On the box is a picture of a cuddly-looking, joyful man. He has a round face, a bald head, a high-wattage smile. He's smartly dressed in a shirt and tie, slacks and an apron. He's standing behind his product, which is grilling some meaty fish and asparagus.

He used to waylay people for a living. The lucky ones were merely left to bleed. The others were hit so hard they forgot what year it was.

	There he is, the grilling champion of the world, George Foreman!

Those two personalities added together equal one Hall of Fame boxer named George Foreman, a thunderous punchman turned virtuoso pitchman through his work as a preacher man.

The two-time heavyweight world champion -- now known more for his line of grilling machines than his boxing acumen -- on Sunday will be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, N.Y., along with welterweight king Curtis Cokes, junior welterweight champ Nicolino Locche, three-division champ Mike McCallum, journalist Jack Fiske and author Budd Schulberg.

Ten others will be inducted posthumously: Fred Apostoli in the modern category; Battling Battalino, Louis Kaplan, Tom Sharkey and Jess Willard in the old-timer category; Caleb Baldwin and Joe Goss in the pioneer category; and promoter Dan Duva, booking agent Dewey Fragetta and manager Al Weill in the non-participant category.

Foreman clearly will be the most distinguished member of the 2003 class. He won the Olympic gold medal in 1968, waving little U.S. flags when his fellow black teammates were raising clenched fists. Then he stormed his way to the title by smoking Joe Frazier.

But Foreman's second life is what made him a household name -- literally.

"He became a great pitchman for George Foreman's grill … not the George Foreman Grill, but his 'face' grill," said Larry Merchant, who is an HBO color commentator along with Foreman.

Foreman recorded one of the most stunning upsets in sports history when, at the age of 45, he knocked out undefeated WBA and IBF champ Michael Moorer with one punch.

Foremania exploded. He capitalized on his emerging celebrity by agreeing to endorse a little-known indoor grill that would soon explode in popularity right along with him. Over 40 million grills have been purchased around the world, making Foreman nearly $150 million in the past four years alone.

More women might know Foreman for his grills than men know him for his boxing skills. An eBay search for George Foreman on Tuesday returned 286 items, only 73 of which were listed under the heading of sports.

"You'd have to be past your mid-life crisis to remember George is a fighter," said Merchant, who as a columnist for the New York Post and Philadelphia Daily News covered many of Foreman's fights.

"He learned how to sell himself. Instead of trying to be intimidating he turns every skeptical question into a smile, and he'll laugh with you. He said the reason for his comeback was that he was doing it for all the old people to show that life's not over, blah, blah, blah. He used it as a sales tool.

"I'm not saying that some of it wasn't an act, but it had to come from some sort of internal transformation."

Today, Foreman charms the world with his self-effacing humor and graciousness.

The first time he was heavyweight champion, however, he was a surly bastard who got booed when he won.

"That George Foreman was a miserable, hateful young man," said ESPN2 fight analyst Scott LeDoux, whom Foreman dismantled in 1976. "He had a chip on shoulder and he didn't care who you were, you were going to pay a price. He was angry at the world."

	Foreman, in his second boxing career and much heavier, ended up a champ again.

Foreman obliterated his first 40 opponents, beating all but three by knockout. He dropped Frazier six times in two rounds, made quick work of Ken Norton and crumpled steel-jawed George Chuvalo.

"He had an aura based on what he did to Frazier, an air of invincibility," Merchant said. "He looked like the kind of heavyweight champ who will march through anybody and annihilate them."

Then came Zaire. Foreman was favored to beat Muhammad Ali in their colossal "Rumble in the Jungle" showdown in 1974.

People spoke of Ali before the fight as if he were about to die.

"Maybe he can pull off a miracle," said Ali's long-time muse, Howard Cosell. "But against George Foreman, so young, so strong, so fearless? Against George Foreman who does away with his opponents one after the other in less than three rounds? It's hard for me to conjure with that."

In covering the fight, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Norman Mailer was astonished at the absolute power Foreman displayed in gym workouts.

"Foreman hitting the heavy bag is one of the more prodigious sights I've had in my life," Mailer said in "When We Were Kings," a spectacular 1997 documentary about the fight. "Of all the people I've seen hitting the heavy bag, including Sonny Liston, no one ever hit it the way Foreman did. At the end of hitting the heavy bag there would be a huge dent [in it] about the size of a small watermelon."

