George Foreman

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 30:08

The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and three, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My castaway this week is a boxer. These days he's a slick middle-aged salesman who makes a fortune from promoting healthy eating. But it wasn't always like that. Born in Houston, Texas, in an area where Saturday night was murder night, he became a heavy drinker and a minor crook. Then he learned to box. Turning professional, he won thirty-seven straight victories and at the age of twenty-four became heavyweight champion of the world, knocking out Joe Frazier in the famous Sunshine Showdown in Kingston, Jamaica. Eighteen months later, in another historic bout, The Rumble in the Jungle, he lost to Mohammed Ali. The defeat changed him. He turned to God and to hamburgers, becoming a preacher and ballooning to Twenty Five Stone.

Presenter1:11

Ten years later, no longer able to support his ex wives and many children, he went back into the ring, and at the age of forty five regained that heavyweight title. He's a sporting legend. Fear is everything, he says. It's not the fight you lose, it's yourself. He is George

Presenter1:30

And, George, when you sit in your dressing room before a big fight, like those big ones that you fought, is it fear then not so much of your opponent, but fear of what's going to happen, how your life is going to change if you lose?

George Foreman1:44

The unexpected. You sit there and you know every fight, win, lose or draw, your life is going to be changed forever. And you sit there wondering how, at what point, is it going to be a drastic change? And that fear just overtakes you, and it should overtake you for good reasons.

Presenter1:56

Yeah.

Presenter2:00

But psychologically, if you're defending your World Championship title, one minute you're king and the next minute you're a loser, and that that's the point, isn't it?

George Foreman2:09

That's a horror, too. You sit in the room as heavyweight champ of the world, you are heavyweight champion of the world all through your soul. Then you lose it, you're no longer half heavyweight champ, you're just nothing you feel.

Presenter2:22

So the pressure is enormous. Also because, I mean, thinking back to the Rumble in the Jungle, nineteen seventy four, I mean, the eyes of the world were upon you. I think you you fought at three o'clock in the morning.

George Foreman2:31

Yeah, it was about three four four in the morning.

Presenter2:33

So so that television audiences in and in the States could kind of have it at a decent hour. But but the pressure it's a performance, isn't it? You know that everybody is watching you.

George Foreman2:43

You don't concentrate on too much what ev that everybody is watching you until something drastic happens. Then you realize it hasn't h happened in a corner of the world. It happened and everybody has seen you. Your life becomes different and everyone know it's different.

Presenter2:59

Is there a physical fear as well? Um you have written that when you faced up to Joe Frazier that eighteen months earlier that you said your knees were knocking.

George Foreman3:07

Surely because Joe Frazier was called smoking Joe Frazier. I was going to stare him down, but I was hoping he wouldn't look down. Generally if you l win a staring match, the fighter d drops his head. I said, if he drops his head, he's going to see my knees shaking. I was afraid of Joe Frazier.

Presenter3:25

But you I mean, you say that he was smoking Joe. I you were you were pretty psyched up too. I I mean, at the end of that, and you did knock him out in the second round it was a very quick fight, second round. You said then that you were sitting in the corner saying, I want to kill him, I want to kill him, you know, the it's it's it's a real kind of

George Foreman3:40

Well, with that fight with Joe Frazier, it wasn't so much that I wanted to kill him, I wanted to get that fight over. Joe Frazier was a frightening opponent. Knocking him down three times didn't assure me I was going to win this thing. So I had to keep that fight under control and hope that it would automatically win. I kept telling his corner, you better stop it. I'm going to kill him. But I was saying, you better stop it because I'm afraid he's going to get stronger as the fight goes on. That was my problem.

Presenter3:58

Uh

Presenter4:03

Oh I see. It was again fear of him, whatever.

George Foreman4:05

Yeah, it was total fear. My best performance was motivated by fear.

Presenter4:11

But of course it was Ali in the end who knocked you out. You've said since, it was the fight that saved your life. You've said, Thank God I didn't win. Now explain that to me.

George Foreman4:21

If I had won that boxing match and continued on the road that I was traveling, I wouldn't be here with a smile on my face.

Presenter4:28

Why not?

George Foreman4:28

I don't think I even had any idea of what the future held for me. I was living one day at a time, didn't care. When the bell would ring for a boxing match, I wasn't trying to win fights. I was trying to kill people. I really had this killer instinct. And how could you go from that point on in life with that kind of attitude? I needed a conversion in my life. I really did.

