Terry McGovern: The Year of the Butcher – Part Two, The Dixon of Old

Published

2 years ago

March 7, 2023

Terry McGovern: The Year of the Butcher – Part Two, The Dixon of Old

“They used to say,” wrote The Washington Times, some years after McGovern’s retirement, “that Terry started to beat his man before the first gong rang. As he sat in his corner he would glare across the ring at an adversary, his face drawn and scowling.”

This will sound familiar to boxing fans raised on stories of the intimidating qualities of Mike Tyson and before him, Sonny Liston. The ability of the biggest men to unnerve is well known but the ability of the smaller men to menace is rarely as celebrated. The main difference between McGovern and a fighter like Liston or Tyson was not that he was smaller but that he was able to dominate the men that did not fear him. Tyson was found out by deluxe journeymen James “Buster” Douglas, immunised to Tyson’s intimidation by the recent death of his mother; Liston was outmaneuvered by an ego on wheels by the name of Muhammad Ali. But when McGovern first brushed up against a fighter far too good to feel even a sliver of fear, he crushed him utterly, defeating Pedlar Palmer, the bantamweight champion of the world in a little over two minutes in September of 1899. The century ended amidst carnage and savagery as nine overmatched and terrified opponents were dispatched in a total of fifteen rounds. Even the world class Harry Forbes, who would go on to win and defend the bantamweight title, could not extend McGovern beyond two.

But his first opponent for 1900 was not a man who could be intimidated by a look, nor even a thirteen-fight knockout streak. His first opponent for 1900 took heed of the brutality McGovern inflicted upon Palmer and the money he made for doing it and calmly issued a challenge, which McGovern calmly accepted. His first opponent for 1900 was George Dixon, the featherweight champion of the world, arguably the greatest fighter in history up until that point. Dixon feared no man.

He had been competing in title fights across two weights for ten years, and had lost only two of those fights, dropping a narrow decision to the great Frank Erne in 1896, avenged the following year in style against an opponent who by then was weighing in as a lightweight. When he dropped another close decision to former KO victim Solly Smith in 1897 there were respectful murmurs that perhaps the genius had stepped past his best – but little surprise when he rallied to reclaim his title and make a further nine defences.

George Dixon

Those titles, those defences were a part of the Dixon story too. He was the first black man to win a world championship; he was the first Canadian to win a world championship – he was a stylistic trailblazer stiffening overmatched opponents with mobility and technique years before the supposed grandfather of modern boxing, James J Corbett, turned professional. It is reasonable to suggest that Terry McGovern was not qualified to fight him.

And yet, when money began to exchange hands, Terry McGovern was the favourite.

Partly, this was caused by sentiment. Terry McGovern was fighting Irish, the embodiment of the most beloved fighter in history at that point, former heavyweight champion John L Sullivan. Whenever McGovern’s cheerful dialogue with his beloved mother was printed in a newspaper, which in the early days were often, newspapers were sure to stress her first generation immigrant brogue in descriptive print. He was white; Dixon, though enormously respected by the white press and subject to very little of the bizarre speculations about heart or punch resistance in the body that were routinely levelled at other top black fighters, was still a black man, one who had turned professional only twenty years after the end of the American civil war. But there was more than emotion and the casual racism of the day at work – a sense was building that Dixon’s time had passed and that McGovern’s was now.

McGovern trained for a long fight, and once again he did not leave New York, where the fight was to be held, but ensconced himself in Fleetwood, a township just north of the Bronx. His dedication to re-developing his stamina was impressive given his power-punching decimation of the division at large. McGovern knew what he was faced with. It made his eerie confidence more persuasive. Some talked of an over-developed hardness to his body and possible problems making the weight limit, but such rumours had evaporated by the seventh of January, two days before the fight.

Dixon’s camp, situated in Lakewood, New Jersey, seemed equally excellent. “If appearances count for anything,” wrote the Washington Evening Star, “Dixon is the Dixon of old…he thinks well of McGovern but believes he will beat him.”

By the sixth, the odds were lengthening, but for those in attendance it was a mystery as to why. “When McGovern faces Dixon,” reported the St.Louis Republic, “he will meet the greatest fighter ever at the weight. As a ring general Dixon has no equal…[he] is a perfect fighting machine. He never misses a chance to inflict punishment.”

