Either you’re on top, or you’re nowhere.
GEORGE FOREMAN
While Muhammad Ali basked in the spotlight after Zaire, George Foreman fled from public scrutiny into a private hell that threatened to lead to suicide. In a world that venerated success and disdained losers, Foreman knew that “either you’re on top, or you’re nowhere.” In the midst of his despair he found no one he could turn to and no one he could trust. As a result of his ring success, he still enjoyed riches and fame, money and women, but nothing seemed to fill the hole in his soul. Having lost his identity, he blamed his manager-trainer Dick Sadler, referee Zack Clayton, and most of all Ali, whom he hated with a passion for taking his title and destroying his manhood. After sixteen months of despair, however, he vowed to recover his identity as a man by beating the man who had taken it away from him under false pretenses. Back on the comeback trail in search of a rematch, he was determined to show that he was still the toughest man alive. Once he got Ali back in the ring, Foreman was convinced that he would demonstrate that his loss was just a fluke and that he was a winner after all.1
As Foreman continued to wrestle with losing, Ali discovered that winning was a lot more complicated than he had imagined. Despite being honored by mayors and presidents, he soon realized that staying alive as the champion would prove increasingly difficult. Over the course of the late 1970s, he was often on the defensive to keep his title and his reputation intact against a hungry crop of heavyweight contenders, the ravages of time, and diminishing physical skills. Increasingly his victories seemed less triumphant and clear cut, and more tentative and ambiguous. In fact, even before beating Foreman, Ali heard calls for his retirement by boxing fans and boxing professionals fearful that he would be seriously hurt in the ring. For Ali’s fans, “Stayin’ Alive” was a fervent hope that their aging champion could continue to survive in a world of limits and looming defeat.2
Ali himself had fed the idea of retirement when he declared before the Rumble in the Jungle that he would exit the ring whether he won or lost. In fact, the new champion reversed himself after his victory, declaring 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 an independent black nation. In addition, as champion, the lucrative offers he received to keep fighting were too much to ignore. As Zaire demonstrated, he would continue as a rebellious hero, but the monetary rewards of his fights threatened to overshadow his principles and remove him far from his fan base. In other words, would success spoil Muhammad Ali in an era of narcissism and self-indulgence? And while he grew tired of the training necessary to remain at the top of his game, fighting kept him in the limelight, and the public acclaim was too much for him to give up. Besides, he was still the best fighter around, and he found the actual fighting gave him a joy that could be found nowhere else. Increasingly, this hero of the 1960s put his flaws on display.3
Both Ali’s positive impulses and his flaws were evident in his first title defense against little-heralded challenger Chuck Wepner, dubbed “the Bayonne Bleeder” for his propensity to cut easily. Scheduled for March 24, 1975, the fight was to be an easy one to allow the champ to stay in shape by boxing on a regular basis. Promoted by Don King, whose star had risen as a result of his prominence in Zaire, the Wepner fight was to be the first where Ali gave away the profits after expenses. As reported in Jet, Ali announced at a press conference that from this fight on “all the profits will be given away.” This impulse arose from the guilt he experienced over having amassed a fortune without doing much to help poor black people. Driving through Gary, Indiana, in his Rolls-Royce, “I saw this little girl with hardly any clothes on standing at a bus stop with her mother,” Ali explained. “It was zero degrees, and she had no shoes.” He gave her mother $100: “I’ve spent $100 on some dinners. All of a sudden I felt so guilty. I’ve never felt like this in 14 years of fighting.” The experience moved him to donate money from the Wepner fight to poor African Americans in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Louisville, Gary, or elsewhere through various black organizations such as the NAACP, the United Negro College Fund, and the Nation of Islam. This proposal led black sports columnist and frequent Ali critic A. S. “Doc” Young, to call this “the best idea Muhammad Ali has ever had, the best proposal he has ever presented to the public. If he follows through on his declaration, he will make the most important individual financial contribution to Black causes in the history of sport.”4
This grand stance burnished his image as a black folk hero, but the Wepner fight, like much else during the second half of the 1970s, laid a little tarnish on that image. Part of the problem was that instead of offering Foreman a rematch, Ali decided instead on a series of easy fights that would offer a respite from years of constant training and self-discipline. As for a rematch with Foreman, he asserted that his decisive victory proved that Foreman was no longer a worthy contender. In contrast, he may have surmised that he had been lucky against Foreman the first time around and that the ex-champion would not be so easily fooled again. With little to fear from Wepner, Ali did not train very hard—a practice repeated numerous times in his second reign as champion—and he was decidedly unimpressive.