Presenter4:50

And you got it, as we shall hear. But tell me about your first record you want to take to this desert island.

George Foreman4:54

Oh, Sam Cook, you sent me. It was probably the the most exciting and beautiful record, the first one I'd ever heard in my life. It started reminding me that maybe you need somebody in your life to fall in love with. And I heard this song and he made you feel love.

Speaker 25:10

Thank you.

Speaker 25:13

Send me

Speaker 25:15

I know you

Speaker 25:18

Send me

Speaker 25:20

Darling you.

Speaker 25:23

Send me

Speaker 25:25

I just do, honest you, honest you do. You

Speaker 25:33

Drill me.

Speaker 25:35

I know you.

Speaker 25:38

Real me

Presenter5:40

Sam Cooke and You Send Me and Memories for George Foreman of First Love.

George Foreman5:44

Ah, fell in love.

Presenter5:46

Absolutely. You were devastated, you say, after um Ali took your title. But there was a moment though in the seventh round, wasn't there, when you could have got him. I think he dropped his hands.

George Foreman5:55

Yeah, I almost had him. He was playing around and I thought, you know, he really thinks he's gotten me in trouble. And I was about to get him, and Angelo Dundee screamed,

George Foreman6:05

Mohammed, don't play with that sucker.

George Foreman6:08

And when he said that, he picked his hands back up and I lost him. The Fox got me there.

Presenter6:14

But you do think that there w was maybe something in your water beforehand.

George Foreman6:18

Yeah, no doubt about it, when I look back in retrospect, but I don't think it had anything to do with Mohammed Ali.

Presenter6:23

No, certainly not. But but certainly you were perhaps a bit more sluggish than you might have been. And it robbed you of your heart for the fight. You went on for another three years, but you weren't the same guy.

George Foreman6:32

No,'cause I I didn't think anyone could beat me.

Presenter6:35

And we're going to have to do it.

George Foreman6:35

No matter I had this masterful power in my fingers.

Presenter6:38

And then God came into your life. Was there a moment when it happened?

George Foreman6:40

That's right.

George Foreman6:43

It was the last fight I had with Jimmy Young in St. John, Puerto Rico, in a dressing room. I had a vision. In a split second, I was dead and alive again. And I heard a voice say, You believe in God. Why are you scared to die? And I was afraid, truly. I had no idea that I would die one day. And I was fighting for my life in the dressing room. It changed me.

Presenter7:02

It was a vision, it wasn't a hallucination, you believe you really saw something.

George Foreman7:03

Yeah.

George Foreman7:05

Well, if if whatever it was, this follows me to this day. It was the most profound event in my life.

Presenter7:11

But when you were a boy in this rather poor district of Houston, Texas, you had associated people turning to religion with weakness, hadn't you?

George Foreman7:20

Surely most everybody th that you would meet who was going to church, they couldn't fight. As a matter of fact, they didn't even steal. They were the weakest of people, I thought. And my mother would even tell me when I was a bad boy, go read your Bible, and I'd say, sure, and I'd act as though something good had happened, but I didn't read it. I didn't believe in it. It was just probably the worst thing in my mind that could happen to a human being, religion.

Presenter7:44

Really?

Presenter7:44

But perhaps for you you had to become truly desperate before you could find God.

George Foreman7:50

I don't know. You know, I w became extremely wealthy and then I figured, hey, no one has God but the wealthy because I could buy everything I wanted. So I suppose if there's really some religion, I must have it.

Presenter8:01

So you you spent your gains from boxing on setting up your own church, didn't you?

George Foreman8:05

After I retired from boxing the first time, of course, we started a church in Houston, Texas.

Presenter8:10

The First Church of the Lord Jesus Christ in Humble, Texas, I thought was a great name for a town.

George Foreman8:14

was great men

George Foreman8:16

Well, humble is where I live. That told me to be cool about it. Humble is what I had to be.

Presenter8:21

Tell me about record number two.

George Foreman8:23

Growing up in the tough Fifth Ward of Houston, all of us laughed at guys who would listen to classical music. But I love The Lone Ranger. All of us kids did. And then one day I found out it was a classic.

