05/27/2026
George Foreman was 25 years old on the night of October 30, 1974, when he walked into a stadium in Kinshasa, Zaire, to defend his heavyweight title against a former champion named Muhammad Ali.
Approximately one billion people watched the fight live on television around the world.
It was, at the time, the most-watched single sporting event in human history.
George was undefeated. He had won 40 professional fights in a row. He had knocked out Joe Frazier in two rounds to take the title 18 months earlier. He had defended it twice. He was the youngest, strongest, hardest-punching heavyweight champion in the world.
Muhammad Ali was 32. He had been stripped of his own title seven years earlier for refusing to be drafted into the Vietnam War. He was the heavy underdog.
For seven straight rounds in Kinshasa, Ali leaned against the ropes and absorbed every punch George Foreman threw at him.
George kept punching. Ali kept absorbing.
In the eighth round, Ali snapped off a counter-punch combination. George went down. He did not get up.
It is now known, throughout the entire history of boxing, as the Rumble in the Jungle.
George Foreman walked out of that stadium with the rest of his career in pieces.
He took a year off. He came back. He lost another fight, to a smaller boxer named Jimmy Young, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on March 17, 1977.
After that loss, in the small back dressing room of the stadium in Puerto Rico, George Foreman had a religious experience. He has described it in dozens of subsequent interviews. He believed that he had heard the voice of God.
He retired from boxing within hours.
He flew home to Houston, Texas, and announced to his family that he would never fight again.
He gained 100 pounds. He became an ordained minister in 1978. He founded the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ in 1980. He preached on Houston street corners. He preached in small Houston community centers. He preached in small Houston Black churches throughout the early 1980s.
In 1984, he founded the George Foreman Youth and Community Center in Houston to serve underprivileged Black children from the same poor East Texas neighborhoods he had once grown up in.
For ten straight years, George Foreman was, by every measure of his industry, gone. He was a preacher. He was a father. He was an overweight 38-year-old man running a small Houston youth program.
He was almost completely forgotten by professional boxing.
Then in 1987, he came back.
He needed the money. The youth center was struggling. The church needed funds. He had 12 children to feed. His five sons were all named George Edward Foreman, by his own deliberate choice, because he wanted them to have at least one thing in common with each other.
He walked into a small Sacramento gym on a winter morning in 1987 and announced that he was returning to professional boxing.
He was 38 years old.
He had not boxed in 10 years.
The boxing press laughed at him.
He started slowly. He fought small-time opponents in small-time arenas. He won. He kept winning. By 1991, when he was 42 years old, he stepped into a ring in Atlantic City to fight the reigning heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield.
George lost the fight.
He did not lose by much.
He went the full 12 rounds with a man 14 years younger than he was. Holyfield walked away with the belt. George walked away with the unanimous respect of the entire boxing world.
The boxing press stopped laughing.
For the next three years, George Foreman kept fighting. He kept winning. He kept building toward another title shot.
On the night of November 5, 1994, in the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada, George Foreman stepped into a boxing ring to fight the reigning heavyweight champion of the world, Michael Moorer.
George was 45 years, 299 days old.
Moorer was 26.
For 10 straight rounds, Moorer outboxed him. The 19-year age gap was obvious to everyone watching. George was losing the fight on all three judges' scorecards. Most ringside reporters had already begun writing their stories about George Foreman's failed final comeback.
In the 10th round, with one minute left, George threw a two-punch combination.
The first punch was a left jab.
The second punch was a straight right hand that landed flush on Michael Moorer's jaw.
Michael Moorer collapsed.
He was counted out at the 2:03 mark of the 10th round.
George Foreman, 45 years and 299 days old, became the oldest heavyweight champion of the world in the entire history of boxing.
The record stood for the next 20 straight years.
He had been knocked out by Muhammad Ali 20 years earlier in front of one billion people in Africa.
He had been ordained a Christian minister 17 years earlier in a small Houston church.
He had now, at the age of 45, completed the most consequential second-act comeback in the entire history of professional sports.
He retired for the final time in 1997, at the age of 48, after a final loss to Shannon Briggs in Atlantic City. He moved into the HBO broadcast booth and worked as a ringside analyst for the next 12 straight years.
The same year George Foreman won back the heavyweight title in 1994, he had signed a small endorsement deal with a Florida appliance company called Salton.
The product was a small electric counter-top cooking grill.
The grill had been designed to drain fat out of cooking meat through small slits in the bottom of the cooking surface.
The company had been struggling to sell it.
They needed a celebrity spokesperson.
George Foreman agreed to attach his name to the product.
The grill went on sale in late 1994.
It became, by the late 1990s, one of the most successful kitchen appliances in American household history.
The George Foreman Grill has now sold over 100 million units worldwide.
In 1999, when George Foreman was 50 years old, the Salton company offered to buy out his ongoing endorsement rights to the grill in a single lump-sum payment.
The payment was $138 million.
George accepted.
The 1999 payout to George Foreman was, at the time, the largest single celebrity endorsement deal in the history of any American consumer product.
He had become a heavyweight champion at 25. He had become a Christian minister at 28. He had become a quiet Houston youth-center director at 35. He had become a heavyweight champion again at 45. He had become one of the wealthiest celebrity endorsers in American history at 50.
He had then spent the next 25 years quietly doing what he had been doing throughout his entire post-1977 life.
He preached at his small Houston church. He raised his 12 children. He sat ringside at HBO boxing broadcasts. He gave occasional small interviews about his faith, his family, and his old boxing career.
He named all five of his sons George Edward Foreman. When asked why, in a 2007 interview, he gave a single short answer.
He said: "I named all my sons George Edward Foreman so they would always have something in common."
That had been the secret.
For 76 straight years, George Foreman had been quietly making sure that the people he loved had at least one thing in common with each other, and with him.
On the morning of March 21, 2025, George Foreman passed away peacefully at his home in Houston, Texas.
He was 76 years old.
He was surrounded by members of his family, including his wife of 40 years Mary Joan Martelly, his seven daughters, and his five sons all named George Edward Foreman.
His family released a brief statement on his Instagram account that same afternoon.
The statement read: "Our hearts are broken. With profound sorrow, we announce the passing of our beloved George Edward Foreman Sr., who peacefully departed on March 21, 2025, surrounded by loved ones. A devout preacher, a devoted husband, a loving father, and a proud grand and great grandfather, he lived a life marked by unwavering faith, humility, and purpose."
Muhammad Ali had passed away nine years earlier, in June of 2016.
The two of them, who had once fought in front of one billion people in Kinshasa in 1974, had become very close personal friends in the decades that followed.
Muhammad Ali's daughter Laila Ali released her own statement after George Foreman's death.
She said: "He and my father had a tremendous amount of respect and admiration for each other."
They had ended, by 2025, as friends.
George Foreman had spent the previous 50 years of his life being slowly, patiently, completely forgiven by the man who had once knocked him out in Africa.
He had also, in those same 50 years, become one of the most beloved second-act comeback stories in the entire history of American sports.
He had been knocked out at 25.
He had been a quiet preacher at 35.
He had been the oldest heavyweight champion of the world at 45.
He had been the wealthiest celebrity grill spokesperson in American history at 50.
He had been the patriarch of a 12-child family of five sons named George at 70.
He had died peacefully in his sleep at 76 surrounded by all of them.
