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The Hauser Report: Riyadh Season Comes to America

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The Hauser Report: Riyadh Season Comes to America

On August 3, at BMO Stadium in Los Angeles, Terence Crawford made a muted statement, eking out a close decision victory over Israil Madrimov in what was expected to be a legacy-building fight. Jared Anderson and Issac Cruz landed with a thud. And several other performances fell short of expectations. But a huge statement was made by The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia which propped up the card financially and is using boxing to expand its influence and cultivate an image throughout the world.

In recent years, the Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority (GEA) has invested heavily in sports. It has changed the economics of professional golf through creation of the LIV golf tour and hosted significant competitions in events ranging from Formula One automobile racing to mixed martial arts. The Women’s Tennis Association season-ending finals are scheduled to be contested annually in Riyadh through 2026. A “6 Kings” tennis showcase featuring Novak Djokovic, Carlos Alcaraz, and Rafael Nadal will be held in Riyadh later this year. And Saudi Arabia has been designated as the host country for the 2034 World Cup.

The Saudi government says that it’s investing in sports to build The Kingdom as a tourist destination. Critics call the program “sportswashing” designed to cover up a multitude of wrongs such as the denial of equal rights to women and the suppression of free speech.

The first “megafight” contested in Saudi Arabia was the December 7, 2019, rematch between Anthony Joshua and Andy Ruiz. Within the past ten months, The Kingdom has hosted five major boxing events, the most significant of which saw Oleksandr Usyk defeat Tyson Fury to claim the undisputed heavyweight championship of the world. Now the GEA boxing program (part of an entertainment extravaganza known as “Riyadh Season”) has extended its reach to America.

It has always been politically acceptable to do oil business with Saudi Arabia. McDonald’s has more than 250 outlets in the Kingdom. Apple controls forty percent of the Saudi mobile phone market.

Should sports be different?

Earlier this year, Bob Arum (who has a long record of supporting Jewish and progressive political causes) noted, “Everything has its compromises, in life and in business. I think we have to be pleased we’re seeing these big fights no matter where they take place.”

Others draw a parallel between Saudi Arabia’s sports branding and corporations paying large sums for stadium naming rights or buying advertising time during telecasts.

And Las Vegas showed decades ago that sports can lure tourists to a desert destination.

But unlike most sports sponsors, the Saudis have a political agenda as well as a commercial one.

And there’s another difference. Saudi Arabia receives 500 billion dollars in oil revenue each year. It can spend what it wants to get what it wants in boxing without worrying whether fight-related expenses are covered by income from fights. And the Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority is considering a plan that, if implemented, could lead to the domination of professional boxing.

Fighters now routinely thank His Excellency Turki Al-Alshikh (chairman of the GEA and architect of the Saudi boxing program) the way they once paid homage to HBO and Al Haymon. Matt Christie, taking note of Saudi Arabia’s recent domination of the heavyweight landscape, wrote at the start of this year, “Turki Al-Alshikh is doing for heavyweight boxing what ecstasy pills did for Manchester nightclubs in the 1990s. The banner division has become his playground and, all around him, hands are being held, minds are being lost, fights are breaking out, and the pupils of the old and tired are bulging with euphoria. Resistance to this extraordinary Saudi revolution is futile because, irrespective of any nagging voices suggesting something isn’t quite right, it’s happening. Don’t worry about the long-term consequences or what might go wrong because, right here and right now, we’re in the thick of the party of a lifetime. Al-Alshikh, in the space of six breakneck months, has become the most influential figure in the entire sport.”

That brings us to August 3 in Los Angeles. There were eight fights on the card but Crawford-Madrimov was the lynchpin. Terence is at or near the top of virtually every pound-for-pound list. Early in the evening, Turki Al-Alshikh went so far as to call out Canelo Alvarez, challenging him to fight Crawford in Riyadh or Las Vegas in February 2025.