This is an oft-forgotten fact where Dixon is concerned. Because he was deemed by his peers the definitive “scientist” for his era, he is treated by many modern sources as a box-mover who used a famous left to keep his opponents at bay, and his famous footwork to keep himself from the furnace: for those labouring under this impression, please take note – nothing could be further from the truth. He did have that educated stiff left; he did use clever footwork to manipulate befuddled opponents; but Dixon was an aggressive, surging, war-machine, not some pit-a-pat rainy-day spoiler. Yes, at times he employed skill to close opponents down and sew decisions up, but when strategy called for it, he attacked two-handed and showed great prowess in doing so.

McGovern quit serious training two days before the fight, restricting himself mainly to running in order that he might easily make weight. “I don’t know that I ever felt better,” he cheerily informed visitors. “I expect to win a hard fight.”

Dixon hit weight six days before the fight. A reporter asked him how long he felt he could last in the ring with such a prestigious foe. “A full day,” was the answer.

The two men were first able to run the rule over one-another at the weigh in, just after two pm on the ninth of January, the day of the combat. In attendance was Barbados Joe Walcott, and roughhousing between he and Dixon’s manager Tom O’Rourke nearly ended in disaster when a kick aimed at the legendary welterweight instead connected with McGovern’s knee as much to the alarm of Dixon as O’Rourke; McGovern delightedly waved away any sense of impropriety accepting O’Rourke’s assurances of an accident as if the manager had his own best interests at heart rather than Dixon’s. The two fighters walked to the scale almost arm-in-arm; when they measured for height and when McGovern came away half an inch taller he announced “I got you whipped now!” and Dixon leaned back, hands laced, grinning. McGovern stripped naked and stepped up, Dixon after him, more modestly dressed, but both came in under the agreed 118lb limit – no official weights were taken, though Dixon reported that he weighed 116lbs that morning and expected to be 120lbs in the ring that evening; McGovern had measured a half pound heaver at first light.

“Dixon seemed to be in the better condition,” was the report that went out on the wire. “He was full of life and energy and looked as if the making of the weight had not troubled him,” whereas “McGovern seemed to be too finely drawn.”

They separated cordially and just under seven hours later they were in the ring. Staged in the arena of Manhattan’s Broadway Athletic Club, it was the most significant meeting between featherweights to that date, and astonishingly, it almost inarguably remains so today. Both list among the twenty greatest fighters in all of history by my estimation; on only a handful of occasions in all of boxing have two such behemoths clashed.

Broadway Athletic Club

An American, McGovern entered the ring draped in the Irish flag, at his waist an emerald-green silk belt; the Canadian, Dixon, wore an American flag. McGovern crossed the ring and the two shook hands warmly.

Then, at around nine thirty-five in the evening, the bell for the opening round sounded and the warmth departed McGovern’s soul. He crushed Dixon like a bug.

This great champion, this man who liked to boast, if a legend so great can be said to boast, that he had visited the canvas only once in four-hundred fights, would visit it eight times in the next thirty minutes and when he left the ring he would leave the better part of his brilliance at the feet of a fighter now boxing with the apocalyptic savagery of a butcher turned trained killer.

But it was Dixon who opened more aggressively. He “waded in” according to The Brooklyn Eagle, “and was the first to lead, McGovern letting a vicious lead go over his shoulder.” Twice in the opening seconds Dixon tried his left and twice McGovern ditched them and landed body-punches over the kidneys, under the heart, and before the first minute was up, Dixon had given ground and had his back to the ropes. “McGovern crowded in,” reported The New York Tribune, “pounding his right to the ribs.” Dixon’s problem was cradled within a nutshell sealed in those precious moments; his punches, even when they landed, were not enough to deter McGovern’s furious assault upon the body.

“In years gone by,” explained the Eagle, “Dixon never hit any man but once as he hit blows in the spots that he rained upon Terry…last night it was different…his heaviest blows were to no avail against the rugged McGovern.”

Dixon was faced with the disastrous prospect of having to box and move for twenty-five rounds against a 5’4 juggernaut with darkening plans for his internal organs or grit his teeth and try to break him. He chose to try to break him.

Such was Dixon’s brilliance that the beam began to tip; a savage and fast second round was likely in McGovern’s favour, but in the third, as McGovern rattled his ribs and liver, Dixon ripped across a hook to the ear and McGovern peeled away, hurt. Two left jabs and a right hand to the jaw then “staggered Mac” according to the wire report before one-two “almost dropped Mac to the floor.”

At the bell to end the third, the betting at ringside was even for the first time since the fight’s announcement, but this was the nearest Dixon would come to a triumph; by the end of the seventh, no bets on McGovern were being taken.