Foreman was equally as intimidating in conversation.

"George Foreman was a phenomenon," Mailer said. "He was almost like a physical golem. He almost never said anything, but when he did it was arresting. You never quite knew what he was talking about. It might be deep. It might be non-responsive.

"He was negritude. He was this huge, black forest."

Ali chopped down the forest in one of the most memorable fight sequences ever. Ali had executed a brilliant strategy of leaning deep into the ropes to absorb shot after shot and just to let his ferocious foe punch himself tired. In the eighth round, Ali felled Foreman with an unexpected, blinding flurry.

Foreman seemed destined to be forever remembered as the poor sap who got rope-a-doped. He followed his demoralizing loss with five straight victories, including another Frazier knockout.

But a transformation occurred in the dressing room after Foreman lost to Jimmy Young. The pedestrian contender floored Foreman in the final round to earn a decision. The former champ, bleeding and battered like so many of his past opponents, had an out-of-body experience and proclaimed he had found Jesus Christ.

Foreman retired, shook his surly bonds and became an ordained minister at the First Church of the Lord Jesus Christ in his hometown of Houston.

	All-Time Heavyweight Pound for pound list
	Tim Graham's top 10: 1. Muhammad Ali 2. Joe Louis 3. Lennox Lewis 4. Jack Johnson 5. George Foreman 6. Rocky Marciano 7. Joe Frazier 8. John L. Sullivan 9. Larry Holmes 10. Gene Tunney

He went from glowering to glowing just like that.

But Foreman, 10 years after his religious awakening, needed to box again. He was at the laughable age of 38 and he weighed more than 315 pounds.

Why did he feel compelled to do it?

"He wasn't broke," veteran boxing publicist and longtime friend Bill Caplan recalled. "But he was preaching at his church and a woman came up to him and said 'George, I got a teenage son who's running with a bad crowd. Please teach him how to box so he can get off the streets.' George said 'I don't do that anymore. Have him come to church.'

"A very short time later the kid was in on a liquor store robbery and the clerk got shot. When George heard about that he felt so sorry that he didn't help when he was asked. So he opened a youth center and decided to teach kids how to box.

"He knew he had come back to finance the youth center."

If not for the George Foreman Youth and Community Center, one of the greatest sports stories never would have happened.

Caplan was the ring announcer for Foreman's return bout against Steve Zouski in Sacramento's Arco Arena.

"I started to introduce George, you know, saying '... And in this corner the former Olympic gold medallist and former undefeated heavyweight champion of the world,'' Caplan recalled. "I got the most eerie feeling that I was in a time warp, that I had gone back 10 years."

Not everyone felt that way at first. Foreman was ridiculed for coming back. He was viewed as a sideshow of Butterbean proportions.

Yet Foreman kept winning and continued to generate more and more publicity. He was a featured guest on talk shows, regaling audiences with his previously unnoticed sense of humor. He ate platters of cheeseburgers to make fun of his weight. He talked about his five sons all named George.

It was a wonderful feel-good story that enthralled folks who never would have considered themselves boxing fans.

He won the first 24 fights of his comeback, whacking pugs like Tom Trimm, Guido Trane and Bobby Hitz. But he also beat notable names Bert Cooper and Gerry Cooney. It was enough to get Foreman a shot at Evander Holyfield for the undisputed title.

Foreman took Holyfield the distance, but lost a 12-round unanimous decision. Still, Foreman plodded onward. A loss to Tommy Morrison four fights later proved to be a blessing in disguise.

Moorer felt Foreman was an easy mark and agreed to give the old man one more chance.

Foreman's jolting victory cemented his boxing legacy. In the process, he became a pioneer for the over-40 athlete.

Foreman was viewed as an anomaly when he won the title. Then Nolan Ryan came along and pitched into his 40s. Now there are fortysomethings all over the sports world.

Merchant doesn't think Foreman would warrant induction into the Hall of Fame based solely on the first part of his career.

"I do think that his comeback made him one of the very special heavyweights,'' Merchant said.

Foreman appears to be retired for good now. He still preaches Wednesday nights, Saturday nights and Sundays except for weeks he is working for HBO.

"He gets a little thing now where he sees this young crop of heavyweight and he wants to do it again," Caplan said. "But he goes home and his wife tells him he's crazy and to 'Go take out the garbage.'"

Tim Graham covers boxing for The Buffalo News and The Ring Magazine.