George Foreman, heavyweight boxing champion, dies at 76

George Foreman, world heavyweight boxing champion, Olympic gold medalist and later preacher, died Friday at the age of 76, his family said.

“Our hearts are broken,” an announcement on Foreman’s Instagram page read.

“With profound sorrow, we announce the passing of our beloved George Edward Foreman Sr. who peacefully departed on March 21, 2025 surrounded by loved ones,” it read.

A cause of death was not provided.

Foreman, known as “Big George,” won an Olympic gold medal in boxing at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City when he was 19 years old.

He won the world heavyweight championship five years later in a stunning knockout of Joe Frazier in two rounds in 1973, but he lost it to Muhammad Ali the next year in the famous “Rumble in the Jungle.”

But Foreman was not finished. At the age of 45, Foreman reclaimed the heavyweight title when he beat Michael Moorer — a comeback that made him the oldest boxer to win the championship.

He became a preacher in 1978, and was also known as an entrepreneur. He became a household name for the “George Foreman Grill” — officially called the George Foreman Lean Mean Grilling Machine.

More than 100 million were sold worldwide, according to Foreman’s website, and he became a fixture on television programs promoting the device in an apron.

“A devout preacher, a devoted husband, a loving father, and a proud grand and great grandfather, he lived a life marked by unwavering faith, humility, and purpose,” the statement announcing his death Friday read.

Humility and purpose were not always character traits for which Foreman was known.

He described himself on his website as going “from thug to boxer.” He was born in Marshall, Texas, on Jan. 10, 1949, but grew up in Houston’s Fifth Ward, where his website said he bullied other children and “became a mugger and brawler.”

Foreman credited the Job Corps program, started by President Lyndon B. Johnson, with the mentoring that led him from crime to a career in boxing.

“I have been literally rescued from the gutter. I was out hiding from the police,” Foreman told NBC News in a 2023 interview. “The next thing you know, I’m in the Job Corps program getting three meals in one day. They built me into what I’ve become.”