It was in the fourth that he turned the tide against his prestigious foe, brutalising his body with multiple shots every time Dixon punched. In the fifth McGovern was less destructive but was now boring his way inexorably towards domination, and if Dixon took a share, it was a share of his own ashes.

He began to give way to McGovern in the seventh. His nose was erroneously reported as being broken in several newspapers, but it does appear to have exploded in a geyser of blood at the tip of a McGovern left hand, the canvas and the ropes drenched. Twice in the eighth Dixon slipped in the mess of his own blood and McGovern helped him to his feet, attacking the body, now the blood-sodden face, the body, now the head. The Evening Star describes a fighter beaten in the normal way, “his nose broken and his body covered with bruises…groping blindly in a vain but game effort to once more face his antagonists” but other reports indicate something even more fundamental was happening. Like a dog that has been drinking from a poisoned well, there is a sense of a fighter winding down towards an end. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle described “a worn out fighting machine” that was “working smoothly but not strongly” against some new generation of machine too advanced to be reckoned with.

The lights in Dixon went out with the eighth as he was lashed repeatedly to the canvas by McGovern, who was completely unharmed. After the fourth or fifth knockdown, Dixon flinched, reluctant to stand with McGovern so near. “Don’t worry George,” McGovern assured him with what seemed an entirely genuine smile. “I won’t cop any sneak on you.” True to his word, McGovern permitted Dixon to stand unmolested. Then he beat the art out of the greatest fistic artist of his era. They threw in the sponge at the very end of the eighth round; Dixon never recovered.

Terry McGovern was now the bantamweight and the featherweight champion of the world. He was twenty years old.

The following month, an article appeared in the St. Paul Globe criticising McGovern’s management.

“Terry McGovern may be matched to box …Championship Lightweight Frank Erne in Chicago in the near future. McGovern may make a mistake going out of his class…A defeat at the hands Erne would do the clever little boxer a vast deal of harm. McGovern would do better to stick to his knitting.”

Franke Erne likely considered the ten-thousand dollars McGovern shared with Dixon and hoped he would suffer a rush of blood and make the match. Erne was, after all, the best fighter in the world at the 135lb limit and surely beyond even the heavy-duty machinations of McGovern, who was weighing in at flyweight just three short years before.

Well McGovern would have that rush of blood. And Erne wouldn’t last three rounds.

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 319: Rematches in Las Vegas, Cancun and More

Published

20 hours ago

March 28, 2025

David A. Avila

Avila-Perspective-Chap-319-Rematches-in-Las-Vegas-Cancun-and-More

Rematches are the bedrock for prizefighting.

Return battles between rival boxers always means their first encounter was riveting and successful at the box office.

Six months after their first brutal battle Mikaela Mayer (20-2, 5 KOs) and Sandy Ryan (7-2-1, 3 KOs) will slug it out again for the WBO welterweight world title this time on Saturday, March 29, at the Fontainebleau in Las Vegas.

ESPN will show the Top Rank card live.

“It’s important for women’s boxing to have these rivalries and this is definitely up there as one of the top ones,” Mayer told the BBC.

If you follow Mayer’s career you know that somehow drama follows. Whether its back-and-forth beefs with fellow American fighters or controversial judging due to nationalism in countries abroad. The Southern California native who now trains in Las Vegas knows how to create the drama.

For female fighters self-promotion is a necessity.

Most boxing promoters refuse to step out of the usual process set for male boxers, not for female boxers. Things remain the same and have been for the last 70 years. Social media has brought changes but that has made promoters do even less.

No longer are there press conferences, instead announcements are made on social media to be drowned among the billions of other posts. It is not killing but diluting interest in the sport.

Women innately present a different advantage that few if any promoters are recognizing. So far in the past 25 years I have only seen two or three promoters actually ignite interest in female fighters. They saw the advantages and properly boosted interest in the women.

The fight breakdown

Mayer has won world titles in the super featherweight and now the welterweight division. Those are two vastly different weight classes and prove her fighting abilities are based on skill not power or size.

Coaching Mayer since amateurs remains Al Mitchell and now Kofi Jantuah who replaced Kay Koroma the current trainer for Sandy Ryan.

That was the reason drama ignited during their first battle. Then came someone tossing paint at Ryan the day of their first fight.

More drama.

During their first fight both battled to control the initiative with Mayer out-punching the British fighter by a slender margin. It was a back-and-forth struggle with each absorbing blows and retaliating immediately.

New York City got its money’s worth.

