Wendy Rollin

By Wendy Rollin

George Foreman in 2009. Photo by el grito, licensed under CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

At 28 years old, George Foreman sits inside a dressing room in San Juan, Puerto Rico, moments after losing a 12-round fight to Jimmy Young.

The former heavyweight champion is exhausted, but the loss is quickly becoming the least of his concerns. Foreman would later say that something happened in that room that frightened him far more than anything he had experienced inside a boxing ring.

He believed he was dying.

Only a few years earlier, Foreman had stood at the top of the boxing world. He had an Olympic gold medal, a heavyweight championship and a reputation as one of the most powerful fighters of his generation. He had money, fame and a name recognized around the world.

None of it seemed to matter now.

Foreman later described a terrifying spiritual experience in which he cried out to God. As he thought about the money he could give away if his life were spared, Foreman said a message came to him that would remain with him for the rest of his life:

“I don’t want your money; I want you!”

For George Foreman, March 17, 1977, became more than the night he lost a boxing match.

It became the dividing line in his life.

The man who entered that dressing room was a boxer searching for another path to the heavyweight championship.

The man who emerged from it believed he had encountered Jesus Christ.

Within months, Foreman would walk away from boxing. Soon, he would step behind a pulpit.

And years later, when nearly everyone believed his championship days were behind him, he would return to the ring as a very different man.

George Foreman’s life would become famous for second chances.

But the one he considered most important did not begin with a victory.

It began after a loss.

Before the World Knew His Name

Long before millions knew George Foreman as a heavyweight champion, preacher or smiling television personality, he was a young man struggling to find direction.

Born January 10, 1949, in Marshall, Texas, Foreman grew up in Houston’s Fifth Ward. He later described himself as an angry and troubled teenager who fought, struggled in school and eventually dropped out.

His life might easily have continued down that road.

Then came the Job Corps.

Foreman entered the federal program as a teenager and was sent to California. There he studied, learned trades—and discovered boxing.

It became an unlikely doorway into another life.

The anger and aggression that had created problems outside the ring could now be disciplined inside it. Foreman possessed extraordinary natural power, and what began with relatively little experience quickly became something much bigger.

In 1968, at just 19 years old, George Foreman represented the United States at the Olympic Games in Mexico City.

He won the heavyweight gold medal.

A teenager who had once been struggling to find his place now stood on an Olympic podium.

Foreman turned professional the following year.

The boxing world soon discovered just how dangerous he could be.

The Man Everyone Feared

By the early 1970s, Foreman had built a reputation around one overwhelming quality: power.

Then came Joe Frazier.

On January 22, 1973, Foreman entered the ring in Kingston, Jamaica, against the undefeated heavyweight champion. Frazier had already defeated Muhammad Ali and was one of the most respected fighters in the sport.

Foreman overwhelmed him.

Frazier went down six times before the fight was stopped in the second round.

At 24 years old, George Foreman was heavyweight champion of the world.

He looked the part.

The young Foreman was not yet the laughing, easygoing “Big George” millions would later recognize. He carried an intimidating presence into the ring and possessed the punching power to support it.

George Foreman with trainer Dick Sadler in 1974. Photo by Unknown / Associated Press, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

For a time, he seemed almost unbeatable.

Then came Muhammad Ali.

On October 30, 1974, Foreman met Ali in Kinshasa, Zaire, in the fight that became known around the world as the Rumble in the Jungle.

Foreman entered as champion and favorite. Ali, however, allowed Foreman to expend energy throwing heavy punches while he defended himself against the ropes—a strategy that became known as the “rope-a-dope.”

By the eighth round, the fight had changed.

Ali attacked.

Foreman went down.

For the first time in his professional career, George Foreman had lost.

The heavyweight championship was gone.

And the defeat stayed with him.

When Losing Became Part of the Story

Foreman continued fighting after Ali.

He won again, including another victory over Joe Frazier, and remained one of the most dangerous heavyweights in boxing.

