IT was the greatest hour of
the 20th century’s greatest sportsman, that ended with the slaying of possibly
the most devastating and feared heavyweight in history and that proved the making of
the most recognisable promoter the boxing world has seen.
41 years ago today, 60,000 gathered at the Stade du 20 Mai in the
heart of the Kinshasa jungle, in the recently renamed dictatorship of
Zaire, to witness The Rumble in the Jungle, a happening that – even by
boxing’s high standards – proved as memorable as it did surreal.
It was said there was nothing the challenger Muhammad Ali could do to
stop the champion George Foreman, whose punching power and air of
invincibility intimidated as much as the small death he had inflicted on
Joe Frazier when winning the WBC and WBA titles three fights earlier,
ruthlessly punching through him in the same way he had 37 others (he was
then 40-0), including Frazier and Ken Norton, previously.
Instead “The Greatest”, leaning on the ring’s loose ropes throughout
and shunning the footwork for which he was partly famed, incredibly and
fearlessly took the raging Foreman’s finest shots to both face and body –
a tactic so daring some feared a fix – until an eighth-round opening
was presented by the champion’s slackening, inelegant, yet still
imposing figure.
Throwing a life-changing right hand, the challenger sent the champion
crashing to the canvas where, overwhelmed with fatigue, he succumbed to
defeat. Ten years after winning his title against Sonny Liston and
seven after it was stripped, Ali was the world heavyweight champion once
again.
“Almost at that precise moment, the skies opened above, and there was
this amazing electric storm,” recalls The Independent on Sunday’s Alan
Hubbard, who that night was ringside. “Flashes of lightning, thunder,
and the rain cascaded down. It was so heavy that some of the ringside
telephones were actually washed away in the storm.
“The river had just expanded and overflown into the roads. Everywhere
you looked you saw these young kids dancing, and doing the Ali shuffle.
[Boxing commentator] Reg Gutteridge was very anxious to get back [to
Kinshasa] because he was doing a live television piece for ITV, but I
thought we were all going to be drowned.
“I’ve covered many world title fights, World Cups, 12 Olympics,
Winter Olympics, but one event is etched in the mind. I think about it
frequently. That’s The Rumble in the Jungle. It was so bizarre, so
ethereal, that you never forget it.
“To be sitting at four o’clock in the morning, in a jungle clearing,
in an African country, in Zaire that was, with 60,000 Zairians [60,000
is the most common figure; accounts range between 50,000 and 80,000 but,
emblematic of Zairian inefficiency, no official attendance was given]
singing ‘Ali bomaye, Ali bomaye’ [‘Ali, kill him’], a big picture of
Mobutu, the president of Zaire in the background, watching this
incredible drama unfold… It is the most exhilarating experience I have
ever had in sports journalism.
“There’d been nothing like it before, nothing like it since, and I
doubt there ever will be again, and it was all because of one man. It
was because of Ali, who literally transcended boxing.
“The fight itself was absorbing. Everybody with the exception of one
or two expected Foreman to win. I thought Foreman would win. But Ali’s
tactics were quite incredible.
“Although he totally denies it, the late Angelo Dundee [Ali’s
trainer] did climb into the ring before the fight started and slackened
the ropes. He says he didn’t and that he was just testing them, but we
actually saw him, so the ‘rope-a-dope’ was already formed in Ali’s mind.
“Dundee had prophesised that Foreman would blow up like an old bull
elephant around about the eighth round, and that’s precisely what
happened.
“Ali threw everything at him, and he actually took everything from
Foreman too. We could hear him saying to Foreman in the clinches: ‘Is
that your best shot, George? Is that your best shot? You ain’t hurting,
George, you ain’t hurting, is that all you’ve got?’
“And then came that wonderful moment – that corkscrewing right hand.
It looked a glancing blow but it was expertly delivered, like a sword,
and Foreman spun round in the ring. You could see that his head was all
over the place.
“He didn’t get up, and the whole place absolutely erupted.”
The scenes captured on camera were of an unforgettable triumph, of
the underdog and people’s champion conquering the colossal,
previously-indestructible aggressor, but images elsewhere in the stadium
carried an altogether more sinister tone – bloodstains on the arena
floor as a reminder of that shed by anti-government protesters, 1,000
criminals imprisoned in chambers to prevent negative publicity from
their potential crimes (it is alleged that between 40 and 100 of these
were hanged in the square in Kinshasa), bullet holes in a wall deep in
the stadium where others had been lined up and shot.