Ryan had risen to the elite level rapidly since losing to Erica Farias three years ago. Though she was physically bigger and younger, she was out-maneuvered and defeated by the wily veteran from Argentina. In the rematch, however, Ryan made adjustments and won convincingly.

Can she make adjustments from her defeat to Mayer?

“I wanted the rematch straight away,” said Ryan on social media. “I’ve come to America again.”

Both fighters have size and reach. In their first clash it was evident that conditioning was not a concern as blows were fired nonstop in bunches. Mayer had the number of punches landed advantage and it unfolded with the judges giving her a majority decision win.

That was six months ago. Can she repeat the outcome?

Mayer has always had boiler-oven intensity. It’s not fake. Since her amateur days the slender Southern California blonde changes disposition all the way to red when lacing up the gloves. It’s something that can’t be taught.

Can she draw enough of that fire out again?

“I didn’t have to give her this rematch. I could have just sat it out, waited for Lauren Price to unify and fought for undisputed or faced someone else,” said Mayer to BBC. “That’s not the fighter I am though.”

Co-Main in Las Vegas

The co-main event pits Brian Norman Jr. (26-0, 20 KOs) facing Puerto Rico’s Derrieck Cuevas (27-1-1, 19 KOs) in a contest for the WBO welterweight title.

Norman, 24, was last seen a year ago dissecting a very good welterweight in Giovani Santillan for a knockout win in San Diego. He showed speed, skill and power in defeating Santillan in his hometown.

Cuevas has beaten some solid veteran talent but this will be his big test against Norman and his first attempt at winning a world title.

Also on the Top Rank card will be Bruce “Shu Shu” Carrington and Emiliano Vargas, the son of Fernando Vargas, in separate bouts.

Golden Boy in Cancun

A rematch between undefeated William “Camaron” Zepeda (32-0, 27 KOs) and ex-champ Tevin Farmer (33-7-1, 8 KOs) headlines the lightweight match on Saturday March 29, at Cancun, Mexico.

In their first encounter Zepeda was knocked down in the fourth round but rallied to win a split-decision over Farmer. It showed the flaws in Zepeda’s tornado style.

DAZN will stream the Golden Boy Promotions card that also includes a clash between Yokasta Valle the WBC minimumweight world titlist who is moving up to flyweight to face former flyweight champion Marlen Esparza.

Both Valle and Esparza have fast hands.

Valle is excellent darting in and out while Esparza has learned how to fight inside. It’s a toss-up fight.

Fights to Watch

Fri. DAZN 12 p.m. Cameron Vuong (7-0) vs Jordan Flynn (11-0-1); Pat Brown (0-0) vs Federico Grandone (7-4-2).

Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. William Zepeda (32-0) vs Tevin Farmer (33-7-1); Yokasta Valle (32-3) vs Marlen Esparza (15-2).

Sat. ESPN 7 p.m. Mikaela Mayer (20-2) vs Sandy Ryan (7-2-1); Brian Norman Jr. (26-0) vs Derrieck Cuevas (27-1-1).

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

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Boxing Odds and Ends: The Wacky and Sad World of Livingstone Bramble and More

Published

2 days ago

March 27, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Boxing-Odds-and-Ends-The-Wacky-and-Sad-World-of-Livingstone-Bramble-and-More

One couldn’t write a book about prizefighting’s most eccentric characters without including former lightweight champion Livingstone Bramble who passed away last Saturday (March 22) at age 64 in Las Vegas. The Bramble chapter might well be the longest chapter in the book.

Born on the island of St. Kitt’s and raised in St. Croix, Virgin Islands, Bramble had his first 22 pro fights in New Jersey, nine at Ice World where he made his pro debut. A 3,000-seat hockey rink in Totowa, a community in Northern New Jersey roughly equidistant between Newark and the state capitol of Paterson, Ice World was the stomping ground of Main Events, a family-run enterprise founded by former labor lawyer Dan Duva, the oldest son of colorful boxing trainer Lou Duva who was effectively the face of the operation.

Bramble burst into prominence on June 1, 1984, when, in his twenty-third pro fight, he upset Ray “Boom” Mancini at Buffalo’s War Memorial Auditorium, taking away Mancini’s WBA world lightweight title.

Referee Marty Denkin stopped the fight in the 14^th stanza with Boom Boom on his feet but in very bad shape. Bramble dominated the second half of the fight but was yet trailing on two of the scorecards, a potential scandal that was averted when he took the fight out of the judges’ hands. They fought again 11 months later in Reno and Bramble won a narrow but fair 15-round decision, out-pointing Mancini by 1 point on all three cards.

