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Daughters' Day Freeda Foreman set to join ranks of fighting females
Posted: Saturday June 17, 2000 06:52 PM
LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Freeda Foreman, following her father into the ring despite his strong objections, and Maria Johansson, receiving her dad's blessings and advice, make their pro boxing debuts in separate bouts on Father's Day. Former heavyweight champion George Foreman was so determined to keep his daughter from fighting that he sent her a $15,000 check -- the amount of her purse for Sunday's bout -- not to fight. Freeda, 23, who quit her job with UPS in Greenville, S.C. to begin training in February, doesn't plan to cash the check. "How did you find out about that?" she said, referring to the check. "My father will kill me if he thinks I told anyone about that." Freeda, whose shares her middle name -- George -- with her father and seven of her nine siblings, remains extremely close to her father, although she wishes he could accept her desire to have a boxing career. George Foreman has said that he fought, took a cumulative beating over the years, so his daughter could have an education and not become a boxer. "I understand that he worries about me, knows what goes on in boxing and doesn't want me to get hurt," Freeda said. "I felt the same way about him when he was fighting. "But I have a poster of him in my room that says, 'Never give up on your dreams.' That's his motto. I want him to understand that this is my dream and I'm going after it. "It's all his fault. After all, I have his genes. What am I supposed to do with all my size and strength?" Freeda, who has a 4-year-old daughter, is scheduled to go four rounds against LaQuanda Landers of Milwaukee, who also is making her pro debut. Johansson, whose father, Ingemar, was a heavyweight champion during the late 1950s, faces Karrie Frye of LaPorte, Ind., who has a 4-1 record with four knockouts, at the Regent Las Vegas. The card features undefeated Hector Camacho Jr., son of the former lightweight and junior welterweight champion, against Manard Reed. As women's bouts on undercards become increasingly more common, Freeda and Maria join daughters of other fighters in the ring, including Laila Ali, Muhammad Ali's daughter; Jacquelyn Frazier-Lyde, Joe Frazier's daughter; and Irichelle Duran, Roberto Duran's daughter, who has yet to have her first fight. Johansson, a 34-year-old mother of two from Sweden, said her father doesn't want her to fight, but told her that, if she does, "Remember to keep you hands up and your head down." "He doesn't like it, but if I like it, he's happy," Johansson said. "I've seen all of his fights on videotape. He's my hero, so I suppose it's natural that I would want to be like him." Johansson, a teacher who also has been a bouncer at a bar in her home town, has been training longer than Foreman. The Swede looked considerably more polished as she and Foreman held brief workouts two days before their fights. "She's getting better and better," said Patrick Johansson, Maria's brother. "She's a very natural athlete, used to beat boys at a lot of sports." Freeda's only "fights" came as a youngster, she said, grinning again, when she tangled with her brothers and sisters over such issues as who got the top bunk or who got to sit in the front seat of the car. Her trainer, Larry Goossen, said she didn't have a clue about boxing when she began. "I had her in tears," Goossen said. "I didn't think she was going to make it. But she has made 100 percent progress. She has a lot of her dad in her." Neither George Foreman nor Ingemar Johansson will be at their daughters' first fights, Foreman by choice and Johansson because of business in Sweden.
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