George Foreman: From the Fifth Ward to Heavyweight Champion at 45

George Foreman's life ran in two halves split by a decade of preaching. In the first he was a teenage street fighter from Houston who won Olympic gold, demolished Joe Frazier and lost to Muhammad Ali in Africa. In the second he was a heavy, smiling minister who came back at 38, became the oldest heavyweight champion in history at 45 and then earned more from a countertop grill than he ever had from boxing. He died in Houston on March 21, 2025, at the age of 76.

Marshall, the Fifth Ward and a Ninth-Grade Exit

Foreman was born on January 10, 1949, in Marshall, Texas, and was raised in Houston's Fifth Ward, one of seven children in the household. School did not hold him. He left after the ninth grade, around the age of 15, and spent the following stretch on the streets of the neighborhood.

He never prettied up that period afterwards. In later interviews he summed up his own path as going from thug to boxer, and he admitted that he had bullied other kids, robbed people and fought, and that he had hidden from the police.

The Job Corps and Doc Broadus in Pleasanton

The change came through the Job Corps, the training program launched under President Lyndon B. Johnson as part of his war on poverty. Foreman signed up at about 16, and the program eventually placed him at a center in Pleasanton, California. There he met Doc Broadus, a boxing coach at the center who saw that the angry teenager's heavy hands could be put to better use inside a ring.

Foreman gave the program the credit for the rest of his life. Recalling his arrival, he described suddenly getting three meals a day, and summed it up this way: "They built me into what I've become," as quoted in NBC News' obituary. Broadus became something close to a father figure and would remain part of Foreman's team for decades, from Kingston and Kinshasa all the way to Las Vegas in 1994.

Mexico City, 1968: Gold and a Small Flag

Foreman's amateur career was brief. According to the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Museum, he had only around 20 amateur bouts before he was sent to the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City as the American heavyweight. He fought four times there and went the distance only once.

In the final he faced Jonas Čepulis of the Soviet Union, and the referee stopped the contest in the second round. Afterward the 19-year-old walked around the ring waving a small American flag, an image that set him apart at Games remembered for political protest by other U.S. athletes. The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Hall of Fame later inducted him in 1990.

Kingston, 1973: Six Knockdowns in Two Rounds

Foreman turned professional in 1969 with a knockout of Donald Walheim in New York City and spent the next four years beating everyone put in front of him. By early 1973 he was unbeaten and was given a shot at Joe Frazier, the reigning heavyweight champion who had handed Muhammad Ali his first loss two years earlier.

The fight took place in Kingston, Jamaica, on January 22, 1973, and Frazier was widely expected to win. It turned into a rout. Foreman put Frazier on the canvas six times across the first two rounds, and the bout was stopped in the second. At 24 he was heavyweight champion of the world.

His first two defenses were just as short. He knocked out José Roman in the first round in Tokyo in September 1973, then stopped Ken Norton in the second round in Caracas in March 1974.

Kinshasa, 1974: The Night It Went Wrong

On October 30, 1974, Foreman defended the title against Ali in Kinshasa, Zaire, in the bout promoted as the Rumble in the Jungle. Ali spent long stretches on the ropes absorbing punches, waited for the champion to tire and then knocked him out in the eighth round. It was the first loss of Foreman's professional career, and he would not hold a world title again for twenty years. (RingTalk covers that fight in a separate article.)

San Juan, 1977: A Dressing Room Conversion

Foreman kept fighting after Zaire but never got a rematch with Ali. On March 17, 1977, in Puerto Rico, he lost a decision to the clever Jimmy Young. In the dressing room afterwards, suffering from exhaustion and what Wikipedia describes as heat stroke, he went through what he called a near-death experience and emerged a born-again Christian.

He walked away from boxing. According to NBC News, he was ordained as a minister in 1978, founded the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ in Houston in 1980, and opened the George Foreman Youth and Community Center in the city in 1984. For ten years he preached rather than punched.

The Comeback Nobody Took Seriously

By the mid-1980s the money from his first career was largely gone, and the youth center needed funding. In 1987, aged 38 and far heavier than the champion of the Frazier fight, Foreman returned to the ring and stopped Steve Zouski in four rounds. He kept winning, now a cheerful, self-mocking figure rather than the sullen puncher of the 1970s.

In April 1991 he got a title shot against Evander Holyfield and lasted the full twelve rounds, losing on scores of 116–111, 115–112 and 117–110. In June 1993 he lost a unanimous decision to Tommy Morrison for the vacant WBO title.

Las Vegas, 1994: The Oldest Heavyweight Champion

Then Michael Moorer, a 26-year-old southpaw who had taken the WBA and IBF belts from Holyfield, picked Foreman as an opponent. According to Boxing News, Foreman first had to win a legal fight against the WBA on grounds of age discrimination before the bout was cleared. They met at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on November 5, 1994. Moorer was 35–0, Foreman 72–4, and the bookmakers made Moorer roughly a 2-to-1 favorite.

Foreman wore the same red trunks he had worn against Ali two decades earlier. For nine rounds Moorer outboxed him. Going into the tenth, two judges had Moorer ahead 88–83 and the third had him up 86–85. Then a short right hand put Moorer down, and he did not beat the count. Foreman knelt in his corner to pray. He was 45 years old and champion again, the oldest man ever to win the heavyweight title, and he dedicated the win to his buddies in nursing homes and in jail, according to History.com.

He did not keep the belts long. The WBA stripped him in 1995 when he refused to fight Tony Tucker, and he gave up the IBF title rather than grant Axel Schulz a rematch. His final fight came on November 22, 1997, when he lost a majority decision to Shannon Briggs at 48. He retired with a record of 76 wins, 68 of them by knockout, and 5 losses.

The Grill That Outearned the Ring

The grill that made his name familiar to people who never watched a fight was not his invention. It was designed by Michael Boehm of Illinois and launched by Salton in 1994, the year he beat Moorer. Salton sent samples to Foreman's associates, Foreman tried it, and he became its pitchman through a run of good-humored infomercials.

The deal initially paid him a share of the profit on each unit. In 1999 Salton bought the right to use his name outright for about $138 million. More than 100 million grills have been sold worldwide, and estimates of his total earnings from the product run above $200 million, well beyond his purses as a fighter.

Family, Faith and the Final Bell

Foreman had twelve children, and all five of his sons were named George Edward Foreman. He continued to preach in Houston for the rest of his life. His family announced on social media that he died on March 21, 2025, at 76, surrounded by loved ones; no cause of death was given.

An Olympic gold medal and two heavyweight reigns twenty years apart make up the record. The distance traveled by the Fifth Ward dropout, from the streets to the Job Corps and from the pulpit back to the championship, makes up the rest.

Sources

• George Foreman, Wikipedia (accessed October 2026)
• George Foreman Grill, Wikipedia (accessed October 2026)
• George Foreman, heavyweight boxing champion, dies at 76, NBC News, March 2025
• Hall of Fame: George Foreman, U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Museum (accessed October 2026)
• On this day: George Foreman regains the world heavyweight title at the age of 45, Boxing News, November 2021
• George Foreman becomes oldest heavyweight champ in history, History.com, This Day in History, November 5