Bramble’s eccentricities overshadowed his feats in the ring. He owned a boa constrictor named Dog and a pit bull terrier named Snake. A Rastafarian, he trained with reggae music in the background, braided his hair before it was fashionable, and began his public workouts by having his trainer blow soap bubbles which he popped with his fists. Prior to both Mancini fights, he had a voodoo witch doctor place a hex on Boom Boom (the man was exposed as Bramble’s former middle school basketball coach).

After the second Mancini fight, Bramble successfully defended his title with a 13^th-round stoppage of Tyrone “Butterfly” Crawley, but he was then shocked by Edwin Rosario who became a lightweight champion for the second time when he knocked out Bramble in the second round at an outdoor stadium in Miami Beach. Rosario’s upset spoiled a lucrative unification fight between Bramble and Hector Camacho.

Attempting to fight his way back into title contention, Bramble never did get over the hump. His best win as a former champion was a second-round knockout of junior welterweight Harold Brazier, a boxer who would be stopped only one other time, that coming late in a 124-fight career. Bramble took that fight on nine days’ notice, subbing for Micky Ward who pulled out with a hand injury.

Bramble eventually devolved into a gatekeeper, a diplomatic term for a professional loser. He won only three of his last 16 fights to finish 40-26-3.

Late in his career, Bramble settled in Las Vegas. He was 41 years old when he made his first and only ring appearance in his adopted hometown. It came at the Orleans, an off-Strip property where he was paired against Guadalajara journeyman Juan Carlos Rodriguez who had lost seven of his previous nine heading in. At the time, Bramble was preparing for his life after boxing by taking a class for aspiring slot machine technicians.

Bramble lost a wide 10-round decision. “[He] couldn’t get his jab working or put his punches together in a disappointing performance,” wrote Review-Journal ringside reporter Royce Feour. The bout’s matchmaker Brad Goodman was more scathing in his assessment. “Bramble should retire,” said Goodman. “He can’t pull the trigger. His mind was telling him to do something, but his body was not reacting.”

Bramble had four more fights, the last two 6-rounders on small cards in Idaho and Utah. All told, he answered the bell as a pro for 498 rounds.

Jacob “Stitch” Duran, boxing’s most prominent cutman, was new in town and scrounging for work when he first met Livingstone Bramble. They met at the long-shuttered Golden Gloves gym.

“I approached him and asked ‘when is your next fight?’” recalled Duran. “He looked me in the eye and said, ‘right now if you don’t shut up.’”

Duran was taken aback, but then Bramble smiled his radiant smile and Duran knew he was being spoofed. He would eventually work the pads for Bramble and the two became fast friends.

Livingstone Bramble spent his final years in an assisted living facility in Las Vegas, the cost of which, notes Duran, was born by the World Boxing Council which has a fund set aside to assist former professional boxers who have fallen on hard times.

Duran had a habit of visiting Bramble every week but stopped when the boxer could no longer recognize him. “I told his son that I just couldn’t do it anymore, it was too heartbreaking, and that I wanted to remember his dad the way that he was,” Duran told this reporter. “His son was very understanding.”

Stitch Duran remembers the exact time when he was informed that his friend had died. The call from Bramble’s son came at 3:44 in the morning.

News travels fast in the digital age and after Las Vegas fight writer Kevin Iole shared the news of Bramble’s departure on his website, other news outlets quickly latched hold of the info. What’s missing is a formal obituary and funeral arrangements. As yet, there are none.

Bobby Czyz

Livingstone Bramble and Bobby Czyz were stablemates whose careers ran on parallel paths and sometimes intersected. Both earned their spurs on Main Events promotions at Ice World.

The headline attraction on the card where Livingstone Bramble made his pro debut was a match between Bobby Czyz and Tommy Merola, young middleweight prospects. He and Bramble were on the same bill again the following year. The May 21, 1981 event was reportedly the first advance sellout of a boxing card in Totowa.

The brainy Czyz, who finished sixth of 365 in his high school graduation class according to a story in the New York Times, went on to win world titles as a light heavyweight and a cruiserweight. He had a promising career as a Showtime boxing commentator when he hung up his gloves.

Czyz lost that gig (we won’t elaborate) and things went downhill from there. In the summer of 2018, he was discovered working as a cashier in a New Jersey grocery store by a reporter for the Newark Star Ledger.

