My dad loved football, and my mom boxing. I enjoyed neither, preferring a life devoted to X-Men comic books and Little Debbie snack cakes. But she convinced me to watch a match: Buster Douglas’ underdog surprise knockout of undefeated heavyweight champ Mike Tyson in 1990. I was right-hooked.

She was a devout Muhammad Ali fan, the sparkling poet-slash-prizefighter whose dramatic 1974 rope-a-dope comeback against George Foreman in Zaire was a story she told over and over — Ali, the graceful strategist versus Foreman, the cocky powerhouse. 

So when Foreman came out of retirement in 1994, we ponied up for Pay-Per-View and watched 45-year-old George Foreman, a lumbering heap of a man, knock out 27-year-old Michael Moorer in the eighth round. My mom was a little older than Foreman at the time, and she relished an old dog’s victory. 

By this point, I was seeing boxing for what it was: lots of punching and irreversible brain damage. 

But I was charmed by Foreman’s affable, self-deprecating personality, which is why, a few years later, as he embarked on a second career as a pitchman, I bought a George Foreman Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine. I don’t remember buying it, but I did it for George.

One day, the cramped kitchen of the shoddy, one-bedroom Queens apartment I was living in during the late 1990s was empty, save for a broken toaster. The next, I had a George Foreman Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine — a sleek, nonstick indoor grilling appliance from the future — competing for space alongside that toaster.

Here’s the likeliest scenario: I was high and watching George Foreman smiling on my TV, telling me I could cook juicy chicken breasts without fat easily and quickly, all for three easy payments of $19.95. In the late Nineties, there were two primary strands of marijuana: There was rare and expensive kind bud, the strong stuff, and then there was what I smoked out of a sticky glass bowl. It was technically marijuana, but it could have been dried pizza parlor oregano, too. Still, the high it provided was a pleasant fog of forgetfulness that fell from the heavens.

FOREMAN’S LATE-NIGHT INFOMERCIALS were hypnotic, like so many of that time — cheerful pitchmen and women selling kitchen gadgets that made life easier or food healthier. The American dream is buying a set of steak knives on an installment plan at three in the morning. And Foreman was a natural at the job. I’m surprised I didn’t buy two (one for my bedside night table). George Foreman is the only salesman I was ever happy to make a little richer. He was so warm and adorable. How could I not buy a grill from Bloodsport Granddad?

I found Foreman relatable. He was like me in that I, too, liked to eat and should probably avoid ingesting mass quantities of French fries and nuggets. 

Foreman was dubbed “Big George” early in his career due to his imposing size: He was 6’3″ and weighed between 220 and 230 pounds. He packed on weight for his comeback, weighing in at 250. But by then he was a changed man, too. It wasn’t just bulk. Foreman had mellowed, matured, and found spirituality. He was no longer the aggressive, emotionless wrecking ball in the ring but a slow-moving bulldozer, humble and focused. Out of the ring, he was gentle. Witty. Bashful.

He was transformed by time and experience and capitalism into the perfect Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine sales force of nature — it’s as if the gods had sent him to earth to sell me a thing that cooks chicken, complete with sear marks.

The Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine has sold over 100 million units. The company that produces it, Spectrum Brands, couldn’t have found a better celebrity to partner with. I will always remember Foreman, who died last Friday at 76, as a two-time heavyweight champ. But if I had to quote him, I’d probably recite his famous George Foreman grill catchphrase: “It’s so good I put my name on it!”

He put his name on it. What an endorsement. 

Foreman wanted me to know that he cared deeply about weight loss, healthy cooking, and juicy chicken, like any good figurehead. But what he really cared about was the money — the man had 12 children from five marriages, and he had bills to pay. 

And Foreman’s Little Grill That Could made him even richer than he already was as a heavyweight champion. He cashed out with his partners in 1999, selling the business for approximately $137.5 million. Now that’s a knockout. 

DOES IT MATTER THAT FOREMAN had little to do with the development of his namesake contraption? No. The grill was the brainchild of Michael Boehm, an Illinois-based tinkerer, who designed the product’s various special features, and there weren’t that many. But I pretended, as did millions, that George had sat in some stainless-steel laboratory for hours perfecting a clunky, primarily plastic indoor grill that would help you lose weight. A grill that an average person could use. 

