LAS VEGAS — More than any other sport, boxing is often a willful act of self-delusion.
Rocky Marciano may have retired undefeated, but few fighters do, and all express shock when their day finally comes. Likewise, all fighters see themselves as contenders even if, as Jesse Ferguson learned two weeks ago against heavyweight champion Riddick Bowe, the reality of contending can lead to a painful collapse of the delusions that kept your dream alive long after good sense counseled switching to a day job.
It is this cult of self-delusion (or dreams, if you will) in the face of overwhelming odds and undeniable fact that gives boxing its sense of nobility. Quite often, to fight the good fight is enough, both in a boxing ring and in life, regardless of the outcome.
Tonight, in a bout for the World Boxing Organization heavyweight title, George Foreman may find he has finally joined the ranks of the deluded by fighting the good fight once too often. Today, he is still the heavyweight champion of midlife, a 44-year-old, 257-pound embodiment of the sporting dreams of all those who find themselves suddenly paunchy and graying with no understanding of how it could have happened.
But in a matter of hours, Foreman must face an assault from a 24-year-old, heavy-handed heavyweight dreamer with youth on his side named Tommy Morrison. Fortunately for Foreman, Morrison comes with his own set of Achilles’ heels, which are attached to his head and his chin. In addition to having been knocked unconscious by Ray Mercer and temporarily flattened by both Carl (The Truth) Williams and Joe Hipp, not the least of Morrison’s problems has been an odd inability to control his emotions or his attention span for more than nine minutes of boxing. For, say, a postal carrier, this would mean only that someone’s Time magazine ends up across the street. For a heavyweight boxer, it could mean you end up delivered to the emergency room.
Morrison’s weaknesses are particularly dangerous when the man in front of him is a guy like Foreman, 44 or no 44, because the last thing a boxer loses is heavy hands, assuming he ever had them. Certainly, Foreman does, as his 67 KOs in 73 victories have made abundantly clear throughout a career that began before Morrison was born.
Despite all this, there is an odd sense of foreboding about this fight among people who know Foreman best — those who have matched fists with him. It is a feeling that has come with no other of his fights since he began his comeback in 1987, not even the night he fought Evander Holyfield for the heavyweight title.
One reason for this is that Foreman, after carefully picking opponents during his five-year comeback, was roped into a fight he admits he never had any intention of becoming involved with.
“When he lost to Mercer, I knew why, and it wasn’t because the best man won,” Foreman said. “I know the curse of being a puncher. I know how to maintain explosiveness through a fight. I learned the secret that allowed me to be the most relaxed man in boxing, and I picked him out (to tell) because I felt he was sincerely explosive. I chose to tell him the secret because I never thought I’d fight him.
“We wouldn’t have fought, but when they brought that WBO title into it, I had to take the fight. They offered me a million, and my wife said, ‘Just retire, George.’ They offered me $2 million, and my wife said, ‘Just retire, George.’ They offered me $7 million, and my wife said, ‘You afraid of that Tommy Morrison?”‘
That is Foreman’s story, but he has been so much a carnival barker since his comeback began that it is a story tinged with distortion. He will be in the ring at a point in his life when perhaps he shouldn’t.
“I’ll tell you the truth,” Foreman said last week. “I’ll miss this when it’s over. I’ll miss all the attention.”
According to a source close to promoter Bob Arum, who is staging this fight for what he believes could be as many as 2 million pay-per-view television viewers around the country, because of that need and the money, Foreman was trapped and now must convince himself that he is here for some other reason.
“When he signed his last (three-fight) deal with HBO, he only got to pick the opponents for the first two fights,” the source said. “The third one was up to HBO. That’s how he ended up with Morrison. George wanted no part of this but he had no choice. Just like so many other fighters, the easy money got him.
“They gave him an easy $5 million. Then they gave him another easy $5 million. Now they’ve handed him an awful tough $7 million. I’m not saying George won’t win. I think he might knock Morrison out, but at this stage of his career, he knows he didn’t need a fight like this.”