In December of last year, Bobby Czyz, now 63 years old, was diagnosed with brain cancer. And that brings us to this Sunday (March 30) when a benefit will be held for Czyz at the Elks Lodge located at 242 Chestnut Street in Nutley, New Jersey. A number of boxing luminaries of yesteryear will be in attendance at the event which commences at 1 pm. Tickets to the fundraiser, which are tax-deductible, start at $100.

At last look, the event was a near-sellout. Those interested in attending or just supporting Bobby in this battle should go to this website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/battle-for-bobby-czyz-tickets-1243505882569

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A Paean to George Foreman (1949-2025), Architect of an Amazing Second Act

Published

5 days ago

March 24, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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George Foreman had two careers as a prizefighter. He finished his first career with a record of 45-2 and his second career with a record of 31-3.

The two careers were interrupted by a 10-year intermission. During the lacuna, George morphed seamlessly into a different person. The first George Foreman was menacing and the second George Foreman was cuddly. But in both incarnations, Foreman was larger than life. It seemed as if he would be with us forever.

George Foreman, born in 1949 in Marshall, Texas, a suburb of Houston, learned to box in the Job Corps, a federally-funded vocational training program central to President Lyndon Johnson’s anti-poverty initiative. He was already well-known when he made his pro debut in 1969 on a card at Madison Square Garden topped by an alluring contest between Joe Frazier and Jerry Quarry.

The previous year, at the Olympic Summer Games in Mexico City, George endeared himself to the vast majority of white Americans (and many African-Americans too) by parading around the ring clutching a tiny American flag in his right hand after winning his gold medal match with a second-round stoppage of his Russian opponent. The scene was viewed by millions on television and the picture of it graced the front page of many large-circulation American papers.

The image would not have resonated as strongly if not for the actions of medal-winning American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos. Ten days earlier, at the same Summer Games, Smith and Carlos stood on the podium with their black-gloved fists clenched high in a black power salute during the playing of the National Anthem. Big George, although only 19 years old, was hailed as a patriot, an antidote to those that would tear apart (or further rent) the fabric of American society.

Foreman squandered the admiration that flowed his way with his disposition. He didn’t handle the demands of celebrityhood very well. Reporters found him stand-offish if not downright surly. But he kept winning.

Foreman was never better than on the night of Jan. 22, 1973, when he conquered defending heavyweight champion Joe Frazier in less than two rounds at Kingston, Jamaica. Frazier, like Foreman, unbeaten and a former Olympic gold medalist, was as high as a 5/1 favorite in U.S. precincts, but George demolished him. Frazier was up and down like a yo-yo, six times in all, during the brief encounter.

In his next two fights, Foreman knocked out veteran Puerto Rican campaigner Joe Roman in the opening round and took out Ken Norton in the second frame, the same Ken Norton who had fought 24 rounds with Muhammad Ali, winning and losing split decisions.

Then came the iconic Rumble in the Jungle and we know what happened there. Riding a skein of 24 wins inside the distance, Foreman entered that contest with a record of 40-0 and the prevailing sentiment among the cognoscenti was that he would horizontalize Muhammad Ali in the same fashion as he had starched most of his other victims.

Following this setback, Foreman sat out all of 1976. He would have six more fights before his goodbye starting with a bout at Caesars Palace with Ron Lyle.

Foreman bombed out Lyle in the fifth frame of a back-and-forth slugfest that would be named The Ring magazine Fight of the Year. Four more knockouts would follow beginning with a fifth-round stoppage of Joe Frazier in their second and final meeting and then came a date in San Juan with Jimmy Young, a cutie from Philadelphia.

Foreman and Young met on a sultry afternoon in March of 1977 at the Roberto Clemente Coliseum, a building with no air-conditioning. Foreman nearly took Young out in the seventh round of the 12-round contest but ran out of gas and lost a unanimous decision.

In his dressing room after the fight, Foreman experienced an epiphany and became a born-again Christian. His trainer Gil Glancy rationalized the voices that Foreman heard in his head as a hallucination born of heat prostration, but George was having none of it. He returned to Houston where he could be found evangelizing on street corners or preaching as a guest pastor in storefront churches. His Rolls Royce was gone, replaced by a Volkswagen, and he found coveralls more to his liking than the fancy silk suits he had once purchased in bulk. He eventually established his own church, the Church of Lord Jesus Christ, and became an ordained minister.

ACT TWO

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “There are no second acts in American lives,” but Fitzgerald never met Reverend George Foreman.

Foreman’s second act began on March 9, 1987, before an announced crowd of 5,555 at Arco Arena in Sacramento with a fourth-round stoppage of journeyman Steve Zouski. He told reporters in attendance that he would use his purse, reportedly $24,000, to build a youth center but the cynics were of the opinion that every penny would go into his coffers as expensive divorces and other burdens had exhausted his savings. When George passed the collection plate at his church, wisecracked the wiseguys, all that came back was lint.