Presenter9:33

Part of Rossini's William Tell overture from the motion picture soundtrack of The Legend of the Lone Ranger and Memories of the Cowboy.

George Foreman9:40

Campbell

Presenter9:40

On the television in your youth, but you wouldn't have had a television, George. I mean, your family was so poor.

George Foreman9:43

And your family was so poor? We were so poor, we would peep through the windows of neighbors who had televisions. And it was wonderful. Everybody would open their their curtains so you could at least watch through the windows and see the Lone Ranger.

Presenter9:55

Yeah.

Presenter9:57

What about food? You said that hunger shaped your boyhood really.

George Foreman10:01

Oh, yeah. Uh growing to this day I'm always watching for kids who could be missing on some food because I would play with children and then their parents would call them in to eat lunch and they'd tell me to go home as though I had some lunch at home. I never had lunch.

Presenter10:15

How far did a hamburger go in your family?

George Foreman10:17

Ooh, sometimes my mother, who worked at a restaurant, uh she'd bring home a hamburger sometime with the mustard on it. She'd slice it in so many different pieces and we'd always get a piece of it. We could smell the mustard. There were so many of us, but she could stretch that hamburger one mile.

Speaker 210:27

Uh

Presenter10:27

We could smell the bust of you, weren't they?

Presenter10:33

You used to pretend, didn't you, um um when you took packed lunches to school you had a an empty bag, huh?

George Foreman10:40

Yeah, because you had to have some kind of self esteem. I'd carry a a bag and you'd put maybe some grease at the end and you'd blow the bag up and you'd act as though you'd already eaten your lunch before you had gotten to school, so kids would say, He always eat his lunch But I never had a lunch.

Presenter10:55

That's

Presenter10:56

And your mother was the lynchpin of this family. I think you were the fifth of seven kids, weren't you?

George Foreman10:59

You are number five of seven.

Presenter11:01

And always on the move, always sort of one step ahead of the rent man.

George Foreman11:05

That's true. She'd always have to choose wi should I pay the rent or should I pay the electricity bill? And most of the time the rent would lose out, we'd buy some food, we'd have to move again.

Presenter11:16

And I said in the introduction that in your neighbourhood Saturday night was murder night. I mean, you were one tough kid, weren't you?

George Foreman11:22

Yeah, they called the Fifth War the Bloody Fifth. Every weekend someone would get killed.

Presenter11:27

Really?

George Foreman11:28

Always. I'm just happy that I made it through.

Presenter11:31

That A, you didn't get killed, or B, that you didn't kill anybody. Because you might have done. You were very aggressive.

George Foreman11:34

Yeah, the danger was just as great that I may have taken someone out myself. A very aggressive and violent bo

Presenter11:42

Was it a pleasure or were you taking ignorance?

George Foreman11:44

Ignorance how do you define ignorance? Even as a mugger, a teenage thief, I didn't know it was wrong to steal. I had no idea. Everyone was doing it. It was like picking fruit off trees. Why not? It's there for you.

Presenter12:00

And your father was quite proud of you, wasn't he, as because you were a good fighter, and he liked

George Foreman12:05

Well, as a little boy, he'd always feel good after a little swig of this or that. He'd always grab me by my head and say, George Foreman, next heavyweight champion of the world, stronger than Jack Dempsey, able to hit like Jack Johnson. And that would make me feel good. I had no idea who Jack Dempsey or Jack Johnson were. It just made me proud. He'd always make me proud.

Presenter12:27

But your mother didn't.

George Foreman12:28

Nor did I know about boxing.

Presenter12:29

As you say, your mother didn't. Your mother used to box you, didn't she?

George Foreman12:32

Yeah, she'd have to keep me in line because they after a while my parents broke up and it was the matriarchical family, my mother ruling and she'd have to make me more afraid of her than I would of getting in trouble.

Presenter12:43

And were you?

George Foreman12:45

I was. Sometimes she t when she couldn't whip me with a strap or something, she said, I'm gonna box you She would tear me up. And for a long time I was truly afraid of my mom, but thank God it was probably the only thing that got me through.

Presenter12:58

Record number three, tell me about that.

George Foreman13:01

Ah, don't be a drop out. When the great James Brown made this record I had no idea that celebrities were concerned about whether you got an education or not. He said that you could just lose everything if you didn't have an education. And you thought, man, I wish I just heard a a little earlier. I would have stayed in school.

