LAS VEGAS – In his autobiography, George Foreman recalled a defining moment in his life, when he had absorbed a crushing amateur boxing loss, sat on the rubbing table and hung his head in dejection when a mysterious man approached wearing a tuxedo.

“Don’t worry, George. You’re going to be a great fighter someday,” the man said, patting Foreman on the back.

Foreman wrote he was so inspired that this “celebrity” was moved to encourage him – Foreman actually believed the sharply dressed man owned the Oakland Auditorium – that he decided to continue on as a boxer.

What a fortuitous development that was, considering Foreman would move on to win an Olympic gold medal at the 1968 Summer Games in Mexico City, stand twice (in the 1970s and 1990s) as heavyweight champion of the world and would hawk America the George Foreman Grill.

It was Foreman who spawned two of the all-time greatest sporting calls of the century – Howard Cosell’s “Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!” and Jim Lampley’s “It happened! It happened!”

And it was Foreman who developed from a petty street thug, beyond the sullen, beaten victim of Muhammad Ali in 1974’s “Rumble in the Jungle” and into one of the most beloved and charitable sporting figures the world has ever known. 

Friday night, that man in the tuxedo who lifted Foreman’s spirits in his hour of need sobbed along with countless others across the globe who learned Foreman died earlier in the day at age 76.

“It’s like losing a brother,” said International Boxing Hall of Fame publicist Bill Caplan, who joined Foreman in the Canastota, New York, shrine in 2022.

That night he comforted Foreman in Oakland, Caplan required the tuxedo only because he was employed as the ring announcer, a detail Foreman would later learn and chuckle over thanks to the fact their bond lasted for the rest of his life.

Caplan publicized Foreman’s first run as heavyweight champion, when he dominated Frazier and Ken Norton and was deemed so fearsome that many in Ali’s own corner feared for the life of “The Greatest” as he headed to that ring in the former Zaire in 1974.

Instead, discouraged by a sparring cut that required a fight postponement and an extended African stay that was soured by the continuing citizen roars of “Ali Bomaye” – “Ali, kill him,” – Foreman was drawn into the “Rope-a-dope” strategy of Ali, who weathered Foreman’s massive blows, fatigued the champion and unleashed an eighth-round flurry of blows that knocked out Foreman.

Less than three years later, Foreman had an epiphany following a loss to Jimmy Young and turned to religion, walking away from boxing to become an ordained minister in Texas from the age of 27 to 37.

“He lived a fantastic life and did things no other world-class athlete has ever done. Sports writers who have all the knowledge could never give me a name of any other world-class athlete who left their sport for so long and came back to win a championship,” Caplan said.

When Caplan read a small blurb in the Los Angeles Times in 1987 that Foreman had resumed training, the publicist and his publicist-daughter, Debbie Caplan, ventured to Houston and knocked on Foreman’s front door. 

“What took you so long?” Foreman asked them, launching into a grass-roots campaign of training and fighting mid-level opponents to lose weight and construct himself back into championship form.

A 1991 title loss to Evander Holyfield sent him back to the lab, but Foreman – promoted by Bob Arum’s Top Rank – landed another title shot at Moorer, deciding to don the same red trunks he wore in Zaire and telling HBO’s Lampley how he intended to lure Moorer into the path of his lethal right hand, then planting it right on his jaw in the 10th round to win back the belt that slipped away from him nearly 20 years previously to Ali.

“It happened!” Lampley exclaimed into the microphone, words that are the title of his new book that hits stores next month. “It happened!”

The phrase struck Lampley powerfully Friday night, knowing they also applied to Foreman’s magical existence, which included his 12 years as an HBO analyst working alongside Lampley.

“I’m bereft. He was distant at first, and then over time we had good conversations and we became good friends. So tonight was a rough passage I didn’t see coming,” Lampley said.

In one of those deeper conversations, Lampley leaned on a hunch after reading a story that detailed how former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama would share late-night phone calls to discuss presidential duties, pressures and life.

Did Foreman and Ali do the same?

“When Ali died, I asked George about it. He told me it was exactly like Obama and W.,” Lampley said.

“We wound up having midnight conversations that nobody in the house ever knew about. They were private. We spoke to each other through a very personal channel,” Foreman told Lampley.