Although Foreman had been out of action for a decade, it seemed much longer. By then, Muhammad Ali had fallen into decrepitude, dating an entire generation of heavyweights as relics. In appearance and in fighting style, Foreman scarcely resembled his former self which had the sensory effect of elongating the gap in his timeline. The new George Foreman shaved his head bald and his torso was more massive. When he sallied out of his dressing room, Hall of Fame boxing writer Graham Houston likened the impression to that of an ancient battleship coming out of the mist.

This reporter was ringside for Foreman’s second comeback fight at the Oakland Coliseum where he was paired against Charles Hostetter, a smallish heavyweight packaged as the heavyweight champion of Texas. Hostetter folded his tent in the third round, taking a knee like a quarterback running out the clock at the end of a football game. Foreman carried 247 pounds, 20 pounds less than what he had carried for Zouski but nearly 30 pounds more than what he had carried in his first meeting with Joe Frazier.

The Hostetter fight was a set-up, as were many of Foreman’s fights in the first two years of his comeback, but Big George never cheated himself. Away from the probing eye of reporters, he always went the extra mile in his workouts.

Foreman stayed busy, but his comeback proceeded in fits and starts. In his eighth comeback fight, he stopped Dwight Muhammad Qawi in the seventh round (more exactly, Qawi quit, turning his back on the referee to signal that he was finished) at Caesars Palace, but it was a lackluster performance by George whose punches were slow and often missed the mark. This was the same Dwight Muhammad Qawi who had given Evander Holyfield a tough tussle in a 15-round barnburner when both were cruiserweights, but against Foreman the “Camden Buzzsaw” was a bloated butterball, carrying 222 pounds on his five-foot-seven frame.

The bout’s promoter, Bob Arum, exhorted Foreman go back to the bushes to freshen-up and when George returned to the ring nine weeks later it was in Alaska in an off-TV fight against an opponent with a losing record.

But Foreman’s confidence never wavered and when he finally lured a big-name opponent into the ring, Gerry Cooney, he was more than ready. They met on Jan. 16, 1990, at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City.

At age 33, Cooney was also on the comeback trail. He hadn’t fought in two-and-half years, not since being stopped in the fifth round by Michael Spinks in this same ring. Since his mega-fight with Larry Holmes in mid-1982, he had answered the bell for only 12 rounds. But, rusty or not, Cooney still possessed a sledgehammer of a left hook.

Cooney landed the harder punches in the first round and won the round on all three cards, but Big George was just warming up. In the second stanza, he decked Cooney twice. The second knockdown was so harsh that referee Joe Cortez waived the fight off without starting a count.

“He smote him,” wrote Phil Berger for his story in the New York Times. “The Punching Preacher gained a flock of converts,” said Bernard Fernandez in the Philadelphia Daily News.

Foreman called out Mike Tyson after the fight. The wheels were set in motion when they shared top billing on a card at Caesars Palace in June of 1990 (Tyson knocked out former amateur rival Henry Tillman in the opening round; Foreman dismissed the Brazilian, Adilson Rodrigues, in round two), but the match never did come to fruition and Foreman, tired of waiting, set his sights on Evander Holyfield who owned two of the three meaningful pieces of the world heavyweight title.

An Adonis-physiqued gladiator renowned for his vitality, Holyfield, 28, figured to be too good and too fast for Foreman. If Evander set a fast pace, Foreman, it seemed, would eventually crumble from exhaustion. “Hopefully Holyfield will take it easy on him,” wrote the sports editor of the Tennessean. “There’s no glory to be gained in mugging a senior citizen.”

Holyfield won the fight, but Foreman – the oldest man to challenge for a world title in any weight division to that point in time — won the hearts of America with his buoyant performance. On several occasions Holyfield rattled him, but Big George kept coming back for more and at the finish it was he, improbably, who seemed to have more fuel in his tank. After trouncing Gerry Cooney, casual fans, at least most of them, finally took him seriously and with his gallant performance against Holyfield, he graduated into a full-fledged American folk hero. One would be hard-pressed to find an example of a boxer elevating his stature to such an extent in a match that he lost.

There was more to George Foreman’s growing popularity. He proved to be a great salesman, leavening his fistic fearsomeness with self-effacing humor. He developed an amusing shtick that played off his fondness for cheeseburgers and he became a popular guest on the talk show circuit. “Is this Adilson Rodrigues a good fighter?” inquired Johnny Carson. “I sure hope not,” deadpanned Foreman.

