All the glowing tributes, all the celebrations of his greatness across two eras, all the marveling at his personal reinvention, all the “It happened! It happened!” – every bit of it was warranted. George Foreman was truly larger than life in so many ways, he was an all-time boxing icon, and his death on March 21 rightly touched off a parade of positive remembrances from all who knew him, all who covered him and all who rooted for him.

But it’s been over a month now. There is, of course, no hard-and-fast rule for when the “too soon” period ends and the coast is clear for some critical reflections. But in Foreman’s case, perhaps we should take it as a sign that today, April 22, marks the 30th anniversary of his title defense against Axel Schulz – a fight that definitely wasn’t going to make its way into any of those fond farewells to “Big George.”

Foreman vs. Schulz, televised live on HBO from the MGM Grand Garden Arena on April 22, 1995, was dubbed “Celebration” on the fight posters. It seems perhaps an odd tagline for a prize fight, but in context, it makes sense. 

Five months earlier, Foreman had done the unthinkable, reclaiming the lineal heavyweight championship of the world at age 45 via his miraculous 10th-round knockout of Michael Moorer, and this was his first defense of his second reign – his first title defense in a shade over 20 years – against the handpicked challenger Schulz.

It was meant and expected to be a jovial celebration, not a serious confrontation.

Foreman’s longtime HBO colleague Larry Merchant, however, offered what turned out to be the perfect analogy minutes before the ring-walks: “He’s won the election, and now the hard part: He has to govern.”

We’ve seen countless “gimme” first defenses go awry over the years – including, of course, Moorer’s against old man Foreman. Merchant wasn’t exactly predicting a rough night for George against the largely unknown, unworthy German. Nobody was. He was simply identifying how sitting atop the mountain differs from scaling it.

But as it turned out, “the hard part” began immediately.

Foreman uttered a prescient quote of his own during the vignette that preceded the bout. A time capsule of sorts reflecting the pop culture of the moment, some four weeks after the 67th annual Academy Awards, Foreman was edited into assorted iconic scenes in American history and quipped as he sat on a park bench, “Life is like a boxing ring – you never know what’s gonna happen inside it.”

No, you sure don’t. In retrospect, though, when one boxer is 46 and the other is 26, and the younger man is doing his best to adapt the mobile game plan that Tommy Morrison used to perfection two years earlier (“Run, Axel, run,” you can imagine the German fans cheering, if we extend the Forrest Gump corollary), well, the near-disaster for Foreman shouldn’t have been so shocking.

Still, before the opening bell, Schulz was listed as anywhere from a 6-to-1 to 10-to-1 underdog, and the New York Daily News wrote, “Some people think [the odds] should be 20-to-1.”

Given the specifics of the German’s record of 21-1-1 (10 KOs), it was easy to see why. In his previous fight, Schulz decisioned 41-year-old James “Bonecrusher” Smith – and that was by far the most meaningful win on his resume. His only other notable fights were his loss and his draw, both of which came against then-undefeated Henry Akinwande.

Schulz had been inactive for 216 days, the longest such stretch of his career. Foreman, of course, could once lay claim to a layoff more than 3,400 days longer than that; regardless, the inactivity was one more reason not to love Schulz’s chances.

He did bring with him, however, a vibrant fan base. An estimated 2,500 Germans made the trip to Las Vegas, with thousands more gathered for public watch parties back home, where it was about 5:30 a.m. when the fighters made their way to the ring.

Foreman was looking for the easiest opponent he could get away with who was still financially viable, and a little international appeal went a long way in helping Schulz secure the co-starring role. The New York Times reported that Schulz earned $1 million while Foreman pocketed about $12 million as his “celebrity status persuaded HBO to pay more for this fight than for any other event in the cable network’s history.”

Defending champ Foreman, sporting a record of 73-4 (68 KOs), jogged to the ring in his gray hoodie to the song “Hakuna Matata” – again tying the event to the cinema of the moment, some 10 months after the release of The Lion King.

“Hakuna Matata,” as we all know, means “no worries.” It wasn’t long before the song selection became ironic.

From the start, young Schulz – whose pro boxing career began more than three years after Foreman’s second boxing career began – made his intentions clear. Though Gil Clancy, who was keeping Foreman’s HBO broadcast seat warm while Big George was otherwise occupied, said of Schulz in the pre-fight, “He’s a stationary target without much offense,” the challenger immediately defied the scouting report.

