No Way but to Fight: George Foreman and the Business of Boxing

Terry and Jan Todd Series on Physical Culture and Sports

by Andrew R.M. Smith

Olympic gold medalist. Two-time world heavyweight champion. Hall of Famer. Infomercial and reality TV star. George Foreman's fighting ability is matched only by his acumen for selling. Yet the complete story of Foreman's rise from urban poverty to global celebrity has never been told until now.

Raised in Houston's "Bloody Fifth" Ward, battling against scarcity in housing and food, young Foreman fought sometimes for survival and other times just for fun. But when a government program rescued him from poverty and introduced him to the sport of boxing, his life changed forever.

In No Way but to Fight, Andrew R. M. Smith traces Foreman's life and career from the Great Migration to the Great Society, through the Cold War and Culture Wars, out of urban Houston and onto the world stage where he discovered that fame brought new challenges. Drawing on new interviews with George Foreman and declassified government documents, as well as more than fifty domestic and international newspapers and magazines, Smith brings to life the exhilarating story of a true American icon. No Way but to Fight is an epic worthy of a champion.

Genres: Sports

400 pages, Hardcover

First published January 10, 2020

About the author

Originally from Guelph, Ontario, Canada, Andrew R.M. Smith earned a BA in History at Acadia University before completing his MA/PhD in History at Purdue University.

Reviews

[Brandon McGuire · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t have much to say. It’s true that Foreman had a very interesting life and that I do enjoy the sport of boxing. However, this book struggled to keep my attention and I got to the point that I couldn’t wait for it to end. You’d probably need to be very interested in the minute details of his life to really be enthralled by the book.

[Malcolm · Rating 3 out of 5]

It may be my failing memory, and almost certainly is my childhood spent outside the United States, but it has always seemed to me that George Foreman was the third string in a two-boxer era, who despite his successes was overshadowed by the power of the mythic Ali-Frazier rivalry. Here was the guy who’d waved the American flag while Smith and Carlos had raised their fists, who’d fallen into Ali’s dope-on-a-rope trick, who’d built a strong record fighting relatively weak opponents, and whose media presence seemed pale and more than a little thuggish in comparison to his slightly older rivals. It may also be that by the time he came to dominance, the very notion of a single world champion had become overwhelmed by the competing title granters, or perhaps quite simply I never really cared…. I say all that fully acknowledging Foreman’s high profile both in boxing and as a popular cultural figure (again, in my mind almost totally the result of a kitchen appliance).

The point of all this reflection is that it meant that I came to Andrew Smith’s biography of Foreman with high hopes, in part a product of his place in academia, in part because it is published by a university press, in part because I knew I did not have a decent grasp of the history of 1970s and ‘80s boxing through the omission of Foreman, in part because it was ‘blurbed’ by people I respect. It may be that these expectations were too high, except this is a very good biography. Smith effectively evokes Foreman’s life, draws on an impressive array of sources, including it seems extensive discussions with Foreman and people who knew and worked with him, painting a rich picture of Foreman’s life in sport, his youth and his public profile.

Much of the outline is well-known – Foreman is after all a notable public figure and parts of the story have been well-told over the years. Much of what we have here seems also to be new additions to the story, especially the previously unavailable sources and interview material constructing a much more nuanced image than my disparaging summation of his public image. Smith does well to draw out Foreman’s fraught relationships with his team, trainers and advisors, to explore some of the ways his boxing profile fed into and influenced some of his non-boxing profile, and to his credit does not overplay some of the high profile aspects of Foreman’s fight career, where that temptation might have been strong given the dominant framing of the man.

Even with all this I am left slightly disappointed, and I suspect that is not dashed expectations. First up, it is hard to be clear about the intended audience of the book. There seems to be a clear emphasis on the ‘well-rounded general reader’ (Hobsbawm’s “intelligent, educated citizen”) although even there Smith seems to have assumptions about our knowledge of the business of boxing and the precarious circumstances of most fighters even as he does a good job drawing out much of the dubious practice and the corruption woven through the sport. Second, I accept that this is a sports biography (or rather, a biography of a figure known primarily as an athlete) but if the point is that Foreman had no way (is that option?) but to fight more was needed on the events, especially during the time away from boxing in the ‘70s and ‘80s, that made fighting the only way. Third, and related, there is almost nothing on Foreman’s private life aside from attention to issues such as divorce settlements. Now, I am all for the return of, the rise of ‘public man’ (to tweak Richard Sennett’s classic title), but again if the point is to show the necessity to fight some contextualisation in a rounded and full image of the man seems necessary.

So, on the one hand it is a well told, engaging, flowing biography introducing new material and enriching our (my) understanding of Foreman and for that this book is to be welcomed and celebrated – yet I can’t help but think there is a bigger story to be told.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good biography that provides the business insights and corruption of boxing industry. If you are looking for a book that goes deeper in George's life, probably not the best book. Outside of his childhood, it really has a focus on his boxing, which is what I wanted to read about.

[Brian Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

It happened