Turki Al-Alshikh

Turki Al-Alshikh

There was a lot of hype throughout the evening. The GEA deserves credit for constructing solid undercards. But DAZN blow-by-blow commentator Todd Grisham sounded like a carnival barker when he called the affair “maybe the best card in all of boxing history” and “perhaps the biggest card that boxing has ever seen.”

That said; three fights on the undercard stood out. Jose Valenzuela outboxed heavily-favored Isaac Cruz to claim the WBA 140-pound title. Jarrell Miller and Andy Ruiz slogged to an entertaining twelve-round draw. And Jared Anderson (hailed as America’s best heavyweight prospect) was knocked down three times before being stopped in round five by Martin Bakole (who was born in Congo but fights out of Scotland).

The evening seemed to drag on forever. The main pay-per-view telecast began at 3:00 PM Pacific time. There were unnecessary delays between fights. A featured performance by Eminem didn’t start until 9:15 PM (at which point crotch-grabbing and liberal use of the word “motherf—–” were introduced to Riyadh Season). That was followed by the national anthems of Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan (Madrimov’s homeland), and the United States. Crawford-Madrimov didn’t start until 9:55 PM which was well after midnight on the east coast.

Crawford came into the fight as a 6-to-1 favorite, riding an 11-fight-8-year knockout streak. Terrence usually takes three or four rounds to decode his opponent and then the destruction begins. But against Madrimov, he couldn’t solve the puzzle.

Israil was quicker than expected, strong with good footwork, and fought a disciplined fight. Terence responded cautiously. Both men tried to counterpunch without having many punches to counter. The crowd didn’t like it. After nine rounds, the contest appeared even. Then Crawford finished stronger to claim a 115-113, 115-113, 116-112 triumph. But Crawford-Canelo (which was a stretch to begin with because of the weight differential between the two men) now looks like a bridge too far.

In that regard, Turki Al-Alshikh might be finding out that matchmaking is more complicated than he thought. The Saudis invested a lot of money in Deontay Wilder, who promptly lost twice. Oleksandr Usyk is far less marketable than Tyson Fury. His Excellency announced on social media earlier this summer that Jared Anderson had followed his advice and brought on Sugar Hill Steward as his new trainer. Oops!

At present, three more fight cards are scheduled to take place under the Riyadh Season banner this year.

On September 21, the GEA will extend its reach to Wembley Stadium in London when Anthony Joshua and Daniel Dubois square off for the recently devalued IBF heavyweight belt. Usyk has beaten both Joshua (twice) and Dubois and became boxing’s first “undisputed” heavyweight champion in more than two decades when he decisioned Tyson Fury in Riyadh in May of this year. But after collecting a healthy sanctioning fee for Fury-Usyk, the IBF stripped Oleksandr for choosing to honor his rematch clause against Fury rather than fight a meaningless “mandatory” defense against Dubois (who became the IBF’s mandatory challenger a mere ten weeks ago). It’s unfortunate that Turki-Alalshikh (who was essential to the unification process) is supporting this fragmentation of the crown.

If things proceed as planned, Artur Beterviev and Dmitry Bivol will meet in Riyadh for a much-anticipated 175-pound title-unification bout on October 12. Then Usyk-Fury II will be contested in The Kingdom on December 21.

Meanwhile, Turki Al-Alshikh has been establishing relationships and building for the future. No one knows how far the Saudi bandwagon will roll. But it’s worth looking at what might happen in the future.

Let’s start with the proposition that, yes, the General Entertainment Authority is making some good fights. But consider what the public is being charged to watch them.

Nearly three years ago, Paul Magno wrote of boxing in the United States, “Almost everything is behind some sort of paywall. Despite the promise brought by an influx of mainstream money to the sport over the last few years, things are more walled off from access than ever. Everything requires some sort of subscription or a direct pay-per-view fee. That’s certainly no way to build a dwindling fan base. And it also does nothing to keep loyal fans who are growing increasingly tired of seeing the hat passed to them before every fight.”

