The King was back at home in Africa to reclaim his crown and that is what he did today.
DREW “BUNDINI” BROWN, SALONGO, 31 OCTOBER 1974
The effigy of George Foreman as the Superman of the ring was shattered among the rubble of the destroyed statues of Livingston and Stanley, representing white domination, down in the distant Congo.
DAN DANIEL, THE RING, JANUARY 1975
“The plot couldn’t be better,” noted Dave Anderson in the New York Times. “In perhaps the most dramatic scenario in boxing history, Ali had regained the heavyweight title at the age of 32 by outpunching a 25-year-old slugger who had recorded 24 consecutive knockouts in a previously unbeaten career,” and he accomplished this in the former Belgian Congo much to the astonishment of millions of fans watching in theaters around the globe, and the many who followed the fight over the radio or on the front pages of their morning newspapers. In the heart of Africa he had returned from exile to his former exalted state. As his corner man Bundini Brown declared, “The King was back at home in Africa to reclaim his crown and that is what he did today.” He proved, according to most accounts, “he is a gladiator. He just might be ‘the greatest,’ as he always proclaimed.”1
Reclaiming the crown provided a sense of personal redemption after Ali’s years in exile, but even more than a personal vindication, the triumph of an underdog over such a powerful opponent cemented Ali’s place as a sports superstar, an American legend, and a global icon, especially across Africa and the Islamic world. Indeed, many fans agreed with Foreman that the fight had turned into a morality play, with Ali as good and Foreman as evil. Why was this so? As 1974 was coming to a close, many Americans were doubtful about the strength of the American dream. United States participation in the Vietnam War had finally ended, and although the South Vietnamese government momentarily remained in power, it looked like the war would be the first major loss in American history. At home the threat of impeachment of President Nixon over the Watergate affair forced his resignation. Americans doubted they could trust a government that abused its powers, attacked its citizens, and could not prevent either a humiliating defeat abroad or a recession and runaway inflation at home caused by the oil embargo. The government seemed a pitiful and often immoral giant not worthy of the nation’s trust.2
Americans were awakening to the realization that the full weight of the federal government had been used against the two major political movements of the day: the black freedom and antiwar movements. In that environment the most that one could hope for was to survive these catastrophes. As Foreman had come to stand for the strength and power of the establishment and the flag-waving “silent majority,” his loss to Ali provided a momentary redemption for the rebellious values of the 1960s. In an era when successful black and white radical activists were at the mercy of the rising wave of conservatism, the victory by the underdog vindicated those who, like Ali, had challenged white supremacy at home and abroad, and those who had fought to end what they saw as an immoral imperial war against a much weaker foe. So too many saw in Ali’s victory a vindication of the values of the generational revolt against authority. That the victory occurred in Africa between a global black hero and a black man considered a tool of white colonialists also served to confirm Ali’s role as a champion of global black liberation. Ali’s victory gave many hope that their “underdog” quest for freedom from the establishment and colonial rule was still possible and morally justified.
So much of the meaning of the bout was bound up with the unexpected victory of the underdog over such an overpowering force as George Foreman, and the rope-a-dope tactics by which the victory was achieved. Ali’s triumph appeared greater because it was so unexpected. As the older and weaker opponent, according to Ronald Kisner, Jet’s sports editor, Ali found himself “to be a Daniel in the lion’s den, a man without a prayer.” In lauding Ali as Sports Illustrated’s “Sportsman of the Year” for 1974, George Plimpton put it well. For many sports writers “he may be the most astonishing athlete of our time. Charismatic. Talented. Outspoken. Possibly of tragic stature. Unpredictable—both in the ring and out.” One never knows what sort of fight he will deliver, noted Plimpton. “The only sure bet is that you’re going to be surprised. Even his opponents can never be sure what he’s going to do.”3
Plimpton and other observers were not alone in their surprise, especially given how many people were frightened that Foreman might seriously injure Ali. Dick Schaap, covering the fight for Sport magazine, was one of those “afraid that Foreman might inflict some terrible damage upon Ali, might scramble his mind, or worse, mess up his pretty face.” As the fight progressed it took him and “millions of others” through a full range of emotions. Early on Schaap feared that Foreman’s formidable punches were wreaking havoc as he battered a seemingly helpless Ali along the ropes. Gradually, however, he like millions of others realized that Ali was not just a stationary target being pummeled but was in fact defending himself well and tiring out his opponent. By the seventh round the idea that Foreman could hurt Ali “seemed ridiculous.” Schaap’s only feeling then was curiosity over whether Ali could knock him out. When he sent Foreman toppling to the canvas, there was only one emotion left: “Elation, total ecstatic elation, a sudden realization that the worst does not have to happen, that logic can be beaten, that the defeat of logic can be one of the sweetest feelings in the world. Of course he’s the greatest.” The picture accompanying Schaap’s article shows the iconic image of Foreman twirling to the canvas with Ali looking on in wonder. The caption: “After Ali had performed his wizardry, after he had sapped Foreman’s strength, all that remained was George’s fall.”4
The emotional experience of the match, as described by Schaap, certainly contributed to the evaluation of the bout as a great title fight and a superhuman accomplishment by the recrowned heavyweight champion. Whether one rooted for Foreman or Ali, the range of emotions that the fight evoked had everyone on the edge of their seats and made the ending all the greater for Ali and all the worse for Foreman. It was the knockout, following the emotional ups and downs of the bout—and especially the fear during the early rounds that Ali could not survive and would be severely battered and knocked out—that capped the fight and provided fans with a sense of triumph.