Speaker 213:18

And of their personal trouble I will not tell.

Speaker 213:22

The phone cards didn't seem good, and they didn't seem bad.

Speaker 213:27

They didn't seem so happy, and I know they weren't sad.

Speaker 213:31

But the point isn't that they follow the rules.

Speaker 213:35

They got an education, and they all finished school.

Speaker 213:39

Now underneath his tail, I can see the two black

Speaker 213:43

When he dropped out of school, he never, never went back. Everyone

Presenter13:48

Still makes you laugh.

George Foreman13:49

Ah boy, it it was a ra reminder.

Presenter13:53

Yeah, don't be a drop out, James Brown. You did drop out, as you say, of school eventually. But but I think you'd begun well uh at school, hadn't you, George? Wasn't there a time when you you actually went to school in beautiful pressed white trousers?

George Foreman14:04

Yeah, you to be poor and disadvantaged is r can really be a drag. And ev I had one pair of white trousers and I'd wash those things if I could find bleach and clean them every day so the teachers would think that I'm a wealthy boy. And I would just put a crease in those pants every day, hang them on a hot water heater and get them up so that they thought I had more than one pair of pants.

Presenter14:28

But it was all about that need for respect, really, wasn't it?

George Foreman14:30

For respect, and I wanted to be accepted, and of course, I wanted to be an education and be thought of with the word potential.

Presenter14:37

But you dropped out, as we say. Crime became a way of life. I mean, you were smashing windows in the first place and then you were smashing people when you and this was kind of feeding a drink habit too, wasn't it?

George Foreman14:49

Yeah, was no doubt about it. If you really want to be a good mugger and you're gonna r rob people out there, you had to get some nerves from somewhere. And we call it Thunderbird. We'd all chip in maybe twenty, fifteen or twenty cents, and buy a bottle of cheap wine. And once you had a drink of that wine, you would do anything. If you had enough nerve to go out and on a prowl and be a predator waiting to rob people.

George Foreman15:12

And that's what I had turned myself into as a teenager.

Presenter15:15

But as you said, y you didn't f feel it was crime'cause it was what everybody did. You didn't connect it.

George Foreman15:19

Well, everybody did. Once a cousin caught me shooting hookie, making truant. She was in the house. I thought she had gone. I was going back to sleep. She said, go. No one from this family ever become anything anyway. Go to bed. I won't tell. I said, I'm going to be something. And one night while trying to get away from the police, after mugging someone, I try to dig a hole in the ground and cover myself from head to toe with slop so that the dogs wouldn't sniff me out. And I heard my cousin's voice saying, you're not going to be anything. No one from around here ever become anything. That changed my life because I'm not a criminal, I thought. I'm not what you call a thug. But why am I digging a hole underground to hide from the police? That's when I knew a change would have to come.

Presenter16:03

And was that the last time you mugged anybody?

George Foreman16:06

When that happened, I heard my cousin say no one ever become anything. I never stole anything again. I just thought I was doing what everyone else was doing. It wasn't bad, but I realized I was bad.

Presenter16:17

Pickle number four.

George Foreman16:17

Yeah.

George Foreman16:19

Fourth record, The Temptation. I got my first job after.

George Foreman16:23

That realization of my crime life. And it was such a hard job. I'd make $1.25 an hour, and not much money at all. You work 17 hours, you get $17. And on the way to the work, I'd always hope it would rain so that we wouldn't have to go out on those trucks. And I heard this song one morning by the temptation, I wish it would rain. And I so wish it would rain.

Speaker 216:49

Against the window pane, my eyes search the skies.

Speaker 216:53

Desperately it for rain cause rain drops behind my teardrop

Speaker 216:59

No one will ever know that I'm crying, crying, when I go outside.

Speaker 217:06

To the world outside my tears, I refuse to explain, Oh, I wish it would rain.

Presenter17:17

The temptations, and I wish it would rain. There was some um salvation in the system for you, though, George, wasn't there? Because you went away to a sort of residential job camp to try and learn some skills.

George Foreman17:26

I heard a commercial about a great football player. It said, If you're looking for a second chance in life, if you're a high school dropout, join the Job Corps and I did. I went away to Grants Pass, Oregon.

