Cut Man: Ringside Reflections of Boxing\u2019s Greatest Comeback<\/a>, detailing what it was like to be there\u00a0as sporting history was being made. Speaking in his engaging Texan drawl, he shared his many memories with Boxing News.<\/p>\nHow did it all begin with George?<\/p>\n
I needed some work and my wife said why not go back to boxing? I had been a fighter and I was pretty much broke. A friend of mine said George Foreman was making a comeback and that he needed a sparring partner. So I began making the 80-mile round trip, with George broke himself and only able to pay me gas money.<\/p>\n
Everyone thought Foreman\u2019s comeback was a joke. Nobody would work with George as far as training him. Gil Clancy, he wouldn\u2019t even answer his calls, he wanted nothing to do with it.<\/p>\n
It must have been tough taking Foreman\u2019s punches, even with headgear on!<\/p>\n
Yes, sir! George trained like nobody else I\u2019ve seen \u2013 10 rounds of sparring, eventually with four different sparring partners. When we began sparring, George would only hit me on the shoulder or on the arms, but when we went at it harder, when I would hit George, he would punch so hard he\u2019d lift me up in the air. And George would hit the heavy bag for 10 rounds straight, throwing non-stop punches. George would really slam that bag, and he\u2019d lift you up in the air when doing that, too.<\/p>\n
I was George\u2019s sparring partner \u2013 I\u2019d say we must have sparred 700 rounds or more overall \u2013 and I worked his corner later on. I was there when he fought in London (against Terry Anderson). That was a great trip. I worked the Gerry Cooney fight, and the Bigfoot Martin fight. The Alex Stewart fight, I was again George\u2019s chief sparring partner. I worked a whole bunch of \u2019em.<\/p>\n
You believed in George right from the start.<\/p>\n
Yes. What happened was, George took us to churches, where he would give his sermons, and he took us to some prisons, where he would tell the inmates his story, about how he had been a thug and that he\u2019d turned his life around. In Sacramento (where Foreman would kick off his comeback, this against Zouski in March of 1987), the opponents kept falling out and it took a while to get the first fight done.<\/p>\n
Charlie Shipes, who had been in prison after his career as a great welterweight, he came on and became George\u2019s main trainer. Charlie had lost everything; his family had turned their back on him, and George asked him if he\u2019d train him when he got out of federal prison. That film, \u2018Big George Foreman\u2019 that came out a couple of years ago, that was not true at all \u2013 that was the biggest joke I\u2019ve ever seen. Doc Broadus didn\u2019t train George Foreman, Charlie Shipes did! They didn\u2019t even mention Shipes\u2019 name in that film. I asked George, and he said that, once he\u2019d sold it (his life story), there was nothing he could do about that.<\/p>\n
You must have been so pleased when George\u2019s comeback became the success it did, with everyone sure enough forced to take him seriously\u2026<\/p>\n
Oh, yeah. The Gerry Cooney fight was big, I was the chief second in the corner for that fight. That was George\u2019s first pay-per-view fight on the return. And then what happened was, they brought Angelo Dundee in, and George fought the double-bill, with Mike Tyson on the card, and then George fought [Evander] Holyfield for the title the following year (1991).<\/p>\n
Can we just talk about Foreman\u2019s great chin? The best in the heavyweight division?<\/p>\n
No doubt. George had a great, great chin. In the Cooney fight, he was hurt early, but George showed no mercy and he knocked Cooney out. For me, that fight [Foreman-Cooney] was my first big payday on the comeback. George gave me a $10,000 bonus after that fight. The Alex Stewart fight was tough. The problem was, George could\u2019ve knocked him out, in the second round, but he showed mercy. You remember Everett Martin? He was the only guy to go 10 rounds with George [at that time in the comeback]. George knocked him down in the seventh round and his eyes rolled in the back of his head, but he got up. And he didn\u2019t get paid one penny for that fight. Martin had a contract and he broke it to go with another contract and nothing happened, until he fought George and then they filed a lawsuit. They took his entire purse. What bothered George was, Everett kept saying, during the fight, \u2018It\u2019s my time, Lord! It\u2019s my time.\u2019 George was a preacher of course, and Everett was too.<\/p>\n