The blows that toppled Foreman at the end of the eighth round came so quickly but paradoxically seemingly in slow motion that no one watching could dispute Ali’s accomplishment. Indeed, everyone had a chance to see and vicariously experience the powerful sequence of punches that ensured Foreman’s defeat and Ali’s miracle. The image of Ali staring in wonder at his own handiwork as his huge opponent pirouetted to the canvas in an almost-languid collapse became the iconic picture of the fight that was repeated endlessly in newspaper articles and television clips in countries around the globe. The knockout was so dramatic that the outcome seemed foreordained. The pictures of the knockout deepened the impression of Foreman’s defeat as more than a simple loss in a well-fought fight. Ali’s dramatic and overwhelming victory and the way he achieved it sealed his legend and went a long way to convincing the boxing establishment of his greatness. The expected apocalypse that was to be Ali’s defeat did not happen.5
If Ali’s triumph surprised the world, George Foreman’s shocking and humiliating loss forced him to come to terms with physical defeat for the first time in his life as a professional boxer and one of the few times in his entire life. Needless to say, it was a devastating experience for him and his many fans. From being called invincible, he had gone to being derided as The Ring’s Dan Daniel put it, “the most stupid defender of the title in the history of the heavyweight class.” As Foreman made his way back to his dressing room, the groggy, weary, and dispirited former champion found it difficult to comprehend how he could have lost. After all, he was a 3 to 1 favorite going into the fight, and never before in his professional experience had he suffered a loss. In fact, he had never even been knocked off his feet. Losing seemed incomprehensible.6
Ever since his teens he had relied on his size and his power to intimidate his opponents and define who he was. Now, however, everything had changed. “For a twenty-five-year-old who had the world kneeling at his feet, losing stinks. I felt empty, totally empty,” he later recalled. The day after the fight was no better. Following a sleepless night, Foreman faced the first day without the heavyweight crown moping on the couch in his suite, dark glasses hiding his swollen eyes. His older friend and adviser, Mr. Moore (no relation to Archie Moore), a man who had seen him through marital difficulties and other problematic episodes in his young life, snatched the glasses off his face, and told him: “You be proud of that. You let the photographers take your picture like that. And you smile. You’re not putting on any dark glasses.”7
Still, it was hard to put a happy face on the defeat. Ali summed up the feelings about the fight that both men shared. As he put it, the rope-a-dope was a great strategy, “and when I fought Foreman, he was the dope.” The previously unbeaten Foreman, noted the Ghanaian Times, “was reduced to shambling ruin by Ali’s dazzling artistry and relentless psychological warfare,” and the belief that he was one of the deadliest punchers in the business was shattered. Former champion Jack Dempsey expressed disgust at the defeated champion’s amateurish performance, and the sporting press in general noted that Ali’s masterful and intelligent performance had exposed the myth of George Foreman. In The Ring, Dan Daniel took note of this fact: “The effigy of George Foreman as the Superman of the ring was shattered among the rubble of the destroyed statues of Livingston and Stanley, representing white domination, down in the distant Congo.” Even more depressing, his miserable performance, concluded Daniel, precluded a rematch. In its coverage of the fight, the Ghanaian Times summed up much of the African view. “Foreman was made to look ridiculous by Ali’s skill and some spectators were laughing at the champion’s discomfort by the seventh round.” In a kinder assessment, Daniel concluded that it was apparent that “it will be sometime before Foreman recovers from the mental and physical setback he suffered at Zaire.”8
Indeed, Foreman and his camp struggled to come to terms with such an overwhelming and humiliating loss. For such a powerful aggressor, defeat came at a moment, the mid-1970s, when the American people were also forced to wrestle with the humiliating loss of the all-powerful American military after more than ten long years of war in Vietnam—a war that no one but the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese believed the United States could lose. Parallel to the large numbers of Americans deeply disturbed by the futile demonstration of its power, Foreman shared elements of this culture of defeat by leveling unfocused anger toward the man who had beaten him. In interview after interview, the ex-champion revealed that immediately after the bout he developed a powerful and all-consuming hatred toward his triumphant opponent. As Foreman recalled in his spiritual autobiography, “I hated Muhammad Ali . . . I would have loved nothing more than to kill him in the ring.” Another equally powerful response was to deny that he had been defeated at all. Like the powerful US military and the national victory culture that it represented, Foreman charged that he had not lost his title in the ring or on the battlefield. Rather, both were defeated behind the scenes by enemies who used trickery and subterfuge. In his mind Foreman had not been defeated in a clear-cut manly battle; rather, he was stabbed in the back by everyone, including his friends and allies.9
At a brief press conference at Charles de Gaulle Airport on November 2 during his stopover in Paris, Foreman at first declared: “Ali won the fight. There are no doubts.” Shortly thereafter, however, he contradicted himself and set off a controversy over the outcome of the fight. Claiming that he deserved a rematch because of too many irregularities, the disappointed former champion charged: “There’s the counting of the referee. He counted me out too quickly. There’s also the story about the ropes; some journalists have reported that they were really taut [sic] to favor Ali who wasn’t ignorant of it. My adversary was very often sitting in them like on a chair.” Along with the charge of a quick count by the referee, loose ropes, and poisoned water, as we saw in the previous chapter, Foreman’s underlying complaint was that the leaders of his team—especially Dick Sadler—had not paid attention to the condition of the ring and thereby did not adequately look after their warrior in the heat of battle. As the disappointed young man saw it, it was his leaders, not the fighter himself, who were responsible for poor executive decisions that then hindered their charge on the field of battle.10
Indeed, it appeared that it was his relationship with his own corner that upset Foreman the most. At times he admitted that he fought a stupid fight, but he quickly turned his anger and his humiliation against his own team, especially trainer Dick Sadler. Why, for example, did his handlers fail to check out the ring in advance of the fight as had Angelo Dundee? Why did they continue to urge him to keep on the attack long after the tactic was no longer working? Even more important, what was wrong with the water they gave him to drink in his corner? In his autobiography, the embittered former champion claimed that someone in his corner had doctored the water he sipped just before the bout started. “‘Rope-a-dope’ the fight got nicknamed,” Foreman wrote, when he told a reporter he believed his water “may have been mickeyed. What else, I asked, could account for that medicinal taste and my terrible tiredness? What else, I asked, could account for how sick and sore I felt for a month afterward?” Later he heard that Sugar Ray Robinson, watching the fight at a New York theater, remarked that Foreman seemed drugged. In fact, Foreman recollected Sadler once talking about a fixed fight with which he had been involved. Had this happened here? In the recent past, moreover, Foreman had had a falling out with Sadler after his manager managed to sell more parts of his fighter to investors than existed, leaving the champion in the position of not owning any part of himself. This had resulted in a break in their relationship for a while that had been patched up for the Rumble in the Jungle. After Zaire, Foreman concluded that Sadler had betrayed him and could no longer be trusted. Like many Americans coming to terms with the defeat in Vietnam, Foreman often treated his loss as “a stab in the back” by those close to him. “I felt like the protective shield over me was gone,” declared the defeated warrior. “There was a complete lack of concern about my well-being.” One thing is certain: the loss convinced him that Sadler had to go.11
