George Foreman’s resilience: A two-time rags-to-riches story

Boxer, preacher, and grill super salesman George Foreman died in his longtime hometown of Houston in March. Texas Standard commentator W.F. Strong has been thinking about Foreman’s life and how he literally fought his way from rags to riches more than once. The full transcript of this episode of Stories from Texas is available on […]

The post George Foreman’s resilience: A two-time rags-to-riches story appeared first on KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
He was born in 1949
in Marshall, Texas,
George Edward Foreman.
He was the fifth of seven
children.
Life was hard.
George grew up hungry, angry,
and restless.
By his own account, he was headed
for the streets and he was headed
for trouble.

(00:20):
In his mid-teens he dropped out
of school. He was big and strong,
but he wasn't strong in spirit.
He fought, he stole, he
drifted.
His mother prayed that he
would find another path.
Then came the job corps.
It was a government program that
gave poor kids work training.

(00:41):
George signed up thinking it
was a way out of Houston's fifth
ward.
It was there that a supervisor
put a pair of boxing gloves
on him.
They fit like destiny.
George hated losing.
He hated being laughed at.

(01:04):
In 1968 in Mexico
City, George Foreman shocked
the world by winning the heavyweight
gold medal.
He turned professional.
In 1973 he fought Joe
Frazier, Smokin' Joe,
and knocked him down six times
in two rounds.
Foreman became the heavyweight
champion of the world.

(01:25):
They said he was unbeatable.
But then came
Zaire, nineteen seventy four.
The rumble in the jungle.
Muhammad Ali rope a doped
him, leaned against the ropes, let
Foreman punch himself out, and
beat him in the eighth round.
The giant fell.
Foreman spiral, he was lost.

(01:47):
He retired, nearly died from
exhaustion in a Houston locker
room, and turned
to preaching.
Folks thought the fighter was
finished, but in nineteen
eighty seven, ten years after
hanging up his gloves, George
Foreman made the most unlikely
comeback in sports.
He was older, heavier,

(02:07):
slower, but he
was calmer, wiser,
and stronger in spirit.
People laughed when they saw him
because he looked like a preacher in
boxing trunks.
And yet he kept
winning.
And on a November night in nineteen
ninety four, at the age of forty
five, George Foreman

(02:28):
knocked out Michael Moorer
to become the oldest heavyweight
champion in the history.
George Foreman wasn't just a two
time heavyweight champ, he was a two
time American success story.
That alone would have been
enough, but here's the twist.
Not long after, a company
approached him with a funny

(02:49):
looking electric grill,
portable, tilted, designed
to drain fat.
They asked George to put his name on
it. He did more than that.
He sold it.
He smiled.
He told America it was a lean,
mean, fat reducing grilling
machine.
The George Foreman Grill went on
to sell over a hundred million units

(03:11):
worldwide.
Foreman made more money from
grills than he ever made
from boxing.
He passed on that winning legacy
to his twelve children, including
five sons. He named them all George.
He explained that if one goes up we
all go up.
If one goes down, we all
go down together.
From the streets of Marshall to

(03:33):
Olympic Gold to World Champion
to kitchen counters around
the world, George Foreman
was one of the most inspirational
success stories Texas
has ever seen.
I'm W.F.
Strong, these are stories from
Texas.
Some of them are true.