Part of the charm of the George Foreman Grill was its simplicity. There was no on or off button, for instance. You plugged it in, and a red light blinked on, and the grill was only ready when, counterintuitively, the red light blinked off. And how hot was the grill? No one knows for sure. Hotter than the surface of the sun? It’s a miracle the grill plates didn’t melt the plastic device. Boehm’s two big innovations were the floating hinge that allowed the grill to open wide like a python to accommodate all kinds of different cuts of meat. He also developed the grill’s biggest selling point: the slanted design, which let fats run off into a trough during cooking.

I do not know who invented the special plastic fork/spatula (forkula?) used to clean the grill of burnt bits, but that was an important part of the device, which was profoundly dishwasher unsafe. The George Foreman Grill is a monument to no-frills industrial design. They were not built to last, and I quickly learned man was not meant to live on chicken breasts alone. (Nor hot dogs. I ate a lot of grilled hot dogs.)

The 1990s saw an influx of “fat-free” foods, from cheeses to yogurt, cookies, and frozen dinners. Foreman was at the forefront of this trend, promising food that was juicy but not greasy. Fat was the enemy, a civilizational problem, and only George Foreman had the solution.

The infomercials sold convenience and health with a little fear-mongering about fat. Foreman was usually joined by a friendly host, a real housewife-next-door type whose job was to repeat how the grill locks in juices, plus an expert like Cherie Calbom, nutritionist and co-author of George Foreman’s Knock-Out-the-Fat Barbecue and Grilling Cookbook. She was there to offer expertise and warn consumers about the perils of grease and fat. Did you know George Foreman’s Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grill is the only grill that lets you drain off grease and fat because it sits on an angle?  

The grill could handle any protein, but I was living through Peak Chicken Breast. The chicken breast is the plain oatmeal of the affordable protein world. It is basic. You can season it, but it lacks the soulfulness of, say, a drumstick or thigh. A chicken breast is relatively easy to cook; you can easily bake it at 425 or so in the oven or a skillet on medium heat. You don’t need a George Foreman Lean Machine Fat-Reducing Machine to cook a chicken breast, but it’s fun. The fat, you see, dribbles down the grill into a special tray. There was a two-to-three-week period where I ate chicken breasts like it was my religion. I knew that protein was important post-workout, and I would swear to myself that, one day, I’d join a gym. 

IT IS QUAINT TO RECALL a more innocent time before sexy Instagram and TikTok influencers were able to sell crash diets and taut physiques via pocket supercomputer, back when my life was ruled by a single screen in my living room. We live in an age of weight-loss miracle drugs, but once upon a time, there were far fewer ways to shed pounds. 

I was always chubby — a high school gym teacher once tried to console me by suggesting I was merely born “big” — so I’ve always been vulnerable to what I’ll call “the easy way.” For instance, I gave up sugar cereals for a time. I ate salads. There was a popular diet based on consuming nothing but cabbage soup in the Nineties. I tried it. Weight Watchers was a nonstarter: Strict and unimaginative gender norms were alive and well, and Weight Watchers was for the ladies (calories, of course, have no gender. Forgive me.).

But George Foreman’s grill straddled two weight-loss trends: the fat-free movement, where fats and oils and flavor were considered toxic substances, and the growing Atkins all-protein diet. The premise of the Atkins diet — and other, more recently popular variations like Keto and Paleo — was simple: Deprive your body of carbs and sugars, eat nothing but protein, and then trigger the biological process known as ketosis, which is basically your body eating itself. 

Foreman’s promises were more potent than his namesake grill’s practical applications. It turns out, I did not have the discipline to patiently cook my chicken breasts for five to eight minutes per side, every day of the week, nor did I have the foresight to buy chicken breasts from the grocery store, which is why I ate so much cereal during those years — boxes of Honeycomb and Golden Grahams. My path to Atkins protein purity — and a new, lithe body — was frequently sabotaged by my growing addiction to sugary cereals, weed, and booze. One of the many gifts of sobriety is realizing that ordering a Papa John’s pepperoni pizza with extra garlic sauce at two in the morning is not only unhealthy but a classic red flag.

My George Foreman Grill disappeared from my life much the way it appeared: One day, it was gone, replaced by a clamshell hot sandwich maker. I think I made two grilled cheeses with that thing before a girlfriend threw it away.