Did Old George Foreman Put On Weight Between Fights?

Nah, I don't think so. As I understand it he was health and age conscious and tried to stay at a reasonable weight. Archie Moore king of longevity and mortal men was advising him so he was in good hands for hanging around.

 

Before his comeback he was morbidly obese over 300+ lbs. He decided to try fasting and would only drink water and consumed nothing else some days. He made sure to drop at least 40 lbs before he even began his boxing training again to shake off the ring rust. He took his health very seriously and didn't want to get that big again because it made him very depressed (although he did like being big in the muscular/powerful sense to push around smaller opponents and enjoyed weight lifting).

 

Heck, Selling Gills on television can make one hungry enough to wolf down some king sized steaks. Lol.

 

His returning to boxing probably saved his life really.
If he'd had carried on, not really doing anything much and eating, piling on the pounds, then we'd have been reading his orbituary.
Reading about his boxing life that ended in 1977...

 

When training for one of his fights, he was at home being interviewed by Lampley. Lampley brought this up, he said there was talk that George was 280 lbs when he began training. Foreman laughed and said that was a lie, it was only 279.

Even though he was joking, he probably did put on a lot of weight between fights.

 

This is why, even if someone isn't religious, they have to look at things from multiple angles and have a fresh perspective. Foreman's life was going absolutely nowhere. He was a depressed, obese, street preacher living in poverty whose wife and friends deserted him. He lost the vast majority of his money from boxing. But after hitting rock bottom he found a reason to put on the gloves again, to help out kids who were growing up struggling the way he did. Without the experience from his first career, there is no way a tubby 40 year old would have made it. Boxing saved him in the 70's (he would have ended up either in prison or dead given his reputation) and it saved him again in the 90's (would probably die of a heart attack from overeating/poor mental health, etc).

 

Great post.

 

Thanks for sharing.

 

I remember seeing clips of him training and he looked leaner than he did in the ring. It’s like he’d train, lose weight, & bulk up again before the fight. He looked lighter in the training footage.

 

Huh, while I would say boxing saved the kid who won Olympic gold in the '60's, I did not know the basic facts that Foreman was depressed as a preacher-or that he was poor.

 

I thought he was the pastor of a small church that was experiencing financial difficulty and couldn't pay for necessary repairs on the church properties, and he figured maybe his name still meant enough for him to be able to fight a few minor fights and be paid enough to fix the church building. Then when he started training, his love for boxing came back and the rest is history.