If American exceptionalism is more than just a fleeting abstract concept, George Foreman is one of its embodiments.
The sport of boxing, more than any other athletic pursuit, has transformed men who at one point of their lives were seemingly incorrigible thugs and gangsters, into beloved American heroes, models of reformation. Foreman, who passed away last Friday at the age of 76 surrounded by family at a hospital in Houston, for four decades was a living, breathing algorithm of redemption and success. His cause of death was not publicly shared.
Born in Marshall, Texas in 1949 in the Jim Crow era — Texas being the last state in America where in 1865 more than 250,000 Black slaves were informed they were liberated from white ownership well after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 — Foreman grew up in Houston’s notoriously dangerous Fifth Ward as one of its most feared inhabitants, strong arming for money and committing other petty crimes as strapping teenager.
Related: George Foreman, the fearsome heavyweight who became a beloved champion, dies at 76
Foreman was one of six children and his mother, Nancy Ree, misled him for much of his early life as to the true identity of his biological father. In adulthood, Foreman finally learned that it was a man named Leroy Moorehead. These experiences informed and shaped who Foreman became as a father — raising 10 biological children and two others he called his own. He named all five of his sons George in part so they would have no doubt as to who was their dad and “so they would always have something in common,” he once quipped.
A junior high school dropout, he joined the Job Corps at 16, but boxing ultimately became Foreman’s salvation. He rose to the world’s best amateur heavyweight, winning the Olympic gold medal in the weight class at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. Though only 19 years old, Foreman was roundly ostracized by many Black people for waving the American flag in the ring after his victory at the height of this country’s Black liberation movement.
It was a stark juxtaposition with track stars Tommie Smith and John Carlos each raising a fist adorned with black gloves standing on the medal ceremony podium during the playing of the Star-Spangled Banner after capturing the gold and bronze respectively. The apolitical and socially ill-educated Foreman was unfairly labeled a sellout by a plethora Black folks, one that he carried with him into his seminal 1974 heavyweight title fight against Muhammad Ali, globally revered by those of the African diaspora as a fearless freedom fighter.
The heavily favored, 6’4”, 220-pound, supremely chiseled 25-year-old undefeated Foreman would lose by eighth round knockout to the 6’3”, 217-pound, 32-year-old Ali in the Rumble in the Jungle in Kinshasa, Zaire, with the African nation’s dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, deceitfully utilizing the international stage to legitimize what was in application one of the world’s most brutal and repressive reigns of terror.
“Foreman enhanced the legend, stature and myth of Muhammad Ali with his loss. Yet set the stage for his own immortality. And proving there is such a thing as a good loss,” boxing historian Mel “Doc” Stanley profoundly said to this writer on Tuesday.
Foreman would retire from the ring three years later at 28, embracing the spiritual calling that compelled him to serve as a born-again Christian and ordained minister. With his church facing financial hardship, he returned to the ring at age 38 and astoundingly, at 45, regained the heavyweight title in 1994 by knocking out Michael Moorer in the 10th round with a short, powerful combination.
It marked the beginning of Foreman’s improbable standing as one of America’s most popular and adored personalities and richest former athletes. The jovial giant, eternalized in the 2023 biopic “Big George Foreman: The Miraculous Story of the Once and Future Heavyweight Champion of the World,” became ubiquitous as his eponymous George Foreman Grill made him a small fortune as a must-have household item in tens of millions of kitchens and college dorms across the planet.
Foreman amassed generational wealth as his reported net worth left to his family is over $300 million. And he also reinforced the truism that life’s long play has many acts in which the protagonist can find peace, joy and prosperity after a fall from grace.