For the fight that inspired Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky (1976), Wepner came in as a 10–1 underdog. Despite being given no chance, he “was a man with a fair right hand and a yard of sheer unmitigated guts.” With Wepner “trying every minute of every round until his will no longer could carry his body,” the fight lasted until 2:41 of the fifteenth round when “he went to the canvas as much from the exhaustion of futile effort and wild swinging as from the series of lefts and rights that he received from a savage two-fisted attack mounted by the champion.” Ali started off dancing on his toes, but this proved ineffective. Midway through he stood flat-footed, facing a challenger who kept coming in regardless of Ali’s jab and the powerful blows he landed to his face. In the ninth, Ali was caught by a long Wepner right and down he went for a mandatory eight count. Later the champion claimed he tripped on his own foot, but the referee ruled it a knockdown. Still, by the twelfth it was clear that Ali would win: “The only question in anyone’s mind was whether the courageous Wepner, willing to take any amount of punishment for his chance at the heavyweight title and all its rewards, could go the distance.” He came close, but a flurry of rights and lefts ended his attempt and sent him to the hospital to have the cuts over his eyes sewn up. While he was clearly outclassed against Ali, the challenger proved that “he was no bum.”5
For Ali, however, the fight raised a number of disturbing themes. In his first defense he was “still the best heavyweight around,” noted The Ring, and with the exception perhaps of Joe Frazier, he stood head and shoulders above the rest of the pack. Yet his fights were uneven. He showed signs of age, he was often out of shape, he no longer dazzled, and perhaps most disturbing, he got hit a whole lot more than he ever did in the past. He still showed flashes of “blinding speed” in his combinations, “but these instances are separated by periods of standing flat-footed taking all an opponent can offer in the guise of wearing his adversary down.” In sum, declared The Ring, “Ali is not the finely oiled fighting machine with the grace of a ballet dancer and the attack of a cobra that he once was. There are times in which his roar is a meow.” Already the magazine predicted a sad end, with Ali running through the mass of contenders, including Joe Bugner, Ron Lyle, Ken Norton, Foreman and then Frazier, “until that evening when he is drained of too much of his greatness and the sands of time drag him away from his crown.”6
Although the first defense of his title was not impressive, Ali was now acknowledged by The Ring and other boxing publications as the key to boxing’s success. All in all, he dominated 1975 with a total of four title defenses, climaxing with perhaps the greatest fight of his career—against Joe Frazier in Manila. Although the Ring considered 1974 the year of the biggest heavyweight championship fight of all time because of the world interest and financial return generated by Ali-Foreman, it was clear that Ali made 1975 “a bigger one for future boxing historians than 1974 by appearing twice in the United States and twice in other countries in defense of his crown.” After finishing off Wepner in March, the champion looked mediocre and absorbed a good deal of punishment against hard-punching Ron Lyle in Las Vegas on May 16. It took a knockout in the eleventh to win. Sponsored by the government, Ali met Joe Bugner in Malaysia in July in a dull fifteen-round fight. Instead of a knockout, the champion “had to be satisfied to punch the clock in workmanlike fashion.” The fight was forgettable, but the setting was glamorous. Fighting in a Muslim nation, Ali continued to promote himself as the representative of worldwide Islam and a Third World figure of liberation.7
The pattern was set for the rest of Ali’s career. He was “staying in shape while running around the world and the US attempting to make friends and be a super salesman for himself and for boxing.” He generously donated to various causes and was a fighting champion not seen since Joe Louis took on all comers. What was different was the frequency of his defenses abroad that drew on his fame as a Third World hero and were heavily financed by governmental leaders who sought to burnish their stature through their association with Ali. Promoted jointly by Don King, the government of the Philippines, and Bob Arum, Ali underscored his role as a global hero by fighting former champion Joe Frazier in Quezon City outside Manila in the Philippines on October 1, 1975, at 10 a.m. In this case President Ferdinand Marcos was willing to guarantee a $3 million payday for Ali and $2.5 million for Frazier to distract a restless population from martial law, an ongoing communist rebellion, and a growing dissatisfaction among Muslims with the government. As in Zaire, the first heavyweight title fight in the Philippines would promote international investment and showcase a stable society under the president’s “wise” leadership. In fact, Ali met with various Muslim groups to emphasize the Marcos regime’s desire for Muslim-Christian amity. The two men had fought twice before, and there was bad blood between them. This, plus the international setting, laid the groundwork for one of the greatest fights in heavyweight history, and some would argue, the greatest of Ali’s career. As The Ring put it, “the Thrilla in Manila” actually lived up to its name, surpassing in excitement their previous two bouts and in Nat Loubet’s opinion, “Ali’s meeting with George Foreman a year earlier.”8
