"The Rumble in the Jungle"—which came by its name because Ali had said upon signing for the fight that "we're gonna rumble in the jungle"—was now rescheduled instead of canceled. This time for October 30.
With the fight back on, everything returned to normal. Writers, who swore they would leave, now didn't. President Mobutu, who was afraid his country would lose its fight, now wasn't. And the promoters, who had nothing to do, now did.
The thirty-six-day delay now gave us the feeling that the pendulum had swung in Ali's favor. For while we were able to go back to the gym to fine-tune Ali and work on his final strategy for the fight, George was unable to resume training, his doctors having advised him that because of his cut eye he couldn't work up a sweat for at least ten days lest the sweating delay the healing process. This meant he couldn't spar or do any roadwork—not that George felt he needed to do either anyway. And so, while George sat in his room under guard growling and grumbling that he couldn't win for losing, Ali continued to prepare for the fight. The only time there was any communication between the two came when Ali's old instructor, Archie Moore, delivered a poem parodying Ali's style to our headquarters reading:
Your poetry is nothing but rhyme,
Fifteen rounds is a long time.
Frazier couldn't even make two,
Ken Norton was the victim of George's Coup.
Foreman's left will make you dance,
Dance Turkey in the Straw.
When his right connects with your lower mandible,
Goodbye jaw.
Ali's retort to Archie's poem came the next day in the gym. While shadowboxing against a backdrop of press and onlookers, he spotted Archie in the audience and, calling him out, said, "Folks, there's Archie Moore, one of the greatest of all time. Go back and tell George I'm gonna throw on him some of the stuff you taught me in your camp. You remember? The cut eye gives George a chance to get in shape, but it won't change nuthin'. He's never met a dancing master before."
Ali would continue to bait George with his biting comments. And continue to work his "home-court" advantage, leading the locals in cries of "Ali, bomaye!" as he did his daily roadwork through the streets of Kinshasa.
My problem was not with Ali, it was how to fill my time between training sessions. I once read somewhere that "Africa marches patiently through time." Good for them; bad for me. My time was creeping along at a snail's pace. Every day seemed like Groundhog Day: up at dawn, to the gym, and then back again to our encampment. That was it. Boredom was beginning to border on comatose.
Our encampment was a government complex, with slightly less than four-star accommodations. I had a nice villa I shared with Luis Sarria, Ali's masseur. But while most such places have amenities like mints, spas, and extra towels, ours was supplied with an overabundance of lizards and bugs—some so big that if you swatted them, they swatted back. I was so bored I joked that I was teaching the lizards to do push-ups just to break the monotony.
Having heard about the potential of civil unrest in Zaire, I had left Helen at home. That left me on my own to find something to do. I could have gone into Kinshasa and watched the rowdy militia roaming the streets, carrying guns like toy soldiers and drinking beer like college kids on Easter break. That didn't sound like such a good idea. Or I could have just sat around the encampment, twiddling my thumbs and practicing for the Olympic solitaire competition. Great!
I came up with a few ideas, although I must admit they hardly raised the noble pastime of wasting time to an art form. I introduced a game of cards to the camp, one played for matchsticks. Then I expanded it to include anyone and everyone I could find to come out to the compound to play, a group of hail-fellows-well-met that included the likes of writer Budd Schulberg, Don King's matchmaker Bobby Goodman, and any similarly bored writer or hanger-on I could persuade to come and play or just kibitz. Other so-called "activities" included spending time outdoors between monsoon rains trying to catch some sun and eventually getting a suntan that became the envy of all the brothers (one even telling me I looked like a schwartza) and reading anything I could get my hands on, up to and including the Kinshasa phone book.
So imagine my excitement when one day I noticed a couple of strange faces in the crowd at the gym watching Ali during his daily workout who, by their looks and their language, I immediately identified as paisanos. Seems that they were over in Zaire on some form of lend-lease from Italy to build steel mills for the government and lived in their own Italian city somewhere in the jungle. They not only invited me to come over to visit them and enjoy Italian food direct from Italy at an Italian restaurant, but also asked me to bring along as many as I wanted, which I did, in Mercedes buses provided by the government. It was heaven! Or, at least, a little bit of Italian heaven in hellish Zaire.
