Former world heavyweight boxing champion George Foreman will be remembered as an incredibly gracious man with an infectious smile, International Boxing Hall of Fame broadcaster and close friend Jim Lampley said on Saturday.
Lampley made the famous “It happened!” call in 1994 when Foreman, at 45, stunned Michael Moorer to become the oldest ever heavyweight champion and later worked alongside the boxer for many years at HBO.
“He did not look at friendship as a casual process,” Lampley told Reuters in a video interview from his home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
“You earned a friendship with George, and if you earned that friendship then you had a real friend to go the distance, and I developed that bond with him.
“It took a while.”
Foreman, an intimidating, thunderous puncher who also became a celebrated pitchman for various products – most notably an electric grill that bears his name – died on Friday aged 76.
“Once he became that lovable, society-wide pitchman, pitching grills and big-man clothing and mufflers and various products, all of them being sold by that massive smile, he belonged to us,” said Lampley.
“He belonged to us as a culture and as a nation, and heavyweight champion became only part of it.”
Lampley said he and many others at ringside for Foreman’s fight against undefeated southpaw Moorer did not think the challenger could possibly manage a win.
But according to Lampley, Foreman told him several times in the lead-up to the fight that at some moment late in the bout Moorer would stand in front of him and let Foreman knock him out, which he did in the 10th round with a stiff right hand.
“Now go back to YouTube and look at the video, it’s uncanny. It’s beyond all belief,” said Lampley. “So when he knocked Moorer down … I’m thinking ‘Oh my gosh, I have to think of something that I am going to say about this. What is this call?
“All I could think of was George telling me ‘he’ll come and stand in front of me and let me knock him out’ and that’s how the words ‘it happened, it happened’ came out of my mouth.
“I was really speaking to George and saying to him, ‘You told me this and now here it is in front of me, it happened’.”
Lampley said Foreman, who always called him “young man” despite the sportscaster being just three months younger, drew inspiration from the song “Impossible Dream” ahead of the Moorer fight and knew all the words.
“It was deep in his heart that he wanted to do that one thing, win back the heavyweight championship at that advanced age, and he did,” said Lampley.
“So, a man of conviction, a man of enormous strength, a man of wonderful love and friendship, unique in my personal experience as a sports figure, and I loved him.”
