Smith chronicles that evolution, and the many others in the athlete’s life, in his fascinating, colorful new biography No Way but to Fight: George Foreman and the Business of Boxing. Smith University of Texas Press 400 pages $29.95 Buy the book here.īoth as a boxer and a person, the 1977 loss transformed Foreman. No Way but to Fight: George Foreman and the Business of Boxing By Andrew R. At just 28, Foreman-the man who once said “boxing was invented for me”-left the sport that had taken him from poverty to the Olympics and becoming the heavyweight world champion. “It made everything clearer for him,” Smith writes of the near-death experience. But by breakfast the next day, Foreman had checked himself out.

When he arrived at the hospital, doctors said Foreman suffered from a concussion and heatstroke.

Smith writes, “Foreman started to come alive again.” “With his championship aspirations dying,” sports historian Andrew R.M. The match, held on a humid March night in San Juan, Puerto Rico, had been a stunning upset that “traumatized the heavyweight boxing scene.” But for the Texas boxer, its aftermath offered a new start. In the dressing room, Foreman climbed a table and leapt from it he later said he’d heard God talking to him. In the moments after he lost to Jimmy Young in 1977, George Foreman vomited.