America At Large: Most of my sportswriting brethren were still in bed nursing hangovers a week ago on Sunday when I hailed a cab and drove across Houston to the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ, where the Rev George Foreman was presiding over the morning services.
The Rev Foreman had chosen the Book of Samuel, Chapter 17, for his homily on Super Bowl Sunday. He would read a few verses and then pause to draw out a life's lesson, expounding on points suggested along the way by the tale of one of fistic history's greatest upsets, David's first-round knockout of Goliath, a bout in which King Saul (as opposed to Don King) was cast in the role of the unscrupulous promoter.
This aspect of the morning worship had been preceded by a substantial round of lovely, hand-clapping music, and George was already well into the second hour of the proceedings when he abruptly snapped the Good Book shut and declared the lesson ended.
"When people start falling asleep, it's time to stop reading the Bible," he thundered in a voice loud enough to awaken the aged parishioner who had been snoring from a front-row pew. He then smiled gently at the man, suggesting the preacher wasn't nearly as cross as he had pretended to be.
"That was like watching an old fight on ESPN Classic," I told George when he greeted me on my way out of the church. "It was interesting, even though we knew who was going to win that fight." I reminded him later he'd probably picked a good place to stop. The children had just been returned to the congregation after Sunday School and retaken their places alongside their families. Had the Rev Foreman read on for just a few more verses he'd have gotten to the part about David decapitating the deceased Goliath and parading into the city with the head held aloft on a stick, an image which might have produced more than a few nightmares.
That morning George had seemed to be hammering home the message - that however daunting the odds might seem, nothing is impossible - to his flock.
Who could have guessed he was actually steeling himself for another comeback? At a press conference in Humble, Texas, yesterday, the 55-year-old Foreman announced his intention to return to the boxing ring.
Reaction to this news has ranged from shock and indignation to fears for his safety to abject ridicule. "Right," said the Showtime network's vice-president for sports, Jay Larkin. "Who's he going to fight, Muhammad Ali or Laila Ali?"
It has been seven years since Foreman's last fight, and seven months since he was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Election to this body requires that a boxer have been retired for five years, but in point of fact Foreman never did formally announce his retirement. He just didn't fight again after the controversial 1997 split-decision loss to Shannon Briggs in which he lost his claim to the linear heavyweight championship.
Seventeen years have passed since Foreman ended a 10-year retirement to resume the comeback which culminated in his 1994 10th-round knockout of Michael Moorer to reclaim the title he had lost in the jungles of Zaire two decades earlier. His motivation in 1987 was much clearer. His church was in tatters and his Youth Centre in Houston was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. He needed the money then, but he certainly doesn't now.
He earned $5 million a year for the HBO commentator's role he resigned two months ago, and a few years ago he sold his interest in the George Foreman Grilling Machines for $137 million, retaining "consultant's" role which currently nets him a million dollars a month in residuals. His family has been well provided for, and the Youth Centre and the church are fully endowed. He has given freely to charitable causes - including the tens of thousands of dollars he spread around Father Joe Young's Southill parish when he and I visited Limerick together five years ago.
No, Foreman is apparently coming back this time just to prove it can be done. He has been quietly training for the past two months, and says he has already shed 25 pounds. He won't fight, he says, unless he can get himself down to 225, which would be nearly two stone lighter than he was when he fought Briggs.
Although he has been dropping hints about resuming his boxing career since last summer, the guessing here is that Foreman intentionally delayed a formal announcement until Lennox Lewis took himself off the stage last week. Foreman beating any heavyweight would have immediately provoked questions about Lewis, an opponent for whom he would have been stylistically unsuited and whom he never would have fought.
Here's the part we don't believe: Foreman says he only wants to fight once but, if he is successful, that seems unlikely. While Foreman never wanted to fight Lewis, he always wanted to fight Mike Tyson, and this time Don King isn't around as an impediment to that match-up.
Although another fiftysomething-former champion, Larry Holmes, threw down the gauntlet to Foreman, Big George says he wants no part of "other geezers". While he hasn't chosen an opponent yet, if we are to believe him it will be someone who hadn't even been born at the time of his Rumble in the Jungle against Ali.
Foreman says he wants to fight "somebody under 30 - a serious fight against one of these young guys". Earlier this week when word began to trickle out that his sibling was contemplating a comeback, Houston promoter Roy Foreman was asked if he didn't fear for his brother's safety.
"Hey, boxing is a tough business," replied the younger Foreman. "I was afraid for him when he was 20."
