timeThirty-five years ago, I was sitting on the couch in my living room watching a tape of Jungle Fight with Muhammad Ali next to me. I was researching the book that would eventually become “Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times.” Over the course of a year, Ali and I watched tape of every one of his games.
Time plays all kinds of interesting tricks. On that afternoon in 1989, Ali v George Foreman seemed like a long time ago.
This Wednesday will mark the 50th anniversary of Ali Foreman’s birth. There are other sporting events that capture the world’s imagination. But no sporting event in history has brought as much joy around the world as Mohammed’s predawn victory in Kinshasa, Zaire, on October 30, 1974. The prince was unfairly deprived of his crown and he fought back against his rivals. Let’s put that night into perspective.
Ali was a great fighter and probably the most beautiful fighting machine of all time. His victory over Sonny Liston was legendary. In the two years following these victories, he dominated a considerable number of heavyweight divisions, rarely losing a fight.
But Ali was more than just a fighter. He is a beacon of hope for oppressed people around the world. Every time he looked in the mirror and dressed himself up, “I’m so beautiful,” he was really saying “black is beautiful,” at a time when many people of color thought white people were better. When he refused to join the U.S. Army at the height of the Vietnam War, he held to the principle that war is wrong unless there is a good reason to kill.
It’s hard to understand the shockwaves Muhammad sent through society in the 1960s unless you lived those years firsthand, day-by-day.
“To say Ali was the original creator is to understate the truth,” Dave Kindred later wrote. “He is a universe. He is the first, the last and the only. Whatever He does, He does. Only He can do it.
But as the 1960s progressed, forces beyond Ali’s control began to weigh on him. He was indicted, tried and convicted for refusing to enlist and faced five years in prison. He was stripped of his title and unable to compete for more than three years. Richard Nixon, who mocked everything Ali stood for, ascended to the presidency. When Ali was finally allowed to return to the ring, his legs were no longer young. He lost to Joe Frazier and then to Ken Norton.
Ali took revenge on Frazier and Norton. But by then, a new king had been crowned. George Foreman’s professional record is 40 wins and 0 losses, with 37 knockouts. His last eight fights have all ended in the first or second round. His victims in these fights included Frazier and Norton. This is the mountain Ali must climb.
“My opponent doesn’t worry about losing,” Foreman boasted. “They worry about getting hurt.” This view was echoed by Dave Anderson of the New York Times, who wrote: “George Foreman may be the heaviest boxer in the history of heavyweight boxing. In a few rounds, Ali might Able to escape the power of Foreman’s sledgehammer, but unable to escape within 15 rounds, sooner or later the champion would land a punch with a sledgehammer and Muhammad Ali would be eliminated for the first time in his career. Outside. This could happen in the first round.
The game started in the early hours of the morning to accommodate closed-circuit spectators in the United States. Had Muhammad fought Foreman in Las Vegas or New York, the mystique of that night and Ali’s legend wouldn’t have been the same. Foreman is a three-to-one betting favorite. Sixty thousand fans packed the Stade du 20 Mai (Stadium of May 20).
When the bell rang for the first round, heavy storm clouds were gathering overhead. But the night is touched by stardust.
In the first round, Ali tested Foreman from distance. Then, 30 seconds into the second period, he retreated to the ropes. Conventional wisdom holds that the ropes are the most fearsome boxer in the ring the opponent least wants to face. Ali’s horns were screaming at him to dance. But Muhammad remained there, determined to fight in a defensive stance, blocking some punches, leaning back against the ropes to avoid others and absorbing sledgehammer blows as they landed on the ground. This is how he fought for the next six rounds. But Ali didn’t just take a beating. He threw them away too. He fought hard and won three of the first four rounds. Then, in the fifth round, Foreman began landing thunderous right hands to Muhammad’s body. Ali looked tired. The end seemed near. But Muhammad rallied at the end of the round, survived rounds six and seven, and told Foreman at the start of round eight, “It’s my turn now.”
