Boxing legend George Foreman remembered for his love of family, faith and cheeseburgers

HOUSTON (AP) — George Foreman was remembered Monday in a memorial service in his hometown of Houston for his legendary boxing career as well as for his love of God, family, horses and cheeseburgers and for his desire to help his fellow man.

“He preached love all the time. That’s what this life is all about. It’s all about love and George was pure because George lived and believed what he preached,” said James Douglas, a longtime friend and former president of Texas Southern University in Houston.

During a nearly 1½ hour memorial service, Foreman’s family and friends recalled anecdotes about a man who was a two-time boxing heavyweight champion but who was also a pastor who delivered life affirming sermons at his church in northeast Houston and a savvy businessman best known for the George Foreman Grill.

Foreman even addressed the crowd posthumously at the Wortham Theater Center, a performing arts center that hosted the memorial, with audio messages recorded previously.

“Winning and losing can never assure a lasting smile. But saying to the face you see daily, ‘I did my best,’ can,” Foreman said on the recording.

Many of the people who spoke at the memorial, including George Foreman IV, one of five sons of the boxing legend, highlighted the importance of faith in the elder Foreman’s life and how God guided his efforts to help others.

“’How well do I remember how Jesus brought me through? I prayed, I walked a night or two. I said, Lord, why don’t you take and use me? That’s all that I can do. I give my life to Jesus, what about you?’ That was a song my grandmother gave to my father. He was going through a hard time. So now I’ve given it to you,” George Foreman IV said as his four brothers stood behind him.

Foreman had 12 children, including five sons who are all famously named George Edward Foreman.

“Rest well, dad. We will carry your love with us always,” said George Foreman IV, who is also a pastor.

Former boxer Michael Moorer, who Foreman defeated in 1994 to become the oldest man at age 45 to win the heavyweight championship, told the crowd that the two went from being competitors to having a relationship “built on respect for over 30 years.”

“George was a champion in life. His faith transformed the shy country boy from Texas to a successful businessman and a voice for the less fortunate,” Moorer said.

Dr. Adan Rios, a longtime friend of the boxing great, recalled how Foreman bought land to create a food bank for AIDS patients and donated $1.7 million to help treat adolescent patients with cancer.

Foreman died on March 21 at age 76. Foreman’s family has not disclosed his cause of death, only saying on social media that he “peacefully departed … surrounded by loved ones.”

Born in Marshall, Texas, Foreman was raised in Houston’s Fifth Ward, one of the city’s historically Black neighborhoods.

He began his boxing career as an Olympic gold medalist in 1968, turning pro the next year.

Foreman became the heavyweight champion of the world when he beat Joe Frazier in 1973. But he lost the title the following year when Muhammad Ali beat Foreman in the famous “Rumble in the Jungle” fight in Zaire.

Foreman then gave up boxing and after a religious awakening, became an ordained minister in 1978. He began preaching in Houston, later founding The Church of the Lord Jesus Christ in 1980.

The middle-aged fighter returned to the ring after a 10-year absence and in 1994 pulled off one of the most spectacular knockouts in boxing history, flooring Moorer — 19 years his junior — with a surgical right hand to claim Moorer’s two heavyweight belts.

Foreman retired in 1997 with a 76-5 career record.

He then moved on to the next chapter in his life as a businessman, pitchman and occasional actor.

He became known to a new generation as the face of the George Foreman Grill. The simple cooking machine sold more than 100 million units and brought him more wealth than boxing. A biographical movie based on his life was released in 2023.

“Of all the traits that I could mention, his faith, his family, his boxing career, his business career, the one that stands out to me as a friend of George Foreman, he never forgot where he came from,” said Houston Mayor John Whitmire.

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George Foreman IV stands with his brothers as he says the eulogy for his father during a memorial service for Olympic and world champion boxer and minister George Foreman at Wortham Theater Center in Houston, Monday, April 14, 2025. (Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle via AP)

A mourner looks through photos in a program during a memorial service for Olympic and world champion boxer and minister George Foreman at Wortham Theater Center in Houston, Monday, April 14, 2025. (Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle via AP)

The University of Houston Choir sings "If I Can Help Somebody" during a memorial service for Olympic and world champion boxer and minister George Foreman at Wortham Theater Center in Houston, Monday, April 14, 2025. (Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle via AP)

Dana Clark Green sings "Precious Lord" during a memorial service for Olympic and world champion boxer and minister George Foreman at Wortham Theater Center in Houston, Monday, April 14, 2025. (Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle via AP)

Michael Moorer, former world champion boxer shakes hands with George Foreman IV as he gets up to speak about the boxing career of Olympic and world champion boxer and minister George Foreman at Wortham Theater Center in Houston, Monday, April 14, 2025. (Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle via AP)

George Foreman IV, right embraces his brothers as they leave the stage following the eulogy for their father during a memorial service for Olympic and world champion boxer and minister George Foreman at Wortham Theater Center in Houston, Monday, April 14, 2025. (Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle via AP)

George Foreman IV, center, stands with his brothers as he delivers the eulogy for his father during a memorial service for Olympic and world champion boxer and minister George Foreman at Wortham Theater Center in Houston, Monday, April 14, 2025. (Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle via AP)

A photo of George Foreman sitting in the corner of a boxing ring is shown during a tribute video honoring Olympic and world champion boxer and minister Foreman during his memorial service at Wortham Theater Center in Houston, Monday, April 14, 2025. (Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle via AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.

West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.

Decisions are expected by early summer.

President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.

Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.

“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”

She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.

Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.

She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.

Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.

“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.

Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.

The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.

About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.

"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”

But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.

“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”

Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”

“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.

One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.

Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”

The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.

The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.

The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.

The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.

If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.

“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)