BEHIND THE CURTAIN BEHIND THE CURTAIN BEHIND THE CURTAIN (23 page)

Oscar, known as the “Golden Boy,” would become boxing’s biggest attraction, winning ten world titles in six divisions over a sixteen-year career. In that time he had some great anecdotes about the life of a pugilist. Like most boxers, Oscar abstained from sex before every fight because he believed it was physically draining and, therefore, detrimental to a peak performance in the ring.

Jay loved teasing him about the challenges of being celibate while lying next to his beautiful wife, Millie Corretjer, sometimes resisting her charms for up to five months. Dr. Phil was once a fellow
Tonight Show
guest during one of these discussions. When Oscar asked him about the legitimacy of this boxing custom, Dr. Phil just laughed.

In 2007, I attended one of Oscar’s last big bouts, which he lost in a close, split decision to Floyd Mayweather. Naturally, I was rooting for Oscar, who I thought was the clear-cut winner. But after the fight I booked Floyd Mayweather to appear on Leno. After all, there’s only room for one champion in boxing.

One of Jay’s most beloved guests was the two-time heavyweight champion George Foreman
. George was also one of our funniest sports guests. I’ll never forget his best line: “I got ten kids. All the boys [five] are named George. When you’re a boxer, you gotta make preparations for memory loss.”

By the time he started showing up on
Leno
in 1992, most people were more familiar with him as the spokesman for the George Foreman Grill than as a boxer. The champ told Jay that when a business partner and friend suggested the idea of putting his name on a small, slanted grill, he wasn’t interested and quickly forgot about it. Then his wife, Mary, tried the grill and liked it because the grease rolled right off. She fixed him a burger and he loved it, but he never expected to make any money on the deal. George said he was just hoping to get sixteen free grills for family and friends. As it turned out, he made tens of millions of dollars by endorsing the product. Some estimates put the total amount at more than $200 million, far more than he ever made in the ring.

In 1997, George did a cooking segment—one of the show’s funniest—to display the wonders of The George Foreman Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine. He was also promoting a cookbook he had written, and that night he was planning to prepare mustard lemon chicken, one of the recipes in the book. Halfway through the demonstration, George forgot the ingredients, so he just started saying the
machine would “knock out the fat.” Jay “helped” by mixing in huge quantities of spices and seasonings willy-nilly. No matter: at the end of the segment, Jay pulled out a sample of the entrée that had been pre-cooked to perfection by a food stylist.

George frequently discussed his mixed feelings about retiring from boxing. At age forty-five, he had been the oldest man ever to hold the title heavyweight champion. At age fifty-five, he was planning to make yet another go of it, but Mary was adamantly opposed. George reasoned that when you’re more afraid of your wife outside the ring than the guys inside the ring, it’s time to quit.

Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman made his debut appearance on
The Tonight Show
in February 1993 following his team’s Super Bowl victory. He admitted he was overwhelmed by the experience, considering his record in his rookie season four years earlier was 0-11. He led his team to two more championships in his twelve-year career for the Cowboys, making many more
Tonight Show
stops along the way. Never one to get emotional, Troy let down his guard when he appeared with Jay in 2001 to talk about his decision to step down from the game he had been playing since he was seven years old. He said he would miss the camaraderie in the locker room after a big game and would never be able to duplicate the highs and lows he felt while playing football. In an attempt to lighten the mood, Jay asked Troy to name the first football team he played for. The question caused Troy to pause and smile for the first and only time during his interview. “It was the Henrietta Fighting Hens,” he said.

Standing at seven foot one and weighing 325 pounds, Shaquille O’Neal was the largest, most imposing player in the NBA during his career. He was also a daredevil and would regale Jay with tales about skydiving, bungee jumping, and riding motorcycles. Shaq wasn’t completely fearless, though. One day he made an appearance with an animal act that came on right after him. When the animal ambassador showed up with a large, scary-looking snake, Shaq’s eyes got as big as saucers and he stood up and bolted from the stage. It wasn’t an act.

To me, our all-time dopiest sports moment involved an all-American swimmer, who was an Olympic contender. But
that’s not why we booked Matt Zelen
in 1998. We brought him on because he had recently lost his swimsuit while competing in a meet—and had gotten a lot of exposure in the press.

The meet was a major invitational hosted by his school, St. John’s University in Minnesota. Nine schools participated and six hundred people attended. The crowd made the twenty-one-year-old competitor nervous about the race, and he forgot to tie his suit. The moment he hit the water, he felt it slip to his knees, then to his ankles, where it was causing drag. So he kicked it off, which meant he was buck naked for most of the 100-meter butterfly swim.

Now Matt had a dilemma: It was a big meet. His parents and his grandmother were there, and he was off to a good start. Should he stop or continue? He decided to go for it. He could hear the crowd cheering louder and louder as he passed his suit floating in the water three times, once with every lap. When the heat was over, he had won by over two seconds but was disqualified for violating the uniform code.

Matt later checked with his grandmother, who said she was okay with his decision to keep going. “I promised her if I had been swimming the backstroke, I would have quit right away,” he told Jay.