When Bob Foster battled Pierre Fourie in South Africa

By Jamie Rebner

ALTHOUGH Bob Foster is undoubtedly considered one of the greatest light-heavyweight champions of all time, he wasn’t a household name during his prime years. His championship reign lasted from 1968 to 1974 and included 14 successful title defenses. Yet Foster is best known for his two crushing defeats at the hands of heavyweight kingpins Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali. 

One of the reasons why Foster didn’t achieve mainstream fame as champion is because the era of light-heavyweights he ruled over featured few recognizable names. Clearly, Andy Kendall, Roger Rouse, Mark Tessman, and Ray Anderson are anything but a murderer’s row of contenders. 

Had Foster’s career started a bit later, his peak would have coincided with a golden age of the light-heavyweight division that took place from 1976-1983. Those years featured countless wars of attrition waged by the likes of Victor Galindez, Matthew Saad Muhammad, Michael Spinks, Dwight Muhammad Qawi, and Marvin Johnson, to name a few. 

Unfortunately for Foster, he missed out on that era, and despite his light-heavyweight dominance, he wasn’t a major box-office draw. That is why it was surprising to see how much attention he received ahead of his 13th title defense against homegrown favorite Pierre Fourie in Johannesburg, South Africa. 

That bout took place on December 1, 1973, at the Rand Stadium in front of a segregated crowd of 40,000 people. It was historic because it was the first fight between Black and white fighters in South Africa in almost twenty years. Although fights between Black and white competitors are ubiquitous today, they were outlawed in South Africa starting in 1954 as part of Regulation 15 of the Boxing Control Act. 

That law was part of a greater social system of apartheid, or ‘apartness’ in Afrikaans, which, according to South African History Online, was a system of institutionalized racial oppression that was introduced in South Africa in 1948. Apartheid was a social system supported by the National Party government, which “severely disadvantaged the majority of the population, simply because they did not share the skin colour of the rulers. Many were kept just above destitution because they were ‘non-white’.” 

Although segregation existed before the National Party came to power, apartheid cemented segregation as part of the law. 

So, how did Foster-Fourie II come to be? 

To answer that question, we have to travel back four months before the monumental clash in South Africa, when Foster and Fourie battled for the first time in Foster’s hometown of Albuquerque. 

Fourie was confident going into his first title shot, pointing to Foster’s age and inactivity as reasons for optimism. “Foster’s been 34 years old now for the last four years. He hasn’t had a fight in nine months. No one will know what that does to a man, not even him. You can’t tell if your reflexes are gone by sparring. But he’ll find out Tuesday. The layoff is not going to help him any. I know the crowd will be against me, but I’ve fought before where the crowd was against me. But I won’t freeze. I don’t freeze for any fighter.” 

There was some controversy at the weigh-in before the fight, with Foster claiming that Fourie had told him, “Tonight’s the night, boy.” Foster took offense to that remark as racist and vowed to knock Fourie out for his verbal transgression. However, Fourie was confused when Foster thought he called him boy, saying that he “wouldn’t insult a champion.” Alan Toweel, Fourie’s manager and trainer, maintained that his fighter had greeted the champion and said, ‘Tonight’s the night, Bobby,” and that Foster had misunderstood the South African accent. However, Foster didn’t believe that explanation and was determined to finish Fourie before the final bell. 

But Foster couldn’t end Fourie’s night early, and the South African became only the second title challenger to last the distance with Foster. However, it was strictly a moral victory for Fourie as he lost a landslide decision on all three scorecards, which delighted the 10,200 pro-Foster fans in attendance. 

After the fight, Fourie expressed disappointment with his performance while being complementary of Foster in the same breath: “I wanted to work in close, but he smothered my attack. I couldn’t get inside. I would like a rematch. I don’t think it is a disgrace losing to the champ. He’s the best light-heavyweight champ of all time.”

Fourie’s request for a rematch was wishful thinking, given that the fight wasn’t close. But as is often the case in boxing, money talks. And there was money to be made in a rematch in South Africa. However, for that to take place, the country’s apartheid laws would need to be circumvented, which required the assistance of South African Sports Minister Piet Koornhof. 