Some have compared this bout to the fistic assassination former champion Ken Norton endured at the hands of another young puncher named Gerry Cooney. Norton still had a name and a reputation, but his legs had already retired, and so had his reflexes. He was gone in 47 seconds, crumbled on the floor. It was not a pretty sight.
Foreman, of course, has been down before, although not lately, and everyone concedes that if he does go down, he will get up. And up. And up again, if he must. His heart is not in question. His reflexes, however, are something else.
“George cannot match our speed or our athleticism,” insisted Morrison’s trainer, Tommy Virgets. “All he can try to do is capitalize on our mistakes, because Tommy has a tendency to get a little bored in there, and that’s when he’s vulnerable. If you make a mistake, George makes you pay dearly. I would like to think we can take George over his limits, although nobody has except Alex Stewart. George was so swollen and beaten up that night.”
That night is the graven image in the back of everyone’s mind, the night that has led bettors to make Morrison the favorite and led many to whisper that perhaps that was a warning shot Foreman, like so many fighters before him, has chosen to ignore. It is the ugly picture of Foreman’s happily pudgy face transformed into that of an angry gargoyle.
By the time Foreman eked out a decision after dropping Stewart twice in the first round, the former champion’s eyes were two slits, his cheeks were so swollen that they appeared attached to the bridge of his flattened nose, and that nose leaked blood. It was frightening to see, even for Foreman, but that is where his own delusions set in.
“I wasn’t hurt. I was just puffy,” Foreman said. “I had a cold, and my sinuses were blocked, and I blew my nose. That’s why my face puffed up. I didn’t even know I looked like that. If I’d had a mirror in the corner, I might not have come back out, but when my nose started running, I thought it was just mucus. I told Angelo (Dundee, his cornerman) to wipe my nose. I didn’t know why my nose was running. Later on, I saw the red.
“It wasn’t a matter of running out of gas. It was a matter of me getting hit in the face. Every time I jabbed, he countered and hit me with a brick, but I’ve been in the ring with a lot of true hitters, guys who hit me and I saw stars. I know what it is to be hit and see stars, and I know what to do.
“Morrison has never been in with someone like me. In the ring, I’m a predator. His only weakness is being 24. When the bell rings, he does what he wants, regardless of what he’s told. I was the same way, but my first time in the ring in 1966, the guy had to figure out how to fight me. I didn’t have to figure out nothing. It’s the same thing today.”
But this is not 1966. George Foreman is 44, and when he was hit in the face with “bricks” 14 months ago, for the first time, his face swelled shut. He won regardless, but now he says his face betrayed him because he had a cold. Delusions, when backed by a minimum of $7 million and the WBO heavyweight title, can convince you of anything.
They can convince you right up until the bricks start coming at you again and suddenly you are 44 and your hands are over your ears and the rain of leather is pounding against your head like a fierce hale storm and you have no umbrella.
That is when the delusions stop and the pain begins and you learn what they all have learned before — what Ray Robinson learned and Ray Leonard learned and what Larry Holmes taught Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson taught Holmes. Age will beat you if you stay too long inside a boxing ring.
“He showed a lot of age on him that night,” Stewart said. “He didn’t go down, but his face was devastated by the number of punches I hit him with. He looked real bad after that fight. I think he’s walking on thin ice.”
Carrying 257 pounds onto the thin ice of age may not be fatal to Foreman. It may not even get him wet. He may well survive. He may even land one shot, watch the young guy fall over and laugh all the way back to the locker room. But it is all risky business now, not a sure thing. It is a risk all fighters take until the night things change from risk to certainty and they leave the arena the way all the great ones do — wearing sunglasses at midnight.
“He’s been a great ambassador for the sport, but he should have retired after the Stewart fight,” said promoter Dan Duva. “We all owe him a lot, but the clock has run out on George Foreman.”
Perhaps it has and perhaps it hasn’t. Perhaps Morrison’s own deficiencies will prove too much for him and Foreman will overwhelm him with the jab and thunderous right uppercut that has left so many other men unconscious.
Then again, perhaps this will be the night the self-delusions end for George Foreman. And the pain begins.
