Rumblin' in the Jungle

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"If you were surprised when Nixon resigned, just watch what happens when I whup Foreman's behind."

Muhammad Ali
October 1974

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"Forty years ago this month, the eyes of the world turned to Kinshasa [Zaire] to watch the 'Rumble in the Jungle,' the legendary boxing event that saw Muhammad Ali and George Foreman slug it out for the world heavyweight title," writes Thomas Yocum for The Guardian.

Muhammad Ali was a great fighter, one of the greatest of all time, as he frequently told anyone who would listen. He wouldn't stop there, though. Often, he would tell folks who did not want to listen.

He was also a master showman, and I guess he figured — correctly — that most people believed that a 32–year–old boxer who had been prevented from competing during his prime years because he refused to fight in Vietnam would be unable to stay with the heavyweight champ.

George Foreman was young and powerful. He had grabbed the title in 1973 with a hammering of Joe Frazier, and, in his second defense of his title, he brought down one of the top contenders for the title, Ken Norton, in similarly dominant fashion. Seemed he barely worked up a sweat in either. At times, you could have sworn he was actually bored.

Frazier and Norton, it is worth noting, were the only two boxers who had beaten Ali up to that time. Norton broke Ali's jaw.

In the three years prior to his bout with Ali, Foreman fought in 11 fights — all but one were done in two rounds or less, and that single exception was finished in five rounds. Foreman was used to fights that were scheduled for 15 rounds; he simply wasn't accustomed to fights that actually went that long.

Therein lay the key to Ali's upset victory. He knew that the longer he could keep the fight going, the more he would frustrate Foreman. Foreman would make mistakes, and Ali would wait for those mistakes, then exploit them. It was his "Rope–a–Dope" strategy.

Well, there was more to it than that, but that's a pretty good summary of the strategy. The "Rope–a–Dope" strategy was to force Foreman to use a lot of his energy pounding away at Ali, who would lean back on the ropes and cover his face with his gloves while Foreman hammered his midsection. Few, if any, observers thought Ali could take punches anymore, especially the powerful punches Foreman threw, but he surprised them all.

"They told me you could punch, George," Ali taunted Foreman in the early rounds. "Is that the best you can do?" An enraged Foreman tried to throw even harder punches — but with no apparent effect on Ali.

Foreman became visibly tired, and Ali was able to bring him down in the eighth round. It may have been a bigger shock to the sports world than his triumph over Sonny Liston 10 years earlier.

Originally scheduled for Sept. 24, the bout was postponed for five weeks because Foreman suffered a cut near his right eye while he was preparing for Ali.

When the men finally met 40 years ago tonight, their fight began at 4 a.m. local time to accommodate the closed–circuit audience in the Western Hemisphere.

The postponement gave Ali an opportunity to bond a little with the locals while he spent the extra time preparing for the fight.

I remember seeing footage of Ali running Rocky–like through the streets of Kinshasa, and the locals, young and old, running along with him or watching from the side, were chanting, "Ali, bomaye!" — which means, "Ali, kill him!" It quickly became one of the most recognizable sports–oriented phrases ever.

Killing people wasn't Ali's way, though. Any boxing expert will tell you that the fighters who take that mentality into the ring with them are the sluggers, and Ali was no slugger. He was a finesse fighter, more likely to win on points than on a knockout. The ironic part is that Ali did win most of his fights by knockout. That's the thing that people often forget. It's the thing that Foreman apparently forgot, and it cost him his title.

That was the key to the success of the "Rope–a–Dope" strategy. Ali had a reputation for outlasting opponents and winning on points, even though three–quarters of his wins up to that time were by knockout, so his approach likely made sense to Foreman, probably the best slugger of the time. He didn't expect Ali to go for the knockout after Foreman ran out of gas, though. He probably expected Ali to land a lot of punches in the later rounds in an attempt to pile up points — and Foreman walked right into the trap, landing punch after punch to Ali's midsection — proving repeatedly that Ali could take a punch.

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I suppose it would be natural for him to be bitter about the outcome.

"I hated Ali," Foreman told The Daily Express. "Hated him."

Understandable. Foreman was deceived. I guess everyone was.

Ali's "Rope–a–Dope" strategy wasn't evident in the first round. It was more evident in the second round — enough that Frazier, who was sitting ringside, remarked about it and wondered on the air, in response to British TV host David Frost's question, why Ali was leaning against the ropes so much.

By the end of the third round, Frazier was criticizing Foreman for being too wild in his punches and not thinking things through. He needed to be more deliberate and strategic. The champ was going to wear himself out, Frazier said prophetically.