DAZN is the General Entertainment Authority’s main distribution partner for boxing at the present time, although TNT Sports, Sky Sports Box Office, ESPN, and other outlets such as PPV.com are part of the process. Recently, Turki Al-Alshikh posted on social media, “I have become increasingly impressed with DAZN’s quality and with what they offer to us. I hope that one day DAZN will become the home for all combat sports, especially boxing and MMA.”

But DAZN has yet to build an effective marketing platform in the United States. And there are times when it seems as though the American market is little more than an afterthought for DAZN and its Saudi patrons. For example, Usyk-Fury II is scheduled to take place opposite three first-round playoff games in the college football championship tournament that will be shown on free television in the United States at noon, 4:00 PM. and 8:00 PM eastern time. That’s the equivalent of televising a fight on pay-per-view in the United Kingdom opposite a free knockout-stage World Cup contest between England and Argentina.

Also, DAZN is now at a point where, insofar as boxing is concerned, it’s giving subscribers quantity rather than quality. Too many of its fights are predictably mediocre. Many of its “free” shows are novelty boxing. In some instances, DAZN pays promoters as little as one dollar for the right to stream an entire fight card (and gets what it pays for).

A DAZN subscription is expensive to begin with. Boxing fans in the United States who add to that cost by buying the fights they most want to see on DAZN-PPV will be charged more than a thousand dollars this year. The Crawford-Madrimov card cost $79.99 in America and £24.99 in the United Kingdom. Most of the pay-per-view numbers in the United States for Riyadh Season fights have been dreadful.

So, a word of advice. Stop saying you’re “doing this for the fans” and actually do something for the fans. Don’t put the fights that matter most on pay-per-view where many fans can’t afford to see them. Put some of them on “free” television to reward loyal fans and build a fan base for the future. The Kingdom can afford it,

At present, the General Entertainment Authority is planning a lavishly-funded website (boxing.net) under the stewardship of Rick Reeno, who built Boxing Scene into a must-visit destination before it was sold by Paramount to new ownership.

Boxing needs a free website that keeps the industry and fans current on every aspect of the sweet science. The GEA can afford a website with a top-of-the-line infrastructure and elite editorial talent. The question is whether boxing.net will actually come to fruition and, if it does, whether it will be an independent voice, a propaganda outlet, or something in between.

Riyadh Season has entered into sponsorship agreements with various sanctioning bodies and promoters. That will add to its visibility, keep the sanctioning bodies in line, and further curry favor with promoters.

And there is talk of a project that would extend beyond anything the sweet science has seen before – the creation of a league that would redefine boxing as a business and a sport.

Turki Al-Alshikh alluded to the league in a sitdown with a small group of reporters in Riyadh earlier this year. Articles in the New York Times and on Reuters in June elaborated on it. Nothing is certain at present. But one scenario being contemplated is:

(1) Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund (the Public Investment Fund) would finance the project and pay out as much as two billion dollars to put the league in place. It would be a joint venture between boxing’s major promoters and one or more Saudi entities. Most likely, league fights would be promoted by Sela (a company owned by the Public Investment Fund that has taken the lead in developing the Saudi sports program).

(2) The business would promote high-profile fights around the globe under one brand name (as is the case with UFC). Roughly two hundred of the best men’s boxers in the world (women aren’t included in the present plan) would be divided into twelve weight classes (boxing currently has eighteen weight divisions). The best would fight the best with fighters moving up or down in the league rankings based on performance. Fighters could be dropped by the league and replaced by new talent as circumstances warrant.

The proposal could turn non-league fights orchestrated by today’s promoters into a minor league of sorts. In essence, the promoters would be developing new fighters to the point where the Saudi League is ready to sign them.