Given Ali’s mediocre performances since Zaire, few expected much from a third meeting between these two men. For Joe Frazier, the fight represented his last chance at the title; few gave him a shot. In perhaps his greatest fight, he beat Ali in their first battle but then was destroyed by Foreman in 1973. Then Ali beat him on points in February 1974, which qualified Ali for his match with Foreman. Frazier fought only twice over the next year and a half, knocking out Jerry Quarry and Jimmy Ellis, which Dick Schaap called meaningless victories. With the Vietnam War over, the third match had none of the overarching domestic religious-political narrative that had surrounded their first fight back in 1971. Indeed, Schaap noted, “The first heavyweight championship fight in the history of the Philippines was going to be a joke, an Ali super-promotion, a great hype. But it would not be a great fight.” The joke was Ali’s crude taunting of the proud, working-class Frazier with a rubber gorilla that he pulled out on every occasion and announced, “It’s gonna be a chilla and a thrilla, and a killa when I get the gorilla in Manila.”9
Rather than a political or religious battle, this was a grudge match. “We have a score to settle, ‘My Man’ and I,” Frazier declared. “I apologize! I apologize for not being as flashy as Clay. All I can do is fight! Fight and live my life like a man! His time has come. He is finished.” Throughout the buildup, Ali ridiculed Frazier’s talents and his chances, but even more he depicted him as an ugly animal. During a workout at Deer Lake, Ali yelled to the crowd, “Joe Frazier should give his face to the Wildlife Fund! He so ugly, blind men go the other way!” If that was not enough, he added, “He not only looks bad! You can smell him in another country!” Holding his nose, he asked, “What will the people in Manila think? We can’t have a gorilla for a champ. They’re gonna think, lookin’ at him, that all black brothers are animals. Ignorant. Stupid. Ugly. If he’s champ again, other nations will laugh at us.” These hateful words made Frazier’s blood boil. “Whatever you do, whatever happens,” he demanded of trainer-manager Eddie Futch: “Don’t stop the fight! We got nowhere to go after this. I’m gonna eat this half-breed’s heart right out of his chest.” As a champion of black pride, Ali’s remarks appeared to have stepped over the line into racial caricature, depicting Frazier as a less than human gorilla who was too black physically and not black enough politically. While this was part of Ali’s attempt to get under his opponent’s skin, it made Frazier a man willing to die to achieve vengeance.10
Despite low expectations, the fight turned out far better than anyone could have foreseen, “an incredible demonstration of skill and courage on the part of both men.” Ali started quickly, dominating the first couple of rounds as if he wanted to fulfill his prophecy of an early knockout. Standing flat-footed, he unleashed a series of powerful jabs and combinations that repeatedly landed on the onrushing Frazier’s jaw. Like their first fight, however, Frazier came on in the middle rounds, gluing himself to Ali’s chest, giving the champion little room to get off, and landing his own vicious left hooks to the body. Ali employed the rope-a-dope, crouching in the corner, letting Frazier punch away, but to no avail. According to Nat Loubet, “Frazier had too much smoke and fire,” and he hurt the champion with hard body shots. In one of Frazier’s biggest rounds, the sixth, he landed two left hooks to Ali’s head that bounced him back on the ropes. Going into the seventh, Loubet judged Frazier ahead and the fresher of the two. “They told me you were all washed up,” Ali grunted at one point. “They told you wrong,” responded the challenger. Frazier was bobbing and weaving, taking Ali’s best punches as if they were nothing. He smashed his way in close and “appeared to be on the verge of becoming the third man to regain the heavyweight title.”11
After ten rounds Ali seemed to be fading, the fight even. He sat on his stool, body sore, head down. He told his corner that he was so exhausted that he might not be able to go on much longer. In the eleventh it looked to be true. Once more Frazier trapped him in the corner, pounding his body and head with wicked shots that should have toppled the champ. At the end of the round Sports Illustrated’s Mark Kram had Frazier ahead 6-4-1. Could this be a reprise of their “Fight of the Century?” Not this time. In the twelfth round, Ali some-how caught a second wind, “a tired fighter came to life, went up on his toes, reached down into his reserve of stamina.” Standing in the center of the ring, Ali used long right hand leads to keep Frazier away. The challenger, game as always, could not get off his left hook. Massive bumps emerged around his eyes. At the end of the round, Frazier told his corner, “I can’t pick up his right.” Still, the match remained very close. The last three rounds would decide the outcome.12
