It is almost a “you had to be there” situation, how badass George Foreman was in the first half of 1974.
40-0, seeking to look to soothe the inner turmoil of his soul via contained violence for the entertainment of the masses. That meant taking it to foes with a determination that had plenty of people thinking Foreman just might kill Muhammad Ali (44-2, losses to Joe Frazier and Ken Norton) when they would clash at the Rumble in the Jungle. It would be a spectacle, of cultural import, too, the first heavyweight clash to unfold in Africa.
What sort of badass was Foreman? A Sports Illustrated writer told readers he’d grown up a “street-corner wino in Houston’s worst neighborhood.” The grin and self-deprecating pokes at being portly, we all think of that Foreman now, but the 1974 George operated at a vicious frequency. To the point that the possibility of the 25-year-old Foreman beating the 32-year-old Ali to death was a topic in barrooms and the schoolyards during recess breaks.
It Was All Going Smoothly Until…
I didn’t put it to Foreman that directly when I asked him about it on Monday. The high that day was 86 degrees, so he was chilling. His wife had made him some duck and quinoa. “I was going smooth, in great shape, the rhythm of my punching was great,” the native Texan said from his ranch. He figured his “0” wouldn’t go the night of September 24 on the first big card promoted by Don King. Then, fate flicked a jab, in the form of a cut, in sparring. “Out of nowhere, it had never happened to me before, a cut. I felt it immediately. I showed it to (co-trainer) Dick Sadler. He was trying to hide it.”
Not doable, not in that era. Among the watchers at the sesh with Foreman working with Bill McMurray was Larry Merchant, columnist at the NY Post. He saw the slice and ran for a pay phone, which wasn’t right next door. More on that in a bit….
A “the show must go on” mini panic ensued. King and the actual pay providers would not be running the show in Zaire as they would have been able to in Las Vegas or NY, which is where this fight would have landed if King hadn’t gotten inventive and found a backer in the government-run by Mobotu See Seko (president 1971-1997).
This fight would show the world what the ex-Congo Zaire represented, and the stakes were, therefore, a bit higher. That construct didn’t maybe help Foreman regarding the treatment of that wound which got butterfly treatment from Sadler. Visiting a higher-level doctor consult in Belgium got ruled out, and Foreman got shelved, told not to even sweat for ten days. King guaranteed him $5M (and Ali), so he wanted to see it through, of course.
Foreman got the OK to sweat, just sweat, after ten days. He started running, and now the reset date is coming up close. “Nobody could run with me, did 4-5-6 miles I’d do …but I couldn’t spar, they were afraid it would open up,” Foreman recalls. “Finally, we got some little guys. They did pitty pat, and the fight was in a couple of days and I was supposed to be ready for it. Before the cut, I’d never been in that good shape. I was punching so good, I was thinking, ‘Bring on King Kong.’’
From Unbeatable To Beaten
Ding dong, Ali at the door, not Kong. But tough, like the movie icon, Ali ate and ate and absorbed so much I heard that the Bounty people approached him after about a commercial spotlighting the shared powers of absorption. “Yeah, with the cut and the time off, it was a train wreck,” Foreman says. Ali was no ghost on this night of October 30. All his willpower and concentration needed to rope the “dope” and give himself openings to bee-sting the huffing unbeaten were drawn from the Greatest of pugilistic wells. Also, Foreman notes he just wanted it more. Winning had become not boring but predictable for the Texan. He’d stepped up from the journeymen record builder types and had bettered Frazier, Joe Roman, and Ken Norton before signing to meet Ali. Ali’s ego hated not being number one, so he had a higher-grade fuel pumping in him than did George; his ego hadn’t allowed for the possibility of failure, and therefore, he didn’t consider all the potential outcomes in Kinshasa.
“Come get me such, I’m dancin,” Ali told the camera/Foreman in the weeks leading up. He did dance on fight night, though he more often stood stationary, back to the ropes. What sort of strategy was this? You asked yourself if you were watching, less so as the rounds progressed. To the sixth, seventh, then eighth, down goes Foreman’s activity rate. Then a bee sting, and another, Foreman is tipping over, he’s down in the eighth. It’s over; Foreman is confused and doesn’t beat the Zach Clayton count.
The Ali legend spiked hard. He would shock and amaze doubters with the win in Manilla over Frazier in ’75, their third and last collision. Then again, in 1978 by showing Leon Spinks that age can overcome youthful vigor when camp features cavorting with Bourbon Street Bettys. “I had never lost before,” Foreman recalls when asked about his head 50 years ago in Zaire, in the “loser” dressing room. He summoned explanations and potential excuses. He’d shuffle them in his head and trot them out when speaking of the 1974 RING fight of the year, into the 1980s, in fact. Ali stuck as a sore subject to the 1968 Olympian.
