Houston, Texas A Slugger and A Dream

At 7:30 on a muggy Houston morning, George Foreman, the heavyweight boxing champion of 15 years ago, is bundled in a military shirt and heavy work pants, plodding up and down a freeway embankment in the piney woods near his home. Foreman isn’t just climbing the steep hill. He is maneuvering up it backward — up and back, up and back — a modern-day Sisyphus, sweating and straining in the heavy grass. As he moves, the old fighter hurls jabs and uppercuts at the blazing sun with his prodigious arms.

Strange as the sight might seem, Foreman’s goal is even odder. At the age of 40, after a full ten years layoff from the ring and about 40 lbs. over his best fighting weight, the slugger is in training once again. His objective — some call it an obsession — is to recapture the heavyweight title he lost by a knockout to Muhammad Ali in 1974. Exclaims the ex-champ: “I’m ready, and I’m better than I ever was.”

Can Foreman be serious? What kind of odds would Vegas put on him against Iron Mike Tyson, the current titleholder? Boxing does not take kindly to reruns by its geriatric set. Witness Joe Louis, Joe Frazier, Larry Holmes and Ali. Foreman, the boxer turned preacher, is older than the other ex-champs who tried in vain to return. Some of them embarrassed themselves. Some of them got flattened. Boxing experts snicker that there are only two kinds of opponents Foreman can be counted on to defeat. One kind is hooked up to a respirator. The other can be found lying on a sesame-seed bun in the company of pickles and catsup.

None of this bothers Foreman, who KO’d 42 opponents in compiling a 45-2 record. He is all vigor and determination these summer days, slugging at the bags and straining on the iron. This is a new Foreman, he is quick to advise: “Forty is no death sentence; age is only a problem if you make it one.” He looks as menacing as he did that night in 1973 when he blockbusted Joe Frazier clear off the canvas to win the title. His 19-in. biceps bulge with muscle, his thighs are thick as saplings, his huge 48-in. chest heaves with power. He also has the beginnings of a paunch. Explains Foreman: “The secret to my winning is my eating.” By which he means that he has been reborn at the dinner table too. The Big Macs have been replaced by broiled mackerel. For breakfast, the slugger still puts away a dozen eggs, but first he excises the yolks.

In 18 fights since he launched his comeback two years ago, Foreman has knocked out every foe, leading him to crow, “I’ve proved myself. I deserve a chance at Tyson. He can’t say he’s the best as long as a 40-year-old man not from Mars is sitting out here. He can’t whup me.” Foreman rambles on, branding Tyson a “sneaky crybaby” and insisting, “My biggest job will be catching him.”

Listening to this, a thought springs to mind: Is the old slugger punch- drunk? This, after all, is the same George Foreman who found religion in a San Juan, Puerto Rico, dressing room in 1977, proclaimed boxing an affront to God and announced he was quitting forever. This is the same Foreman who ballooned to 320 lbs. from a fighting trim of 217, and even today at 255 is far beefier than anyone who wants to hold the title should be. As for the recent wins, all were against unknowns or retreads who will probably never get within spitting distance of the Top Ten contenders.

But Foreman keeps mowing them down. At Pride Pavillion in Phoenix last month, Slab-of-Meat No. 18, a cruiserweight named Bert Cooper, was served up. A Joe Frazier protege, Cooper was billed as one of Foreman’s toughest challenges yet. Midway in the first round, the ex-champ caught him with a right to the middle that pirouetted Cooper 90 degrees. The pummeling got worse. When the bell rang for Round 3, Cooper sagely refused to come out.

“Tyson’s next,” Foreman bellowed, arms outstretched, to the crowd. Every old man in the dim arena choked at the visage in the crimson robe — a middle- aged Rocky in their midst. Around the stands signs shot up, echoing TYSON’S NEXT. In the dressing room Foreman chortled, “Cooper tried to run, but the ring was too small. They’re all thinking, ‘What’s George going to do to me?’ “

These mismatches keep the adrenaline flowing and the nostalgia and hopes burning for a flock of Foreman camp followers. Archie Moore, who the record books say is 75, was light-heavyweight champ until he was at least 48. Now Moore has signed on as resident guru and gerontologist. “Ah, the wisdom and cunning of age,” Moore muses. “Make the young man take three steps to your one. Smotin’ power, that’s what it comes down to. George can still smote, oh yes he can.” Moore also knows something about losing weight. Eat all you like, he once suggested, just don’t swallow.

In the bar of a Phoenix hotel, a gaggle of aging boxing groupies watch the hulk as he works out. Foreman is like the dynamo of old, steadily pounding home sledgehammer blows. Five rounds later and barely sweating, he halts to regale the faithful. “I should be carrying a cane,” he jests. “My training camp is Baskin-Robbins. But if Tyson wins, it’s only Lamborghinis and big houses for himself. Means nothing. If I win, every man over 40 can grab his Geritol and have a toast.”

What is atop the summit if Foreman manages to conquer it again? Money? “A lot of it,” Foreman acknowledges. Not for lavish houses in California, or Mercedes and Corvettes. Foreman has had those. “For the kids,” he explains. “I want to give them the same shot I had.” The ninth-grade dropout got his rebirth in the Job Corps. Since 1984, he’s dispensed his own good deeds at the George Foreman Youth and Community Center on Houston’s north side. The small gym with its boxing ring and exercise gear is an after-school haven for 400 youths, some of them too poor to afford the $10-a-year dues.

But there must be something else driving a man to run ten miles a day in the Texas heat, fight in backwater towns and suffer reporters’ ridicule. Perhaps it is the memories, some to be relished, others to be expunged: the glory of Jamaica, where he hammered Smokin’ Joe for the title in ’73. Then, the next year, the nightmare of Africa at 4 in the morning, and the specter of Ali in the ropes, taunting him with a whisper, “Is that all you got, George?” before knocking him out in the eighth. Says his friend Norm Henry, a California fight promoter: “He looks at Tyson, and he sees Frazier all over again.”

Down the road from the youth center is the tiny Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, which evangelist Foreman helped found nine years ago. With the fighter on the trumpet and cymbals, Sunday services are rarely dull. His sermons sometimes seem directed at himself. “Once you fall, you ain’t comin back,” he advised the flock recently. “Make noise in a strange fashion, or God may not notice you.”

The only noise that Foreman is eager for is the telephone, ringing with Tyson’s call. “We keep on winning, and that phone will ring,” assures Foreman’s brother Roy, his manager. “One day Tyson’ll have to come to us.” Until that happens, the old slugger is content enough dreaming his dream. “Champeen of the world,” he beams. “Champeen. Great stuff there.”