Can George Win? Never Say Never

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. —  They never come back.

It’s the oldest axiom in the fight game. But for those of you scoring at home, you will remember that I advised you of this before the Sugar Ray Leonard comeback against Marvelous Marvin Hagler. Leonard was bucking a stacked deck, I assured you. Leonard was trying to come back after a three-year layoff, a detached retina and, as it turned out later, an alcohol and drug problem.

Well, Leonard came back. Not for long, as it happened, but long enough to thrash Marvin Hagler and send him into depression and a career making Italian films.

Jim Jeffries couldn’t do it, I reminded you. Jack Johnson couldn’t do it. He came back fat and happy from a sojourn in Paris and, a once-master boxer, he couldn’t even get out of the way of Jess Willard’s clumsy rushes.

The proposition before the house then is this: Is George Foreman another Sugar Ray Leonard? Or is he another James J. Jeffries?

He’s fat. He’s happy. He still can punch. So could Jeffries. The punch is the last to go. After the legs, the teeth, the hair, the memory.

Jeffries tried to come back after five years, on gym workouts alone. Foreman is trying to come back after 10 years. Jeffries was 35. Foreman is 42. At least.

Foreman has had a few “fights.” If you could call them that with a straight face.

Is Foreman working a heist on the American public? Should he come into focus wearing a checked vest, a gold watch and a beaver hat and riffling a deck of cards? Is this fight just a W.C. Fields comedy? A complicated hoax?

Ferdie Pacheco, the fight doctor, has said he will leave the country if Foreman wins.

I’m not even going to leave town. I don’t care if Foreman wins. Evander Holyfield is kind of a bore as heavyweight champion, to tell you the truth. Kind of in the Jack Sharkey, Ezzard Charles mold. Nice guy. I’m sure he’s good to his mother. He may put Foreman to sleep. But he’ll put the customers to sleep first. He’s the pugilistic equivalent of a long nap. When he had a ticker-tape parade in Atlanta recently, he was afraid, with some reason, no one would show up but his mother. He’s the most undervalued heavyweight champion since James J. Braddock--or Floyd Patterson.

He is so overshadowed at the prefight daily news conferences by the challenger, he doesn’t even get the straight lines. Foreman is in the press room more than the New York Daily News. Holyfield comes in like a suspect in a child murder.

Holyfield’s press nickname is Rodney. He don’t get no respect.

Is he entitled to any? Do you get to be one of the revered heavyweight champions of history knocking out overweight or overage has-beens or never-weres?

I doubt it. I think Evander kind of irritates the American public. They think he’s just a 9-to-5 guy who got lucky. A journeyman who found money. He fell into the heavyweight championship. If it weren’t for Buster Douglas, he wouldn’t be getting $20 million this week. Buster Douglas made Evander heavyweight champ. First by knocking off Mike Tyson. Then by knocking off Buster Douglas. By coming into the ring in about the shape of a chocolate eclair.

Foreman, of all people, has become kind of cuddly. America’s teddy bear. George used to glower a lot when he was champion, originally. He thought it was expected of him. Muhammad Ali knocked it out of him. George was a good enough puncher and not much else, and Ali made him look like a statue in the park when they met.

George has these arms like pythons and the massive fists of a bricklayer. But, as Ali showed him, boxing is still a speed sport. George functions best when the other fellow--as Joe Frazier did--impales himself on George’s telephone-pole left jabs.

Still, you can’t begrudge Foreman his shot at $12.5 million, probably just to take a nap in public. The country is in a paroxysm of patriotism at the moment. But in 1968, when George won the Olympic heavyweight title in Mexico City, the USA was taking quite a kicking around--in Vietnam and at home. While other of our athletes shook their fists at Old Glory on the Olympic victory stand, George went around the ring waving it. White America cheered. So, as a matter of fact, did a lot of Black America.

Does that mean the fight will be Dempsey-Firpo? Ali-Liston? Probably not. But you never know. Evander Holyfield is not Willie Pep. He fights with his face a lot. He’s as easy to hit as 23 in blackjack. He puts his head in harm’s way.

If he stays away from Foreman--and that should be about as hard as staying away from a glacier--he’ll probably just have to wait till George starts to melt like a snowman in July. If Foreman does get hit, the ringsiders won’t get blood all over them, they’ll get grease. George should enter the ring between two buns.

If Foreman wins, Jim Jeffries will roll over in his grave. Muhammad Ali will start sobbing. But every guy over 50 will go have a drink. If Foreman wins, it’ll be the greatest boon to geriatrics since the pacemaker.