Boxing, Grilling, and Octopi

And a strange place for Jesus to make an appearance

George Foreman died. He was 76 and was one of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time. He was a fearsome presence in the ring, with perhaps the most powerful right hand in the history of the sport.

He was considered unbeatable…until he fought Muhammad Ali.

George Foreman and Muhammad Ali

This legendary fight, held in Zaire, Africa, was billed as “The Rumble in the Jungle.” The odds were 4-1 against Ali, who was a bit past his prime. But Ali had formed a brilliant plan. He called it “The Rope-a-Dope.” In the opening rounds Ali let Foreman punch with all his might as Ali leaned against the ropes, covering himself with his arms.

By the fifth round, Foreman was visibly tired. His arms grew heavy, his punches decreased in power. That’s when Ali started peppering Foreman with combinations, and in the eighth round he felled the formidable foe.

This stunned the boxing world, and shocked Foreman to his core. He continued to fight, but never got the one thing he wanted most: a rematch with Ali.

Eventually, Foreman lost a bout to a skilled heavyweight named Jimmy Young. Suffering from heat stroke after the fight, Foreman said he had a near-death experience. He called out to God to save his life. His prayer was answered and Foreman became a born-again Christian.

This changed his personality from dour menace to smiling extrovert and amiable pitchman for a product bearing his name, the George Foreman Grill. That gig made Foreman a rich man, which helped him support his twelve kids, five of whom he named George.

Then, incredibly, twenty years after his loss to Ali, George Foreman regained the heavyweight crown by defeating Michael Moorer. He was 42 years old.

Putting together George the Christian with George the grill guy, I am reminded of a product I once saw at the Christian Booksellers Association convention. This was a huge show drawing bookstore owners (remember those?) from all over America and even the world, to come meet with publishers and place orders for upcoming books.

There was also a big room for gift items these bookstores could order, as such accessories were often a significant part of bookstore revenue.

In this area you’d find keychains, crosses, necklaces, posters, candles, nativity scenes, Christian-themed music CDs, and so on.

Then there were the odd trivialities, like the breath “candies for Christ” called “Testamints.”

One item got my hackles swaying. It was a grilled cheese sandwich press that toasted the face of the Lord right on the sandwich. The name of this transubstantiating marvel was “Grilled Cheesus.”

I kid you not.

The words of Scrooge whirled in my head: “I’ll retire to Bedlam.”

***

Random noun: Octopus

In junior high school my brother had to do an oral report on the octopus. He was nervous. When his time came he went up in front of the class, cleared his throat, and said, “An octopus lives in the ocean and has eight testicles.”

Which reminds me of a poem by Ogden Nash:

Tell me, O Octopus, I begs
Is those things arms, or is they legs?
I marvel at thee, Octopus;
If I were thou, I’d call me Us.

When I was a kid I was taught that octopi was the plural form, but it turns out that’s an error from a long time ago, having to do with a mixup of Greek and Latin. How this escaped the notice of monks and medieval scholars is a mystery, yet to this day I find it weird to say octopuses and even weirder to spell it, because shouldn’t there be another s in there? Otherwise the word looks like octo-pewses.

The octopus has eight…let’s call them arms…and each arm has a number of suction cups called “suckers.”

“There’s a sucker born every minute” is a quote usually attributed to P. T. Barnum, but was more likely in the minutes of the 1909 congressional debate over creation of the income tax.

“The gentleman from California is recognized.”

“Mr. Speaker, I rise to support the passage of this bill, which the people will support if we pledge to spend only that revenue that comes into the coffers, and that such expenditures will only be for the maintenance of armies, roads and bridges.”

“Will the gentleman yield for a question? Why does the gentleman think this argument will hold sway among the electorate?”

“I thank the gentleman for his question. It is because there’s a sucker born every minute. Mr. Speaker, I yield the floor.”

Indeed, a sucker is also called a “mark” or a “fish” by the confidence man. There were plenty of those floating around Times Square when I lived in New York City. On many a corner was a “sharp” operating a game of three-card monte on a piece of cardboard set on a crate. That’s a game with two red cards and one black, all slightly bent so they look like little tents. This is done so they can easily be picked up by the thumb and middle finger and tossed onto the “table.” The sharp shows the cards face up, then moves them around, face down. As he does, he chatters something like, “Come on now, find the black. You pick the black, you get your money back. I’m not mad when I lose, I’m just happy when I win. Now who’s gonna step up?”

It cost $5 or $10 to play. So a fish confidently puts down his bill and points to a card. He thinks his eagle eye has got it right.

But no, for the sharp has a trick move. It looks like he tosses the black card, but really tosses a red. The mark then “follows” the wrong card.

If, however, the mark happens to point to the black card, the sharp has some options to keep from losing his bet, including a shill “accidentally” knocking over the makeshift table.

Being a close-up magician, I knew the “magic move” that switched the cards. I was tempted to put down a bill and instead of pointing to the card, flipping it over myself.

But I knew there were a couple of shills around, one of them quite large.

Life is like a three-card monte game. We make our guesses and take our chances, and sometimes we pick the right card only to be confronted by an enforcer who doesn’t want us to win.

But take heart. It’s not like what the supercomputer in the movie WarGames says, after running through every possible scenario of a nuclear war between the U.S. and Soviet Union: “A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”

But we are here, and we play.

In Shakespeare’s As You Like It, the character Jaques says, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”

But Jaques was a downer, a pessimist, not the life of the party. We don’t just say lines or make moves a writer gives us. We make our own moves, talk our own talk. We choose to walk, run, or dance. When we get knocked down, we can get back up.

We got heart, as the old song says.

The octopus, by the way, has three hearts…and is a pretty good dancer. Let’s learn from the octopus.

From a college essay: Magellan circumcised the globe with a 100-foot clipper.