“I didn’t really plan what happened that night,” Ali told me as we watched the game together. “But when a boxer comes into the ring, he has to adapt to the conditions he’s faced with. Against George, it was slow. His legs were tired from dancing all night. George was too close. Cutting off the ring. It took me more energy to get away from him than he did to chase me. With 14 rounds left, I knew I couldn’t keep dancing. I would be tired, and George would catch me. So in between rounds, I decided to do what I did in training when I was tired. Let the young guys take charge and stop everything in a scientific way. Not everyone can do that but I think it takes a lot of skill. When I was full of energy, I was able to knock George down early in the fight and if he hit me too hard, I would start dancing again.
“So starting in the second round, I gave George what he thought he wanted. He hit me hard. A couple of times, he shook me really hard, especially with his right hand. But I blocked and ducked. Most of what he throws. Every round, his punches get slower and he does less damage when they land. And then I start talking to him, ‘Harder, show me something. It didn’t hurt. I thought you were going to be the bad guy. I was stuck, but he was stuck because by the sixth round, I knew his punches weren’t there. Not as violent as before anymore. Because of the way George fights, one punch at a time, his head doesn’t move, so it’s easy to hit him with counterattacks.
Later, when Foreman and I talked about that fight, he had similar memories.
“Before the fight, I thought I could knock him out easily,” George told me. “One round, two rounds. I was very confident. What I remember most about this fight is that I went out and hit Muhammad’s body with the hardest punch I’ve ever delivered to any opponent in the world. Anyone else would have collapsed. I could tell it hurt. Then he looked at me like, “I’m not going to let you hurt me.” “Honestly, that’s what I remember most about the fight. Everything else happened so fast. I was burned out. Muhammad started talking to me. I remember Angelo yelling in the corner, “Muhammad , don’t play with that fool. ” But Muhammad just kept playing. He later called it “the rope,” and it worked.
“You see, Muhammad’s antennae were built to guard against hard punches. With my style, my size, my tendency to punch — no matter how hard I hit, Muhammad had an instinct for every punch. Prepare, live through every punch, and wait for the next punch. There’s no doubt that I’m the one who throws the most punches. During the game I was thinking, ‘Hey, this guy wasn’t a champion before because someone bought him a title and he was good.
The eighth round is over.
“I knocked him out with one punch, and if I had knocked him down in the first round, he would have gotten up,” Ali told me. “But when I found him, he was too exhausted to pull himself together.”
Ten years after defeating Sonny Liston, and seven years after he was stripped of the title, Ali regained the world heavyweight championship.
“You’ll never know what this means to me,” Ali later said. “Now that I’ve won the championship again, every day is special. I wake up in the morning and no matter what the weather is, every day is sunny.
Of course, Foreman had mixed experience with the aftermath of this fight.
“There’s a grieving process when you lose someone like that,” George admitted years later. “When you become the heavyweight champion of the world, it’s not like you’ve lost a battle. You’ve lost a part of yourself. One day, you walk through the airport, heading to Africa, and everyone is afraid of you. And then, from Africa comes back and they pat you on the back. ‘You’ll be fine.’ I’ve never been so depressed in my life.
But a bond was formed. After Ali’s death, George recalled phone conversations he and Muhammad had when they were older. Many of these conversations center on religion.
“We agreed that good was good and bad was bad,” George recalled. “Most people, no matter what their religion is, or even if they don’t follow a specific religion, know the difference. It always brings me joy when I hear his voice. For us, There seems to be something greater than religion – a desire for love and belonging to each other, a sense of gratitude that we have each other.
Looking back on Zaire, Foreman observed, “I think Mohamed needed this victory more than I did at that moment.”
Ali agreed.
“The fight against Cleveland Williams was when I was at my best as a boxer,” Ali told me. “The biggest fight for the fans was against Joe Frazier in Manila. But the biggest fight for me was beating George Foreman and winning the world title again.
Ali provided a coda, “A lot of people have come up to me and told me they remember where they were when I beat up George Foreman. I remember where I was, too.
