I have friends who tell me in his prime he is the best ever.

I'm like, Come on, Sugar Ray Robinson, like all I know is when George Foreman was in his prime, that dude was the best I've ever seen.

And here he is, ladies and gentlemen.

Maybe the most intimidating champion in the history of boxing.

Sonny Liston, Mike Tyson or George Foreman, who joins us on the shell Pennzoil Performance line.

Big George.

Thanks for joining the show.

I'm happy to be with you, my friend, as always.

So this is the 46th anniversary of the rumble in the jungle on by my producer Raj tells me George has been saying he was robbed.

Is that true?

Uh, whenever you lose, you better say you were Rob.

Otherwise you won't even want to come back.

That was a tough fight at a tough time and hard to swallow.

Did you?

Did you?

But someone said that you've been saying you've been You slipped because the ring was wet.

But it looked like Ali hit you right on the bus with the right hand.

What happened?

Yes.

Someone had put some ice and banana and, uh, butter everything.

When everything tonight because I tried to break my fall, I kept slipping.

George, you lost that night to the greatest champion.

The greatest like athlete in the history of the world, basically, is basically by acclamation right on one of his greatest nights, under difficult circumstances in the heat with loose ropes.

All that stuff is true.

And you lost, um, one other fight to Jimmy Young, also under very difficult circumstances.

Retired from boxing, come back after a 10 year retirement when the heavyweight championship off the world, and then go on to make hundreds of million selling a grill.

And yet this still seems like the biggest moment of your career, even though it was a loss, was it?

I think it's one of the biggest moments I've had in boxing, period.

I was so far and for so long away from home.

I wanted that fight to get over.

But I thought it would be the easiest fight I had your champion.

And you're looking for easy, sweet pickings.

You.

I didn't expect the tough fight out out of Mohammed Ali, so it was embarrassing.

Do you humanizing the heat.

All of that was just an excuse.

I lost it hurt.

It hurt.

But then I've gone on to do things that make me wish I was back in that same same 25 year old guy in Africa enjoying that place.

I don't ever want to think about it as a bad thing.

It was wonderful to be, Oh, to be young at heart.

I'd like to see that Frank Sinatra whenever I see that fight, George, you you want an Olympic gold medal?

You were 40 you know, with 37 knockouts.

Mohammed Ali had lost his first fight to Joe Frazier.

The fight of the century in a great fight.

Andi avenged the loss in a tough decision, and he'd lost to Ken Norton, had broken his jaw and barely beaten Norton in a rematch that could have gone either way.

You fought Norton and Frazier and knocked him out in two rounds apiece.

So, of course, going into that fight is a 5 to 1 favorite.

You must have thought, as you said, easy pickings.

At what moment did you realize?

Wait a minute.

This old man ain't going away.

It was about the fourth round.

I hit this guy and I hit him pretty good and I thought I had him weakened and he started leaning on me, leaning on me.

I said He's ready to fall.

And then he whispered in my ear that all you got, George, I knew then this'll was not the fight.

I didn't anticipate it at all.

I had no expectation to hear him say that to me.

And at that time of the fight, it got pretty scary.

Then George George, When people talk about the all time greats, look in your first career as champion you were.

Except for the Ali fight, you looked like the most unbeatable fighter ever.

But you did get counted out in your second in the rumble of jungle.

In your second career, you were bigger and older and fatter and slower could still punch.

But you had a kind of resolve in your second career.

You went 12 rounds with a prime Holyfield.

You knocked out more for the championship.

Even big, young, strong heavyweights.

They finally gave Shannon Briggs a decision over here, which I thought you won.

But he didn't knock you out.

It was a slugfest.

If you do, I sometimes think if George Foreman could combine his first career when he's 25 invincible with his second career when he had that internal intestinal fortitude, maybe you are talking about the greatest fighter ever.

Do you sometimes think that if on Lee I was the kind of man I became in my second career when I was still young, what I could have done?

That's a lot of thinking.

I try never to think that are hard about anything but this subtle had this plan when I came back to box and he said, Look, all of these good boxers around they got the left jab, footwork.

They move, spin, turn.

He said.

You get out there and jump on them.

Don't even reach back.

Don't even think about Farmer Defining yourself as a boxer just knocked them out.

They were not prepared for it, so I went through the ranks knocking everybody out because they wanted to box.

All you have to do is fight him.

So, uh, one of coming back the second time, it was a different crop of fighters.

They all were pretty good, and I couldn't take the same style again.

So I had to change with the times.

I needed both styles, uh, in different and different times, so to speak.

Yeah, but what what a chin what heart you displayed in your second career against all odds going the distance with Holyfield in a great fight.

Georgia always love talking to you.

And if there's any last words before we say goodbye, we'll always remember.

Everybody should remember that, especially with sports guys.

One victory does not define anyone, and a defeat does not mean that's the end of that's the end of someone.

Keep looking, keep pulling and keep praying for the other guy.

The great George Foreman.

Ladies and gentlemen, who's come back toe win the heavyweight title 20 years after he lost it is, to my mind the most significant single accomplishment I've ever witnessed in sports.

One of the greatest fighters of all time, George Foreman, E.