“That was the first time a sporting event had been held in an
environment like that,” added Hubbard. “You never thought it could
happen.”
It had all been made possible, of course, by Don King. The
previously-little known promoter, who first appeared at Foreman’s side
when the champion stopped Ken Norton in two rounds in Caracas,
Venezuela, seven months earlier, seduced Mobutu Sese Seko – then the
cruel and corrupt dictator of the country known today as the Democratic
Republic of Congo – into paying each fighter $5million (£3.13m, and more
than Rocky Marciano, Joe Louis or Jack Dempsey earned in an entire
career, though loose change if considering Mobutu stole in the region of
£3.7bn in aid money to leave Zaire crippled with debt) for a prolific
propaganda coup for his country, his presidency, and the most evocative
fight in history.
Mobutu is said to have watched the fight from his palace through fear
of assassination but, just as with his ruling, there was no escaping
his influence or the racial overtones that were present throughout. The
Rumble in the Jungle, which significantly was refereed by the black
American Zach Clayton, came at the height of the black power movement of
the seventies and was truly a raw, black celebration.
“The Foreman-Ali fight was one of the fantastic achievements that God
blessed me with,” King, whose name featured nowhere on the fight’s
contracts, told
Boxing News. “It was a spiritual thing. It was
through God and perseverance, dedication and commitment, to demonstrate
that people of colour could rise to the occasion if given the
opportunity.
“It was the two hottest athletes in the world at that particular
time. The location chose me: it was the [US’s] segregation, racist
mentality, and they did not want to see a black man pull off something
of this sort.
“We had a search on, and we ended up in Kinshasa, Zaire. It weren’t
because I wanted to go to Africa, it was because Africa was the only
place that would accept us.
“I named the fight ‘From the Slave Ship to the Championship’ [this
was later replaced when it offended Zairians] and so that’s what we
rolled with. At that time we were still living in 1865.”
“That fight made King,” The Sun’s Colin Hart, another ringside and
one of the few to correctly predict victory for Ali, explained. “He’s
the best promoter there’s ever been, in my opinion. He got government
money involved in three major fights.
“It was supposed to be the coming home of the black man to Africa,
and the black Americans hated it, they loathed it. Ali didn’t like the
look of the women, etcetera, and they couldn’t wait to get out of
there.”
As Ali in the fight’s lengthy build-up had unintentionally insulted
the Zairians when he told reporters “All you who think George Foreman is
gonna whup me; when you get to Africa, Mobutu’s people are gonna put
you in a pot, cook you, and eat you”, the then-charmless Foreman wrongly
wore traditional African dress upon arrival in a country he found to be
unexpectedly modern while unintentionally scaring locals with his dog, a
large German shepherd.
“We didn’t know the difference between east, west, north Africa, we
didn’t know anything, so when coming to Africa, we thought ‘Boy, this is
really gonna get us recognition, why not put on African clothes and
walk around with that image’,” Foreman told
BN.
“The whole idea of me taking that fight was to bridge the gap with
Americans, and those who had been born in Africa, and kind of make a
bridge there. Putting on the clothes was a part of that.”
If it was an attempt to win the popularity contest, Foreman lost out
as convincingly as he did the fight. Ali, who by now had joined the
Nation of Islam and was influencing his times, was attempting to reclaim
the WBA title stripped from him seven years earlier for his refusal, on
religious grounds, to join the US army’s war effort in Vietnam and
declared himself, to the delight of the locals, “going back home to
fight among my brothers”, having called Africa his home, the home of the
black man, and saying: “Damn America and what America thinks.”
The setback wasn’t Foreman’s last before he eventually entered the
ring in the early hours, as demanded by US television, of October 30:
Ali’s popularity continued to soar through his regular exposure to
locals in Nsele while his rival remained isolated; Foreman feared his
food was being poisoned; a witch-doctor was even said to have told Ali a
‘succubus’, or female demon – “a woman with trembling hands” – would
get to the champion by fight night.
The two had originally been scheduled to meet on September 25,
immediately after a concert performed by black acts including James
Brown, Bill Withers and The Pointer Sisters but their fight was
postponed when, five days prior, Bill McMurray accidentally and
disastrously elbowed the champion during sparring and opened a
significant cut over his right eye.
