Don King claims George Foreman threated to drop out the day before the Rumble fight

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-02-08-sp-573-story.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Claims George was both threatened by the army and fooled into believe he had an extra 500k coming his way.

 

Some wild quotes in there...

Welp, that didn't go as planned.

Unfamiliar with that bit of history.

'92 Holmes might have something to say about that.

 

"'92 Holmes might have something to say about that"

I'm sure he'd have a lot to say about that just not in a boxing ring.

 

They were signed to fight in '99. The money fell through, but they'd both signed.

 

There are a lot of guys, over the years, that threaten to pull out at the last minute, for a variety of reasons. Ray Robinson was notorious for that, trying to get more money. A guy that was once the head of the Arizona boxing commission went to Minneapolis to fight Pat O'Connor and said that he would "try to win" unless he got another $1500. I know a guy that made 50k to be there and be ready in case Butterbean pulled out of his fight against Larry Holmes, And that happens more often than you might think.

 

Didn't George say in his autobiography something about Don King coming up with the idea to make him limp as a threat that he might drop out near the time or something like that? I thought I remembered him joking about how he limped on one foot the way into a place to promote the fight and then the other foot on the way out because he forgot which one he said he'd limped on and was not expecting the instruction from King to do it in the first place.

 

I… I don’t know, I can’t tell if you’re lucid or not.

 

Oooh, who was going to step in if Butterbean didn’t keep the date with Holmes?

 

BoxRec: Mike Sedillo

 

Glad he picked up a check but a journeyman like that may have saved the card from cancelation but hardly been a box office attraction … Butterbean had unique appeal as a sideshow attraction.

 

I saw him at a gym right after he came back and he was pretty happy about it.

 

Haha, I bet.

For many of our club show main events, my brother and I generally had a backup plan — maybe someone in a 6-rounder on the undercard in the same weight class as the main eventer with a deal worked out on how much they’d get to bump up to 8 or 10 rounds and fight our main eventer instead of the lower-pay undercard fight. I don’t think we ever had to use the backup plan, at least not off the top of my head, but it’s nice to have a security blanket.

(For us it made more sense to have the standby on the card anyway rather than just pay someone to be there in case.)