History would show that Big George wasn’t done making miracles, but there were potholes in his path. He had ended the Holyfield fight with a puffy face and with swelling around both of his eyes, but he looked a lot worse following his 10-round match with Alex Stewart in April of 1992. At the final bell, his face was a bloody mess and both of his eyes were swollen nearly shut. Fortunately, he scored two knockdowns in the second stanza, without which he would have been on the wrong side of a split decision.

Two fights later, he was out-pointed by Tommy Morrison in a bout sanctioned as a world title fight by the fledgling and lightly-regarded World Boxing Organization (WBO). Purportedly a distant relative of John Wayne, “Tommy the Duke” had the equalizer, a Cooney-ish left hook, but there were holes in his defense. A slugfest on paper, this bout played out like a chess match. Go figure.

Eighteen months after his lackluster showing against Morrison, Foreman got another shot at the world heavyweight title, thrust against Michael Moorer who had upset Holyfield to win the WBA and IBF (and lineal) titles. (The WBC version was held by Lennox Lewis; Mike Tyson was in prison.) A former light heavyweight champion who had successfully defended that diadem nine times, Moorer, not quite 27 years old, was undefeated in 35 fights with 30 knockouts.

The match-up was widely disparaged because of the alphabet soup nonsense and because Foreman was coming off a loss. “Big George has been good for the game, but has outstayed his welcome,” wrote Harry Mullen. The noted British scribe, who had been ringside for Larry Holmes’ beatdown of Muhammad Ali, told his readers that he wouldn’t be going to Las Vegas to see the fight because he just couldn’t stomach yet another dispiriting spectacle. “The most likely outcome,” he said, “is a prolonged and painful beating.”

At this juncture of his life, Foreman didn’t need the money. Although his TV sitcom “George” had been cancelled after only eight episodes (George played a retired boxer who starts an after-school program for inner-city kids), he had money rolling in from a slew of endorsements. McDonald’s, KFC, Frito-Lay, Oscar Meyer – you name it – and Big George was a “brand ambassador.” With his purse of no great importance in the big picture, George’s only incentive for defeating Moorer was his pride.

Through nine rounds, Moorer vs. Foreman was a tedious affair. Moorer was ahead by a commanding 5 points on two of the scorecards while the third judge had Moorer ahead by only 1. Foreman, who scored 68 knockouts over the course of his pro career, always had a puncher’s chance, no matter the opponent, but there was no inkling of the thunderclap that would come. This was shaping up as the sort of fight that would have the patrons streaming to the exits before the final bell.

The thunderclap arrived in the final minute of the 10^th frame. It was a classic British punch in execution, a stiff right hand delivered straight from the shoulder. The punch didn’t travel far, but landed smack on Moorer’s jaw. His face went blank and he fell to the canvas where he lay prone as the referee counted him out. Before the stupefied crowd had a chance to soak it all in, Foreman dropped to his knees in prayer. Many were misty-eyed as ring announcer Michael Buffer made it formal, orating the particulars.

Six days after the 20^th anniversary of the Rumble in the Jungle, Big George Foreman had rolled back the clock, recapturing the world heavyweight title, or at least pieces of it, capping the most astonishing comeback in the history of human endurance sports.

Foreman would have four more fights before leaving the sport for good two months shy of his 49^th birthday. We won’t delve into those bouts other than noting that he was fortunate to get the nod over Axel Schulz and unfortunate to lose to Shannon Briggs in his farewell fight, a narrow decision widely assailed as a heist.

And the money kept rolling in. In 1994, the year that Foreman conquered Michael Moorer, a portable indoor grill that came to be called the George Foreman Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine was introduced to the public. The contraption proved so popular that Foreman, the TV pitchman and the face of it, reaped a reported $200 million in royalties, more money than he had earned in all of his prizefights combined.

They say you can never go home again, to which Big George replied , “bah, humbug.”

Foreman’s heroics during his Second Act put a spring my step and had the same effect on many others. In the words of the inimitable Jim Murray, he was a hero to every middle-aged man and older who looked in the mirror and saw some stranger looking back at him.

Thank you, George, thanks for the memories. Rest in peace

***

Note: TSS editor-in-chief Arne K. Lang is the author of five books including “Prizefighting: An American History,” released by McFarland in 2016 and re-released in a paperback edition in 2020. Several of the passages in this story were extracted from that book.

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