Midway through the thirteenth round Ali ripped a right hand into Joe’s face as he was coming in and sent his mouthpiece sailing out of the ring. The punch stopped Frazier in his tracks and threw him back several steps. He was stunned, unable to bob and weave, flat-footed with little movement, “a style made to order for Ali.” As Kram described it, this was the most savage round of the forty-one that the two men fought. With Frazier a sitting duck, Ali unleashed combinations that pounded Joe’s face into a pulp, bloodied his mouth, and opened a cut under his right eye. Nine straight right hands smashed Frazier’s left eye, thirty or so in the round. The skin was puffed up under the right eye and below and above his left eye. Unable to see where the punches were coming from, Frazier was fighting blind and taking a beating. One after another solid right and left landed square in his face. At the end of the fourteenth round, an extremely worried Eddie Futch examined Frazier’s grotesquely swollen eye and, over Frazier’s bitter opposition, called an end to what looked like unmitigated slaughter. Ali was the winner by TKO in the fourteenth round.13
For boxing fans and commentators, the Thrilla in Manila proved Ali’s greatness for once and for all, and enhanced Frazier’s reputation as well. According to The Ring the third battle between the two bitter antagonists “was the best heavyweight championship fight in the history of the game. Certainly it was one of the most exciting battles in heavyweight annals.” Usually these “fights of the century” were overhyped affairs that did nothing but disappoint. “The Thriller of Manila [sic],” however, “presented the acme of action, the winner in absolute doubt until, in the thirteenth round, Joe got careless and left an opening which Ali did not ignore.”14
With his greatness as a fighter assured, by the fall of 1975 Muhammad Ali stood at a critical juncture, as did American culture. As exemplified by his third bout against Joe Frazier, the religious and political themes of his bouts were beginning to wane. Unlike the Rumble in the Jungle, which carried anticolonial, anti-Vietnam, and black nationalist ideas, the Thrilla in Manila highlighted more traditional themes of boxing: money, personal pride, and personal animosity, but in Ali’s case, with a continuing overlay of Muslim disdain for “ignorant,” unenlightened blacks like Frazier. More to the point, both men earned millions in fights supported and bankrolled by dictators around the globe. As a global hero because of his politics, Ali’s international bouts allowed him to trade on his nonwhite status without having to put much effort into emphasizing the point. After this bout with Frazier, politics and religion faded farther into the background. Ali was fighting for personal pride, millions in cash, and ostensibly to help black people through investments in shopping centers and businesses that rarely materialized. At the same time, the Frazier fight allowed Ali to articulate his black nationalist views for the last time in a Playboy interview conducted while he was preparing for Frazier but that hit newsstands in November 1975, shortly after the match. Significantly, his views were totally divorced from the fight itself and from his future bouts too.15
Over the course of the following few years, Ali’s rhetoric softened as befitted his greater acceptance by the larger American society, exemplified best perhaps by his several invitations to the White House by President Ford. Equally important, the Nation of Islam changed direction after the death of its leader, Elijah Muhammad, on February 25, 1975, and the passing of the torch to his son Wallace Muhammad. With Ali’s support, Wallace moved the Nation away from a black nationalist theology based on color. The transformation into a movement aligned more with traditional Islam meant that membership was not restricted solely to African Americans. Indeed, whites could join. These changes split the Nation, with Louis Farrakhan and Jeremiah Shabazz continuing to lead a branch based on Elijah Muhammad’s original ideas. As a member of the board overseeing the transformation, Ali declared, “I’ve changed what I believe, and what I believe in now is true Islam.” Ali’s split with the Nation was critical to his becoming “a lasting American hero,” according to Michael Ezra, “because it allowed him to renounce earlier statements about whites, politics, and interracial relations.” As the champion told the New York Times: “I don’t hate whites. That was history, but it’s coming to an end. We’re in a new phase, a resurrection.” Elijah Muhammad, Ali said, preached independence, pride, and self-discipline. “He stressed the bad things the white man did to us so we could get free and strong.” Now, however, “his son Wallace is showing us there are good and bad regardless of color, that the devil is in the mind and heart, not the skin. We Muslims hate injustice and evil, but we don’t have time to hate white people. White people wouldn’t be here if God didn’t mean them to be.” According to Shirley Norman in Sepia, Ali even relaxed his views on interracial marriage, although he remained personally against it. “Now I say,” she quotes him, “if two people love each other and find unity and peace with one another, then it’s their business—and color don’t mean nothing.” It was not color that makes people good or bad: “After all who’s a better example than me that races can all get along with each other?”16
