'When I beat Joe Frazier, it was probably the last moment during those years that I found happiness. You don’t meet someone, sit down and they give you advice and tell you what it feels like to be heavyweight champion of the world, what you are going to go through. 'It really changed my life, because there is no preparation. 'Fear will make you do a lot of things,' Foreman says with a laugh. Yet Foreman destroyed Frazier in two rounds to win the belts.

I never forgot that, and it’s made me a far better person than if it had been me knocking him down.' “There I was going down from that punch, I kept that and looked at it all the time, mainly because I realised what a big moment it was for sports and for boxing. 'I was out of boxing for 10 years, and the only picture that I saved was Muhammad Ali knocking me down.

Foreman, whose extraordinary life has been made into a Hollywood biopic Big George Foreman, explains to Telegraph Sport: Almost two decades later, and with 10 years away from the sport preaching the word of God, Foreman was champion again. For all his huge achievements in a roller-coaster boxing career spanning 28 years, George Foreman’s mother never wanted him to fight due to his temper and when having his life replayed back to him the heavyweight icon was reduced to tears.īut there is no greater testament to the humility deep inside Foreman than the screen saver the legendary 74-year-old two-time heavyweight champion has on his computer at his desk at home in Texas: the moment Muhammad Ali knocked him down in Kinshasa, Zaire, at 'The Rumble In The Jungle' in October 1974.įoreman lost the heavyweight world title that night, but it changed his life forever.

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