George Foreman - God In My Corner

This week, upon the recommendation of my SIL, I read that book.

Being the age that I am (35) I only knew George Foreman as a fat old boxer who came out of retirement and lucked into winning the heavyweight boxing title at the 'old coot' age of 45 back in 1994.

But it turns out the man has quite the interesting life story.

When he was 28 he had a near-death experience after which he claimed to have experienced hell and seen Jesus.

On the spot he quit boxing, at the near peak of his career, walked away from fame and fortune, mended his ways, and became a street corner preacher. Seriously! Who among us knew?

I don't want to summarize his life story here but will say this. George Foreman grew up dirt poor and actually took to mugging to subsist. He was a drunken hood well into his teens before he even discovered boxing. George was Mike Tyson before Mike Tyson!

And not only did Foreman walk away from his lucrative income in boxing, he was also victimized by *bad investments*. His confidantes stole and squandered all of his earnings. So this man who climbed his way out of poverty fell right back into it. He could have gone back to boxing at any time but wouldn't; he was a man of God now.

Only years later, George would resume boxing and re-climb the sport's highest perch....and the George Foreman Grill would make him financially him whole again to the tune of tens of millions. It goes without saying that few among us have gone from rags-to-riches-to-rags and then back-to-riches.



Primarily, this book is one of spiritual journey - I would highly recommend it for anyone at all interested in Christianity. But there's more to this autobiography than the proselytizing, and the peaks and valleys of celebrity. George Foreman may seem like a punch-drunk simpleton but there's so much more to the man. He's a latent intellectual who not only rethought his life's purpose; he's also chiseled out well-developed ideas on personal and public relations. Furthermore, George displayed real savvy in reinventing his boxing style (from cold-blooded bruiser to plodding strategist) and conducting his slow-and-steady return to prominence. He studied the failed comebacks of all the former boxing greats and realized that they all tried to challenge the new champs too soon. You'd think anyone who returned to the ring at age 38 would be antsy and have one eye on their biological clock. But not Foreman - he was one exceptional dude.





One interesting bit of trivia from the book concerned Foreman's highly publicized loss to Muhammad Ali in the Rumble In The Jungle - the one in which Foreman lost on the referee's *quick count*.

In George's autobiography, he admits to giving that same referee $25,000 before the fight. He was convinced (by others) that this had to be done to insure the ref didn't use his discretion, which he has plenty of, to simply disqualify George on a technicality. Years after the fight, after George had become good friends with his once-hated opponent, Muhammad Ali admitted to him that he too had paid off the referee upfront with $35,000.

How very Goldman Sachs of them both!

[Goldman simply donates to both political parties - as do many other *rational* corporations.]