Ali’s changing religious views made him less radical and hence more acceptable to whites, but his sexual behavior diminished his standing among black and white women. In an era of outspoken feminism, the views articulated by Ali and the Black Muslims underscored patriarchal values coming under sustained attack and demonstrated the splintering of various radical movements. Despite Ali’s image as “sexy a specimen of manhood as can be imagined,” noted Shirley Norman in Sepia, “there are also liberated females, both black and white, who scorn ‘the greatest’ as the epitome of a ‘sexist male chauvinist pig,’ as the Women’s Lib crowd terms the kind of man who believes as Ali in the superiority of the male animal.” Part of the Nation of Islam’s appeal lay in its support for black male dominance and female subservience in a society that undercut the black man’s ability to support his family effectively or provide for the safety and security of black women and children. With the heavyweight champion as its representative, the Nation of Islam offered a potent model of black masculinity. Based on the Koran, Ali told Norman that males should be “in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other.” According to the laws of nature, a woman must “always look up to her man. And if she don’t have a man, then she better find one to look up to . . . or she’s no kind of woman.”17
The Playboy interviewer asked the champion why the Muslims were so restrictive toward women. Ali’s reply was revealing: “Because they should be. Women are sex symbols.” Although he admitted to being a sex symbol himself, Ali noted that men “don’t walk around with their chests out. Anyway, I’d rather see a man with his breasts showing than a woman. Why should she walk around with half her titties out? There gotta be restrictions that way.” Muslim women had to wear demure clothing, avoid makeup, and keep their hair covered in public. The religion also prohibited premarital sexual experimentation. It was clear that men made the rules: “In the Islamic world, the man’s the boss and the woman stays in the background. She don’t want to call the shots.” While women’s liberation movements argued that women should control their own lives, Ali declared that, unlike Christian women, “Muslim women don’t think like that. See the reason we so powerful is that we don’t let the white man control our women. They obey us.” As to careers for Muslim women, Ali noted that many had careers but not in white men’s downtown offices where they had been “used” by white men. Against that threat, “we protect our women, ’cause women are the field that produces our nation. And if you can’t protect your women, you can’t protect your nation.” If white men attempted to sexually violate black women, they should be killed.18
Starting in the Philippines, the public learned that the image of Ali’s perfect Muslim marriage was undermined by his private sexual behavior. As Life reporter Dave Wolf put it, the prefight story surrounding the Manila match was not war or religion; it was “Ali’s women,” a subject hitherto unreported by the press. Despite his marriage to Belinda (who had taken the Muslim name Khalilah), who was his second wife and the mother of his children, Ali had had a voracious sexual appetite for many years. Indeed, the morning of his upset loss via a broken jaw to Ken Norton in March 1973, publicist Harold Conrad found him in bed with two women. This was not unusual. Lloyd Wells, a member of the champion’s entourage, was charged with recruiting women for Ali. One camp aide even boasted to Shirley Norman that the champ could bed four women in an hour. On the surface, however, his marriage was a sterling example of a Muslim family in which the man led his wife and family while she bowed to his male superiority. When the champion introduced his stunning young paramour Veronica Porche to Ferdinand Marcos as his wife, however, Ali’s personal life, his sexual habits, and the nature of his family life went public. Absent a religious or political narrative, Peter Bonventre covered the incident in a four-page Newsweek spread entitled “The Ali Mystique,” which detailed his history of sexual high jinks. Ali took the unprecedented step of calling a press conference to defend his marital infidelity and male sexual privilege. All men, he argued, including male reporters, required girlfriends to satisfy their sexual needs. “I won’t worry about who you sleep with, if you don’t worry about who sleeps with me,” Jet reported him saying. As long as the affair remained private, Belinda could ignore it. Now, however, the cat was out of the bag, and the story spread quickly. When Belinda read the story, she immediately flew to Manila, went directly to the Hilton Hotel, and proceeded to attack Ali and wreck his suite. Then she flew home. The marriage was all but over.19