Jim Lampley (who was the voice of HBO Boxing for decades and now comments on fights for PPV.com) observes, “There are some similarities between what the Saudis are doing and the way HBO was at its peak. HBO gave fans a broadly based expectation that there was an organization committed to making the biggest best fights possible. And it became the gathering point for the highest-impact, highest-priced, most globally important fights in boxing. But HBO’s goals were different from the Saudis’. It was trying to sell subscriptions and pay-per-view buys, not change the world. And while HBO established itself in boxing by paying more than the competition, it never paid as much above the prevailing market rate as the Saudi government is paying now.”

Boxing needs a strong collective entity and central authority. But questions about the proposed league abound.

Who would run the league as its de facto commissioner? Would the world sanctioning bodies play a role?

What would happen to fighters who choose to not participate? What if the powers that be have a prejudice for or against a particular fighter because of the fighter’s religion? Or his marketability? Or his penchant for speaking out on social issues? Like Muhammad Ali once did. Except suppose, in this instance instead of refusing induction into the United States Army, the fighter repeatedly criticizes the Saudi government for its treatment of women or the lack of a free press? Suppose, unlike all the fighters who have journeyed to Riyadh at government expense to pay tribute to Turki Al-Alshikh and proclaim what a wonderful country Saudi Arabia is, a fighter has a divergent view? Does this mean that he will be denied access to bigtime boxing? Keep in mind; a Saudi-backed boxing league would be accountable in the end to the Saudi monarchy and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

What sort of testing for performance enhancing drugs would the league require? VADA testing has been in place for most Riyadh Season boxing matches. But because of timing constraints, the testing has been spotty.

The proposed league offers an ideal opportunity to advance clean sport. Its overseers could say, “We’ll have the most comprehensive PED testing in boxing. To join the league, a fighter will have to submit to VADA testing 365-days a year with VADA’s standard reporting requirements in place. No adverse test result will be covered up. And the beauty of it is that all two hundred of our fighters will be subject to the same rigorous testing, so they won’t have to worry about an opponent juicing while they’re clean.”

Will the Saudis put a serious PED enforcement mechanism in place or just pay lip service to the issue? Turki Al-Alshikh knows the answer to that. I don’t.

Saudi Arabia’s participation in boxing has been a mixed bag to date. There have been some good fights that most likely would not have happened without it; most notably Tyson Fury vs. Oleksandr Usyk. And Riyadh Season has made a small number of wealthy people wealthier. But that money has not trickled down to boxing’s middle and lower classes. And the truth is that boxing today, particularly in the United States, is not a healthy sport.

A healthy sport is self-sustaining in terms of revenue. The Riyadh Season fights are happening because the Saudi government has been willing to lose tens of millions of dollars promoting them. Meanwhile, traditional promoters are imploding, creating a power vacuum that the GEA has moved into.

Premier Boxing Champions is promoting fewer and fewer events. When PBC’s deal with Amazon was announced last December, observers hoped it would breathe new life into Al Haymon’s fading empire. But fans are still waiting for the first “free” PBC card on Amazon, and the PBC-Amazon pay-per-view offerings have foundered.

Top Rank is being kept afloat in large measure by ESPN. But that deal expires next year.

Four months ago, Golden Boy was counting on Ryan Garcia and Jaime Munguia to keep it healthy. No one knows when Garcia will fight again, although it won’t be soon. And Mungia has left the company for Top Rank.

Queensberry and Matchroom seem to have more financial viability than their American counterparts. But Saudi largesse is their highest priority.

In sum, Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority will be a dominant force in boxing for as long as it’s willing to pay what it takes to get the fights it wants regardless of how many millions (or tens of millions) of dollars it loses on each event. Depending on the course of action it chooses, the GEA could render every other player in boxing a lower-tier entity.

But dominance doesn’t mean total control.

Premier Boxing Champions was going to take over boxing. Matchroom and DAZN were going to take over boxing. Daniel Kinahan was going to take over boxing. And before that, HBO and ESPN were going to take over boxing. The Las Vegas casinos were going to take over boxing, too.

And a word of caution. Just because the General Entertainment Authority has extraordinary resources at its command doesn’t mean that it will continue to spend them on boxing.

