After Muhammad Ali and George Foreman clashed in ‘The Rumble in the Jungle’, the two went on to become extremely close friends.
Back in 1974, Muhammad Ali and George Foreman clashed in one of the biggest boxing events in the history of combat sports, with ‘The Rumble in the Jungle’ taking place in Kinshasa, Zaire.
The consensus greatest Heavyweight boxer of all time, Ali went on to score the KO in round eight after weathering an early storm from the always hard-hitting ‘Big’ George Foreman.
At the time, their fight was the world’s most-watched live television broadcast, watched by a record estimated audience of 1 billion viewers worldwide.
Muhammad Ali begged George Foreman to come out of retirement to beat Ken Norton
Following their historic meeting, the two heavyweights became great friends and kept regular contact up until Ali’s tragic passing in 2016.
Recalling a conversation the two were having one day not long after their clash, Foreman has revealed that Ali begged him to come out of retirement to beat Ken Norton.
In 1973, a year before ‘The Rumble in the Jungle’, Norton handed Ali just his second professional boxing loss after taking the split decision win.
Just a few months later, the two rematched, and Ali exacted revenge by returning the favor with a split decision win of his own.
Before his trilogy against Norton in 1976, Ali pleaded with ‘Big’ George to come out of retirement to beat Norton as he didn’t believe he could beat him again. Foreman knocked Norton out just a year before his fight against Ali.
“He called me and complimented me for about 20 minutes,” Foreman told Jim Lampley.
“Then he said, ‘George, would you do me a favor?’, I said, ‘Certainly’.
“He said, ‘Please come back and beat Ken Norton and fight him for me. I can’t beat him. George, you can, he’s afraid of you. I’ll let you use my training camp and everything but please come back and beat him for me,” Foreman continued to explain.
Foreman came out of retirement several years later
Unfortunately, Foreman remained retired for several years after, and Ali completed his trilogy with Norton, winning a controversial unanimous decision that was branded a robbery by Norton.
Despite that, ‘Big’ George came out of retirement several years later in 1987 and subsequently regained the heavyweight title in 1994 that he lost to Ali two decades before, becoming the oldest fighter ever to win a title.
The record Foreman set in 1994 still stands to this day, however, boxing savior, Turki Alalshikh wants to sensationally offer Wladimir Klitschko the chance to break that record with a surprise comeback.