Presenter17:37

The n

George Foreman17:37

Of Uh

Presenter17:38

Yeah.

George Foreman17:38

Each?

George Foreman17:39

Three meals per day. I never thought that much food existed. Every day I'd get them.

Presenter17:44

And what did you learn?

George Foreman17:45

I read my first book one after another. I'd never read a whole book before. And it wasn't long before I qualified for the general education diploma.

Presenter17:53

And when you went home to see your mother, as you would presumably at Christmas and so on, did I mean, was she impressed by that?

George Foreman17:58

My mother was so impressed. As a matter of fact, I would write her letters and I'd always show off big words. And uh and my mother just couldn't understand what had happened to her boy. And I was proud this time d to get a chance to get some education. People were interested in teaching me.

George Foreman18:14

And that changed my life. I built a radio. It was all about destruction when I left. I learned to build radios and if I if they would work, I could keep them, things of that nature.

Presenter18:23

And you learn to But

George Foreman18:24

Uh In the evening, because of being homesick, I joined the boxing team, and that's where I learned to box, just so I could be tougher when I made it back to Fifth Ward.

Presenter18:33

But did anyone say to you then, you know, you could be you you're a natural?

George Foreman18:38

Doc Brodus, my original boxing coach, told me when I first went to the Job Corps Center in California, I transferred from Oregon, I told him I wanted to be a boxer. He said, You're big enough and ugly enough. Come down to the gym.

Presenter18:49

Presumably, you were just using brute force in the beginning. I mean, what you had to be taught was the skill, the strategy.

George Foreman18:52

Who are you?

George Foreman18:54

He said, Look, if you just learn and just stop fighting in the streets, I can teach you you can become a gold medalist And I did, I listened to him and it was less than two years I was an Olympic gold medalist.

Presenter19:00

Yeah.

Presenter19:04

Mm. That was the what the Mexico Olympics, wasn't it?

George Foreman19:05

Since nineteen sixty eight.

Presenter19:07

Yeah, yeah. What did it how big would you have been then then? You were

George Foreman19:11

I was already a heavyweight. When I won the gold medal, I was a heavyweight. I was about six feet two inches and uh about one eighty five, almost two hundred pounds then. So I was a big one.

Presenter19:21

It's about fourteen stone. Yeah, yeah, pretty big. And you won that gold and then you you turned professional shortly after.

George Foreman19:27

Yeah, it wasn't everybody said only had twenty five boxing matches and I needed more experience, but I was a gold medalist. What you couldn't go any further than amateurs. And I turned professional in nineteen sixty nine and from then on it was all about pre making preparation to become heavyweight champion of the world.

Presenter19:41

And that was to take on Joe Frazier. I mean, he was the best boxer you'd ever thought at that point, wasn't it? As a matter of fact.

George Foreman19:43

Joe Freight.

George Foreman19:46

Before at that point, as a matter of fact, he was the best I'd seen. I kept hoping I'm going to be heavyweight champion of the world, but I hope something bad happened to Joe Frazier because I don't want to fight him. He was just too tough.

Presenter19:49

I just

Presenter19:56

He was said to be the most terrifying man. He was terrifying.

George Foreman19:57

He was terrified.

George Foreman20:00

Nobody paid much attention that I was bigger than Joe Frazier. They they because Joe Frazier would beat guys, it didn't matter their size anyway.

Presenter20:07

Yeah, yeah. But he always seemed to be sort of down so low. I mean, not only were you taller, he was more hunched over, wasn't he?

George Foreman20:13

Yeah, and he was and he was tough though. It was like smoking Joe Frazier. Here comes this mean machine after you.

Presenter20:20

Yeah, but you knocked him down, as we said, and you beat him. I mean, that has to be the most exciting moment in a sportsman's life, doesn't it, when he becomes champion of the wild.

George Foreman20:22

Yeah.

George Foreman20:27

Raise your hand and say and the new heavyweight champion of the world. There your name will be with John L. Sullivan and Joe Lewis, Jack Dempsey. Oh, what a wonderful feeling.

Presenter20:40

Unbelievable, huh?

George Foreman20:42

Hard to explain.

Presenter20:43

Next piece of music.

