The Fight (8 page)

Thursday, five days before the bout, Ali gave a typical seminar. “This fight is going to be not only the largest boxing
eee
-vent, but it will prove to be the largest
eee
-vent in the history of the world. It will be the greatest upset of which anyone has ever heard, and to those who are ignorant of boxing, it will seem like the greatest miracle. The boxing public are fools and illiterates to the knowledge and art of boxing. This is because you here who write about boxing are ignorant of what you try to describe. You writers are the real fools and illiterates. I am going to demonstrate — so you will have something new for your columns — why I cannot be defeated by George Foreman and will create the greatest upset in the history of boxing which you by your ignorance and foolishness as writers have actually created. It is your fault,” he said, mouthing his words for absolute enunciation, “that the boxing public knows so little and therefore believes George Foreman is great and I am finished. I must therefore demonstrate to you by scientific evidence how wrong you are. Angelo,” he said to Angelo Dundee, “hand me those records, will you,” and he began to read a list of fighters he had fought. The history of Heavyweight boxing in the last thirteen years was evoked by the list. His first seven fights were with pugilists never well
known, names like Herb Siler, Tony Esperti and Donnie Freeman. “Nobodies,” said Ali in comment. By his eighth fight, he was in with Alonzo Johnson, “a ranked contender,” then Alex Miteff, “a ranked contender,” Willi Besmanoff, “a ranked contender.” Now Ali made a sour face. “At a time when George Foreman was having his first street fights, I was already fighting ranked contenders, boxers of skill, sluggers of repute, dangerous men! Look at the list: Sonny Banks, Billy Daniels, Alejandro Lavorante, Archie Moore! Doug Jones, Henry Cooper, Sonny Liston! I fought them all. Patterson, Chuvalo, Cooper again, Mildenberger, Cleveland Williams — a dangerous Heavyweight. Ernie Terrell, twice the size of Foreman — I whupped him. Zora Folley — he saluted the American flag just like Foreman, and I knocked him out cold, a skilled boxer!” The ring apron at Nsele was six feet above the floor — thus another example of technology in Zaïre: a fighter falling through these ropes could fracture his skull on the drop to the floor — Ali sat on this apron, his legs dangling, and Bundini stood in front. It looked like Ali was sitting on his shoulders. So Bundini’s head, rotund as a ball, close cropped and bald in the middle, rose in a protuberance between Ali’s legs. While he spoke, Ali put his hands on Bundini’s head as if a crystal ball (a black crystal ball!) were in his palms; each time he would pat Bundini’s bald spot for emphasis, Bundini would glare at the reporters like a witch doctor in stocks. “To the press I say this,” said Ali. “I fought twenty ranked contenders before Foreman had his first fight!” Ali sneered. How could the press in its ignorance begin to comprehend such boxing culture? “Now, let Angelo read the list of
Foreman’s fights.” As the names went by, Ali did not stop making faces. “Don Waldheim.” “A nobody.” “Fred Askew.” “A nobody.” “Sylvester Dullaire.” “A nobody.” “Chuck Wepner.” “Nobody.” “John Carroll.” “Nobody.” “Cookie Wallace.” “Nobody.” “Vernon Clay,” said Dundee. Ali hesitated. “Vernon
Clay
—
he
might be good.” The press laughed. They laughed again at Ali’s comment for Gary “Hobo” Wiler — “a tramp.” Now came a few more called “nobody.” Ali said in disgust, “If I fought these bums, you people would put me out of the fight game.” Abruptly Bundini shouted, “Next week, we be Champ again.” “Shut up,” said Ali, slapping him on the head, “it’s my show.”

When the full list of Foreman’s fights had been delivered, Ali gave the summation. “Foreman fought a bum a month. In all, George Foreman fought five men with names. He stopped all five, but none took the count of ten. Of the twenty-nine name fighters I met, fifteen stayed down for the count of ten.” With all the pride of having worked up a legal brief well organized and well delivered, Ali now addressed the jury. “I’m a boxing scholar. I’m a boxing scientist — this is scientific evidence. You ignore it at your peril if you forget that I am a dancing master, a great artist.”

“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,” shouted Bundini.

“Shut up,” said Ali, slapping Bundini’s bald spot. Then he looked hard at the press. “You are ignorant of boxing. You are ignorant men. You are impressed with George Foreman because he is so big and his muscles seem so big.”

“They ain’t,” rumbled Bundini, “they ain’t.”

“Shut up,” said Ali, rapping him.

