Tag Archives: boxing

The Road to Diamond, Day 116: George Foreman

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Community, Entertainment, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

March 24, 2025- In the early ’70s, watching heavyweight boxing championships was on par with watching professional baseball or hockey. It was always a group event, mostly involving men. Part of it was about demonstrations of power, but the replays, sometimes 4 or 5, were about noticing finesse. Muhammad Ali’s body English was the most watched, and re-watched. Later on, there was a group that was drawn to Leon Spinks. For sheer longevity, and evolution of class, though, no one outdid George Foreman.

George came out of east Texas, and the Fifth Ward of Houston. In both environments, he learned the way of the fist-starting off as a mugger, then being steered into boxing. He would become the titan of the 1968 U.S. Olympic Boxing squad, bringing home the Gold Medal and being welcomed into the White House, even as his main competitor, Cassius Clay, was irritating the government with his objections to the Vietnam War. Cassius, of course, embraced Islam and became Muhammad Ali. He and George would fight for the World Heavyweight Championship, and in 1974, George found himself worn to a frazzle by Ali’s antics, including the “Rope a Dope” maneuver of allowing George to push him to the ropes, then rest a bit and come out swinging. George had given Joe Frazier his first loss, a year earlier, thus becoming World Heavyweight Champion. In the “Rumble in the Jungle”, though, Muhammad came out on top.

George, bruised but not beaten, showed the world that “Forty is not a death sentence” and would continue to box professionally, in between serving as an ordained minister and as pitchman for his line of barbecue grills, until 1997. He sired twelve children, by five wives, naming each of his five sons George. This was his way, he said, of leaving a piece of himself for posterity.

He died on Friday, March 21, at the age of 76. His namesakes-and grills- aside, though, George Foreman will long live in the memory bank of anyone who grew up between 1965-87. He lived larger than his boxing skill set and more intensely than his religious fervour. May George be at peace, in the arms of his Lord.

The Road to Diamond, Day 60: Floating and Weaving

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Posted by on in animal and plant life, Assistance, collaborating, Community, impediments, Inner Struggles, Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving, Travel

January 27, 2025, Hong Kong– When I was a teen, boxers would speak of the technique of bobbing and weaving, as a means of dodging an opponent’s punches and getting in blows of their own. On a long-distance aircraft, the techniques for safely navigating an expanse of ocean, or of continent, or both, require knowing when to move aside an air current and when to “float” through it. The flight crew of our Cathay Pacific craft handled the turbulence over the mid-Pacific very well tonight.

It is the time of Lunar New Year, ringing in the Year of the (Wood) Snake. The holiday in general leads thousands upon thousands of East Asian people to travel to their ancestral homes, and there was quite a multitude in LAX, on our flight and others like it, and in the transit lines at Hong Kong International Airport. We moved, sometimes in flow and at other times haltingly, but there was only a minimal delay in take-offs and in deplaning upon landing. What issues arose were mostly because of scanning issues, with regard to passports and boarding passes, or because people did not understand the concept of facial scanning. It could be construed as a privacy issue, but to me, the government knows what I look like already and I have nothing to hide from any given national authority, so I look straight into the screening device and am waved on my way.

Wedged as I was between two Chinese men, both bigger than I, on the fifteen hour haul from Los Angeles to Hong Kong, it was nonetheless a stress free leg. The three of us had an unspoken agreement that when Window Seat passenger needed to answer nature’s call, we all found our way to the Comfort Room, Aisle Seat passenger going last. There is plenty of leg room and a fairly ergonomic seat construction. Even though we were at the very last row before the galley cabinets, room was still made for us to recline our seats. In fairness to everyone else, who had to bring their seats upright at meal times, we uprighted ours as well. The meals themselves, dinner and breakfast, were fully balanced and appetizing, by airline standards.

I slept for probably 6.4-7 hours, during the flight, availing myself of three films, during the waking portion. “The Wild Robot” explored the notion of adapting Artificial Intelligence to interpreting and communicating with non-human sentient beings. It also considered the adaptation of AI independence from possible future orthodoxy and repression. “Kingdom of Heaven” followed one man’s spiritual progress through the terrifying time of the Second Crusade, and the overarching climate of relative harmony between Christian, Jew and Muslim up until the time that a boorish claque of English and French nobles used the death of the Christian King of Jerusalem and Acre (Akko) as a pretext to seat one of their own on the throne and to wage war against the mighty Saladin. Various documented aspects of the actual Second Crusade, which ended with Saladin’s capture of Jerusalem were incorporated into the film’s narrative, but the story was greatly embellished. “High Noon”, a classic Western of the early 1950s, is a film I had not seen, though I was named for its lead actor, Gary Cooper, and its themes of the nobility of a true hero and the fecklessness of both politicians and the average “get-along” citizen are quite remarkably presented. The film is about 1 hour long,and its plot concerns itself with one hour in the life of a small southern New Mexico town of the 1880s.

So, my time crossing the Pacific was well-spent, and now I ready myself for the final 2-hour flight to Manila. Much will be decided, these next three weeks.