Most evenings we'd be on the phone, calling back home or wherever. Since the time difference between Zaire and America was six hours or more, we called early in the evening, right after supper, so as not to disturb anyone in the early morning hours. Getting the phone was almost as difficult as getting through, but, fortunately, I was able to reach Helen almost every night just to hear her voice and tell her all was okay.
Another who made great use of the telephone was Gene Kilroy. One time, talking to his mother back in the States, he was told that Howard Cosell on "Monday Night Football" had announced that Muhammad Ali had reached out to call him from Zaire. Hanging up, Kilroy turned to Ali and asked if he had called Cosell. "No," said Ali, puzzled by the question, "I didn't talk to How-ward Cosell," pronouncing the commentator's name in that distinctive style of his. It would remain a puzzlement, at least until the next year. That was when Kilroy, in Cleveland for Ali's fight with Chuck Wepner, chanced to meet a young man from Canada who, inspired by the man whose voice had launched a thousand imitators, admitted he had imitated Ali's voice to call Cosell during the Monday night game. And had the phone bill to prove it!
As the days dwindled down to, as they say, a precious few, the bore-snore of the weeks before the fight gave way to excitement. We were ready; we were there. I could feel it. This would be Ali's defining fight, the fight that would forever cement his claim to being "The Greatest."
Fight day finally arrived. Well, not exactly fight day, really fight night since the fight was scheduled for the ungodly hour of 4:00 A.M. to accommodate closed-circuit showings back in the United States where the Eastern portion was six hours earlier. But fight day or fight night, it made no difference as the camp was in its usual prefight uproar. At one end of the camp was Ali as he consulted with Dr. Ferdie Pacheco over whether to have both hands or just his left deadened to ease the pain, eventually deciding to forgo treatment entirely. At the other was Bundini, packing the robes, which he usually had specially made for Ali before every fight—and kept afterward. And everywhere else was filled with the usual commotion an entourage of about thirty people can make.
My job was to go to the stadium early to inspect the ring. I especially wanted to look at the canvas. Heat like we'd been experiencing in Zaire (between monsoons) can really screw up a canvas, softening the padding underneath and making it more difficult to backpeddle, which Ali planned to do. Then I wanted to inspect the ring itself, remembering the "mux-ip" in Lewiston when the ring was a wrestling ring, not a boxing ring. I recalled one story of Sugar Ray Robinson who threatened to call off a fight when the ring hadn't met his approval. As the story went, before the fourth Robinson–Gene Fullmer fight in Las Vegas, Robinson went out to the arena to check the ring. Finding that the ring was a 20-foot ring rather than the 24-foot ring called for in the contract, he refused to go on with the fight. Publicist Murray Goodman was equal to the task, producing from somewhere a fabric tape measure that, when extended, showed the ring to be 24 feet, thus saving the fight. Only later did Goodman admit that he had 4 feet cut out of the tape and then had the tape restitched so that the ring measured 24 feet when it was, in fact, exactly what Robinson had thought it to be, a 20-foot ring.
To inspe
ct the ring, matchmaker Bobby Goodman and I took the forty-minute bus ride from the camp in N'Sele into Kinshasa, arriving at the stadium early in the afternoon just as the crowds were assembling outside, mannerly and orderly, maybe made all the more so by the presence of armed guards everywhere. The stadium, a relic built back in the teens by King Leopold of Belgium, had been refurbished by President Mobutu, who had gussied it up with a new coat of paint and renovations to make it a showcase for his big night and fight, even clearing out the prisoners kept there. He had also renamed it the 20th of May Stadium to commemorate the day of Zaire's independence. (I thought, why not? After all, he had renamed the country, the cities, and the river, why shouldn't he have the naming rights to the stadium as well?)
There in the center of the stadium was the ring. Or something that looked like a ring. It was even worse than the Lewiston wrestling ring, so slanted it looked like a miniature ski slope with droopy ropes that hung from the ring posts like wet wash, which was almost what they were, having sagged from the brutal humidity. Bobby and I tried to capture the attention of some of the workmen in the vicinity, but they paid us no attention, not sure what our problem was. But then again how could they? They had never seen a boxing ring before.