But he later acknowledged that the defeat to Ali affected him deeply. Reclaiming what he had lost remained on his mind.

George Foreman in 1974, shortly before the Rumble in the Jungle. Photo by Unknown / UPI, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Three years later, he entered the ring against Jimmy Young in Puerto Rico.

Young won by decision.

Foreman returned to the dressing room.

And the fight after the fight began.

“I Want You”

Foreman told the story of what happened next for the rest of his life.

He said he became convinced that death was near. He described slipping into darkness, crying out to Jesus and experiencing what he understood to be an encounter with God.

What happened in that room can only be told through Foreman’s own account, but there was little uncertainty about what he believed afterward.

Jesus Christ was real.

And his life belonged to Him.

Foreman later described the transformation in simple terms: God had changed his heart before changing the circumstances around him.

That mattered because his circumstances did not suddenly become perfect.

There was no championship waiting for him the next morning. There was no promise that every struggle would disappear.

Instead, Foreman made a decision that stunned the boxing world.

He walked away.

At 28 years old, while still capable of competing at the highest level, George Foreman retired from professional boxing.

Then he began preaching.

The Heavyweight Behind the Pulpit

If Foreman’s conversion had lasted only a few months, it might have been dismissed as an emotional response to a frightening night.

It did not.

Foreman began preaching publicly about Jesus Christ. He became an ordained minister and served at The Church of the Lord Jesus Christ in Houston, where ministry would remain part of his life for decades.

The contrast was difficult to miss.

Only a few years earlier, crowds had watched Foreman walk toward a boxing ring as one of the most intimidating athletes in the world.

Now people watched him open a Bible.

But perhaps the clearest evidence of how seriously Foreman took his new direction was what he began doing away from the pulpit.

He never forgot the teenager he had once been.

He knew what it meant to have anger without direction. He also knew what had happened when the Job Corps gave him an opportunity and boxing gave that energy somewhere productive to go.

Years later, Foreman wanted to offer young people their own opportunity to change direction.

Giving Away the Second Chance He Had Received

Foreman established the George Foreman Youth and Community Center in Houston to serve young people, including those growing up in difficult circumstances.

He was not interested merely in producing boxers.

He wanted to help shape lives.

“I don’t want club boxers; I want leaders,” Foreman once said while discussing the young people who came through the center.

There was something deeply personal about the work.

As a teenager, Foreman had needed someone to see something in him beyond the anger and trouble.

Now he was looking at young people who could just as easily be judged by their mistakes, attitudes or circumstances.

Foreman knew those things did not have to be the end of a person’s story.

Someone had once helped redirect his life.

Now he was trying to do the same for others.

For years, boxing remained behind him.

Then, a decade after retiring, Foreman decided to come back.

A Different George Foreman Returns

In 1987, at 38 years old, Foreman stepped back into professional boxing.

Many questioned whether a fighter who had been away for a decade—and was already at an age when most boxers were nearing the end of their careers—could seriously contend again.

Foreman looked different too.

He was older and heavier.

But the most noticeable change had little to do with his body.

The scowl was largely gone.

Foreman smiled. He joked with reporters. He spoke openly about God.

The intimidating young champion the public remembered had become warmer and far more approachable.

He still possessed the competitive drive that had carried him to the heavyweight championship, but Foreman said he no longer needed the anger that had once accompanied it. He had learned that he could compete without hating the man standing across from him.

Then he began winning.

One fight became another. The comeback continued long enough that the boxing world could no longer dismiss it.

Foreman wanted another heavyweight championship.

Nearly two decades after losing his title to Muhammad Ali, he would get another opportunity.

One More Chance at the Championship

It is November 5, 1994.

George Foreman is standing inside the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

Across the ring is Michael Moorer.

Moorer is 26 years old, undefeated and heavyweight champion of the world.

Foreman is 45.

Nineteen years separate them.

For nine rounds, the difference appears to matter.

Moorer is faster. He lands punches and builds a lead on the scorecards.

Foreman keeps coming.

By the 10th round, there is little mystery about what the older fighter needs.

