He threw 369 punches. The champ in the ring that time responded with 641 — nearly double. But it was the last one that counted.
George Foreman’s amazing right hand — which deserted him against Muhammad Ali in 1974 — returned when he faced Michael Moore in 1994, allowing him to regain the world title he lost two decades earlier.
It earned him a glory even Ali couldn’t boast of: Oldest heavyweight champ at the age of 45.
As boxing aficionados around the world recalled Foreman’s heroics after his March 21 2025 demise, social media was abuzz with tags like “preacher” (he forayed into that, before realizing it wasn’t really for him) and “Grill King” (which he certainly loved as he earned millions of dollars selling his signature barbecue rigs).
Yet, many didn’t realize there was a missing label that would have fit Foreman just as perfectly: Smart mouth.
Wait, wasn’t the mouth a trait of Ali — the Greatest of All Time who turned trash talking about his opponents into an art form?
Well, without doubt, it was.
But Ali was a motor-mouth: One that never stops when it starts, a toxic theater of insults and fun that orally decimates anything standing in its way.
Foreman’s mouth, on the contrary, was cultured and kind.
It often spoke in admiration of rivals, interjecting profundity with wit that left one awestruck at the wisdom of a one-time school yard bully, drop-out and petty criminal, who turned into a gentleman as he grew.
Some of Foreman’s kindest testimonies were reserved for Ali, who publicly sneered at him and Joe Frazier, during boxing’s finest era of the 70s when the three Black supermen of the sport had the world enthralled with their on-ring and off-ring duels.
Amid the rivalry, Foreman was all grace when he conceded to Ali after their 1974 fight.
“In boxing, I had a lot of fear. Fear was good. But, for the first time, in the bout with Muhammad Ali, I didn’t have any fear. I thought, ‘This is easy. This is what I’ve been waiting for’. No fear at all. No nervousness. And I lost.”
He pinned his defeat on his audacity to underestimate The Greatest.
“Getting up to Zaire – getting ready to fight Muhammad Ali – I thought this will be a matter of just a little exercise. I’ll probably knock him out in three rounds. Two, three – maybe three and a half rounds. That was the most confidence I had in my whole life.”
Eating humble pie, he professed admiration for Ali’s craft of leaning on the ropes to wear out the opponent:
“They call it the rope-a-dope. Well, I’m the dope. Ali just laid on the rope and I, like a dope, kept punching until I got tired. But he was probably the most smart fighter I’ve ever gotten into the ring with.”
But his most wondrous compliment came during Ali’s late years, as the boxing wunderkind grappled with Parkinson’s disease:
“Muhammad Ali is a true hero, and the fact there’s something wrong with him is his badge of valour. He’s a great man.”
Foreman was equally magnanimous about Frazier, whom he knocked down six times before their contest was stopped halfway through the second round in Kingston, Jamaica in 1973.
“You wouldn’t meet a Joe Frazier down today and then up tomorrow, said hello to big shots then ignore someone on the lower level; he was the most consistent human being. What you see is what you get.”
Foreman also spoke of the risks of refining boxing, using a musical analogy to show a raw sport loved by the masses could turn into an elitist, esoteric thing pursued by a few.
“Boxing is like jazz. The better it is, the less people appreciate it.”
He reflected that relationships could be more damaging at times than his favorite sport.
“People are hurt in love affairs and never recover, more than a boxing match.”
Religion was also harder work than boxing, he posited.
“When I left boxing in 1977 to be a preacher, I couldn’t make a fist after I learned about Jesus Christ.”