George Foreman20:44

Oh, the next music, my first daughter, born in just before I in 1973, before I became heavyweight champion of the world. And it seemed like I knew her all my life. And I never thought I'd even have a child. Then later on, you know, you start talking to men, and especially they want families. All they want was things they'd say before the day of the ultrasound. I'm going to have a boy, I'm going to have a boy. And they'd take their cigars to the hospital and they come out as though they were disappointed once they had a daughter. And so this song was written so that people could appreciate the little girls.

Speaker 221:31

Christ is Jesus Christ.

Speaker 221:38

You are going to be

Presenter21:48

Little Girls, written by my castaway George Foreman and sung by the Vienna Boys Choir with the Vienna Festival Orchestra. And you've got five little girls of your own. I

George Foreman21:50

And sung by the VM

George Foreman21:55

I have five daughters. The most uh wonderful thing that ever happened to me were my daughters.

Presenter22:00

We should say all this talk of girls. You've got five boys, too.

George Foreman22:02

Five sons too, and I don't know what happened with the jeans. I'd go into the room and I'd hear someone screaming and I'm with a a pair of boxing gloves then. I'm thinking the boys are jumping the girls. It's the girls beating up the boys.

Presenter22:14

So None of the Boys is a book.

George Foreman22:15

Yeah, I haven't had any of my boys who decide to be boxers at all.

Presenter22:18

But they're all called George.

George Foreman22:19

George, if you're going to be a good fighter, you make preparation for memory loss.

Presenter22:25

Hi boy, Susie, you can remember all that name.

George Foreman22:25

Caesar, you can remember all that names. I couldn't remember all those names.

Presenter22:29

After, as I said, you you you found God, you also found the hamburger. I suppose, in a sense, it was it because it had been such forbidden fruit, as you say.

George Foreman22:38

That's true. You want to be heavyweight champion of the world and you train and dedicate a great portion of your life you you can't eat what you want. You always have eat s maybe some steak, protein, vegetables, salads. You never could go out and just decide you want ice cream or a cheeseburger. Seems like

Presenter22:38

Uh

Presenter22:53

So you you pigged out

George Foreman22:54

I did. Once I left boxing in nineteen seventy seven, I discovered fast food chains and I exploited them. I ballooned all the way up to three hundred and fifteen pounds.

Presenter23:04

I was free at the end.

George Foreman23:04

I was free at last.

Presenter23:06

What's that? That's twenty, it must be twenty-four stone, is it something that's not?

George Foreman23:09

Yeah, that's right. Almost a whole other human being I became.

Presenter23:13

Did you go back on the drink?

George Foreman23:15

No, I never drank because once I found the knowledge of God and became a preacher in nineteen seventy seven, I dedicated my life to being a preacher, so there would be no alcohol.

Presenter23:24

Were people listening to you because you were George Foreman?

George Foreman23:27

At first no one would even listen to me. By the eighties I had no longer I'd cut off all my hair, I had a nice distinctive mustache. I didn't want to be remembered as a boxer.

Presenter23:35

But they wouldn't have recognized him.

George Foreman23:36

No one would have recognized me at all. And then I started stopping and telling people: Yes, I'm George Foreman. I fought Muhammad Ali, and they'd stop for a second.

George Foreman23:44

And that's when I learned to attract them.

Presenter23:47

But in the end you ran out of money.

George Foreman23:49

Yeah, I did. For ten years, I stayed out of boxing, I walked away. I didn't even make a fist for ten years. And it wasn't long I looked up, I had all these kids, all this promise, and I only had one profession, that of a boxer. I wish I had been a golfer.

Presenter23:54

Okay.

George Foreman24:04

But I had to go back into boxing to support my family.

Presenter24:06

That's what it was, as if it wasn't.

George Foreman24:07

That's strictly for that other no other reason, but I needed the money.

Presenter24:09

Yeah.

Presenter24:11

Okay. Well well you had to lose a lot of weight before you could do it though.

George Foreman24:14

Ordiner.

Presenter24:15

We'll hear about that in a minute. Tell me about record number six.

George Foreman24:18

In the late 70s and early 80s, something called rap music came on the scene. I said, I hate this. How could they do this? I'm not going to ever listen to that. And I'd always go back to the oldies.

George Foreman24:28

And once I heard this song, listening to it, and this kid was singing, and the music was loud. He said, Mama says, Knock you out. He kept promoting his mama and knock you out. And the music was so intense, I liked it so much, and it converted me. All of a sudden, I would add on a rap music to my repertoire. Come on, man.