Saudi Arabia’s “bid book” for the 2034 World Cup outlines plans to stage the tournament in fifteen stadiums located in five different cities. But eleven of the stadiums have yet to be built and it will cost a lot of money to build them. Seventy-three new training sites will have to be constructed and sixty-one more upgraded.

Bloomberg has reported that financial imperatives have caused some mega-projects in The Kingdom to be scaled back. At some point, the decision could be made to stop spending lavishly on boxing.

In other words, a year from now, the Saudis could be putting a transformative boxing league in place. Or the spigot on the gravy train could be shut off.

Meanwhile, the mantra for many players in boxing who are doing business with the Saudis is, get what you can while the getting is good. Pocket your big scores. And if the party ends, walk away smiling.

Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – MY MOTHER and me – is a personal memoir available at www.amazon.com/My-Mother-Me-Thomas-Hauser/dp/1955836191/ref=sr_1_1?crid=5C0TEN4M9ZAH&keywords=thomas+hauser&qid=1707662513&sprefix=thomas+hauser%2Caps%2C80&sr=8-1

          In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism. In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

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Thomas Hauser is the author of 52 books. In 2005, he was honored by the Boxing Writers Association of America, which bestowed the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism upon him. He was the first Internet writer ever to receive that award. In 2019, Hauser was chosen for boxing's highest honor: induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Lennox Lewis has observed, “A hundred years from now, if people want to learn about boxing in this era, they’ll read Thomas Hauser.”

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

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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 10th 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 20th 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 49th 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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Sebastian Fundora TKOs Chordale Booker in Las Vegas

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Sebastian Fundora proved too tall and too powerful for challenger Chordale Booker in retaining the WBC and WBO super welterweight titles by TKO on Saturday in Las Vegas.

Despite a year off, Fundora (22-1-1, 14 KOs) showed the shorter fellow southpaw Booker (23-2) that rust would not be a factor in front of the crowd at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.

“I felt ready this whole time. I’ve been working very hard,” said Fundora.

Behind a massive height advantage Fundora jabbed away at Booker, the subject of an award-winning documentary called “The Boxer” in 2016. It portrayed his journey from nearly being imprisoned and having boxing as an outlet to success on the streets.

Booker tried to offset Fundora’s height but could not.

Fundora established his long spearing jab to maintain a zone of safety and when Booker ventured past the zone, he was met with uppercuts and lefts.

It was a puzzle Booker could not figure out.

Fundora won the WBO and WBC titles with an upset over Australia’s much heralded Tim Tszyu. Though accepting the fight within mere weeks of the fight to replace Keith Thurman, the fighter known as the “Towering Inferno” was able to out-fight the favored Aussie to win by split decision.

Nearly a year passed since winning the titles and the months without action did not deter him from stepping on the gas second round and overwhelming the shorter Booker with a blistering attack.

Booker tried to survive and counter but no such luck.

In the fourth round a right hook by Booker was met with a thunderous four-punch combination by Fundora. A left uppercut snapped the head back of Booker who was clearly dazed by the blow. Another three-punch combination and the fight was stopped at 2:51 of the fourth round.

Fundora retained the WBC and WBO titles by technical knockout.

“We were training to wear him down,” said Fundora. “I’m a powerful fighter. With this fight I guess it showed even more.”

The two-belt champion is now smack in the middle of one of the most talented weight division in men’s boxing.

“I would love to be undisputed like my sister,” said Fundora of his sister Gabriela Fundora the undisputed flyweight world champion. “

Other Bouts

Arizona’s Jesus Ramos Jr. (23-1, 19 KOs) knocked out Argentina’s Guido Schramm (16-4-2) in the seventh round of their super welterweight match. Ramos, a southpaw, caught Schramm with a left that paralyzed him along he ropes. The referee stopped the match at 1:38 of the seventh.

Arizona’s Elijah Garcia (17-1, 13 KOs) survived a knockdown by talented veteran Terrell Gausha (24-5-1) in the first round to mount a rally and win by split decision after 10 rounds in a middleweight match up.