He needs a knockout.

Then Foreman lands the right hand.

Moorer falls to the canvas.

The referee begins counting.

Moorer does not get up.

Twenty years after Muhammad Ali took the heavyweight championship from him in Africa, George Foreman is heavyweight champion of the world again.

At 45 years old, he becomes the oldest man ever to win the heavyweight championship.

Then, amid the celebration, Foreman returns to his corner.

And kneels in prayer.

It becomes one of the defining images of his life.

The first time George Foreman became champion, the world saw his power.

This time, the world saw him on his knees.

The Champion Was No Longer the Same Man

Foreman’s comeback became one of the great second acts in sports history, but winning another championship was only part of what made it remarkable.

The difference in the man himself was visible.

He remained enormously competitive and still carried the punching power that had made him famous, but the intimidating young champion had become an older, warmer and more approachable figure.

Foreman continued boxing until 1997, retiring with 76 victories and five losses, including 68 wins by knockout.

By then, another chapter of his life was already beginning.

The former heavyweight champion became one of America’s most recognizable product spokesmen.

The George Foreman Grill became a household name and eventually sold more than 100 million units.

An entire generation that had never watched Foreman fight came to know him simply as Big George—the smiling former champion selling countertop grills on television.

The business brought him tremendous financial success.

But the money did not replace the ministry.

Neither did television.

Foreman continued preaching.

The pulpit that entered his life after the Jimmy Young fight remained there long after championship belts, boxing purses and endorsement deals had come and gone.

When Foreman later spoke about the place faith held in his life, he did not describe Christianity as simply one part of his identity.

“That’s who I am,” he said.

More Than a Comeback

George Foreman had every reason to spend his later years talking about boxing.

His career had given him a place in sports history, and his unlikely return to the heavyweight championship had made his story even more remarkable.

But his ministry was not something he left behind once fame and money returned.

He continued serving his church, working with young people and talking openly about Jesus Christ for decades.

That is what separates Foreman’s story from an ordinary sports comeback.

He did not simply lose and win again.

The man who returned to boxing believed he had already found something more important than the championship he was chasing.

His strength remained.

His competitive nature remained.

His enormous personality remained.

But Foreman believed the heart behind them had changed.

And increasingly, the opportunities that came into his life became opportunities to give something back.

The Final Bell

George Foreman died on March 21, 2025, at the age of 76.

His family said he died peacefully surrounded by loved ones.

The tributes remembered one of the most unusual careers in sports history—the Olympic champion, the heavyweight, the astonishing comeback and the larger-than-life personality known around the world.

But those closest to Foreman remembered something else too.

The preacher.

The father.

The man whose Christian faith had remained part of his life for nearly five decades after that night in Puerto Rico.

In many ways, George Foreman’s life came full circle.

A troubled teenager was given an opportunity through the Job Corps.

Years later, he built a place intended to give other young people opportunities of their own.

A fighter who became famous for knocking men down spent much of his later life trying to help others get back up.

And a man celebrated around the world for his physical strength spent decades telling people about the moment when his own strength was not enough.

That may be where the real George Foreman story is found.

His greatest second chance was not the night he knocked out Michael Moorer.

It was not becoming heavyweight champion again at 45.

Foreman believed it began 17 years earlier, inside a dressing room after a loss.

There was no championship on the line.

No crowd cheering his name.

No opponent left to fight.

There was simply a man who had spent much of his life depending upon his own strength suddenly confronting a moment when that strength could do nothing for him.

And he called out to Jesus.

Foreman could not return to his younger years and rewrite every part of his story.

He could not erase the losses or undo every mistake.

But his testimony was built around what happened next.

For nearly five decades, George Foreman told people that what happened next began with Christ.

As Scripture says:

“My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.”

— Psalm 73:26 (KJV)

George Foreman spent the first part of his life showing the world how powerful a man could be.

He spent much of the rest of it telling people what happened when his own strength was no longer enough.

For a man remembered for power, that may be the most fitting testimony of all.