As the story circulated in the press, Ali’s heroic image underwent a slow but subtle shift toward a hero with feet of clay. Along with discussions of his ring prowess, his personal problems and his sexual proclivities drew attention. Jet sports editor Ronald Kisner framed the issue in a cover story that asked, “Has Success Spoiled Ali?” With his reclaimed title and his great wealth, Ali personified success. Despite his wealth, however, “Ali has fashioned an image of a man who remained uncorrupted and was spiritually tough as he was physically powerful.” The Veronica Porche affair had begun to sour that image and made his loyalists question whether success had gone to his head. Chicagoan Len Badillo, for example, declared, “When a man gets a lot of money, I guess he thinks he can do anything,” including introducing the young “bombshell” as his wife. An unhappy Belinda, fighting valiantly to save the marriage clearly drew the public’s sympathy as she acknowledged Ali’s history of sexual dalliances. While she wanted to save her marriage, “If he don’t want me then I’ll leave. I will always be in love with him. As far as I’m concerned, nothing can come between us. I don’t care how many Veronicas come up, I’m not going to leave.” His statements made him seem heartless and selfish, self-indulgent and narcissistic, especially when he announced on the Dinah Shore Show that Belinda should be happy since he had bought her houses, furs, jewels, and a Rolls-Royce, and he “should be able to tell her what to do.” For her part, Belinda did not “feel lucky being married to him. I married Muhammad Ali when he wasn’t as famous as he is now. I liked him as a person. The kind of person who takes care of the family.” But he was a Jekyll and Hyde with a split personality. One is Cassius Clay the sensualist and carouser; the other is the religious Muhammad Ali. Referring to his statements that black women must be protected from white men, she intimated that he was a hypocrite with separate rules for husband and wife. He liked the ruling image, the provider image, but he also wanted to be able to indulge his desires. Ultimately, she had married him during his exile, during “his worst times,” when they had little money. Now she hoped that the marriage could be saved.20
Their failing marriage continued as a subject of public discussion. The reaction in Jet was mixed, but the discussion focused on Ali’s personal behavior, less on his public role. Sixteen-year-old Cynthia Lane, of New York City, for instance, warned Ali not to “mess up.” If he let anything break up his beautiful family, she declared: “Of all the things he’s done for Black people, I’m sorry. But he hasn’t just lost a fan, but a young girl who really cares.” Ali had his defenders, to be sure, but the spotlight remained on his personal relationships with Belinda and Veronica. Ajamo Yero Upton, of Washington, DC, declared that success had not spoiled Ali. As a public figure he was sure to make mistakes, “but as Blacks we can’t begin to treat him as the white race does.” A true black, he had worked everything out with Belinda: “This Manila deal is another way the white media has of trying to make Ali look bad in the eyes of Blacks.” For Upton, Ali “is and always will be the Black man’s champion.” Many others continued to respect Ali, but they also praised Belinda as a real woman trying to hold her family together despite all the gossip. As Laura West, of Rockford, Illinois, put it, “Our Black men need strong women like her, she is truly a great lady and a beautiful person.” Betty Washington, of Sparta, Illinois, agreed but was more critical of Ali: “If Muhammad Ali cannot see how blessed he is to have her as his wife and mother of his children, then he is not the greatest, he is a loser!” After one bad early marriage to Sonji Roi, a cocktail waitress, that ended in divorce, he should have been appreciative of a good wife, said Washington. “He needs to mature.” Debra Jackson, of Baltimore, touched on the underlying issue: “His ego has finally dragged him down. He is degrading his beautiful image and embarrassing his lovely wife, Khalilah.”21