Photo credit: Ryan Hafey / Premier Boxing Champions

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Bernard Fernandez Reflects on His Special Bond with George Foreman

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Bernard Fernandez Reflects on His Special Bond with George Foreman

For pretty much the entirety of my career as a sportswriter, I have doggedly adhered to the principle that there is a line separating professional integrity from unabashed fandom, and for me to cross it would be a violation of everything I believed in as a representative of whatever media outlet I was writing for at the time. In 50-plus years, only once did I cross that line. It was when I was in Canastota, N.Y., for an International Boxing Hall of Fame induction weekend and I had submitted the winning bid in a silent auction for an autographed photo of the great Carmen Basilio, being hoisted onto the shoulders of trainer Angelo Dundee and another cornerman after winning a title bout. I have that photo, which also was signed by Angelo, hanging on the wall of my apartment.

I broke my self-imposed rule by asking Carmen to pose with me holding the photo because he was my father’s favorite fighter, and thus mine when I was a little kid watching the Gillette Cavalcade of Sports Friday Night Fights with my dad, a former pro welterweight and Navy veteran of World War II in the Pacific before he became a much-decorated police officer. Anyway, Carmen was long-since retired and I chose to believe that on the grand scale of professional propriety, my posing with him was nothing more than a small blip on a very large radar screen.

But with the shocking news that George Foreman had passed away on March 21, at the age of 76, it suddenly occurred to me that my idealistic principles have forever prevented me from having an autographed photo of Big George hanging on the same wall with the one of Basilio, which I no doubt will regret to my dying day. If I had bent my own standards of how a sportswriter should act in his dealings with one of his interview subjects, I might even have had one of George and I together, side by side, as is the case with any number of my colleagues who asked for and were granted photo op access to the famous athletes they covered.

Why do I now place George Foreman in a separate category from so many other elite fighters I have covered during my career? Had I not rigidly held to my belief that it was unprofessional and maybe even a bit unethical to cross that inviolable line, I might now have photos of myself standing alongside Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Lennox Lewis, Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Tommy Hearns, Bernard Hopkins, Oscar De La Hoya, Roy Jones Jr. and Felix Trinidad, not to mention such legends of other sports as Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Walter Payton, Wayne Gretzky, Wilt Chamberlain, Julius Erving and the quarterbacking family of Archie, Peyton and Eli Manning.

I had, of course, covered a number of Big George’s fights, but although he knew of me, it was not to the extent that he considered me to be a friend. All that changed, however, through the intercession of a mutual friend, boxing publicist Bill Caplan, whose relationship with George was longstanding and so deeply ingrained as to be almost familial.

My newspaper, the Philadelphia Daily News, had sent me to Los Angeles to cover a bout in which Julio Cesar Chavez was to fight Philly’s Ivan Robinson. Despite increasing pain, I somehow managed to file features on both main-event participants in the days before fight night prior to my arrival at the Staples Center in a condition that had gone from bad to worse. Bill noticed my distress in the press room and said he was going to get a ringside physician to check me out. “Maybe after the fight I came here to cover is over,” I told him, grimacing through gritted teeth. But Bill insisted that I get a medical opinion, and quickly, and the doctor who took my blood pressure said it was at a near-stroke level and that I needed to be transported by ambulance to a hospital ASAP. In the emergency room, it was determined that I was suffering from an unpassed kidney stone, a problem I had had several times previously, but not to this extent. I did not cover the fight I had come to see, of course, but I was able to make it back home alive and reasonably well before receiving additional treatment.

George Foreman did the foreword for my first boxing anthology, Championship Rounds, but he consented to do so only after he consulted with Bill Caplan to inquire if I was a writer who could be trusted not to twist his words to fit my own narrative. Bill told him I was a fair guy and that he should do the foreword once he had read the manuscript and deemed it worthy of an endorsement. It didn’t hurt that when I spoke with George by telephone, I remarked that he “owed” me. “Why do I owe you?” he asked, seemingly amused. “Because I bought two of your grills,” I replied, which drew the chuckle from him I had hoped to get.