“Now,” said Ali, “I say to you in the press, you are impressed
with Foreman because he looks like a big Black man and he hits a bag so hard. He cuts off the ring! I am going to tell you that he cannot fight. I will demonstrate that the night of the fight. You will see my ripping left and my shocking right cross. You are going to get the shock of your life. Because now you are impressed with Foreman. But I let you in on a secret. Colored folks scare more white folks than they scare colored folks. I am not afraid of Foreman, and that you will discover.”

Next day, however, Ali varied the routine. There was no press conference. Instead, a drama took place in the ring. But then the fact that Ali was boxing today was in itself an event. In the last week and a half, he had sparred only three times, a light schedule. Of course, Ali had been training for so long his stablemates were growing old with him. Indeed, there was only one left, Roy Williams, the big dark gentle fighter who at Deer Lake had acted as if it were sacrilege to strike his employer. Now he was introduced by Bundini to the audience of several hundred Africans: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Roy Williams, Heavyweight Champ of Pennsylvania. He’s taller than George Foreman, he’s heavier than George Foreman, his reach is longer, he hits harder, and he’s more intelligent than George Foreman.” Bundini was the father of hyperbole.

His remarks were translated by a Zairois interpreter to the Black audience. They giggled and applauded. Ali now led them in a chant,
“Ali boma yé, Ali boma yé,”
which translated as “Kill him, Ali” — an old fight cry when all is said — and Ali conducted his people through the chant, but strictly, laying firm strokes on the air, a choirmaster with a boy scout chorus, stern, not fooling, proud of his chickens,
except a smile seemed to come off the act. Everybody was happy about it and the cry was without menace — nothing of cannibals savoring the meal to come or grunts and growls, more like a high school crowd crying “Slay Sisley High,” a testimonial to Ali’s good spirits. He looked eighteen this morning and he got ready to spar with Roy Williams.

They hardly boxed, however. After weeks and months of working together, a fighter and his sparring partner are an old married couple. They make comfortable love. That is all right for old married couples, but the dangers are obvious for a fighter. He gets used to living below the level of risk in the ring. So Ali dispensed today with all idea of boxing. He wrestled through an entire round with Williams. To the beat of Big Black on the floor beating on his conga drum, one sullen throbbing rhythm, Ali grappled up and down the ring. “I’m going to tie George up and walk with him,
walk
with him,” Ali said in a loud throttled voice through his mouthpiece. “Yes, I’m going to walk with him.” Occasionally, he would fall back to the ropes and let Williams pound him, then he would wrestle some more. “We’re going to
walk
with him.” When the round was over, Ali yelled to the side of the hall, “Archie Moore, number one spy, you tell George I’m running. I’m going to work him until he’s stupid and then the torture begins. War! War!” Ali shouted, and rushed out swinging like an archetype of determination, only to go slack and wave to Williams to pound him on the ropes.

“Archie Moore, number one spy,” he called over his shoulder even as Williams was hitting him.

Ali had fought Moore more than ten years ago. Not yet
Champion then, not even any world-soul larger than Cassius Clay, the Louisville Lip, he had still made predictions the fight would end in four. Archie came into the ring overweight and overage, but he nearly knocked The Lip out in the first round. He caught him a powerful sneak punch and as Cassius staggered back, Moore threw one of his best right hands. If it had hit, the fight might have been over, but Clay, half-unconscious, managed to avoid it. After that, the fight went to Cassius. By the end of the third round, Moore’s legs were so used up he did not sit down on his stool. He remained standing in his corner for fear that once seated, he would not have the strength to get up and answer the bell. He did not, of course, last through the fourth, and it was the end of his career. Archie Moore, with a record of something like two hundred fights, once Light-Heavyweight Champion, and in the ring for the Heavyweight title twice, was retired by Cassius Clay: something of the echo of that night was in Ali’s voice as he cried, “Number one spy!” as if, indeed, it still irritated Ali that he, the first disciple of Moore’s art, should find the old master in his opponent’s employ. Of course, there was no reason for Moore to love Ali, who had never acknowledged his artistic debt. For that matter, Archie had hardly been given full credit for how much he influenced other boxers. Once, in answer to the Irish fighter Roger Donoghue, who asked how Moore could throw punches out of a position that kept his arms crossed in front of his face, Archie replied, “You’re talking about technique, Roger, and what I do is philosophy.” Moore may indeed have brought boxing over to philosophy. He was probably the first to articulate (and he
was strikingly articulate) that not all heavy punches were heavy, not all traps worth avoiding nor all openings there to be taken, not all exhaustions should be thought depleting, nor all ring ropes constricting to one’s back, no corner had to be without room to fight, no knockdown was like any other, and no paradox could ever press upon you without offering its compressed power. Moore was to boxing what Nimzovitch had been to chess. (Ali, needless to say, could offer his considerable parallel to Bobby Fischer when it came to heckling an opponent out of his skin.)

