It’s a life worth celebrating, one with such spectacular turns and twists that it outdoes any Hollywood fiction.
The title of his biopic, opening Friday, says it all: “Big George Foreman: The Miraculous Story of the Once and Future Heavyweight Champion of the World.”
Born into poverty, shy and inarticulate, Foreman, 74, was twice heavyweight boxing champion – the second time when he was 45. From boxing with his formidable fists and power punches, Foreman became a minister and then, thanks to the George Foreman Grill, a multi-millionaire.
In this colorful a life, what stands out? What matters the most with everything he’s done?
“I’ll be honest with you,” Foreman began in a Zoom interview from Atlanta’s Four Seasons Hotel, “I got a second, third, even a fourth chance in the United States of America. I’ll never outlive that one. To be able to come from nothing, and even without hope!
“You know, people take for granted, you hear the word ‘hope’ and ‘faith.’ But you can actually live in this life and not have any hope and make it pretty good.
“My mom loved me, that pulled me out of the depths of life. And I was given a second chance and I actually found hope. And then, eventually finding God and finding faith — that’s important to me. That’s what this story tells more than anything: From nothing to everything.”
“Big George” shows the teenage Foreman as sullen, angry, locked up inside himself. It was the Job Corps program that saved him. Can he still see that kid in himself today? Or is that somebody so far from what he’s become that it seems like an alien from another planet?
Foreman laughed. “That’s putting it just fine,” he said. “To grow up in this life without hope? Can you imagine walking around without any hope? Yet you’re alive? That was me at one time.
“And then,” he continued, “without faith — that was me at one time. Then having a second chance in life to know what hope is all about. And then faith. It was just like, you come from another planet. It is a good planet by the way.”
“This movie, the story of Mr. Foreman, is a survivor,” Khris Davis, who plays Foreman from 17 to 45, said in a separate interview, referring to the film’s many setbacks.
Those included COVID-caused months-long work stoppages, a New Orleans hurricane and the sudden death of Michael K. Williams, originally cast as Foreman’s coach and replaced by Forest Whitaker.
“It was blow after blow but no one gave up,” Davis emphasized. “We believed in a Higher Power.”
“Big George Foreman: The Miraculous Story of the Once and Future Heavyweight Champion of the World” opens Friday