"The Rumble in the Jungle" is what the media called the Ali-Foreman World Heavyweight Champtionship Fight in Kinshasa, Zaire, in 1974. Foreman was the 7-1 or 8-1 favorite, having demolished Joe Frazier and Ken Norton, each of whom had beaten Ali after Ali's return to the ring following his three year suspension for refusing induction into the US Army. Norman Mailer's The Fight (1975) memorably documented what happened: Ali's refusal to shake hands at the weigh-in, Ali's impertinent right-hand leads in the first round, Ali's "rope-a-dope" tactic that first infuriated Foreman, then suckered him into spending himself pummelling Ali against slackened ropes. Foreman wearily marshaled his might for a coup-de-grace, even as Ali counterattacked.
Then a big projectile exactly the size of a fist in a glove drove into the middle of Foreman's mind, the best of the startled night, the blow Ali saved for a career. Foreman's arms flew out to the side like a man with a parachute jumping out of plane, and in this doubled-over position he tried to wander out to the centre of the ring. All the while his eyes were on Ali and he looked up with no anger as if Ali, indeed, was the man he knew best in the world and would see him on his dying day. Vertigo took George Foreman and revolved him. Still bowing from the waist in this uncomprehending position, eyes on Muhammad Ali all the way, he started to tumble and topple and fall even as he did not wish to go down. His mind was held with magnets high as his championship and his body were seeking the ground.
Can the attitude Mailer saw in Foreman in those spiralling last moments -- "uncomprehending ... mind held with magnets high" -- be seen in other titans of Foreman-like prowess, as their empires too settle earthward?
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