For more than a quarter of a century I've been constantly accused of loosening the ring ropes. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I tightened them, not loosened them. Seeing the sagging ropes, I knew I had to fix them, to make them tight so that Ali wouldn't be driven over them into our laps by one of George's "anywhere" punches. But how? Nobody had a knife, the government probably forbidding anyone to carry one. Finally, I found someone who had a razor and used their double-edged Gillette Blue Blade to work on the ropes, cutting and refitting them so that they were taunt and could bear the brunt of two fighters' weight.
The next order of business was making the ring level so that Ali could dance his dance. Not uphill, thank you! Bobby and I managed to corral a couple of workmen who had been standing around watching us in amazement as we worked on the ropes and asked them to go find some strong wooden blocks so we could straighten the tilted ring. And although they didn't seem to be too happy about it, they brought back something that passed for blocks and we were able to right the ring.
Exhausted after hours of working on the ring and making it as battle-ready as it would ever be and soaked through by a torrential downpour, I finally made it back to the encampment. What I needed was a hot shower and about ten hours' sleep. What I got instead was a lukewarm shower and two cups of black coffee. There was still much work to be done and, like Santa Claus, I had my list and was checking it twice. First I checked my little black bag to make sure everything was in readiness, even my solutions for working on a cut, just in case—although Ali had only been cut once in his career, that by Bob Foster whose corkscrew-like left had broken his skin. And if those in charge couldn't construct a ring properly, I would leave nothing to chance, making sure little things like the water bucket and water bottles were taken. I had Bundini and Wally "Blood" Youngblood wrap up two water bottles, one containing honey, orange juice, and water—an old recipe used by Sugar Ray Robinson—wrapping them in white tape and making them look like mummies. I even remembered to take a spare pair of gloves for Foreman, just in case. I was as ready as I was ever going to be.
Time to go. Everybody boarded the buses for the forty-minute ride to the stadium. The mood on the buses was upbeat, as compared to the weather outside, which was menacing. Still, everyone was confident. As we approached the outdoor arena, we became even more confident as the crowds, recognizing our convoy, greeted it with cheers of "Ali, bomaye!" That brought a smile to Ali's face.
Then it was inside to the dressing room, one of the nicest I had ever been in. The carpets were restfully blue, the walls were freshly painted, and the—what's the word I'm looking for here?—ambience was the best I'd ever seen. Soon I was taping up Ali's hands with gauze and trainer's tape while an emissary from Foreman's group, Doc Broadus, oversaw the taping. It's sort of an old ritual in boxing that someone from the other camp be on hand to see that nothing fishy is going on, no horseshoes or whatever are wrapped into the hand wraps, and that not too much tape is used to give the fighter an extra "oomph" in his punches.
All the while Dr. Broadus was sitting there, watching, Ali kept talking to him, telling him what he was going to do to George. Meanwhile, the representative we sent to Foreman's dressing room, Ferdie Pacheco, was barred, and Dr. Broadus eventually had to escort him in. Another of George's mind games.
Ali rose from the rubdown table and flexed his taped fists a couple of times to test his level of pain, saying to himself, "I'll hit him until the pain tears my hands off at the wrist if necessary." He then went over to the full-length mirror and began shadowboxing, almost hugging the mirror as if it reflected not only his image but his future as well, all the time dancing lightly so as not to work up too much of a sweat.
The countdown was on! A last-minute visit from Herbert Muhammad, some words of wisdom and a short prayer, and Ali was ready. A government official came to the door of the dressing room and gave us a time check, "Twenty minutes to go." Ten minutes later he was back with "ten minutes to go." Then he came to the door once more, saying, "George wants you out first ... he's the champion." Great! I thought. The prima donna just wants to make Ali wait in the ring.
I knew George and how his mind worked. He thought the extra wait would "ice" Ali, make him nervous and edgy. But like everything George had touched, this, too, would work to his disadvantage. As Ali entered the ring to cheers, he began dancing around, testing the ropes and the overhead lights, as well as getting the feel of the canvas. Then he leaned over the ropes to greet some familiar faces at ringside, Jim Brown and Lloyd Price among them, and nodded at those he knew in the press section. Moving about the ring, from side to side, Ali began leading the crowd in cheers, exhorting them with a wave of the glove. In the ten minutes or so that George made him wait, Ali had entertained and enchanted the crowd, making every one of them a fan. And they expressed it, excitedly cheering and chanting, "Ali, bomaye!"