The [Michael] Moorer fight, wow, George was taking a beating. I was there for that fight. Matter of fact, I made a few bets for people on that fight\u2026.George didn\u2019t know it, and he wouldn\u2019t have been too happy about that (laughs). Moorer was really trying to knock George out. He could\u2019ve ran those last few rounds and won a decision. I had Moorer winning pretty much all those rounds before [the KO].<\/p>\n
But, yeah, George\u2019s chin, I do think it was the best ever. In the Ali fight back in the day, when George was trained by Dick Saddler, he was drugged. I\u2019ll tell you the story I was told. George asked him if the water he was given by Saddler, this in the dressing room before the fight, was different to usual, and he was told \u201cSame water as always!\u201d Years later, the truth came out. He gave George water with morphine in it, and that drained him and he lost his energy. Saddler was paid off, that\u2019s what I was told. George always said that we\u2019d never know the truth. He thought about it a long time. George in his comeback, he never went down one single time.<\/p>\n
When did you last see George before he passed away?<\/p>\n
Six months before. I met him and he was meeting some doctors who wanted him to represent their drug that was supposed to help with diabetes. It was gonna be a done deal but within three months he was in a wheelchair, and three months later he passed away.<\/p>\n
People really wanted to see the Foreman-Tyson fight, and it was close in 1990.<\/p>\n
George would have won. Look at it this way, Evander Holyfield stopped Tyson twice, yet he couldn\u2019t even knock George down. Tyson wouldn\u2019t fight George<\/a>, he was scared to fight him. George really wanted to fight Tyson, because that\u2019s where the money was at. When they fought on the same card, in Las Vegas in June of 1990, when Tyson fought [Henry] Tillman after losing to Buster Douglas, and George fought Adilson Rodrigues, it was initially going to be just the Tyson fight, and they only sold 2,000 tickets or so. They put George on the card and it sold out.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s kind of funny. A week before the card, George was in Vegas, signing autographs and meeting the fans for photos, and Tyson would not sign any autographs and he would not talk to any reporters. At the press conference the day before the fight, of course Tyson speaks first, and he says, \u201cyou people have been bugging me all week, so ask me your questions now.\u201d A reporter got up and said, \u201cwhen is George Foreman going to be answering questions!\u201d Tyson went part mad (laughs).<\/p>\n
No, Tyson wanted no part of George, it would have been a massive payday for both of \u2019em. I think George would have stopped him the same way he did Moorer, late on. George would have been too strong for Tyson, he\u2019d have pushed him off the way he did Joe Frazier. Tyson screwed up when he left Kevin Rooney.\u201d<\/p>\n
Did you and George always get along great, in camp and in the corner? Any arguments at all?<\/p>\n
No, sir \u2013 we were best of friends. We always got on good. George was strict in camp, all the sparring partners had to be on their best behaviour, no drinking or anything like that. You had to be right or else you\u2019d have to go and do something else, go work with someone else.<\/p>\n
I had so many great times with George, so many big fights. Another interesting story about George, is the fact that he knew the Jackson family. Back when he was heavyweight champ the first time, he was friends with them, the older brothers. He lived not very far from them and he would visit quite a bit. He told me that he knew that young Michael was gonna be big one day, as in huge, because he would see him practicing, and dancing all the time in the house, and he could see how special\u00a0 he was.<\/p>\n
One time, George paid them a visit with his girlfriend of the time, and she later told George that one of the Jackson brothers asked her for her phone number while he was in the restroom (laughs). One more special one about George, George once told me really believed he\u2019d die at the age of 105. I told him, that would make me 99 for me to be one of his pallbearers (laughs). He and I laughed so much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Right at the very beginning of George Foreman\u2019s wholly unlikely return to the ring after a full decade…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":615980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-615979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=615979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/615980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=615979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=615979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=615979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}