Thirty-five pounds lighter than Foreman, Schulz was using his hand speed and his legs to try to replicate Morrison’s success and, the subjective nature of boxing scoring aside, it worked.

Goal number one: Don’t get knocked out by Foreman’s vaunted power. Goal number two: Score points, win rounds. Over 12 rounds, Schulz factually achieved the former, and arguably achieved the latter.

The first three rounds were all close enough to score either way. Schulz’s youth and movement prevailed a bit more clearly in the fourth – though not clearly enough, apparently, to convince judge Jerry Roth, who scored it for Foreman. Roth and Chuck Giampa both had the bout even after four, while Keith MacDonald, having given the champion a sweep of the first three frames, had Foreman up 39-37.

HBO’s unofficial judge, Harold Lederman, had the opposite score, 39-37 for Schulz, but asked: “Can Schulz win in the eyes of the judges when he’s running away? And he is running away, no question.”

It’s always a thin line between running and moving, and to my eyes, Schulz was mostly on the preferred side of that line and led 39-37 after the fourth round. Demonstrating, though, how this fight largely came down to which style you liked, Clancy agreed with Lederman’s card and mine, while Merchant went the other way and aligned with judge MacDonald.

When the 46-year-old champ looked slow, he really looked slow, but he was also getting work done and landing some quality body shots and a few heavy right hands. The fifth and sixth added to the growing pile of rounds in which you could make a case for either man, but I leaned Foreman’s way in both, and he swept the two rounds on all three judges’ cards as well. Lederman, however, gave them both to Schulz.

It was in round seven that substantial swelling emerged above Foreman’s left eye, and the fight began to swing more clearly in Schulz’s way.

Rounds seven through 10 were each varying degrees of decisive (though plenty competitive) in Schulz’s favor, and the German won all four rounds on MacDonald’s card and three of the four on Roth’s, while Giampa split them 2-2. Schulz did at least get a clean sweep in round nine, when he appeared to hurt Foreman with a right hand with about 25 seconds left on the clock.

The punch stats told a tale of two different fights to that point. Over the first five rounds, Foreman outlanded Schulz by 30 punches while scoring at a 53% clip. Over the next five, Schulz outlanded Foreman by 12 punches as George’s connect rate dropped 10 points to 43%.

The outcome was undecided entering the championship rounds. MacDonald had the fight even, and Roth and Giampa each favored Foreman by two points.

The old champion responded to the urgency in round 11, looking energetic and enjoying by far his best round of the fight while making Schulz’s legs wobble with a short right hand inside. Curiously, Giampa gave the round to Schulz, while the other two judges scored it for Foreman.

Big George came out for the 12th with a full golf ball-sized swelling above his left eye, and Schulz proceeded to land combinations and sharp right hands that Foreman could barely see coming. It appeared a reasonably straightforward Schulz round, but MacDonald departed from the other two judges and gave it to Foreman, which would prove significant.

At the final bell, Schulz thrust both arms in the air, while Foreman slumped dejectedly toward his corner – where sunglasses were immediately slapped on in a failed attempt to obscure the damage.

The HBO crew spoke as if fairly confident Schulz had taken the lineal heavyweight title — though Merchant, who scored closely for Foreman, was not available to disagree with his colleagues, as he’d already made his way into the ring for the post-fight interviews. Lederman’s final scorecard read 117-111 for Schulz, and Clancy said he favored Schulz by four points.

I landed on the same final score as Clancy on a 30th anniversary rewatch, 116-112 for Schulz. I scored six rounds for Schulz with relative confidence, compared to just one decisive round for Foreman, while I struggled to pick a winner in five of the 12.

But the news Michael Buffer delivered did not align with my card, the HBO scoring or the fighters’ body language. Giampa tallied a draw, 114-114. Roth and MacDonald both landed on 115-113 for the winner by majority decision, Foreman.

Had MacDonald scored the final round “correctly,” for Schulz, the result would have been a draw. Then again, had Giampa scored the 11th “correctly,” for Foreman, his card would have favored the defending champ. Playing the “if/then” game with the scoring in this close and controversial fight is a pointlessly vicious circle.

Roth, in 1993, recognized Morrison’s effective boxing against Foreman to the tune of a 118-109 scorecard in Morrison’s favor. But he gave the underhyped Schulz four fewer rounds for his somewhat similar effort.

