INTERVIEW - Yuri Foreman aiming to be rabbi and world champ
By Larry Fine
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Yuri Foreman has been working towards becoming a rabbi and a boxing champion and is closing in on both targets.
The 28-year-old, a native Belarussian and Brooklynite by way of Israel, is a year and a half from earning a degree in rabbinical studies and one fight away from his childhood dream of winning a world title.
On Saturday, Foreman (27-0) meets American Cornelius Bundrage (29-4) in an International Boxing Federation light middleweight eliminator in Atlantic City with the winner getting a title shot against Cory Spinks.
"I started as a kid back in Belarus in the former Soviet Union," Foreman told Reuters in an interview near Battery Park in Lower Manhattan. "I took it up to learn self defence because I had been bullied a couple of times."
He was 11 when his parents emigrated to Israel looking for a better life and four years later he resumed boxing.
"I have wanted to be world champion since 15. Now I'm coming very close and the next one is one step from my dream," said Foreman.
The desire to delve into Judaism came much later.
Foreman said he was not raised to be religious and his family's move to Israel was for economic reasons. Continued...
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