“Well, did you ever talk about religion?” Lampley asked.

“Of course we did. We’re both religious men,” Foreman responded.

“How did that go? You’re a fundamentalist Christian, he’s a practicing Muslim. Where’d you find common ground?” Lampley asked.

In recounting this part of the conversation to BoxingScene Friday, Lampley’s voice began to shake.

“That’s a logical question to ask,” Foreman said, “but the truth is, ultimately, we decided and shared with each other that good is good, bad is bad, and any morally conscious person knows the difference. And on that basis, we were able to find common ground.”

Said Lampley: “That’s so reflective of his wisdom and his simplicity as a thinker, along with his maturity as a man, that he wanted that kind of bond with Muhammad. It was thrilling to learn that from him.”

The depth of Foreman’s faith was revealed to all in the seconds after referee Joe Cortez counted out Moorer.

“I will never forget one of the most compelling religious acts that I’ve ever seen – because it was – when Cortez finishes the count, and George ran across the ring to the opposite corner and got down on his knees and says a prayer of thanks for his return to the heavyweight throne.

“Because it was something he wanted so much. It was one of the most compelling things I’ve ever seen in the ring, because it was so him.

“It was so personal, so distinctively George, so unabashed that he would do that in front of the world. I loved him for that. I loved the moment. And I think of it tonight.

“Wearing those trunks, banishing the demons, getting it done.”

Foreman prompted Lampley’s famed call by taking the Hall of Fame broadcaster through the processes he would exercise to position Moorer for the kill shot.

“You watch him, you watch,” Foreman advised Lampley. “There will come a moment late in the fight, he’ll come and stand in front of me and let me knock him out.”

“I was affirming he had told me that was going to happen,” Lampley said of the call. “I would have never predicted that. I remembered the conversations. When it happened, I was really talking to him.

“The simple beauty to which that description happens, that Moorer did come stand in front of him and ‘let’ him knock him out to a certain degree … it was thrilling, stunning, amazing to me that something I gave little credence to actually happened right in front of my eyes. That I managed to meet that moment with a call that properly encapsulated the simplicity and concrete reality of that – ‘It happened! It happened!’ – I’m proud of that.”

Caplan had witnessed a wealth of pugilistic dramatics before, but never anything as magical.

“I’ve got a 65-year-career in boxing,” Caplan said. “The night he did that was the No. 1 highlight of my career.”

Foreman’s good fortune was wildly enriched by the George Foreman Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine, a Spectrum Brands product that an entertainment attorney helped Foreman build and then sell for somewhere between $250 million to $300 million, Caplan said.

Foreman was a regular on Johnny Carson and other late-night talk shows for his cheeseburger jokes. He’d show up in press rooms before big fights in New York, Los Angeles and Vegas wearing a chef’s white top-hat, an apron and bearing a platter stacked high with cheeseburgers. The burgers were delicious. The sales pitch was irresistible.

No telling how many grills were sold, but it’s safe to say a lot more people bought it than the Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao pay-per-view. Some reports put it at 100 million.

In some neighborhoods, Foreman wasn’t known for anything else. In a trip home to visit family, a nephew introduced me to a friend. Sure enough, there was the grill.

“That George Foreman is a genius,’’ he says.

Yeah, and did you know he was heavyweight champion of the world, too?

“Bullbleep,” the friend said.

Foreman spoke to BoxingScene in an extended interview last year, detailing the sale of his personal car collection, as he and wife Joan relocated into a smaller home. He planned to use some of the proceeds to put each of his grandchildren through college.

The vehicles mirrored his life journey as he spoke of restoring a 1953 Chevy in an act akin to rebuilding himself as a fighter.

“I always wanted to show everyone that, ‘Hey, they said this was junk. Look at what we’ve done,’” Foreman said. “I guess I did the same thing [in the ring] when everybody said I was broken down and worn out. I was able to get back on my feet.”

A classic roadster would provide him the peace to reflect on what he’d made of his life during his long drives, with classic rock and soul music playing, deep through the heart of Texas.

“Boy, you talk about having a new car to go down that road … Oh, that’s the most wonderful drive,” he said.

Foreman’s evolution was momentous.