“Someone asked me the other day about the cut – ‘was that part of my
decline?’” said Foreman. “But I was so confident, I could have suffered
two cuts and still beat Muhammad Ali. I was just that confident – as a
matter of fact, over-confident. I should have in hindsight left Africa,
got myself healed real good, and come back for a later date, but I was
just that over-confident.
“I’d never been cut in training and then you gotta stop working out,
you can’t spar anymore. It disrupted my preparation but I don’t think it
caused me to lose at all. Because once the bell rang, I was still the
aggressor. I never stepped back once from Muhammad Ali.”
Leaving Africa may have been the sensible option but it was one
Mobutu, through fears the fighters wouldn’t return – “If [Foreman] went
home, I think he would have never came back,” said King – ruthlessly
refused them. Tales persist of armed guards seizing the champion’s
passport and of warnings to each fighter from Mobutu’s henchmen; even
the media were kept in Zaire until a three-day argument, and Mobutu
covering the cost of flying both the European and American contingents
back, changed the dictator’s mind. He did, however, share another of
their concerns.
“The press chief was a man called Chimpumpu wa Chimpumpu, whose
brother was a government minister with Mobutu,” said Hart. “He always
wore a fur hat, you never saw him without it.
“We sent our copy back by telex [teleprinters]. The bloody telex
operators, when we used to hand our stuff in, there was hardly anybody
there because they all used to bunk off and go to sleep [Alan Hubbard
added that the operators had also been asking for bribes]. And we
complained to Chimpumpu that the telex operators were never there when
we needed them. It went up to Mobutu, and it came down from on high:
‘The next telex operator found asleep when he should be on duty will be
shot’.”
Foreman remained the overwhelming favourite on fight night and, deep
down, it’s probable even Ali understood why. The challenger avoided ever
watching the champion hit the heavy bag, aware the impression it would
leave on his psyche could go even deeper than Foreman’s fists did on the
bag itself and, come the 30th, he wasn’t alone in needing reassurance.
His pre-fight changing room was one of intense fear and anxiety, his
entourage no longer immune to widespread concerns that not only Ali’s
status but his life was at risk, that at 32 the ability to evade Foreman
was behind him while his pride – as suffocatingly intense as the
stadium’s atmosphere – ensured he’d continue to take a beating until
possibly his final breath.
Ali then energised his entourage like he memorably did so many others
throughout his decorated career as he also energised and composed
himself before making his way to the ring where he awaited the champion.
The ropes loose (Angelo Dundee denied ever causing this – the heat of
the jungle causing them to stretch and Dundee attempting to tighten
them was one explanation offered; Hart also believes suggestions Dundee
loosened the ropes to be a myth), the challenger left the world aghast
as, using the now-iconic rope-a-dope, he taunted Foreman and absorbed a
remarkable beating until the champion punched himself out and allowed
Ali to claim his finest victory.
“I didn’t dance,” Ali said immediately after the fight. “I didn’t
dance for a reason. I wanted to make him lose all his power. I kept tell
him he had no punch, he couldn’t hit, he swing like a sissy, he’s
missing, let me see you box!”
“I was shocked,” Foreman told
BN, “because I backed him into
the corner, and got him some heavy shots, and anyone else would have
crumbled. “I think about after the third round when I really gave it to
him hard, the bell rang and he dropped his arms to uncover himself and
said ‘I made it’. And he knew that he had weathered the biggest storm he
had ever and would ever again. And even I remember thinking ‘He made
it’. I don’t know how he did it, I just don’t know.
“I was discouraged about a lot of things back then, more than
discouraged, but if I was going to beat him – really beat him fair and
square – the ropes wouldn’t have made any difference.”
Forty years on, the Stade du 20 Mai is a crumbling, rusting relic
housing some of DR Congo’s poorest; referee Zach Clayton, Foreman’s
cornermen Archie Moore, Dick Sadler and Sandy Saddler, and those close
to Ali – Angelo Dundee, Drew “Bundini” Brown and Walter Youngblood
(later known as Wali Muhammad) – are no longer with us.
It is the memories of The Fight, of the Academy Award-winning
documentary When We Were Kings, promoter Don King, Foreman’s publicist
Bill Caplan, Ali’s business manager Gene Kilroy, the fighters themselves
and, in this context more importantly, their collective legacies that
remain.
Source:
boxingnewsonline.net
