Excerpts from
God in My Corner by George Foreman
Available May 2007 from Thomas Nelson
George’s Second Chance
Everyone needs a second chance, even if your name is George Foreman. You might know me as the guy on television who advertises the George Foreman grills, Meineke Car Care, or Casual Male Big & Tall clothes. If you follow sports, you may know me as the world’s heavyweight boxing champion who lost to Muhammad Ali, and then came back twenty years later to win the heavyweight title again at forty-five years of age.
But what few people know is that something incredibly strange happened to me on the evening of March 17, 1977. That supernatural experience defined my life so dramatically that it divided my identity into two Georges. The “old George” lived prior to that day, which I’ll refer to as “my first time around.” Ever since then, I’ve been the “new George.” God gave me another chance at life, and I’ve been determined to do it right this time.
When we start out in life, we often travel down some wrong roads, hurting ourselves and others along the way. Most of us have to hit bottom before the light bulb turns on and we realize that we’ve blown it. It’s at that critical moment that we must seize the opportunity and change directions. We must start traveling down a different road, leading to a new destination.
My second chance arrived unexpectedly in a Puerto Rican dressing room after a heavyweight boxing match. What happened to me in that room is so incredibly bizarre, it’s unlikely you’ve ever before read anything like it. Simply stated, I died and went to the other side. The experience impacted me so profoundly that three decades later I can’t go a single day without thinking about it.
By the time I was sixteen years of age, I was a vicious, savage teenager, picking fights in school or wherever I went. Not surprisingly, I dropped out of school in ninth grade, and started looking for a job. But not too many people want to hire a ninth grade dropout. Eventually, I took a job washing dishes in a restaurant.
I figured that my only way out of poverty was by using my fists. Sometimes I beat up two or three people a day. I was vicious, too. One time I walked up to a guy who hadn’t done anything to me, and without warning, I punched him right in the face, just to be nasty. He hit the dirt like a rock. I walked away, with him still laid out semi-conscious on the ground. Because my conscience was so encrusted with hate, it didn’t bother me to see people bleeding or knocked out cold. Many times, I mugged people just to get some drinking money. I was really good at beating up people, although it never dawned on me at the time that one day people would pay to watch me fight.
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I had come a long way in my twenty-eight years. From growing up in abject poverty with never enough to eat—to becoming a wealthy, well-known athlete. I had been heavyweight champion of the world. How many people can say that?
Yet in spite of my success, I was empty. For ten years I had gone through the same routine in preparing for a fight—running, sparring, and getting in shape. But in the end, after all that effort, the most I could get for it was another win on my boxing record. That was my goal in life; getting another “W.” I thought, Is that all there is to life?
Money didn’t fill the void. I had more cash in my accounts than most people can ever dream of. My assets included three homes, a dozen cars, and a ranch—yet even with all that stuff I was still unfulfilled. Would another car make me happy? One more house? Some mysterious piece of the puzzle was missing, but I didn’t know what it was, or where to find it.
The New George
When my legs buckled beneath me, I had collapsed on the floor. Apparently, my brothers and trainer had picked me up and laid my body on the training table.
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Still lying prone on the training table, I suddenly sat straight up and yelled at the top of my voice, “JESUS CHRIST IS COMING ALIVE IN ME!”
That’s when all the faces in the room turned ashen, like they had seen a ghost. Prior to this experience, I had never talked about religion. I was your typical tough guy—and in my world, tough guys didn’t talk about Jesus. But something stirred inside me, in the lower part of my stomach, and I could no longer control what I was saying.
I started reciting scriptures from the Bible—even though I had never learned them. For most of my life, I had been ruled by anger and hatred. Now, every hostile emotion had been drained out of me, and a spigot of God’s love had been turned on inside me, filling me up, and overflowing out of me.
I jumped up off the table and hugged everyone in the room, telling them that I loved them. I grabbed Gil Clancy, who always talked about his Irish heritage. I kissed him and said, “Gil, I love you! You’re my brother!” (I would never have done that before as the old George, but a supernatural force had taken hold of me.) In all those years together, I had never told any of my closest associates that I loved them. Now, I couldn’t stop expressing how much I loved them.
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It’s been three decades since my experience in that Puerto Rican dressing room, but it’s just as real to me today as the day it happened. I don’t remember many of the details about my fight in Zaire with Ali. It’s pretty much out of my mind. Even when I regained the heavyweight boxing title in 1994, I can’t remember much about it. But I’ll never forget what happened in the locker room in 1977. Every detail remains vivid to me.
I’ve been trying to live in that moment for the last thirty years. I’ll never forget it. But those men in the dressing room who witnessed my conversion—it’s the oddest thing—they never talk about it. Over the years, whenever I’ve tried discussing it with them, they quickly change the subject. To me, it’s strange that they aren’t curious about it and want to know more. One thing that they can’t deny is that I’ve been a different man ever since that day.
Round 1, the first twenty-eight years of my life, was a charade. That was behind me. Now, I was ready to begin Round 2—my second chance at life.
Fear of Rejection
Like so many people, I feared being rejected by others. I wanted to be loved and accepted by everyone. But after my conversion, I discovered that unanimous approval was never going to happen. My former friends started avoiding me. Even my family didn’t understand what had happened to me. They all thought I had flipped-out.
And I can’t say that I blame them. I had felt the same way about church people most of my life. I didn’t want anything to do with them—and now that I was following Jesus, not many of my former friends wanted to be around me, either!
I knew well that bitter taste of rejection when I lost my heavyweight boxing title to Muhammad Ali. Everyone loves a winner, but few reporters want to interview the person who loses. My friends in Hollywood stopped calling me. When I was champion, Bob Hope called me to be on his shows. After I lost to Ali, he never called again. One rejection after another seemed to have a domino effect. Fewer people were asking for my autograph. The sports magazines wanted pictures of Ali instead of me. In the world of sports, sometimes you’re only as popular as your last victory.