While Ali continued to receive respect and accolades for his public activities, his private life made him seem more and more a hollow symbol of a politically active era. His heroic edge was being chipped away as he aged and pursued a more narcissistic life with Veronica after his divorce from Khalilah. As the steadfast wife and mother, Khalilah earned respect for her refusal to discuss Veronica or the child she and Ali were expecting. Although she professed her love for Ali, by the end of 1976 after nine years of marriage, she sought a divorce from a man who no longer followed the precepts of Allah despite all his protestations to the contrary. Although Ali remained a member of the World Community of Islam in the West, he put his life in Veronica’s hands. The couple announced their marriage for Father’s Day, June 1977, which Jet called a good thing since she was expecting their second child. The elaborate wedding took six months to plan and featured minimal Islamic touches at the Beverly Wilshire hotel’s Le Grande Trianon ballroom in Beverly Hills before 250 guests. The bride wore a wedding gown from I. Magnin, estimated to cost $4,000, and the Ali brothers wore white tails. After a five-minute civil ceremony, with few Muslims present, Ali and his “regally elegant” bride led off the dancing with a waltz. Here was a champion rich and in love, living out a fantasy in his new Los Angeles home. After years of rigorous training and self-discipline required by his boxing career and a much-stricter Muslim regimen, Ali now seemed to live a life of luxury and ease dictated by his riches.22
At the same time, the champ still devoted time and energy to political and religious causes. As the co-chair of the Hurricane Carter Trust Fund, for example, he joined a rally to free the unjustly convicted former middleweight boxer. He pledged $100,000 to help “save the NAACP,” and he continued to donate money to the Muslims. In addition, the champion was still loved and admired for the political role he played in igniting the sports revolution, bringing boxing to its international apogee, and earning great riches for himself and other boxers. Increasingly, however, fans called for Ali to retire. A figure of a receding rebellious past, Ali’s fights carried much less political or religious purpose and revolved around the champion’s desire for money to pay his $2 million divorce settlement, his continuing contributions to the Muslims and other causes, and the expenses that came with his luxurious life style and his huge entourage. Parallel to the declining rebellious impulses in American culture, Ali appeared to be an older and tired symbol of a different era trying to survive and stay alive in the new age. For many boxing fans, especially white ones, he was the privileged holder of the title, often the beneficiary of biased judging in his favor, against younger and hungrier foes.23
Perhaps the first sign that Ali was past his prime occurred immediately after the Frazier match. In “A Letter to Ali and Joe,” for example, boxing fan Hugh John Furlong called for Ali—and Frazier—to retire. Thanking them for their courage, artistry, and toughness, he believed “the time has come for you both to call a halt.” After Manila “there lurks the danger now that to return to the well would be once too often and in doing so would allow someone of inferior class and courage the boast that he ruined either of your careers.” That certainly was the case with Ali. After Manila each fight seemed harder, each foe stronger, while Ali’s skills appeared to erode in bout after bout. He remained the best and continued to beat the best, but more and more fans had to wonder whether he would survive and win and whether in fact he had won increasingly close decisions. According to trainer Angelo Dundee the wear and tear on his body were apparent. No longer invincible, Ali seemed a mere mortal whose every bout seemed in doubt.24
In 1976 he kept fighting. Even bouts against weaker foes earned him $1 million or more. After unheralded Jean-Peter Coopman, for instance, he met legitimate contender Jimmy Young in April 1976, followed by a weak Richard Dunn in Munich, and then a farce with Japanese wrestler Antonio Inoki in Tokyo that had fans wondering why Ali was squandering his talents. The Young match was supposed to be another breather; Ali hardly trained. At 230 pounds he turned in one of his worst fights. Although he won a unanimous fifteen-round decision, many irate fans believed that Young actually won and that biased judges allowed Ali to survive with his title intact. Charles Swedberg, of Odessa, Texas, for instance, called the unanimous decision “a farce” in The Ring. At the end of the fight “Young seemed aware and alive and Ali, dead, beat, without spirit and flabby.” Indeed, Ali’s offense “looked like a kitten playing with a marshmallow.” All in all, “the fight looked rigged.” Henry M. DiCarb Jr., of Massillon, Ohio, called it “the worst decision . . . in heavyweight history.” Never was “a man robbed more blatantly,” by “the so-called ‘greatest,’” who was “humiliated by a 15-1 underdog.” He called for an investigation.25
Although the champion survived against Young to the relief of his fans, his knockout of Richard Dunn was the last of his career. When he fought Ken Norton for the third time for $6 million, the outcome was again disputed. For The Ring’s Nat Loubet, the September 1976 bout was a lackluster affair whose fifteen-round decision divided fans. Norton was the aggressor, ahead going into the thirteenth round. Only a big fifteenth round saved the victory for Ali. Ali’s punches lacked power, his clowning appeared pitiful, and the rope-a-dope left him inactive: “As Ali grows older it is noticeable that his legs are no longer what they were, and that his once vaunted combinations are slower and not so sure of the mark.” The only memorable matter was that viewers “were equally divided as to who won.” Usually close fights go to the champ but a visibly upset Norton was sure he had won. “If you saw Ali’s face at the end,” Norton said later, “he knew I beat him. He didn’t hit me hard the whole fight.” When the result was announced, “I was bitter, very bitter” toward the judges. Again Ali managed to survive, but his skills had declined severely.26