For Foreman, as for many of his fellow Americans, the post-Vietnam 1970s proved a difficult and disturbing period. Losing a war for the first time in its history or losing by way of knockout for the first time led to a questioning of individual and national identity rooted in winning and power. No wonder national political figures depressed by military defeat looked for ways to transform defeat into victory. As Foreman put it, “I was robbed of the victory and I was furious.” Dan Daniel’s prediction that it would take years for Foreman to get over his defeat proved amazingly accurate. It certainly took him a long time—sixteen months—before he returned to the ring, a testament to how severely his self-confidence had been shaken to the core. More immediately, rather than return to the United States where he would be bombarded with embarrassing questions about the fight, he stayed on in Paris at Mr. Moore’s behest and sought consolation in the arms of an old girlfriend. Yet he was too troubled to enjoy her attentions. After several days of abuse she left Paris an emotional wreck. No better off himself, Foreman, accompanied by Mr. Moore, left too. Instead of going home to Houston or Livermore, California, however, the two men detoured to Los Angeles, where the depressed fighter picked up another girlfriend for a getaway escape to Hawaii. Once again, his mind was still too wrapped up in the magnitude of his defeat to enjoy himself. During fitful nights, he would awaken with a start in a cold sweat, tormented by memories of the fight. “If only I hadn’t dropped my hands; if only I hadn’t walked into those punches; if only I’d left Zaire and been treated by a doctor; if only I’d called off the fight; if only the ropes.” After his girlfriend abandoned the sinking ship, Mr. Moore stayed on, worried that George looked “depressed enough to do something stupid to myself.” Moore also put up with George’s rage, helping him to vent the anger that needed an external outlet or it would turn inward and completely destroy the distraught former champion.12
When the two men returned to Foreman’s Houston birthplace, they did so in a brand new Rolls-Royce. The ex-champion hoped that if he drove up in a big, expensive car people in his old Fifth Ward neighborhood would not immediately remind him of his defeat. One friend brought him down immediately, however, by asking, sarcastically if his car was a Toyota. He definitely did not want to hear that several relatives had rooted for Ali. His cousin Willie Carpenter, moreover, who had served as his equipment manager for many years, accused him of taking a dive in Zaire. Foreman was dumbfounded that a family member could even think that of him. Equally disturbing, celebrities whom he had met as champion turned their backs on him. Bob Hope, for example, had featured Foreman on his television show and had promised to help him become an actor after his fighting days were over. Yet when Hope never contacted him again after the loss, Foreman was devastated to realize that the Hollywood star liked him only when he held the title. When the two men met several months later on the Tonight Show, Hope acted as if they were meeting for the first time.13
Clearly, “losing had knocked me off my axis.” Without the title, he felt, “I was nothing. As champ, I’d imagined people considered me the ultimate man.” Foreman still had a dozen cars, three houses, a ranch, and tons of money. Yet having lost his title, life was empty. “I envisioned people making fun of me behind my back. Those miserable thoughts tortured my mind for the next two and a half years.” Depressed, even entertaining thoughts of suicide, he decided to rebuild from the inside, “to become the man who hadn’t yet hit the canvas in Zaire three months before. The only way to do that was to win back the championship.” This time he vowed to die rather than lose. In search of an elusive rematch with Muhammad Ali, however, he first had to demonstrate to himself and the rest of the sporting world that he was still a powerful warrior rather than a pathetic shell of his former self.14
While George Foreman struggled with the nightmare of defeat, African Americans and many younger whites greeted Muhammad Ali’s victory as far more than a sporting achievement. Rather, it served as the vindication of a black folk hero who symbolized black pride and black liberation and mirrored their own struggles against the overwhelming power of white supremacy in America. In a match pitting two models of blackness against each other, noted black poet and intellectual Quincy Troupe, Ali had, in winning, “spiritually and symbolically represented millions upon millions of people who, also in the face of heavy odds and during crucial times throughout the world’s history, had said, ‘No,’ and in the end had the remarkable staying power not only to survive, but to emerge from the struggle with a glorious and significant victory.” As a result, Ali’s knockout of Foreman “was greeted by jubilation all over the world. People danced in the streets, went to bars and got merrily drunk, interrupted shows with screams of joy, ran down the streets shouting, ‘Ali, bombayed, bombayed!’” In contrast to Foreman’s patriotism, “African Americans recognize in Ali our own struggle for dignity, beauty and survival in a hostile America. He has been a mirror image of our own collective struggle for freedom and dignity in this racist-to-the-bone, hypocritical country.” As a result, noted Troupe, “When he won, we all won, much in the same way that Joe Louis won for all of us during the Thirties and Forties.”15
For many African Americans, the way Ali won was just as important as the victory itself. In a morality play rooted in black folklore, the far weaker combatant succeeded in defeating a much more powerful opponent who threatened to annihilate him and making him look “like a man who had drunk one too many at four in the morning than a champion fighting to retain one of the world’s most precious gems.” As the decided underdog, Ali relied on improvisation and superior ring intelligence to lay a trap for his foe. Like the smaller animals of black folk tales, Ali used his wits to survive while Foreman slavishly followed the instructions of his corner. “The surprise is that I did not dance,” Ali declared. “For weeks I kept hollering, ‘Be ready to dance,’ but I didn’t dance. That was the surprise. That was the trick.” Various observers highlighted Ali’s improvisational ability and compared him to animal tricksters. George Plimpton, we have seen, compared him to a “sly mouse” tricking “a big cartoon wolf,” just as New York Times columnist Dave Anderson, noted that “a bee battered a lion,” with, as Ali had predicted, “brains.” Wit and style beat, as Time described Foreman, “a human battering ram” who stalked his opponents “like a robot with gloves.” As Ali told the press, “Don’t ever match no bull against a master boxer. The bull is stronger but the matador is smarter.”16
Similarly, Ali’s victory was not just the victory of an underdog, it was the victory of a garrulous and verbally adroit figure rooted deeply in vernacular black culture over a largely silent and withdrawn champion. In fact, Ali’s verbal skills were a key part of the rope-a-dope strategy. While the referee was busy giving both fighters their instructions, for example, Ali spent his time taunting the champion. He continued this tactic at crucial points throughout the bout, goading Foreman to anger by declaring that the champ’s powerful blows were ineffective. The angrier Foreman became, the less he was able to think straight and the more he kept trying to land the one knockout punch. Even before the match Ali indulged in verbal joking and bragging. He claimed he had wrestled an alligator, was faster than a light switch, and cut his opponents like a razor. Usually, however, Foreman chose not to respond, and Ali found himself squaring off in rhyming battles not against the champ but against the champ’s verbally agile trainer and confidant, Archie Moore. Of course, this only highlighted that Foreman was lacking in the verbal department. As Troupe declared, Ali “has always been a great talker, and the Black community has always loved a great talker.” Troupe traced this cultural style to “an African oral tradition” that could be seen in the preacher, the blues singer, the corner rapper, the dozens player, the joker, and the pimp. Not only did Ali come out of this tradition; he was “the first prize fighter to use this form so effectively to publicize himself and endear himself to a receptive Black community.”17
The Ali-Foreman matchup also highlighted the fact that the new champion had set a precedent as one of “the few boxing champions to utter sounds beyond the customary monosyllabic words.” Whereas many conservative blacks and whites were disappointed that their silent symbol of patriotism was so badly beaten, Ali had become a folk hero of mythic proportions who felt no compunctions about speaking out on issues outside the boxing arena. Whether referring to the Nation of Islam, the Vietnam War, Christianity, or the deep-seated white supremacy of America, he defied the powerful forces, represented by Foreman, which wanted to quiet him forever. Like Foreman and the white silent majority, the government, the military, and the boxing establishment all failed to shut up “the Louisville Lip.”18
Ali’s triumph over an establishment symbol transformed him into a full-fledged black folk hero beloved by all sorts of African Americans, but especially antiwar black and white youth who had defied the authority of the American power structure and actually won a major victory after being derided, as was Ali, as un-American traitors for their opposition to the Vietnam War and American racism. As one of the few major black dissidents still standing, Ali’s victory made him a symbol of those other black heroes who had defied the white establishment and its representatives but who had been killed in the struggle, like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, and numerous Black Panthers, or who were living in exile, like Stokely Carmichael. As a trickster and a rebel in the tradition of other hard men who had defied white racism, Ali reigned as a full-fledged opposition hero, the baddest of them all. He was the man who had beaten “the man.” Maybe it was just coincidence, but there was at least a subtle irony in the juxtaposition in South Africa’s Pretoria News of the iconic picture of Ali watching Foreman pirouette to the canvas under the headline “Magnificent Ali Is the Greatest—Again,” next to a headline that read “Nixon Critical.”19
