What ended George Foreman's time as an HBO broadcaster?

Jeez it took George dying for Larry to finally say something nice about him!

 

No disrespect to Big George and I know he's passed away recently and it's a very sad loss for boxing and he was a great fighter but regarding his commentary work i wasn't a fan honestly.

 

Larry was so strange; he could be a nice, pleasant guy but very vindictive like a flip of the switch. Example, he cried after beating up Ali and claimed he tried to take it easy on him, but watch the fight, you could hear those shots that he laid on him.

 

It is mate.
All those big names from the 70 s , almost all gone.

 

Yeah. He was annoying to me as well. RJJ was way better.

 

This.

Also, I heard Lampley say in an interview years ago that Lampley and Merchant's drinking after the telecasts kind of drove a wedge between the team. Lampley and Merchant would go out drinking after fights along with a lot of the boxing writers covering the events, I remember Wally Matthews being a regular to the post-fight drinking escapades, and George would leave the arena and take his own limo back to the hotel.

Lampley said Foreman never brought it up or said anything negative about them going out. George just didn't want to participate. As an announcer for HBO, Foreman never socialized with Merchant, Lampley or any of the boxing press outside the night of the fights. (I think Lampley got divorced around that time was going out a lot.) George just showed up to provide his commentary and then he left.

And, like most workplaces, the people who go out together after work tend to have different relationships with coworkers than those who just go home. That distance tended to come across in the broadcasts later on.

 

He was probably more brutal on Ali than he should have been . But I dont blame Larry for the beating that Ali took. Muhammad never should have taken that fight. And Angelo Dundee should have stopped it long before he did. Holmes was defending a title and trying to preserve his source of income. Who knows ? If he had let up and started going easy he might have gotten hit with a big shot that could have ended his reign or gotten him badly injured.

 

Correct. Knowing Ali was shot is all hindsight.
On fight night this wasn’t known.

Even during the fight Larry must have reckoned that Muhammad was playing possum.

 

There was a point during the fight where Larry realizes that Ali just can't fight anymore. As he's walking toward his corner at the end of a round (forget which, one of the final rounds), he's holding up his hands to his corner with a look on his face like "wtf? you guys watching this?"

 

I thought Larry took it pretty easy on Ali. He was looking at the referee to call a halt to the fight for a couple of rounds before they shut it down.

 

It does.
At least we have that champions Forever video where they were all together. That was priceless.

 

I remember this comment and I think it was from Lewis Rahman or some Lewis fight. They were talking about how Lewis could be gunshy and I recall George saying he can come back as a great champion and then he said, "but he will always remember... that night... in Africa". The commentators were silent for a moment and then changed the topic. It was like George was talking about himself always remembering that Ali fight.

 

What if they did want to do that?

 

What if George fell down unconscious?