More than a few of my colleagues at various media outlets can accurately say that George considered them to be his friends, but my relationship with him continued to grow. It didn’t hurt that I was on very amicable terms with his younger brother Roy Foreman, who lives just outside Atlantic City, and whenever I needed to speak to George directly he either answered right away or returned my call at his earliest convenience. I also don’t think it hurt that my father had once appeared in a primary undercard bout of a show in San Diego in the 1940s that was headlined by the great Archie Moore, who would later serve as one of George’s most trusted advisers. Before George’s very respectable but losing performance against heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield, the challenger confided that “Archie is the only one who can tell me anything. When Archie Moore takes you to the side to tell you something, you can’t argue because he knows. I can’t argue with Archie Moore. When he tells me something, I have to say, `Yes, sir, that’s right.’”

Maybe the only person George trusted as much as the “Old Mongoose” was Bill Caplan, and it was Bill who told his dear friend of the abject grief my family and I were enduring after my wife, who had been battling stage 4 pancreatic cancer, passed away on May 5 of last year. I would prefer not to divulge any details of something that shall forever remain private, but what George did in support of me and mine, and to honor the memory of a great lady who he never met, went above and beyond.

I included stories I did on George in three of my five boxing anthologies that already are in print (a sixth likely will come out this June), and I’d like to believe that our connection was solid enough that he shared the sort of insights that revealed him to be so much more than a devastating puncher inside the ropes. He was a quality human being in his everyday life, an individual who was widely admired and deserved to be recognized as such. But even if that were not the case, he would stand nearly alone for his ability to hit as hard as any heavyweight who ever lived. In recalling what it was like to share the ring with Big George in the epic “Rumble in the Jungle,” which Ali won by eighth-round knockout on Oct. 30, 1974, the victor said, “If you take any two heavyweights you can think of, and multiply (their punching power) by two, that’s George Foreman.”

Maybe Foreman might have fared better in that much-hyped bout in Kinshasa, Zaire, had he paced himself a bit more, but then that would not have been in keeping with his long-held belief that it did not pay for a powerful puncher to parcel his energy in measured doses.

“When you’re a puncher, it’s a real mysterious, almost magical thing,” he told me. “Guys who can’t punch, one thing they got to have is a lot of bravery because they knew they had to go 10 rounds, 12 rounds, 15 rounds almost every time. Punchers live with the fear if a fight keeps going another round, another round, they’re somehow going to lose. Every fight I ever had, I went for the knockout and nothing else. I didn’t really think I could win a decision. Even when I won on points, I felt like I failed.”

But even Big George didn’t have enough power to kayo the Grim Reaper indefinitely, although he might have dared to believe he could make that happen by dint of his indomitable will. After he won his first heavyweight championship, dethroning Joe Frazier by registering six knockdowns in less than two rounds on Jan. 22, 1973, in Kingston, Jamaica, the new king of the big men said, “All of a sudden I’m beating a guy like Joe Frazier, who could punch like he could and never stop coming at you? I left there thinking, `Nobody can stand up to me.’ I just believed that if I caught anybody with a right uppercut or a left hook, he’s gone. I could knock anybody out with either hand. It seemed impossible to me that I could lose.”

In posting a 76-5 career record with 68 victories inside the distance, Big George didn’t lose often. Now that he’s taken his earthly leave, I can only regret the fact that I didn’t cross that line and ask him to pose for a picture with me. I hope he somehow knows that I shall forever be in debt for the graciousness he exhibited toward my wife and my family when we needed just such a gesture not only from a legendary fighter, but a true friend.

Editor’s note: Bernard Fernandez entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame in the Observer category with the class of 2020. The greatly-admired publicist Bill Caplan, now in his late 80’s, entered the Hall in 2022.

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