The successful triumph over such an imposing enemy struck a deep chord among black people everywhere. First and foremost was the Nation of Islam. In his comments after the fight, Ali credited his surprising performance to Allah, who “has power over all things.” Indeed, Ali noted that without the power of Allah behind him, he would not have achieved the eighth-round knockout. With that as proof, the new champion urged his listeners to follow his example, read Muhammad Speaks, and attend the local mosques to improve their lives. Nation of Islam officials could not be happier. Since he had declared himself a Muslim in 1964, the Nation had used the champion as a powerful representative of their philosophy of black pride, self-help, and a conservative form of black nationalism. His physical perfection and his many victories transformed the boxer into a warrior for the Nation; his picture dotted the pages of Muhammad Speaks. In addition, the NOI had relied on his financial contributions to the organization. Despite the split with Elijah Muhammad in 1969 over his return to boxing, which meant he was not a full member at the time of the fight, Ali’s message had even greater appeal to fans as he promised that his next fight would be on behalf of building a black hospital in Chicago under the Muslim’s auspices. He hoped that his victory would serve to regularize his status. When he finally retired, he planned to use his global celebrity as champion to serve his faith and his people as a minister for Islam worldwide.20
Not only did Ali’s intentions raise Islam’s profile at home; they also increased Arab support for the challenger abroad. Two days before the fight, an Arab-African solidarity meeting, sponsored by the Arab League, opened in Kinshasa, thus swelling the number of Muslims present in the city who supported the underdog. One visiting Islamic missionary announced that thousands of Muslims were praying for an Ali victory. When Dick Sadler learned of this, he reached into African American folklore to retort, “Prayers are good for prayer meetings but they don’t do much for bear meetings.” Readers of Egypt’s Al Ahram got the word but did not dismiss the sentiment. “By believing in God, justice, and himself,” the newspaper noted, Muhammad Ali was able to regain the heavyweight throne.21
Having reclaimed his crown, Ali used it as a platform to spread his religious and racial goals around the globe. In a Playboy interview shortly after the fight, he not only laid out the Nation of Islam’s philosophy of black separation and a coming apocalypse that would chastise America for its racism; he also declared his pessimism about race relations in the United States. “America don’t have no future!” he declared. “America’s going to be destroyed! Allah’s going to divinely chastise America! Violence, crime, earthquakes—there’s gonna be all kinds of trouble” as payback for “all its lynchings and killings of slaves and what it’s done to black people. America’s day is over—and if it doesn’t do justice to the black man and separate, it’s gonna burn!”22
As an international spectacle, the fight dramatized in the cultural realm the importance of global black power that by the early 1970s had surpassed the integrationist thrust of the civil rights movement. After returning to the United States, for example, Ali promoted a Pan-African philosophy as he praised Zaire and other independent black African states as a counter to American white supremacy. As he told Playboy, at first he was skeptical about the fight being in Zaire, a country “supposed to be so undeveloped.” Being in Zaire, he said, “opened my eyes.” Here were “black people running their own country. I saw a black president of a humble black people who have a modern country. There are good roads throughout Zaire and Kinshasa has a nice downtown section that reminds you of a city in the States.” From the black pilots to the black stewardesses, hotel owners, and teachers, “it was like any other society except it was all black.” In contrast to what he saw in Africa, “black people in America will never be free so long as they’re on the white man’s land.” Freedom would occur only when black people had their own nation in North America. Black people, asserted the new champion, were “tired of being slaves and never having nothing. We’re tired of being servants and waiting till we die and go to heaven before we get anything.” Unlike Zaire, he asserted, “we’re a whole nation of slaves still in bondage to white people.”23
Despite continued skepticism about the specifics of the Nation of Islam’s philosophy, black people expressed their pride in Ali as a black folk hero in a variety of ways. At DC’s Capitol Arena, nearly all of the seventeen thousand black fans rooted for Ali, because, noted a doctor in attendance, “he was black man enough to stand on his own two feet and suffer the consequences.” When he won, everyone “walked out filled with pride and brotherliness and black self-love.” The experience was similar at a theater on Chicago’s South Side, where at first the size and strength of Foreman made Stokely Carmichael, briefly back in the United States on political business, extremely nervous. But then the Africans began their “Ali, bomaye” chant, which was picked up by the men and women in the audience, and Carmichael “felt a wave of new confidence.” When the knockout came, it was greeted by “absolute pandemonium.” Likewise, the audience in a Harlem movie house chanted in an “almost primeval way” for Ali after he survived the second round, that fatal round by the end of which Foreman previously had destroyed his opponents. When in the eighth round, “the people’s champion” reclaimed his title by flooring the official champion, “the crowd stood, right arms raised high, fists clenched.” Some in the crowd were clearly “stunned by the swiftness of the ending. ‘Ali! Ali! Ali!’ they screamed.” According to the newspaper account, these were not the super-fly types in elegant attire who stood out at the Ali-Frazier rematch, but rather they were “plain, ordinary folks” who lined up as early as 6 p.m. in front of Loew’s Victoria Theater at West 125th Street and Seventh Avenue in support of “the brash, cocky, spirited Ali.” An audience of postal clerks, keypunch operators, social workers, and other regular folk were surprised and delighted by the outcome. “I was for Ali, but I thought Foreman had a very good chance,” declared Ralph Davis, age thirty-four. “I didn’t expect this,” he added just as the crowd was booing the defeated Foreman as he left the ring. Others were equally ecstatic. “I told you, he’s beautiful, I just love him! . . . He’s the people’s champion.” Many in the crowd seemed unable to believe that Ali had regained the title he had been “stripped of” in 1967. “I’m totally surprised,” declared a postal clerk. “I did not want to see him get hurt. I cried when Joe Frazier beat him up” in 1971. Meanwhile, Gregory O’Bryant expressed the common appreciation that Ali used “scientific methods” against “wild, super aggressive punches.”24
Letters to the editor and articles in the domestic black press further expressed an overwhelming appreciation for the larger social and cultural implications of Ali’s victory. In Jet Ronald Kisner praised Ali’s determination: “Something bigger than life was approaching . . . it was no exaggeration. No broken jaws, man’s laws, knockdowns, layoffs or delays could stop Ali from reaching his destiny.” This was a man determined to overcome all physical and political obstacles and he had triumphed. For John Carlisle III, of Westbury, New York, Ali’s victory carried personal identification and important political weight. “I am so proud that Muhammad Ali won the world heavyweight championship,” he wrote to Jet. “For more than three years, he was exiled from the ring for his refusal to serve in the armed forces.” Even more, Carlisle gave him credit for paying “a special thanks to the Black nation by having the fight in Zaire.” Beverly Blackman, from Long Island City, New York, agreed that “Brother Muhammad Ali” was not only “the greatest” but also had contributed to her happiness and that of “millions of other brothers and sisters the world over. You have made everything crystal clear to anyone who has ever doubted you.” Seku S. Wattara, of Baltimore, saw the victory as a matter of racial pride. “He really is a Brother that the Black race can be proud of,” the letter writer concluded. “Anyone who doubts that he is the greatest of all time should climb into the ring with him.”25