A few weeks after the first fight, Koornhof confidently stated to the Albuquerque Journal that the return match would be possible in South Africa if he and his department consulted with the National Board of Boxing Control. 

Promoter Maurice Toweel, brother of Fourie’s trainer Alan Toweel, was able to get in Koornhof’s ear and obtain special government permission to relax apartheid in sports so that the fight could take place. All that was left was for Foster and his team to be declared “honorary whites” while in South Africa, as ridiculous as that sounds. 

Before leaving for South Africa, Foster said, “Two hundred thousand dollars. That’s pretty good for a night’s work—and I’m not even fighting anybody. Yeah, my mother advised me not to go. She’s afraid I’ll lose my title. That’s the least of my worries. I’m expecting some harassment, but I hope it’s not as bad as what I’ve heard about the way things are down there. It could be a milestone for Blacks of South Africa as far as breaking the barrier. Maybe we can break some kind of barriers where Blacks would also be able to attend the fight. I hope so because I am taking my wife with me.”

Although Foster was motivated to fight in South Africa to engender equality for its Black population, he was even more motivated by a career-high payday. In a 2005 article in the Albuquerque Journal by Scott Fontaine, Foster said he had refused the initial offer of $150,000 and only accepted the bout when he was offered an extra $50,000 to sweeten the deal. So clearly, money was the primary factor. 

Regardless of his motivation, what was abundantly clear upon Foster’s arrival was that his presence was highly valued by South Africa’s Black population, who came out in droves to see him. Albuquerque boxing promoter Paul Chavez, who put on the first fight between Foster and Fourie, was in Johannesburg as a member of Foster’s team and witnessed the hysteria firsthand.

“Bobby [Foster] works in a YMCA gym in the Mayfair section of Johannesburg. It’s jammed every day—three or four hundred people pack the gym to see Bobby train. The people even wait for Bobby to shower and then greet him when he comes out. The people are fantastic—they even wait by Bobby’s car and reach out just to touch it when he leaves the gym. The officials here don’t even like for Bobby to leave the hotel because he might create a riot in the streets. The people here are crazy about him. They wait outside his hotel every day just to catch a glimpse of him.” 

Besides his regular training regimen, Foster participated in numerous advertising campaigns to promote beer, cigarettes, and sports clothes. From those endorsement earnings, he donated $50,000 to a charity that helped Black kids pay for school. That shows that Foster did make an effort to help the cruelly disadvantaged majority population.

When it finally came time to fight, it was an anti-climactic event. Although Fourie was more competitive, he lost on all three scorecards, albeit by closer margins. It was a bout that Foster again dominated with his left jab. As written in the Albuquerque Journal, “Foster never looked worried and in the second half of the fight, he controlled the pattern by starting each round strongly with a flurry of spearing lefts and then waiting for Fourie to come to him.” 

Despite being in control, Foster was far from ecstatic regarding his performance: “I just couldn’t get a chance to settle down. His trouble is he could be a great middleweight. He never hurt me. But I couldn’t really get going.”

In the end, Foster accomplished what he set out to when he came to Johannesburg, which was to defend his title and cash a sizeable cheque. 

Considering the totality of both Foster and Fourie’s careers, it is fair to say that their second fight was the most historically significant bout that either participated in. But is it accurate to label Foster a paragon of racial equality because he fought Fourie in South Africa? 

I don’t think we can go that far because money was his primary motivator. Yet, as South African boxing expert Ron Jackson stated in Fontaine’s 2005 article, “Fourie’s fight with Foster in Johannesburg was really a test run for integrated sport. It is not an exaggeration to say that the clock would have turned back years had it resulted in racial disturbances that had been predicted at the time.” 

Thankfully, there were no racial incidents related to the fight, but progress was slow and it took another four years until interracial boxing was fully legalized in South Africa.

Looking back on it more than 40 years later, Foster-Fourie II did pave the way for equal opportunity for Black boxers in South Africa. For any social progress to occur, a landmark event was needed to break the barrier. 

And in the case of Black and white boxers sharing the professional prize ring, the Foster-Fourie rematch was that event. It took a popular, homegrown contender challenging a venerated, long-reigning champion for the country to finally see the two races united in the ring once again.