Nice Way to Make a Living : Foreman Left Thug Image Behind in His Comeback

When it all started, in 1987, it was a fat man’s gag.

George Foreman, fat and pushing 40, after a 10 1/2-year retirement, was launching a comeback. Right there, he got a few giggles.

And when he took off his robe that first night, March 9, 1987, in Sacramento and showed off his 267 1/2 jiggly pounds, it was a real knee-slapper.

For three years, Foreman knocked over a string of stiffs, started getting TV exposure . . . and got a title shot with Evander Holyfield, in 1991.

Moreover, he went the distance with the then-heavyweight champion and had him hanging on a couple of times. Holyfield won a unanimous decision, but Foreman had made two points:

--It is possible for someone over 40--he turned 44 last Sunday--to compete in sports at a world-class level. Even if he’s too fat.

--Just as amazing was the transformation of the once widely feared George Foreman personality.

Instead of a brute feared by reporters and ring opponents alike, Foreman became lovable.

Foreman is playing out the end of his boxing career this year, and will then probably be seen almost everywhere--on television, the movies and in bookstores.

Real stardom has yet to come, in other words.

Tonight, he fights a tough South African, Pierre Coetzer. It’s a match that Foreman hopes will get him a title bout with the new heavyweight champion, Riddick Bowe. Also on the card tonight at the Reno/Sparks Convention Center is another heavyweight contender, Tommy Morrison, who will face Carl Williams, a knockout victim of Mike Tyson.

Tonight’s bout is the first of a $15-million three-fight deal that Foreman signed last fall with HBO.

If Foreman pulls this off, gets another title shot and then wins, he would not only become the oldest heavyweight champion, he might become the only one to hold the title while starring in his own TV series.

Foreman recently completed work on a sitcom pilot for ABC, called “George.” No one knows if the 30-minute show will be televised, least of all its producer, a former fighter named Tony Danza.

In the pilot, Foreman plays a rich, retired boxer named George Foster, who finds satisfaction befriending and helping unruly urban kids.

Foreman may be one of the funniest, most charming athletes at news conferences, but how is he with a script?

“That was the challenge when we started this,” Danza said. “It’s one thing to be spontaneous, another to do it with a script. George was a little rough at times with just the crew there, but when we brought in an audience, he got much more comfortable and he was terrific.”

Foreman and Danza see the show as strongly pro-family.

“A lot of people say TV is responsible for breaking up families, of harming families,” Foreman said this week. “Well, Tony and I agreed on this show. We said: ‘Let’s go to work. Let’s do something good for families.’ That’s our attitude.”

In the pilot, Foreman and his wife, played by Suzanne Douglas, have two children, a boy and a girl. And in something of a stereotype-reversal, the family has a white housekeeper. Foreman is black.

Foreman fits the role, according to Danza.

“I think George is great in it, but it’s not my decision if this thing goes on,” he said. “I try not to get too excited about it, but everyone I show it to loves George. They all say the same thing: ‘He’s so lovable, you can’t keep your eyes off him.’ ”

Even without a TV series, Foreman won’t be gone after he finishes his boxing career.

“If George were to retire from boxing tomorrow and do nothing but go on the speaking tour, he’d earn more than a half-million dollars a year,” said Foreman’s lawyer, Henry Holmes.

“Almost every day, he gets invitations for major speaking engagements, and he has to turn the big majority of them down because he just doesn’t have the time.”

As it is, continuing with his boxing career, Foreman has time enough to plan numerous other endeavors. Some of them:

--Several commercials, including Frito-Lay and HBO, for which he doubles as boxer and commentator.

--A soon-to-be-announced clothing deal.

--A movie deal, based on his life.

--A non-boxing movie deal, in which he would appear with his friend, Hulk Hogan.

--A book, based on his life. A writer is being sought.

--A video, based on his boxing comeback.

--A Saturday morning children’s show, starring a cartoon George Foreman.

Holmes marvels at his client’s appeal, which, he says, goes in all directions. “The guy’s a franchise,” he said. “He’s loved. There just aren’t any negatives with the guy.”

It wasn’t always that way.

Doc Broadus is the man credited with discovering Foreman the Bad Guy, in 1966.

“I got a call to come to the Job Corps center in Pleasanton one day, that they had a problem with a kid they thought I could straighten out,” said Broadus, now 73 and in Reno for tonight’s fight. Twenty-five years ago, he was a Job Corps counselor.

“I found Foreman behind a dormitory. He’d beaten up this little guy so bad, he’d worn himself out. He stood there breathing hard, holding the kid down with one foot on his chest.”

“Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” I said. “Then I realized that maybe wasn’t what I should’ve said because he started coming after me.”

Broadus is about 5 feet 6. Foreman was 18 then, 6-4 and 225.

“We talked a long time. I explained to him that if he kept on beating up people, he’d wind up in prison for sure.

“So he started hanging around me, working out in my gym. I gave him some jobs. One day, some guy parked in the driveway of our gym. I told George to ask the guy to move his car.

“The guy said no. So George pulled him right out of his car through his window and decked him with one punch.

“So we had another long talk. I said: ‘George, you just don’t handle these situations right.’ It took time, but he got it right after a while.”

Foreman has said that, in his Fifth Ward days in Houston, mugging was acceptable social behavior.

“To show you how ignorant I was, I used to just grab a guy and hold him down on the sidewalk while my friends went through his pockets,” Foreman said.

“I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong. I mean, I wasn’t killing anyone. I wasn’t even hitting anyone.”

In the Foreman camp this week, everyone is talking about his acting on the sitcom. But Foreman tells you he has already earned his Oscar for acting.

Jan. 22 will be the 20th anniversary of Foreman’s beating of then-champion Joe Frazier in Jamaica.

“That was the greatest acting job I ever did,” Foreman said.

“I was scared that night, and for me to have gotten in there and pretended like I wasn’t . . . that was a real performance. I’d hoped by that stage of my career, Frazier would have retired and gone into music or something.

“I’d studied film of Frazier. I knew that when you hit him in the face, he liked it. I knew it made him angry if you missed. Well, I got to him early that night and had it all my way.

“But let me tell you, he missed me in the first round with a left hook that sounded like a bullet when it went by my chin.”