African Americans celebrated Ali’s victory as a matter of racial solidarity, a pattern not seen since Joe Louis’s heyday in the 1930s and 1940s. Even though his opponent was black, Ali’s triumph was viewed as a victory over the injustices of the white world. As president of Morehouse College, Hugh M. Gloster, told Ali in front of four thousand students: “As much as you are admired by boxing fans in general, you are admired even more by the members of your own race. You are our main man.” Taking back his title that “‘they’ had taken from him” because of his religion and his refusal to be drafted, made him an overarching symbol of racial pride in an era when black pride was at its apex. As the Chicago Defender put it, “Now the self-appointed Messiah of blacks everywhere, to Harlem, to South Africa, to the slums of the cities of all the world, he preaches pride in being black, pride in the determination to overcome, to meet the white man’s world on its own terms, and to defeat it.” He amuses many, frightens some with his tirades: “There are blacks who greet him with laughter and glee as he excoriates the white world, but there are also blacks who take his vitriolic, militant speeches as a green light to overthrow the white man’s establishment.”26
Ali’s antiestablishment stance was highlighted when he returned to Louisville, Kentucky, on November 8 for Muhammad Ali Day. At a central plaza, seven thousand people, mostly black, but many whites too, gathered to honor a “black folk hero and the most famous defender of the faith of Islam.” Although a boxer, he stood before the crowd “like a Black Prince,” with his face unscarred and, “as men’s faces can be, . . . something approaching beautiful.” A triumphant living symbol that black was beautiful, Ali received greetings from “those who genuinely loved him,” as well as, finally, “some of the bigshots who shied away from him in the old days when he was considered a traitor and a bum for refusing to enter military service and for changing his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali.” As he walked through the crowd, people nearly trampled one another to touch him. “It was,” wrote Charles Sanders in Ebony, “an outpouring of black love upon a man for whom black people have gained profound respect—for refusing to knuckle under despite the cruelest pressures; for standing up for what he believed even though it cost him, in dollars and otherwise, far more than most men are willing to lose, and for refusing to give up and for trying hard enough and often enough to eventually triumph.”27
Many black intellectuals hailed Ali’s triumph as a victory for 1960s black and white radicalism. In a special issue of Black World, scholars, poets, and artists hailed Ali as a “Creative Black Man,” celebrated his “Spiritual Victory,” and placed him in the tradition of black folk heroes in the United States. While Samuel F. Yette noted that whites often controlled black images, narrowing them to comic or tragic tropes, other contributors emphasized that Ali was “a creative person,” a cultural hero who symbolized the cultural explosion of the sixties and black vernacular culture with his verbal agility, poetry, bragging, humor, and toasting. Like artists or musicians, according to playwright Clay Goss, he used his imagination to become champion, and “he captured our imagination, in the process turning his struggle into our struggle and in turn our struggle into his own.” As a celebrity, Ali transformed the platform he created of the ring into an image of himself “that reflected many of the positive aspects of all Black men who are engaged in the struggle for freedom and human dignity.” Who else but Ali, Goss asked, was capable of believing he could knock out the invincible Foreman?28
Defeating Foreman in Zaire represented the culmination of Ali’s heroism as a radical opposition figure, and for many commentators, it went beyond the black community. What surprised Quincy Troupe, for instance, was that young whites heartily agreed. Unlike the celebrations after victories by Joe Louis in the 1930s and 1940s, where primarily black people made their happiness public, “this time it was different. People of every nationality, color, religious persuasion celebrated the victory of Ali,” and with satellites and modern mass communications, this triumphant joy was felt all over the world. Young whites seemed “genuinely moved by Ali’s great victory, seemed to have wanted it to happen as badly as Third World people.” Indeed, in depressing 1974, with all the scandals, the riots against busing, and Watergate, “Ali’s victory was a spiritual victory” for all in a “completely demoralized and spiritually bankrupt nation.” Where many Americans had lost faith in the democratic political system and where energies for radical change were ebbing in the face of the traumatic shocks that buffeted the land, “Ali’s victory was like a beautiful and soothing balm that washed over all of us” and renewed faith that positive change was possible. In a large sense, Ali’s victory vindicated those protestors “silenced by murder and jail sentences, or shouted down” as “irresponsible and radical—‘un-American.’”29
Indeed, both black and white young people rooted for Ali as a symbol of the generational and cultural revolt of the 1960s, a figure who gloried in self-expression in and out of the ring. Grown older by 1974, they still felt the lingering remains of a war that had consumed their lives, their prospects, and their outlook. In a time during the sixties when revolutionary change seemed possible, many young whites and blacks had forged interracial alliances and made heroes of black—and some white—cultural figures who appeared to be breaking racial and cultural boundaries. As Troupe noted, it was not just Ali, but musicians like Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Pharoah Sanders, Smokey Robinson, Curtis Mayfield, and James Brown who “influenced an entire generation with their revolutionary approach to music and their lifestyles.” The way Ali fought the match elevated the confrontation with Foreman into a larger conflict over the values of the 1960s. In his younger days, Ali had challenged boxing orthodoxy with his dancing, the way he held his hands low, and his poetic predictions as much as he defied political and racial orthodoxy. In Zaire, however, Ali surprised everyone by not dancing and by defying authority and perceived wisdom. When asked whose idea it was to go to the ropes and not dance as he had been predicting for months, “Me,” Ali replied. “I don’t have no trainers. They just work for me. I had to beat George at his own game.”30
At the heart of the battle between the two phenomenal black heavyweight fighters lay the agonizing weight of the just-concluded Vietnam War. The political currents that continued to divide the nation found their champions in the Rumble in the Jungle. Foreman came to represent the US position in Vietnam. As he put it immediately after the bout, in contrast to Ali’s position: “I’m an American. I love my country. If I was ever in a position, I would fight for it with all my might.” Conversely, it was Ali’s response to the draft, rooted in his Islamic religion that ultimately cost him his title. David’s surprising victory over Goliath served to vindicate boxing fans and the general public—white and black—who had opposed the war with such vehemence. With US participation in the Vietnam War drawing to an ignominious close, it was much easier to accept Ali’s opposition to the war as based on conviction and the government’s attempts to punish him as an abuse of power. The victory, moreover, demonstrated that it was possible to survive the persecutions of the government and the majority of the population and actually triumph. For many, Ali’s triumph over great odds to achieve his goals could be taken for the ultimate uphill struggle against the war itself.31
Defeating the patriotic Foreman only confirmed Ali’s status as a hero for white and black opponents of the Vietnam War. Events during New York City’s own Muhammad Ali Day in early November made this clear. At a celebration at the largely African American Boys’ High School in Brooklyn’s Ocean Hill–Brownsville neighborhood, ten-year-old Shirley Sykes delighted the champion with a poem she had written for the occasion, a poem that emphasized Ali’s racial views and his opposition to the war. “The trouble began when he refused to fight,” began the poem, “The Vietnamese who happened to be non-white.” When the war was over, the verse emphasized, “they let him fight / And he tried to win with all his might / Now here’s the latest: / Muhammad IS the greatest.” Later that day at the official ceremony at city hall that included many more white fans, Ali had Shirley Sykes repeat her poem. The war, in other words, was a racial war waged against a nonwhite people by a white American government, and Ali and those who opposed the war were justified in their opposition.32
Equally important, the bout not only featured standard-bearers for opposing positions on the war; in a number of ways it symbolically reenacted America’s frustrating experience in that long and fruitless conflict. As a symbol of American power, Foreman relied on his overwhelming size and strength, rather than finesse, in the match, and he relished his ability to knock out opponents early and in convincing fashion. This led to overconfidence in his own power and underestimation of the enemy’s strength. In addition, the champion followed the lead of his corner to a fault and at crucial moments in the battle proved unable to change his tactics as the situation demanded. Instead, he kept throwing bombs that time and again failed to subdue a weaker and more resourceful enemy. In the end he exhausted his energy, lost his confidence and will, and was defeated because of his own failings rather than as a result of the strength of his clever foe.