George Foreman24:48

And with the local DBC News, Eric Cojay with a triumphant comeback.

George Foreman24:53

Morris so I'm

Speaker 224:56

Don't call it a comeback.

Speaker 224:58

Damn.

Speaker 225:06

Big.

Speaker 225:08

Towering over the competition. I'm Tower and practice shot when I die.

Presenter25:15

L Cool J with Mama Say Knock You Out, which is exactly what you did to Michael Moore in 1994.

Speaker 225:16

Uh

Presenter25:23

He was nineteen years younger than you, wasn't he?

George Foreman25:26

Can you believe you get a second chance in life and all you need is motivation?

George Foreman25:31

And everyone said it'll never happen. You're too old. You couldn't do it. And I dedicated myself over seven or eight years to get back in shape.

Presenter25:39

But I mean it must have been a very tough regime,'cause you had to get rid of at least ten stone, didn't you?

George Foreman25:44

Yeah, you got to stop eating, number one. And then the food you take in had to be fuel food. And of course I had to red uh rededicate my life to uh healthy living and healthy eating.

Presenter25:54

L. D.

Presenter25:55

But the most difficult thing must surely have been if you'd spent ten years as a kind of a pacifist, as you say, you'd never made a fist. During those ten years you were, you know, a God fearing preacher man.

George Foreman26:02

During the ten

Presenter26:07

You've got to fight if you're really going to become heavyweight champion of the world, you've got to get that killer instinct back.

George Foreman26:12

I thought that's the reason I walked away from boxing because of that killer instinct. I didn't want that in my life. But then I would teach young boys at the George Foreman Youth Center that we started in Houston. My brother Roy and I, they'd come in all balled up and mean. They want to be boxers. I said, you can't do this with hate. You never throw a punch in anger. This is a skill. I'd put them in a ring with small guys who would make them miss. And after a couple of minutes, they would be tired. And of course, by teaching them this, I learned myself that boxing is an honorable sport. You don't need any killer instinct. You can get out there and just make a profession. You can really just have a good time.

Presenter26:49

Yeah, but you've still got to be determined underneath it all to, as you've put it, rattle his brains, you know, to lay him out and make sure he doesn't get up again.

George Foreman26:57

Not at all. You don't think that at all. It's only a sport. It's the granddaddy of even bridge. Is it? It is. I mean, there's no one if you would sit down to a game of bridge or poker, you're only doing boxing in another stage. It's like one hundred proof whiskey, and everything else is just watered down whiskey.

Presenter27:17

So it's all about strategy and strategy and it's

George Foreman27:18

It's strategy, and it's never a punch in anger.

Presenter27:22

Which is essentially, I suppose, going back to that rumble in the jungle, what Muhammad Ali had been practicing when you'd been out to kill him.

George Foreman27:28

You'd been out to kill me. I was out to kill. He was just doing a sport.

Presenter27:32

And enjoying himself, huh?

George Foreman27:34

Evidently he was having a good time, and if I had known that earlier I never would have stopped boxing.

Presenter27:40

So when you became heavyweight champion of the world for the second time, aged forty five, you know, it was a kind of win for all middle aged men, wasn't it?

George Foreman27:48

Yeah, it showed the whole world that age forty or fifty was not a death sentence. You could still dream.

Presenter27:54

But was that a better feeling than winning it the first time when you when you knocked out Joe Frazier?

George Foreman27:59

This time it was better because I owed God for that victory. I fell down on my knees that night after the fight. People thought, What's wrong? And I said a prayer, and thank you, Jesus, you did it.

Presenter28:09

More music. Number seven.

George Foreman28:11

Number seven, the Beatles had come to to America years in the sixties and everyone was just screaming and you never could hear a word they were saying. You just j joined the screaming too. Then one day I said and listened to this song, All You Need Is Love and I thought all they really wanted people to do is listen to them sing.

Speaker 228:31

All we need is love.

Speaker 228:33

Love

Speaker 228:35

Love is all you need.

Speaker 228:39

Nothing is known that is known.

Speaker 228:43

Nothing you can see that isn't shown.