Twenty years before the Moorer triumph, he was feared. Ali was beloved. The “Rumble in the Jungle” was cast as Good-versus-Evil. Foreman wore the black hat. There was a reason for that. Foreman was scary, especially in the frightening 1973 beat-down of Frazier in Jamaica. Even promoter Don King was scared of him.

Caplan witnessed that side of him in Zaire when Ali-Foreman was delayed, from September 25 to October 30 because of Foreman’s cut above his right eye.

Zaire dictator Mobutu Sese Seko feared that Foreman would not return for the fight if he went back to the U.S. for treatment of the cut, which required 11 stitches. Instead, Mobutu forced Foreman to stay. Caplan recalls that they were housed in what was a military camp. There were troops and tanks. In other words, there was no escape.

One day, a frustrated Foreman confronted Caplan.

Foreman had learned that King was staying in the Presidential Suite at the Hilton. Foreman told Caplan to accompany him on a trip to the only western hotel in downtown Kinshasa. They got to the hotel, arrived at the top floor and got off the elevator. Caplan recalls Foreman banging on the door to the Presidential Suite with a bearpaw-sized right hand, the very same hand that would go on to KO Moorer and clutch cheeseburgers

King came to the door. Foreman, Caplan recalls, gave King a look that Frazier and Ali might have seen at the opening bell.

“George looks at him and says: ‘Don, you’re moving out and I’m moving in,’‘’ Caplan said. “That’s what happened. It was that simple.’’

Over the years, that fear of Foreman dissipated. Maybe, it was because of the humiliating loss to Ali. Maybe, it was the grill. Maybe, the cheeseburgers.

Foreman’s empathy for others was legendary, like when he provided $400,000 to a Bay Area food bank for AIDS patients, or when he cut Magic Johnson a $1 million check in a joint cause aimed to re-open drug stores and help the elderly fill their prescriptions followed by store closures during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

“As far as I’m concerned, George Foreman will never be dead. He’ll always be alive in my mind and heart,” Caplan said. “I’m somehow comforted by the fact George Foreman is in heaven. He’ll always be George Foreman, and I’ll always be one of his many friends.”

Throughout Foreman’s second chapter, the middle-aged version began to remind us of the big kid who clutched a tiny American flag in one hand in a spontaneous celebration of Olympic gold.

He was a young Giant then.

And a Gentle Giant in the end.

Lampley recalled Foreman’s care one night when the broadcaster was grousing about how his then-wife wanted to uproot their successful existence living in a mountain-side Park City, Utah, home while running a thriving restaurant in town to instead move to San Diego for her broadcasting job.

Foreman said to Lampley, “Jim, it’s a house. It’s just a house. It’s a thing. You’ve owned houses before. You’ll own houses in the future. That’s not the only one. You can’t allow something like that to contaminate your relationship with your wife.”

Said Lampley: “I took a breath and I realized that’s so wise, that’s so true. I appreciated that he valued me enough as a friend and a colleague that he would be that frank and direct with me. That’s just one of many anecdotes I could give to express the wisdom and clarity he brought to what he did at that point in his life.

“Was he that way when he came out of Mexico City? I don’t know. Was he that way in Zaire? I don’t know. But I know the person I worked with, and he was very mature, very sensible, very wise, very helpful.”

Lampley reached out to Foreman to ask if he would contribute a cover blurb for his new book. Foreman, in what Lampley says may have been one of the two-time heavyweight champion’s final public acts, obliged.

“How great is that? What an astonishing gift,” Lampley said. “I feel lucky and blessed that I worked with him, got to know him, felt his greatness. I knew his greatness as a fighter. In working with him, I felt his greatness as a human being.”

In that book passage, Foreman wrote the following:

“I called dozens of big fights with Jim Lampley and from that, I learned to respect that he would call my fights with passion and emotional truth. On November 5, 1994, I knocked out Michael Moorer and gave him the platform to create the title of this book.

“Enjoy the story.”

Norm Frauenheim contributed to this report.

Lance Pugmire is BoxingScene’s senior U.S. writer and an assistant producer for ProBox TV. Pugmire has covered boxing since the early 2000s, first at the Los Angeles Times and then at The Athletic and USA Today. He won the Boxing Writers’ Association of America’s Nat Fleischer Award in 2022 for career excellence.