As the avowed opponent of the Vietnam War, Ali managed to transform Zaire into his home field and stun his powerful foe to achieve an upset victory. Much like the Viet Cong and its North Vietnamese allies, Ali surprised the world—not only by winning but by winning so convincingly that the whole idea of victory culture was placed in doubt. Using an impenetrable defense, the challenger unleashed just enough sneaky offense to weaken Foreman’s resolve. Even as Foreman continued to throw the heavier punches and win the early rounds, Ali, as Foreman himself acknowledged, “owned their hearts and minds more completely with every punch he absorbed.” At the same time, Foreman proved incapable of winning the support of the Zaïrois people. His aloofness and distance was a clear indication that he was “miserable about being in Zaire, and in Africa,” noted Suruba Ibumando Wechsler, a Zaïroise woman who kept up with the event via local radio and newspapers. By contrast, she declared, Ali “seemed to be having the time of his life, here in the very heart of Africa. He mingled with everyone, young and old, rich and poor, black and white.”33
As a spectacle that captured the attention of the entire globe, moreover, the fight publicized the 1960s narrative linking domestic racial oppression and white imperialism to a global constituency. The celebration in Louisville highlighted the victory as one over white supremacy at home as well as abroad. Indeed, describing the events in Louisville that day, Charles Sanders noted that Ali, who surely knew how symbolic it would be “(and what a slap in the face it would be to those American ‘patriots’ who took away his title), arranged to triumph in Africa and in a country where white men once took away some other things—they once chopped off the fingers and whole hands of black men” who failed to provide King Leopold of Belgium their quota of rubber, minerals, and precious metals. Indeed, Ali represented an international uprising of defiant blackness. “How many millions of black people and Third World people there must have been,” mused Sanders, “who saw Ali, on TV, or there in the ring, in Africa, facing George Foreman, also a black man, but who, for reasons bordering on the metaphysical or on religion or something sent to Ali alone their good wishes by Western Union of the Black Mind!” That he represented a worldwide challenge to white supremacy was made clear when the new champion brought “proof” to his Louisville admirers of “what Africans have accomplished since gaining independence from colonial powers.” His Nation of Islam belief that blacks could achieve greatness without help from whites was reinforced when he introduced the young pilot who flew him from Kinshasa to Paris aboard President Mobutu’s DC-10 jet plane, a symbol of modern civilization. At a luncheon linked to his official day, Ali reminded Louisville’s mayor that “you white folks still think Africans live in trees. Well, this man here ain’t no tom-tom beater, he’s a highly-skilled pilot who can fly a jumbo jet as good as any white man!”34
On a different level, Nigerian Olu Akaraogun took the occasion of Ali’s defeat of Foreman to assess “the meaning of Muhammad Ali for the Black World.” In one of the many contemporary discussions of Ali’s importance, Akaraogun noted that Ali’s victory was a victory over American racism at home—and abroad. The greatness lay in identifying “with the exploited and downtrodden masses in Africa and wherever else.” As a supporter of global Black Power, Ali “embodies and at the same time shares the aspiration and hopes of Black people everywhere.” The fact that he had reclaimed the title “thwarted the efforts of the American power structure to cheat and deprive him of his legitimate claim to the world crown.” As a black man, moreover, “Ali had the revolutionary consciousness to realize that he had no business shooting down fellow ‘coloured’ people in Vietnam.” If anybody should be shot, “it had to be the white supremacist who had exploited and enslaved Africans and Asians for centuries.” White America’s taking away his title was typical of American justice, a claim which resonated with millions of African Americans in the United States. According to Akaraogun, Ali’s greatness lay not only in reaching the top and becoming materially successful like other black champions, but in his realization that it was “his duty to identify with the exploited and downtrodden Black masses in Africa and wherever else they are in the world.”35
In turn, the African setting for the Super Fight of the Century encouraged most black Africans to view Ali’s victory as a symbolic reenactment of their own liberation from Western colonial control. Nowhere was this more apparent than in Zaire. In the days leading up to the fight, most citizens of Zaire, government officials, sports figures, and fans maintained a diplomatic neutrality befitting their host position, but in reality they were overwhelmingly pro-Ali. “I was especially surprised by the enthusiasm of the spectators before, during and after the fight. Those I had asked their opinion before the fight were all for the two boxers,” noted journalist Mario Gherarducci: “’May the best man win!’ was what most said. But, at the moment of truth, everyone was for Ali.”36
While the stadium roared with the chant of “Ali, bomaye,” whenever Ali threw a punch, afterward those who remained in their seats or took to the surrounding streets, reenacted the fight with an enthusiasm as if they themselves were the victors. Even at six in the morning, the swampy streets were filled “with ecstatic youngsters chanting ‘Ali, Ali, Ali.” They squared off against each other, doing the Ali shuffle, “sometimes knee deep in waters cascading down the narrow streets, and even falling down and pretending to be the flattened Foreman.” As Thomas A. Johnson reported in the New York Times, those who attended the fight happily stayed up all night watching the fight and celebrating. In the morning others listened to their stories of the bout at bus stations, markets, streets, and backyards. They recounted “in this modern, urban capital, the beginnings of the legends that are to grow out of Muhammad Ali’s upset victory over George Foreman here in styles similar to tribal criers, story tellers and historians of their ancient past.” Hours after the fight the city remained alive with the thrill of the big event and Ali’s surprise victory.37
Ali proved the clear favorite because the Zaïroises identified their still-young liberation from Belgian colonial rule with the new titleholder. His victory became a vicarious reenactment of their colonial rebellion against their former European oppressors and a sign that the independent black and Islamic states were equal to those in the west. The people of Zaire supported Ali despite the odds because they knew him, explained Malonga Suka, an unemployed nineteen-year-old man. “They have heard the name and savored the reputation for ten years,” and they really had no knowledge of George Foreman. As the young Zaïrois said: “This is a great day for Zaire and for black people. Zaire is the winner here today.”38
Ali’s many comments about the sophisticated modernism of Zaire fit well with President Mobutu’s attempt to define the new nation as a civilized country entirely different than the conceptions of the Belgian Congo promoted by the former Belgian rulers and many other Western countries. Just pulling off such a colossal gamble as staging such a massive international event in the face of widespread doubt and constant criticism caused many Zaïrois officials and ordinary citizens to proclaim that the big winner of the Super Fight of the Century was “Zaire itself.” Despite the many difficulties, as evidenced by the problems of the Zaire 74 music festival, the staging of such a prestigious event as this title fight with “two sons of Africa” not only demonstrated the greatness of the country to its people but, even more important, “showed the world that what had once been the fratricidal former Belgian Congo was now a leader of modern Africa with the funds, skills and eagerness to gamble for all the world’s attention.” Just as the odds were stacked against Ali in his last shot at the title, so too were the odds against a developing black African nation such as Zaire pulling it off without a hitch. Not only did the match come off the fight itself and Ali’s dramatic victory put the nation on the map, promoted its image at home and abroad, and helped legitimate Mobutu’s Popular Movement for the Revolution party for a long time to come.39