When the decision was read, the crowd in Vegas booed. The crowd gathered at Oder Tower in Frankfurt, Germany, threw trash at the giant projection screen.

HBO’s Jim Lampley found exactly one writer on press row, Tim Kawakami, who scored the fight for Foreman.

The headline on Kawakami’s post-fight article in the Los Angeles Times reflected the prevailing opinion rather than that of the writer: “Foreman Lucks Out in Las Vegas.”

Mixing a dash of the reinvented cuddly George with a scoop of the chip-on-his-shoulder surly version, Foreman insisted post-fight of Schulz, “He ran, and you don’t give a fighter a championship for running.”

Schulz asked for a rematch in Germany. Foreman was not interested in one – not in Germany, not in the U.S., not in a box, not with a fox. “I will not fight that kid again,” Foreman said at the post-fight press conference.

Foreman had won two alphabet belts against Moorer the previous November, but he was stripped of one for declining to face mandatory challenger Tony Tucker. After this fight, the lone remaining sanctioning body recognizing Foreman as champ, the IBF, ordered a rematch with Schulz, but Foreman knew after 12 rounds together what he hadn’t known previously: that, whatever the official result, Schulz was a bad matchup for him at this age. So the IBF soon stripped Foreman as well.

(Foreman-Schulz later took on added historical significance as a footnote in the extortion scandal surround IBF President Bob Lee, with promoter Bob Arum testifying that he paid Lee a six-figure bribe to get the organization to sanction Foreman-Schulz as a title fight.)

Schulz did get two more cracks at that IBF belt, and he remained as unlucky as he’d been against Foreman. In December 1995, he fought Frans Botha for the vacant title and dropped a split decision that became a no-contest when “The White Buffalo” tested positive for steroids. Schulz got another shot at the vacant title in June 1996 against Moorer and lost a split verdict by two points.

The German marked time beating the likes of future Mike Tyson opponents Kevin McBride and Julius Francis the next couple of years, then suffered the first definitive defeat of his career in 1999, an eighth-round stoppage against 23-year-old Wladimir Klitschko. Schulz retired after that, just 30 years old, made one ill-advised comeback attempt at 38 and was stopped by Brian Minto, and finished with a record of 26-5-1 (11 KOs).

The day after Foreman’s death, Schulz was quoted by German press agency DPA saying, “George was something special. It was a shock when I got the news this morning.” Schulz, now 56, said he’d been planning to meet up with Foreman in celebration of the 30th anniversary of their fight.

Here’s a remarkable statistic: The bout against Schulz marked the first time Foreman had ever won a 12-round decision.

It also set in motion the final phase of his career. Foreman was a marvel for a fighter in the back half of his 40s, but he was limited compared to the various contenders half his age, and with nothing much left to prove, he went about cherry-picking in defense of his lineal title for as long as he could hold onto it.

Crawford Grimsley proved a good bit easier than Schulz. Lou Savarese was somewhere in-between the two. And on November 22, 1997, against Shannon Briggs, the 48-year-old Foreman found himself in the Schulz role, on the wrong side of a controversial majority decision. He retired afterward, considered fighting again – a battle of the aged against Larry Holmes very nearly happened – but ultimately stuck to wearing tuxedos just outside the ring rather than boxing trunks inside those ropes.

Foreman’s struggle with Schulz, however you scored it, brings into focus an interpretation of the late phase of his career that is not terribly flattering. Following his magnificent effort against Holyfield in 1991, Foreman stopped Jimmy Ellis and Pierre Coetzer, took alarming punishment in a controversial 10-round majority decision win over Alex Stewart, lost widely to Morrison, and seemed on his way to losing widely to Moorer before, well, it happened.

Through one prism, after the Holyfield fight, Foreman was more celebrity than serious contender, and if not for round 10 against Moorer, we could be looking back and saying his comeback should have ended with the brave defeat to Holyfield.

The Schulz fight is as persuasive as any in suggesting that. Then again, the Schulz fight is exactly what is supposed to happen when a pretty good 26-year-old takes on an all-time-great 46-year-old.

That everyone came into it expecting something different speaks to just how magnificent Foreman’s knockout of Moorer was. Miracles are, by definition, extraordinary and rare. Foreman’s miracle was so exceptional and uplifting that it caused fight fans – and oddsmakers – to forget that.

Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with more than 25 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X, BlueSky, or LinkedIn, or via email at RaskinBoxing@yahoo.com.