In the summer of 1987 as Mike Tyson became the unified Heavyweight champion of the world. Ending the chaos in the heavyweight division with multiple world champions some with questionable abilities.
George Foreman announced that at the age of 38 he was planning a comeback in boxing. How we all laughed, he was a name from the past. We had seen the future of boxing and his name was Mike Tyson.
People older than me were constantly telling me that Tyson would had been no match for Frazier, Ali or Foreman in their prime. The operative word was prime and Foreman had not boxed since 1977 when he became a preacher.
When I did see Foreman in the ring again. He was old, bald, slow and podgy. The only way he was going to become a champion again if someone like Tony Tubbs won the world title and fought Foreman.
The last laugh was on Foreman. In 1994 at the age of 45, George Foreman became the WBA/IBF Heavyweight champion of the world by beating Michael Moorer. The WBA title was the one he took from Frazier and later lost to Ali.
Foreman is less of a documentary and more of a fairy tale.
The George Foreman of the 1970s was a mean surly man. A boxer of few words but a big punch. He destroyed Frazier in the ring. When he fought Ali in Zaire. Ali's own entourage were looking at a map figuring out the quickest way to get Ali to hospital.
The Foreman that emerged in the late 1980s was such a contrast. He smiled, he joked, he was full of zest. The time spent preaching meant he could articulate at a time when most boxers mumbled in monosyllables. As promoter Bob Arum noted in this documentary. Foreman could sell PPV seats and when he fought Evander Holyfield for the world title, the promoter sold over 1.5 million PPV showings.
The documentary gives more nuance to George Foreman. After he became Olympic champion there is a happy go lucky part to him. Foreman is grateful that President Lyndon B Johnson's anti poverty initiative took him out from a life of petty crime.
When Foreman turned professional he used Sonny Liston as his role model. The mean and moody act was just that; an act. The knockout punch was not. Foreman was big and fast, this is clearly demonstrated in his fight with Frazier.
The low point of his life was The Rumble in the Jungle. Ali's rebirth as a legend meant Foreman had to be the villain. It was a role that should had defined him for the rest of his life. Ali cleverly ensured he would never meet Foreman in the ring again.
A defeat for Foreman in 1977 in the heat of Puerto Rico led to a religious experience in the locker room as Foreman was delirious with heatstroke.
Foreman stopped boxing became a born again Christian and started preaching. Needing funds for his youth club meant that a decade later Foreman started at the bottom taking on journeymen. This time he did it with a smile.
Foreman the documentary is about a man who reinvented himself. It shows that F Scott Fitzgerald was wrong. There are second acts in American lives. After Foreman beat Michael Moorer to be come a world champion, you can see it in Foreman's face. The Rumble in the Jungle was now in the past. George Foreman just beat one of the new breed of boxers and this time he was the hero.
