As one of seven children, we grew up poor and the way i sort out of it was by taking things that other people had by threatening to beat the crap out of them if they didn't hand over their money but as lucrative as mugging was, it was an advert on TV bought with the money i nicked off other people that changed my life.
The TV ad was for an organization called the Job Corps and i signed up and did some training for jobs like bricklaying and carpentry and got a job in San Francisco, California and after work i would go to the local gym and one evening they were showing the Ali fight against Floyd Patterson and i thought, 'You can earn money for punching people'? So I thought i would have a go at it.
Turns out i was good at it and got picked to go to the 1968 Olympics and got to the final where i beat a scary guy from the Soviet Union and turned Pro.
In my first 32 fights i won they all, 29 by knockout but then i had the brilliant and unbeaten Joe Frazier stood in front of me and so i slapped him about for two rounds and the referee stopped it before I killed the man and i was crowned the World Champion.
One thing a boxing champion needs is an adoring fan base but i didn’t do anything to help this along, i was pretty anti-social back then and saw no reason to get warm and cozy with the fans.
The big name at the time was Mohammad Ali and we got offered $5 million and the location was set as Zaire, mainly because the promoter Don King was pals with the dictator there.
The Rumble in the Jungle they called it and Ali sat on the ropes for seven rounds while i punched him and then exhausted, he knocked me out in the eighth.
I carried on fighting after the loss but after one bout, and feeling like i was going to die, i asked God to spare me and if he did I would hand over my boxing prize money to him.
Obviously i lived and became a minister at the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ but i had that promise to hand over my Boxing purses so aged 38, i made a comeback and put my healthy lifestyle down to reducing the fat in my diet and that opened the door to my next venture, as a grill salesman for the George Foreman Grill which made me more money than my entire boxing career.
My last TV Appearance was on the The Masked Singer dressed as a Venus Fly Trap but i died as a two-time world heavyweight champion and an Olympic gold medalist with 81 fights, 76 wins and 68 by knockout and to some i was a Boxing Legend, to others, the guy who made grills on an angle.
No comments:
Post a Comment