But now, I was feeling a different kind of rejection. Not because I lost a fight, but because I had committed my life to God and had changed my ways. I was a completely different person than the old George, and my acquaintances had a hard time knowing how to react to me. I also struggled with making adjustments in my relationships. How do you tell someone that you “don’t do that anymore” without feeling some tension?
If you’re like me, you don’t want to be snubbed. You want everyone to love and embrace you. But ultimately your belief in God will meet resistance, which forces you to either shut up or speak up. I eventually discovered that it was more important for me to tell the truth, even at the risk of being shunned. I had to get over my fear of other people’s opinions of me, because sharing my testimony was more important to me, and apparently to God. But learning how to tell the public what had happened to me wasn’t easy.
An Eternal Optimist
Truth is, my relationship with God is the reason I have such a positive outlook on life. Before I found Christ, I was blind. I was like a man wandering across a desert with sand blowing in my eyes. I couldn’t see anything. But when Jesus came into my life, He opened my eyes and started showing me all the good things that I couldn’t see previously. God changed my heart and altered the way I view everything.
Granted, it is possible to think positively without having Jesus in your heart. But without Him, you’ll never have His perspective on the issues you’re dealing with or going through. For those who love Him, He has promised to make something good out of everything that happens to us. That, right there, is the reason why I can have a positive attitude in every situation.
Ever since I got my “wake-up call,” I have been an eternal optimist. When something bad happens to me, I just remember that dark pit—and immediately I realize how good I have it! The worst day on earth is far better than being in that place. No matter how dark the clouds, I look for a ray of sunshine in every circumstance.
People who are around me can feel my happiness. When I talk about how I enjoy living, it’s not like I’m giving them a lecture. It’s real. Some days when I get excited, my kids will say, “Get real, Dad.”
I tell them, “This is real! Life is a privilege.” I’ll admit that being an optimist in a world of full of pessimists isn’t easy. But it sure is fun!
The Youth Center
I wanted the George Foreman Youth and Community Center to be different. I decided that I would never preach to the kids; I would show them my faith by my works. They would see God in my life as a result of how I act and how I respond to other people’s actions, not just by what I say. My role was simply to be there for the boys, to be available to talk with them, to watch them as they played basketball or lifted weights or boxed. I walked around the center and tried to encourage the boys every way I could. “Nice shot!” “That’s the way to work on that punching bag.” “You are doing a good job.”
Funding the youth center was a formidable problem. Just making the mortgage payment was difficult enough, not to mention maintaining the place, paying for the utilities, and providing the equipment we needed. I kept siphoning money off my savings until there was little left. I kept hoping that something would happen to solve our financial problems, but nothing did.
Sometimes reality pokes a hole in the balloon of our idealism. That happened to me when my attorney who had set up my financial affairs visited the center and sounded a warning. “George, I know you want to help these kids, but you can’t afford to keep up the youth center. If you don’t make some changes soon, you’re going to end up like Joe Louis, broke and out on the streets shaking hands with people, trying to make a dollar. You are going to have to pull back.”
I refused to give up on the youth center. I accepted several speaking invitations and used the honorariums to help pay the center’s expenses. Those speaking engagements and my dwindling life’s savings were all that I had to keep the doors to the youth center open. I didn’t want to ask the government for money, and I certainly didn’t want to go around begging the public for donations.
I spoke at a Christian conference in Georgia, after which the conference organizer got up and made an impassioned plea for money to help the George Foreman Youth and Community Center. I sat on the speakers’ platform throughout the pitch and the longer the fellow went on, the more embarrassed I became. I hadn’t come to the conference to beg for money, or to try to milk donations out of the participants who had already paid dearly to attend the event. I decided then and there that I would find another way to raise the necessary funds. Then it hit me: I know how I can get the money we need. I’m going to fight for it. I’m going to be the heavyweight champion of the world—again—and this time, I will do things right.
The Boxing Preacher
When I made my comeback in boxing, my church was still my higher priority. I would not neglect my responsibilities as pastor, even with my busy schedule. After each fight, people would beg me to stay for certain post-fight events. I’d tell them, “I’m sorry, but I can’t hang around. I’ve got to hurry to get back to my church!”
I didn’t get much sleep on those nights that I fought. After boxing on Saturday night, I would catch a late flight back to Houston, getting back just in time to make it to church so I could preach. I wanted my congregation to know that although I had fought in front of millions of people on television the night before, they were my most important audience.
Sometimes, I looked rather funny wearing sunglasses as I preached, to cover up my swollen eyes. After church one Sunday, some kids came up and asked, “Can we see . . . can we see? Will you take off your sunglasses so we can see your eyes?”
“Are sure you want to see them?” I asked.
“Yeahhhh!” they yelled together.
When I took off the glasses, revealing the black and blue puffy skin around my eyes, they hooted and hollered. They said, “You look like the cowardly lion in The Wizard of Oz!”
No matter what God leads me to do, I’ll be faithful to my calling. I don’t worry about what others say about me. I might look like the cowardly lion to them. But in God’s eyes, I’m the heavyweight champion. And so are you.
Excerpts are from
God in My Corner: A Spiritual Memoir
By George Foreman with Ken Abraham
Available May 2007 from Thomas Nelson
Hardcover, $22.99
224 pages including 16-page photo insert, 6 1/8 x 9 ¼
ISBN-13: 978-0-8499-0314-4 ISBN-10: 0-8499-0314-9
Excerpt reprint permission available upon request.
Contact Pamela McClure, McClure Muntsinger Public Relations:
615-595-8321, pamela@mmpublicrelations.com