Speaker 228:47

No way you can be, this isn't where you're meant to be

Speaker 228:51

See

Speaker 228:56

All you need is

Presenter28:59

Great. All you need is love by The Beatles. The result, of course, of that reinvention of George Foreman was that you could make a lot of money because you could endorse things and you've endorsed a lot of things, haven't you? Nike, McDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and now your own lean grilling machines. They tell me you're a multi-millionaire as a result, is that right?

George Foreman29:17

Well, you when you get out there and you sell. I tell all my kids all the time, learn to sell. You will never starve. And to sell, you gotta find a product that you're sincere about and you can sell for a long time.

Presenter29:28

So you can't sell anything you don't love.

George Foreman29:29

You shouldn't if you don't love it and if you don't believe in it, don't sell it.

Presenter29:33

And what do you spend your money on?

George Foreman29:34

I love cars.

Presenter29:36

What have you got?

George Foreman29:36

What have you got? Oh, I have so many cars, I don't even know how many they are, but if they're old and if they're cheap, I'll buy them.

Presenter29:43

And you've got beautiful suits, I can see. I mean, you're looking incredibly smart.

George Foreman29:45

I can see. I mean, you're looking.

George Foreman29:47

Yeah, but my my probably my passion is old cars.

Presenter29:50

Did your mother live to see your success?

George Foreman29:53

She did, and it was the greatest thing in the world. The last conversation I had with my dear mother, she was laying in the bed, of course, she wasn't feeling that well, and I asked her, Did she need anything? She said, You know, I've had a great life. There's nothing else I need. I've had a wonderful life. To see that lady being so poor,

George Foreman30:11

And having so many kids to feed and have to work so many jobs all her life, she finally said, You know, God has been so good to me.

George Foreman30:19

That was the treat of my whole life, to hear those words.

Presenter30:22

And what about you being alone on this desert island? Any regrets?

George Foreman30:27

No, the uh I found my place with God and understu stood about m religion at twenty eight. I wish I'd learned earlier the only regrets because I've enjoyed it, but I can make it up by living twice that many years now.

Presenter30:43

But you wouldn't think to yourself, My God, I wish I'd bopped old Arlie on the nose in the seventh round when he dropped his hand.

George Foreman30:50

Oh, no, no, no. The sum total of me would be different if I had won that boxing match. I'm not happy about losing, but I'm happy that I had a chance to be in the ring with such a great man.

Presenter31:02

Last record.

George Foreman31:04

Man, when I tr I travel so much and I'm always tired and if ever I get into an airplane or anything, uh

George Foreman31:10

Going down the street and listening to the radio and I hear Frank Sinatra, it always calms me down.

Speaker 231:17

Strangers in the night Exchanging glances Wandering in the night

Speaker 231:27

And that's alright.

Speaker 231:30

For strangers in the night

Speaker 231:38

Yeah.

Presenter31:39

Uh

Presenter31:40

Do you love that, huh?

George Foreman31:41

I love that doopy-doo-doo-doo.

Presenter31:42

Do be

Presenter31:44

Strangers in the night, Franks are not eaten, dance to that on your desert island.

George Foreman31:48

I would, and I would just sit back and enjoy every second of it.

Presenter31:52

Now if you could only take one of those eight records, which one would you take?

George Foreman31:55

I guess the biggest reminder is that all you need is love.

George Foreman31:59

If you'd have to take one thought with y'all, all you need is love.

Presenter32:02

Now we give you the Bible, and we give you the complete works of Shakespeare. They're already waiting for you on the island. What extra book, one more book, would you like to take?

George Foreman32:10

Boy, there's a couple of books of poems, one hundred um of the most admired poems. I would take my book of poetry.

Presenter32:19

What's your most admired poem?

George Foreman32:22

There's one poem is Waiting I Fold My Hands And Wait. Serene I Fold Mands And Wait.

George Foreman32:30

Something like that, and I can just repeat it when I get it, and I I rememberize it throughout the years. I love poems.

Presenter32:36

And what about a luxury? We give you one luxury. It mustn't be of any practical use at all, just something that would, you know, give your soul pleasure.

George Foreman32:44

Pillow

Presenter32:45

Hmm.

George Foreman32:46

Simple pillow

Presenter32:47

Why?

George Foreman32:48

Just to lay my head on and think.

George Foreman32:51

Yeah.

Presenter32:53

George Foreman, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island disc.

George Foreman32:56

Thank you.

Speaker 333:04

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.