Once Ali won, Zaïrois officials and ordinary citizens too could finally abandon their official neutrality and express their relief and joy that Ali had carried the day. For local analysts, the incredible atmosphere surrounding the fight was about more than the Zaïrois love of sport. For Moaka Toko, writing in Elima, “it’s about national pride” in organizing such a grand and complex international sporting event. Given the neocolonial doubts about Zaire staging such an important match, Suruba Ibumando Wechsler recalled that not only was the entire country’s attention fixed on the fight, even in her provincial town of Kongolo in far eastern Zaire, people talked about little else in the months before the bout. Kongolo, like the rest of the nation, “was solidly in the corner of our great hero, Muhammad Ali. After all, Ali was a black man, a descendant of Africans, while Foreman, we all knew, was white.” Despite learning that Foreman was indeed blacker than Ali, she noted that the Zaïrois called him mondele, or “white man,” and associated him with the Belgian colonialists. When Ali pulled off his great upset, “the whole nation felt they had won something much more important than a boxing match, it felt as if we had somehow been liberated once again from the Belgians and all those who had colonized and humiliated Africa.” In effect, the fight demonstrated to the world the organizational skills, discipline, and hospitality that were the foundations of Mobutu’s philosophy.40
Zaire was not the only African nation that reveled proudly in Ali’s victory. After all, throughout black Africa the Reuters news service noted that he was billed as “the people’s choice,” because he was a “symbol of independence and freedom from White domination for millions of Blacks in the United States and elsewhere in the world.” There was no doubt who four thousand fans favored at Nairobi’s Kenyatta’s Conference Center: “The entire crowd rooted for Ali and roared excitedly with every blow.” When the knockout came in the eighth round, the audience jumped for joy. In Abidjan, the capital of Ivory Coast, groups of fans expressed their joy by driving around the main avenues of the city and honking their horns in celebration. After listening to the fight over radio, hundreds of fans in Accra, Ghana, “went mad with joy.” One fanatical Ali supporter ran bare chested through the city, waving his white shirt in victory, while many fans were “seen openly hugging and congratulating each other in appreciation of the resounding victory of their idol.”41
President Senghor of Senegal, one of the major architects of Negritude as a Pan-African ideology, recognized Ali’s victory as a celebration of African independence. Immediately after the bout he sent a congratulatory message to Ali, “the great militant of Black civilization.” Senegal’s Daily Sun added that, “in Senegal, Ali’s victory is considered like that of Africa, as the triumph of the oppressed.” One proof of this veneration of Ali as a symbol of black African liberation occurred as Norman Mailer was flying home soon after the fight. His airplane landed at Yoff Airport in Dakar at one in the morning for what was intended as a brief stop, but it was prevented from taking off for several hours because thousands of local Senegalese had received word via a radio bulletin that the new champion might be on board. Surrounding the plane, they demanded that Ali come out to greet them. So insistent were they that they had to see—and believed they had a right to see—their newly crowned heavyweight champion that they refused to allow the airplane to take off until a delegation had come aboard to observe for themselves that Ali was not among them. Needless to say they found no Ali and were exceedingly disappointed. Finally, however, they let the plane take off.42
In his assessment of the fight in Dakar’s Le Soleil, Mass Diack emphasized how important the outcome was for Africans in general. Reporting from Kinshasa, Diack declared that everyone wished for an Ali victory because “Ali is an African.” Yet even more important, Ali’s triumph took on greater significance because it was a victory “for all the rebels,” and “especially a defeat for all that large part of the American public who would have certainly taken pleasure in seeing Foreman demolish Clay.” At bottom, this fight “stands for the one that American conservatives and liberal democrats have been engaged in already for many years,” he said. Having said no to the Vietnam War and refusing to act as an oppressor, Ali became a villain to much of America while Foreman remained white America’s hero because he opposed the 1968 Olympic protesters with his flag-waving gesture: “And that fierce hatred vowed by these two parts of America for each other was expressed this morning in Kinshasa in all of its plainness by two brothers of the same race who had chosen to fight for different causes.” More than a personal rehabilitation, the article concluded: “It’s a victory of all the oppressed in the Third World that we should sing about this morning. Instinctively, the whole of Africa had united itself behind Mohammed Ali who today had become the beloved one on our continent. We all recognized him as our defender.”43
On a different level, officials of other recently liberated African states were also delighted by Ali’s victory. They, too, were proud that another black African nation had successfully organized such a super fight in Africa. Colonel Hassine Hamouda of Tunisia, for example, attended the fight as the official delegate of the World Boxing Council. He maintained that Foreman did not box well enough to win, but he was pleased to announce in his report to the council that Zaire’s organization of such a global spectacle was a sign of African progress. As Zaire’s Elima crowed: “It’s not just Zaire alone that is honored by the complete success of the organization of the fight of the century. It’s also the Continent that benefits from Zaire’s defiance of those who have always underestimated the organizational capacity of Africans.”44
Underneath pictures of Ali knocking out Foreman and Mobutu introducing the two fighters to the nation, an article in Elima detailed the official responses of African nations to the “Rumble in the Jungle.” Colonel Yhombi Opango of the neighboring People’s Republic of Congo wired a telegram immediately after the match to express his pride in Zaire’s handling of the bout. Me Kamanda we Kamanda, the general secretary of administration of the Organization of African Unity, in the name of the secretary of the Organization of African Unity, sent words of congratulation to President Mobutu: “Our appreciation, our satisfaction, our great admiration for the impeccable organization on African soil of the greatest fight of all time between the world’s two best boxers, Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. The grandeur of this historic sporting event resides in the demonstrated capacity of Africa to perfectly organize this event in an under-developed country.” Even more, the OAU praised the “magisterial demonstration of what the African man can do, what the peoples and the governments of Africa which are peaceful, free and independent are capable of.” All of Africa has taken heart from this defense of African dignity and “African unity, consciousness and determination.” If that were not enough, the general secretary of the Supreme Council for Sports in Africa, M. Jean-Claude Nganga, praised Mobutu and added, “This success is a legitimate satisfaction for all Blacks around the world.”45
