In 1999 the deprived area of Southill in Limerick was boosted by a visit from the former World heavyweight boxing champion George Foreman.
Six years previously, Foreman astonished the boxing world by winning the world title at the age of 45, knocking out Michael Moorer in the 10th round. He defended his title twice before retiring at the age of 48 in 1997.
He arrived in Limerick with his friend George Kemble, the Boston journalist and Irish Times sports columnist.
Their host, Father Joe Young, chairman of the local boxing club who first suggested the visit nine years earlier, said: “Every man, woman and child is here today to honour George. It is a milestone in the history of the community that has been devastated in so many different ways, mainly by unemployment.”
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Foreman told the assembled young people to “get high on life not on drugs. Clean up your lives as I did. I myself came from the impossible and have dedicated my life to physical fitness. From a once hopeless position I have found it possible to reach happiness, become rich and famous and somebody my dear mother was proud of.”
[ George Foreman: A life in picturesOpens in new window ]
People across the world have been paying tribute to Foreman, who died suddenly on Friday at the age of 76. Foreman was born in Texas. At the age of 19 he won the heavyweight boxing gold at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City.
He won 37 successive fights and was the hot favourite to beat Muhammad Ali in boxing’s most celebrated fight: the ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ in Kinshasa, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, in 1974. But he was beaten in the eighth round.
He retired from boxing, took up preaching and then made a comeback 13 years later.
Former World boxing champion Barry McGuigan described Foreman as an “absolute gentleman” who was an “unbelievable human being” yet a “beast in the ring”.
[ George Foreman: Heavyweight boxing champion dies aged 76Opens in new window ]
The Monaghan man told Newstalk he believes Foreman’s record of winning a world title at the age of 45 will never be beaten in the sport.
Former football manager Roddy Collins, the brother of the world Irish boxing champion Steve Collins, said he found Foreman to be “very humble” when he met him.
“His hand was the biggest hands I had ever seen. He was 6ft 4ins, but he looked about 6ft 10ins. The way he won the title so late in his life was unbelievable,” Mr Collins told Newstalk’s Anton Savage programme.