Tellingly, when the fight was over and Ali was mobbed at center ring by admirers, Foreman and his entourage slipped quietly away almost without notice. Foreman's head was hanging in the dejection of defeat.

Nobody wants to mob a vanquished champion.

Ken Norton: The Often-Forgotten 'Giant'

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Ken Norton, who died Wednesday at the age of 70, was good enough to win the heavyweight championship in the conventional way.

Instead he was awarded the title when the champion, Leon Spinks, refused to fight Norton, the top contender, in his first title defense as mandated by the World Boxing Council after he beat Muhammad Ali in February 1978. Spinks was stripped of the WBC title, and Norton was given the title retroactively — on the basis of a fight he won the previous year.

I'm sure Norton would have preferred to win the title the old–fashioned way — in the ring. He came so close at times. It makes you wonder, doesn't it? Ali, Norton's most noteworthy contemporary, did it three times.

Norton fought Ali three times and won the first one — when Ali was in his prime. The only other fighter to do that was Joe Frazier.

Like Frazier, Norton lost his next two bouts with Ali, but Ali's victories against each fighter were different. In each succeeding fight with Frazier, Ali seemed to get better but Frazier did not. Norton — competing "in what can now be viewed as a golden era of heavyweights," writes The Telegraph — maintained his level of excellence.

Norton came into his third fight with Ali supremely confident, and he was confident he had outfought Ali when the final bell rang. There were even those who thought Norton won that final bout with Ali. A victory would have given Norton the title, but he came up short, just as he did against George Foreman.

As I say, he eventually won the title, anyway — but not in the ring. I guess, for some fight fans, that diminishes the accomplishment, even though the WBC insisted it was based on a real victory in the ring. It just wasn't recognized at the time as a title fight.

Perhaps that is, to a degree, why the only Ken Norton who is recognized by many modern–day sports fans is Norton's son and namesake.

There was an embarrassment of riches in the heavyweight division in those days.

Or, as Gregg Doyel of CBS Sports writes, that was when boxing was "the most amazing sport around."

I read Doyel's piece on Norton a couple of times, and, both times, I found myself nodding in agreement when I read this: "[O]nce upon a time boxing was full of true sporting giants," one of whom was Norton.

It must have been hard to stand out among all those other giants.

Jaw Breaker

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For nearly 40 years, ABC's Wide World of Sports was a fixture on Saturday afternoons.

Its mission was really twofold. Ostensibly, I believe it began its existence as a catch–all for offbeat sports that were rarely, if ever, shown on the Big Three networks, but it also showed popular sports, primarily individual competitions, like boxing or figure skating or gymnastics.

As such, it filled a niche in those days before cable.

Everyone knew the intro in which the narrator spoke of "the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat."

As a boy, I often watched Wide World of Sports. The sports it showed really were off the wall most of the time, but, once in awhile, there was some good mainstream sports event on the program.

Such was the case 40 years ago today.

I don't remember much about that day except that my parents went somewhere that afternoon — they probably went to Little Rock to see a movie and have dinner — and a young couple had been hired to look after my brother and me.

As a college professor, my father often recruited his students to look after us when he took my mother out. My memory was that one, if not both, of the young people who came over that day had been in at least one of his classes.

Anyway, as I recall, the four of us started playing a board game of some kind after my parents left. Then, an hour or so later, the young man suggested that we watch Wide World of Sports. Muhammad Ali, who was only two years removed from his first fight with Joe Frazier, was to fight Ken Norton that afternoon.

That was fine with me.

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I don't recall if I had ever seen Ali fight live before, but I had seen him on TV. Interviews. Fight highlights. That sort of thing. I liked him. He always seemed to be symbolic of the era in which he competed.

On this occasion, I got to see him fight — impressively, too, even though he didn't win.

It was a competitive fight, one that Ali lost in a split decision. It went the scheduled 12 rounds, and, after the fight had been awarded to Norton, it was revealed that Ali's jaw had been broken at some point. Norton has always contended that it happened near the end of the fight, probably in the 11th round. Angelo Dundee, Ali's trainer, insisted it was earlier.

Ali and Norton fought two more times. Ali won both — even though some observers will tell you they thought Norton actually won their last fight in 1976 — when Ali was heavyweight champion for the second time. If Norton had won on that day, he would have been heavyweight champ.

As it was, Norton did join that elite club of men who have been heavyweight champion. The title was awarded to him retroactively a couple of years later — after Ali had lost his title to Leon Spinks in early 1978. The crown did not remain on his head for long. In his first title defense, Norton was defeated in a very tight decision against Larry Holmes.

On this day 40 years ago, Norton was only the second professional fighter to defeat Ali (Joe Frazier was the other).

Talk about an exclusive club.