Foreman fought six more times and, in fact, in his next outing, swung some who’d taken shots at him for the Ali loss back to his side. He and Ron Lyle did a yoyo act on January 24, 1976, sending each other to the mat at Caesars. Foreman remembers thinking about some possible “explanations” for why he was losing. “Loose ropes,” “tainted food,” he’d used those to explain away the Zaire deal. He couldn’t think of another one, so versus the hulking bomber Lyle, he decided to fight on. “There, I crossed over into the positive side of myself,” he says of the 1976 RING Fight of the Year.
Foreman scored a win over Frazier, Scott LeDoux, Dino Dennis, and Pedro Agosto, then a bout against wily Jimmy Young. Throughout it all, Foreman hadn’t settled up with himself about Zaire. After a transformative loss to Young, he went to look outside the ring for meaning. Foreman, in the early 80s, didn’t flourish in his second act. Both were retired, and Ali was handling his exit a bit better, even though his body and brain were paying for the punishment taken back in the day.
Can Win For Losing
Ali checked out him doing his new thing in that 3rd Ward, Foreman’s clothes from the heyday having grown thinner. Ali liked to draw a crowd, still, and Foreman didn’t draw much of one preaching his gospel. “You can do better than that,” Ali jabbed at Foreman.
“Nobody was listening,” Foreman admitted. “And the day I stopped saying I was the former champion of the world, etc., and said I fought Ali, and he stopped me, I had a hook and bait. I made use of that.” Sermons flowed better now, backed by legit humility. Formerly a “sore loser,” now Foreman would be able to slide back into boxing via a slower lane, which culminated in him beating Michael Moorer in 1994 and regaining the heavyweight championship at the improbable age of 45.
I wanted to know a bit more as I rediscovered the Zaire fight. Like, how widespread was this pondering that ‘Big George’ might be the last one to ring Ali’s bell, after Frazier and Norton had done the deed? That we might see an execution in Africa…
Watching From The Concrete Jungle
Larry Merchant, then at the NY Post, spent about a month in Zaire and elsewhere filing stories about Ali’s exercise in temerity.
Merchant, 93, answered on the phone from California. No, he says, he was not in Zaire. He watched the big man get outplayed by Louisville’s lips and crafty Ali from Madison Square Garden, which acted as a “pay-per-view” station for the closed circuit showing off the scrap, deep-night-before morning in Africa. “I would have gone to Africa for it. I went to the airport to go back after I came home following the cut and I was told I was not welcome. What had I written (to earn the ban)? An item about two ladies beefing at the hotel lobby because they’d been rooked by a con promising a lux game preserve visit didn’t help,” he relates.
And then his piece with a description of walking the streets in the city and being struck by the conditions, nailing Mobotu as an all hat no cattle type, likely cemented his ban. “No one else got banned upon attempted re-entry after the cut delay,” he says.
Back to fight night—at the Felt Forum, Merchant figured, yeah, Foreman had that power edge. “Murder? I was of the mindset that this could be the end of Ali’s run,” Merchant continued. “I had sat with Ali on a flight, Paris to Zaire, and he sat next to me and said these words: ‘If he don’t get me in seven, his parachute won’t open.’ Angelo Dundee and Ali understood Foreman’s weakness was his stamina. That led to the rope a dope. I didn’t know it would lead to those tactics. Watching in Madison Square Garden, I was thinking about how we, the fans, were at the center of a universe for a couple hours. Ali had been through the wringer politically, but most people in this state were on his side. Those present, many feared it would be the last chapter.”
It is both profound and common sense how stuff that hurt you badly made you a better person. Foreman couldn’t get over and past the sting of losing to Ali. Time had to pass for him to see the loss in clear light. “At this day and this hour, to be associated with this fight, a loss, surely I would have preferred to win,” he says. “Years later, I’m a street preacher, saying I was champion of this, but wasn’t anybody listening. But then I stopped excuses and being sore, and I said, ‘Ali stopped me,’ then they listened to me preach.”
It took about ten years from October 30, 1974, or so for it to truly sink in, for the loss to affect his ego and bring him off an elevated platform so he could speak that gospel in a way that regular folks could embrace. If he were selling cars, he might have put up a sign that said, “I lost to Ali” to get them into his lot, he says, chuckling. “I would not change a thing,” he wraps up. “I have gratitude because I realized no matter how big you are, how great, there’s always going to be someone greater.”
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