Muhammad Ali’s decisive upset victory over George Foreman in 1974 transformed him into one of the few oppositional heroes of popular culture to have survived the dominant world’s attempts to eliminate, discourage, or defeat them. At home in the United States and across the globe, Ali’s victory exerted a measure of revenge for those black liberationists who had been killed, silenced, and betrayed. Even more notably, he was an opposition hero who not only survived into the more conservative 1970s but triumphed. In Bonnie and Clyde, Chinatown, The Parallax View, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Wild Bunch, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, The Harder They Come, and Easy Rider, to cite only a few prominent films of the era, the rebellious or questioning heroes usually meet death or destruction at the hands of a corrupt society. Although their efforts are doomed, the rebellious heroes achieve a kind of nobility in their futile opposition to mainstream society. Despite their nobility, however, they do not survive. If they do, they are severely compromised and helpless in the face of overwhelming and corrupt official power. In addition, starting with Dirty Harry and continuing through Death Wish, a slew of right-wing heroes took their revenge on black and white rebels who were characterized as criminals and social vermin who needed to be eliminated. By contrast, Ali stood out as a rebel against American society who after a long struggle and despite the attempts by the authorities to punish him, triumphs rather than succumbs to overwhelming power or merely survives. At the apex of his fame, Ali represented the thoroughgoing antiestablishment hero, the man who challenged the system and won.46
Immediately upon his return from Zaire, Ali found himself awash in adulation. Previous enemies extolled his virtues. The Ring named him Fighter of the Year, which reversed the magazine’s refusal to award him that honor in 1967 on the grounds that he was a bad example for American youth. In addition, the Boxing Writers Association named him Fighter of the Year, he was awarded the Hickcock Belt as the outstanding athlete for 1974, and Sports Illustrated honored him as Sportsman of the Year. Equally important, a Harris poll confirmed that the public considered Ali one of the greatest heavyweights of all time. Of 1,271 fans, 81 percent rated him as one of the greatest heavyweight champions of all time and 25% said he was the greatest of them all. When broken down by race, 56 percent of blacks rated him “the best ever,” and 37 percent as “one of the best.” Among whites, however, only 19 percent considered him the best, and 61 percent dubbed him one of the best. Despite the disparity, both groups overwhelmingly designated the new champion as one of the all-time greats. “There are certain heroes of sports who transcend games and contests they participate in,” noted sports columnist Maury Allen. “They become folk heroes, figures of such enormity they cross standard barriers.” Of the six athletes who achieved this status since the 1930s, Allen argued, “Muhammad Ali does it best of all. It is time to recognize Ali for what he is; the greatest athlete of his time and maybe all time and one of the most important and brave men of all American time.” It was time, Allen declared, “to end the bitterness and forget the past.”47
This reversal of fortune was best exemplified by the string of Muhammad Ali Days that greeted him upon his return to the United States. Louisville mayor Harvey I. Sloane proclaimed November 8, 1974, to be Muhammad Ali Day and renamed Armory Place, a downtown street, Muhammad Ali Place, “so that everyone will know that the world’s greatest athlete is from Louisville.” Such a public honor had eluded him since his Olympic gold medal in 1960 because officials in Louisville and elsewhere considered him “a traitor and a bum for refusing to enter military service and changing his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali.” For the most part, white politicians were now eager to appear alongside the champion, despite their past opposition to his beliefs.48
An equally notable change of heart could be discerned in Chicago’s mayor Richard J. Daley, who honored the champion with the city’s Medal of Merit on its own Muhammad Ali Day. In 1966, however, the mayor, along with Governor Otto Kerner, heeded the outrage of veterans groups and politicians of all stripes to cancel his title fight with Ernie Terrell, in order to punish the champion for his unpatriotic stance toward the Vietnam War. With the war behind them, the Black Muslims a seemingly quiescent presence in his city (as compared with the Black Panthers), the diminution of violent civic upheavals, and Ali’s intention to raise money for a black hospital and shopping center in the city, the mayor was more than willing to stand beside a black folk hero and bask in his reflected glory. Through it all, however, Ali asserted quite openly that he was going to keep standing up for his Nation of Islam beliefs. As he told Jet’s Ronald E. Kisner and other reporters in Chicago, “Now that I’ve had my little say physically, I can say what I want to say,” including “When I’m in Africa I’m at home. . . . That’s my little world over there.”49
Perhaps the greatest sign of an altered landscape for the returning hero was the invitation extended by President Gerald Ford to the White House for a presidential reception on December 10, 1974. Given Ali’s refusal to comply with the draft and serve in Vietnam, neither President Lyndon Johnson nor President Richard Nixon would have anything to do with him, let alone invite him to the White House. President Ford, however, extended his invitation after the United States had withdrawn from Vietnam yet still remained torn apart by the war, the Watergate scandal, the impeachment and resignation of President Nixon, and a deepening recession. As a sports fan and as president, Ford claimed that he wanted to recognize Ali as the best in his field: “But beyond that, when I took office, we as a nation were pretty much torn apart.” In that environment, Ford wanted to help heal these deep divisions: “Having Muhammad Ali come to the Oval Office was part of our overall effort. I felt it was important to reach out and indicate individually as well as collectively that we could have honest differences without bitterness.” Meeting with the controversial new champion was “part of my overall effort to heal the wounds of racial division, Vietnam and Watergate.” Like many others who now stood up to honor a man long attacked for his religious, racial, and political positions, the president was forced to admit that Ali “was a man of principle.” While the tide had turned in Ali’s favor, however, there remained large pockets of opposition to him as a Black Muslim and as a draft evader, hot topics through the rest of the 1970s. Jet magazine reported that three thousand letters were sent to the White House in protest against his reception there, but it was unclear whether it was because Ali was a Muslim or because of his opposition to Vietnam.50
Although gratified by his newfound acceptance, Ali continued to promote the principles of the Nation of Islam. Indeed, in reclaiming the heavyweight crown he believed he now had a bigger platform for his religious and racial beliefs. Claiming to represent God, he promised to “take this title and use it to help my people in all that I can. We have prostitution problems, dope problems, gang fighting, killing. The world heavyweight champion can be pretty influential.” In fact, the champion often declared that he could not retire, as much as he might like to, because he had so much more work to do in helping to build the black nation. In this atmosphere, the champion had little interest in fighting Foreman again anytime soon. On the contrary, Ali sought a series of easy bouts to allow him to stay in shape by boxing on a regular basis, earn significant amounts of money, and enjoy his newfound status as an American hero.51