Boxing seems a smaller and darker world now. George Foreman has gone and, with his death, he takes a little more of the fading light and lost glory of the ring with him. My own life in boxing, which stretches across 55 years, can be divided into stages and all of them carry markers Foreman left in the dirt and dust of the fight game.
From the malevolent force he personified when he became heavyweight champion of the world to the lovable old grandad making hundreds of millions as the face of a food grill business, Foreman could be easily caricatured. But he was always more complex and interesting than his contrasting personae suggested.