Now I heard another cheer, this one more muted, almost polite, "Foreman ... Foreman ..." I almost wrenched my neck swiveling it around to see George running down the aisle to the ring leaving the rest of his entourage trotting behind him like little ducklings chasing their mother. The way he was running it looked like he was in a hurry to get this thing over with. He entered the ring and promptly plopped down on his stool. No testing of the ropes, no feeling of the canvas, no nothing. He just sat there waiting for referee Zack Clayton to call him to the center of the ring for the prefight instructions.
As the two came to the center of the ring, Bundini, towel around his neck, turned to me and said, "That's some mean-looking man." I answered, "I don't know, the ref looks OK to me." Bundini smiled for the first time, but I knew what he meant. For the closer we got to George, the bigger he looked. He had NFL-thick arms and legs and even his muscles had muscles. I thought the only thing he was missing was a necklace around his neck strung with his opponents' teeth.
As the two stood mid-ring, Ali hissed at Foreman, "Chump, you're gonna get yourself beat in front of all these Africans." "Quiet, Ali, no talking," referee Clayton barked. "Listen to the instructions. No hitting below the belt ... no punches to the kidneys." Ali again: "Never mind that stuff, I'm gonna hit you everywhere but under the bottoms of your big funky feet, chump." Clayton tried to quiet Ali, but Ali continued, "Ref, this sucker's in trouble." A furious Clayton turned to Ali and said, "Ali, I'll disqualify you." Then he tried to finish with the usual, "I want a good, clean fight ... or I'll call a halt to it." Still Ali managed to get in the last words, "That's the only way you gonna save this sucker ... he's doomed." "All right ... all right," a resigned Clayton said. "Go to your corners and come out fighting ... and may the best man win."
And with that Ali turned quickly, leaving George to glare at his back, and returned to his corner. Then, as ann
ouncer Don Dunphy used to say, "There's the bell."
CLANG! The bell sounded, and I gave Ali's rump a light go-get-'em good-luck tap as I sent him out to do battle with the man-giant Foreman. Ali immediately moved out to the middle of the ring and hit George with two quick shots, BING! BANG! Two "take-that-get-acquainted" punches. Ali began to dance, moving away from George and catching him with that lightning-fast jab, which came asfastasyoucanreadthis. Ali may have lost a little something through forty-six fights and 367 rounds, but it sure as hell wasn't his jab. George had no answer for it, almost as if he couldn't see it. Now Ali began talking "smack" to George, "Come on, chump ... show me what you got." But George could show him nothing, plodding after him in that one-two step of his, unable to catch up with Ali who was performing as advertised. The round ended as it began, with Ali snapping his left jab on and off like an electric light switch. And, despite the naysayers, still there.
Round Two began as Round One had ended, with Ali dancing and throwing jabs and an occasional right-hand lead. But now George was cutting the ring off on him, better than we thought he would, forcing Ali to move six steps to his one-two. George was placing his left lead foot between Ali's feet, forcing Ali to stand either in front of him and trade or move backward, which is what Ali did, moving to the ropes above our corner where George began to pound away at him with heavy-handed clubbing blows. I hollered, "MOVE, ALI! MOVE!" But he just looked down at me and went back to covering up. Down in the press section writer George Plimpton, watching Ali retreat to the ropes, let out with an "Oh, Christ ... it's a fix!"
But those concerned with his well-being needn't have worried. For between Rounds Two and Three, Ali told us, "I know what I'm doing." He knew that George's cutting the ring off and making him move those extra steps would tire him out in the later rounds and had decided to change his strategy. Now I've always been of the mind that the trainer is supposed to be the boss, that his directions are to be followed to the letter. Going back through the history of boxing there have been many times when the boxer thought be was the boss and it had cost him. Take Buster Douglas, who had everyone in his camp, trainers included, scared to death of him and would take directions from no one, something that cost him dearly in his fight with Evander Holyfield. But Muhammad Ali was different. He always had a mind of his own, a ring intelligence second to none. And now he decided to change the rules of engagement, change the equation, and make his defense his offense. In the process making George work, and work some more, with the aim of making George wear himself out. It went against all common sense, but it was working.
My View from the Corner Page 23
