SPORTS UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, November 9, 1994
ANALYSIS
George should get out while he's still healthy and on top
By Jim Litke The Associated Press
LAS VEGAS — Whatever other brainedrabbit schemes George Foreman's stunning upset is bound to inspire, a seniors' boxing tour apparently won't be one of them.
Thank heaven for small favors. Now George should do himself a favor and get out while he is still healthy and on top.
"If Larry Holmes and George Foreman ever got into the ring together," Foreman joked over the weekend, "the smell of Ben Gay would be so great that nobody would want a ring-seat seat."
When Foreman first raised the possibility of a fight between 45-year-olds — it would have to be billed something like "When George Met Larry" — he did so strictly in the spirit of poking fun at himself.
He doesn't like Holmes, doesn't want to fight him, and after dropping 26-year-old Michael Moorer with a thundering right hand Saturday night to reclaim a title he owned two decades earlier, doesn't have to do anything he doesn't want.
Though George wouldn't be any more specific about whether he will fight again, he had no trouble remembering what he does even better than box — which is telling jokes. It was, after all, still a Saturday night, he still had an audience, the adrenaline was still flowing and he was on a roll. So on he went:
"I sure would like to fight in the Astrodome for the heavyweight championship of the world," Foreman said. "I just got a wire from Pee Wee Herman. He said that he would fight me."
Kidding again.
Heh,heh—that George.
We think. The only certainty in boxing for the moment is that whatever
George wants, George will get. And while no one would deny him the opportunity to cash in on what was one of the grandest triumphs in sporting memory, the debate comes down to whether he should do it inside the ring or not.
"If he were listening to me," said veteran trainer Lu Duva, who was in Moorer's camp for the fight, "I told him, 'Milk this for all the commercials and endorsements you can. Then never fight again.'"
Not so fast, said Bob Arum, the promoter who made Foreman's impossible dream come true once and thinks he could do so again. Assuming that George's dream is to be even richer
than he is (and coincidentally, to enrich Arum in the bargain).
The most commendable point of Arum's plan is George using his popularity to break the political ties that are strangling boxing.
"When something catalysmic like this happens, everybody rethinks their positions." Arum said. "People might be willing to take a risk
pick his way through the minefield of rising heavyweights — or avoid it altogether — hanging on long enough to fight Mike Tyson when the crown-prince-in-exile gets out of an Indiana state prison next May.
That, as Arum envisions it and certainly intends to promote it, would be the "fight to end all fights." Then, with its popularity intact and a handful of recognizable contenders in the wings, boxing would go forward from that cataclysmic event to another golden age.
The problem with that scenario is that it just puts off solving for several more months what can be solved right now. At the moment, boxing
"Milk this for all the commercials and endorsements you can. Then never fight again."
According to Arum, while the contenders were off beating each other's brains out, George would take only those fights the public was clamoring for.
and have fights the way we used to,
contender vs. contender."
Lou Duvie Veteran trainer for Michael Moorer, in reference to Foreman's victory
He would be immune to the television cartel and the alphabet-soup organizations that extort hefty fees to sanction sham contests. He could
needs less megafights rather than more; big purses encourage fighters not to fight too often, which in turn keeps them from being recognizable.
George is reco n gniz able enough. Rather than an aging colossus standing astride the sport for a few more months, what boxing needs right away is a tournament that matches the
handful of legitimate young heavyweights already out there. And it can't happen soon enough.
"George has bought us all a little time. But the longer he hangs on, the longer boxing is living in the past," Duaa said.
"If we're all lucky, one or two of the young kids will come along in a hurry, turn some heads and drum up some excitement. And then," he said, "we can get on with the future."
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