These days Moore looked like an orotund Black professor who played a saxophone on weekends. His gray mustache curved down on each side of his mouth in a benign Fu Manchu, and his sideburns grew like mutton chops — a plump and dashing man in late middle age. What a titillation to recognize that he was close to sixty and yet had been in the ring with Ali.

Moore’s presence as the first philosopher of boxing must have been encouraging Ali to reveal himself as pugilism’s master of the occult. He proceeded to get himself knocked out by his sparring partner. A ritual knockout.

As the second round began, Ali beckoned for Williams to belabor his belly. Obediently, Williams came forward and pounded at Ali’s capacity to absorb endless punches to the stomach. “Oooh, it hurts,” Ali yelled suddenly. “It huuuuurts!”

Quickly the Zairois interpreter said to the Blacks in the back seats:
“Il frappe dur.”
Ali came off the ropes and wrestled again with Williams. As they walked, Ali made a speech to Moore. “Your man has no class,” he cried loud
and clear through his rubber mouthpiece, “no footwork. He thinks slow. The turkey is ready for the killing.” Moore smiled benignly as though to reply, “Not saying which turkey.”

Ali went back to the ropes. Williams hit him in the stomach. Ali sank to one knee. A trainer, Walter Youngblood, jumped into the ring and counted to eight. Ali got up and staggered about. He and Williams now looked equal to two sumo wrestlers with sand in their eyes. “He goin’ for my gut,” grunted Ali in a sad plantation voice and on the next punch to the stomach went down again. “The man been knocked down twice,” cried Ali, and leaped to his feet. Sparring continued. So did more knockdowns. Each was occasion for a speech. After the fourth — or was it the fifth? — knockdown Ali stayed down. To everybody’s surprise, Walter Youngblood counted to ten. The mood was awful. It was as if somebody had told an absolutely filthy joke that absolutely didn’t work. A devil’s fart. The air was ruined. From the floor, Ali said: “Well, The Lip has been shut. He’s had his mouth shut for the last time. George Foreman is the greatest. Too strong,” said Ali sadly. “He hit too hard. Now, a defeated Ali leaves the ring. George Foreman is undisputed champion of the world.”

The Africans in the rear of the hall were stricken. A silence, not without dread, was rising from them. Nobody believed Ali had been hurt — they were afraid of something worse. By way of this charade, Ali had given a tilt to the field of forces surrounding the fight. As a dead man had he spoken from the floor. Like a member of a chorus had he offered the comment: “He’s had his mouth shut for the
last time.” The African audience reacted uneasily, as if his words could excite unseen forces. There was hardly a Zairois in the audience who did not know that Mobutu, good president, was not only a dictator but a doctor of the occult with a pygmy for his own private conjuror, (distinguished must that pygmy be!). If, however, Mobutu had his
féticheur
, who among these Africans would not believe Ali was also a powerful voice in the fearful and magical zone between the living and the dead. The hush which fell on the crowd (like the silence in a forest after the echo of a rifle) was at the unmitigated horror of what Ali might be doing if he did not know what he had done. A man should not offer his limbs to sorcery any more than he might encourage his soul to slip into the mists. When every word reverberates to the end of the earth, a weak word can bring back an echo to punish the man who spoke; a weak action guarantee defeat. Therefore, a man must not play with his dignity unless he is adept in the arts of transformation. Did Ali really know what he was doing? Was he foolishly trying to burn away some taint in his soul and thereby daring disaster, or was he purposefully arousing the forces working for the victory of Foreman in order to disturb them? Who could know?

Ali now leaped to his feet and reassured the crowd. “Tell them,” he said to the interpreter, “that this is only a treat. The people will not see it ever in real life. Tell the people to cheer up. No man is strong enough or great enough to knock me out.
Ali boma yé
,” he said. “Tell them to
boma yé
.” The translation came. Wan cheers. The shock would demand its time for recovery. The Africans were numb. Do
not try to think until thought returns, their mood may have said. Nonetheless, they cried out
“Boma yé.”
Who had ever heard such confidence as one heard from the man in the ring? The laws of highest magic might be in his employ.