When George Foreman destroyed Joe Frazier on January 22, 1973 to win the heavyweight championship, he appeared invincible to anyone who saw it. His image only grew when he followed that up a year later with another two round knockout of Ken Norton in Caracas, Venezuela. Muhammad Ali was ringside to witness the slaughter, knowing that he was next in line to challenge Foreman and put up a brave front when interviewed after the bout about his chances.
Ali often admitted that rarely trained for fights, going into some relying on his pure skills. For the Foreman bout however, he went into serious training at his Deer Lake camp in late June for the September 24 fight in of all place, Kinshasa, Zaire in South Africa. Promoter Don King had found a country that was willing to pay each fighter $5 million, an unheard of amount in 1974. The original date was pushed back until October 30 when George suffered a cut eye on September 16 and needed the extra time for it to heal. Neither fighter was allowed to leave the country, so Ali went back into training with no other option.
King nicknamed the event ‘The Rumble in the Jungle’ but at the time I was a freshman in high school and not a huge boxing fan. Even I took notice of this one however, and watched preview shows on ABC with the blowhard Howard Cosell,who predicted that Foreman would retire Ali. Muhammad was a 4-1 underdog and many other sportswriters were picking George to beat Ali as well.
Since the fight was going to be shown on closed-circuit locations only, I had to settle on radio reports after it happened. I was shocked along with the rest of the world when I learned that Ali had knocked out Foreman in the eighth round and was the heavyweight champion of the world for the second time.
Ali was on top of the world again after the huge upset and his face was seen every where I looked. Sports Illustrated named him their ‘Athlete of the Year’, but I didn’t actually see the fight until January 1975. By then Ali had talked endlessly about the ‘Rope a Dope’ tactics he used to tire Foreman out before knocking him out in the eighth round. Muhammad’s performance was legendary and impressive when I finally got a chance to watch it on ‘Wide World of Sports’. Boxing was alive again with Ali as the champion, since no one talked more than him or was a better ambassador for it.
Ali would retain his title until losing it to Leon Spinks on February 15, 1978, then regained it from him seven months later. George went into a deep depression after losing to Ali, fought until March 17, 1977 when he lost a decision to Jimmy Young in San Juan, Puerto Rico. After the defeat, he had a born-again Christian experience in the locker room and retired from boxing for ten years to become an evangelist.
Both men will forever be linked for their historic bout in South Africa on October 30, 1974, which makes the ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ one of Boxing’s Classics.
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