Ali’s busy personal life, his divorce, and his starring in and promotion of a movie of his life, The Greatest, diverted him from serious training. But given his poor performances, the film contains “more than a touch of nostalgia” in its footage of his rise, his exile, and his comeback against Foreman. Compared to past glory days, the present question was whether he could survive and retire undefeated. That likelihood seemed increasingly remote. Seven and a half months later, Ali took on unknown Spaniard Alfredo Evangelista. Ali’s sloppy performance led The Ring’s Nat Loubet to demand that Ali retire. “The once magnificent fighting machine” that made him one of the greatest, “is but a shell of its former greatness.” After clowning through the early rounds, he was too exhausted to do much. At times the fans booed him. He looked better against Earnie Shavers later that year on September 29, 1977, but it took a strong fifteenth round to get the decision, which Shavers disputed. Once again, though, Ali was lucky to survive. Baseball commissioner A. B. Giamatti did not think Ali beat Shavers “any more than many think he beat Ken Norton in September of 1976, or beat Jimmy Young in the spring of 1976.” In the past he took pride in not being hit. In his later years, he took pride in getting hit but not hurt. His speed gone, he lay on the ropes absorbing punishment but managing to survive—often barely. His steep decline caused concern in those around him. After Shavers, Madison Square Garden promoter Teddy Brenner refused to host his future fights and his “fight doctor,” Ferdie Pacheco, quit when he saw lab reports indicating severe damage to Ali’s kidneys and his overall physical condition.27
It was all but over. In what was to be another easy fight, Ali met light heavyweight Olympic gold medalist Leon Spinks in early 1978. With only seven professional victories, Spinks was sure to lose. No one told Leon. The young and hungry ex-marine wore down a fighter who looked tired and old at thirty-five, winning a unanimous fifteen round decision. In September 1978 in front of a record indoor crowd of 63,532 at the New Orleans Superdome and the second largest television audience in history, a better-trained Ali beat Spinks to become the only heavyweight champion to hold the title three different times. Although Ali won, it was another dull fight that highlighted how little he had left as well as how much damage drinking and drugging had done to an out-of-condition Spinks. Ali triumphed once again, but it felt like he had barely survived. His fans realized he could go no farther.28
If there was any doubt that the 1960s were definitely over, broadcaster Howard Cosell, in “the greatest broadcast of my life,” quoted icon Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young,” a nostalgic ode to fading youth as Ali exited the ring in New Orleans. Soon after Ali retired. According to novelist Ishmael Reed, nostalgia for a bygone era seemed to be the underlying reason that so many people supported Ali’s last hurrah. According to Reed, Ali’s victory was another sign of “sixtomania now sweeping the country,” a reminder “of the turbulent decade, of Muslims, Malcolm X, Rap Brown, the Great Society, LBJ, Vietnam, General Hershey, dashikis, afros, Black Power, MLK, RFK. He represented the New Black of the 1960s . . . glamorous, sophisticated, intelligent, international, and militant.” Still, as Reed surveyed the crowd, he realized that while the celebrities rooted for Ali, “the busboys were for Spinks.” Ali had become part of the establishment, a star who moved in totally different circles. In their eyes, Leon was “the people’s champ,” one of them, drinking in New Orleans dives, acting wild, being arrested for a traffic violation. Leon was one of those the “establishment has told to get lost,” part of “the underclass” left behind as better-off African Americans enjoyed new opportunities in a racially transformed world.29
Ali’s career may have sputtered out, but he remained a beloved but nostalgic icon for a radical era rapidly receding into the past. In contrast, Foreman’s defeat in Zaire was met with scorn by boxing fans, and he faded as a relevant pugilistic standard bearer for the Job Corps and the silent majority. The decline of both Ali and Foreman as viable heroes during the latter years of the 1970s suggests just how unstable and ambivalent American culture was at time when the nation was at a crossroads. While most boxing fans focused on Ali’s declining skill as a way to measure the relevance of the rebellious past, underneath the radar during the late 1970s Foreman and American culture were still obsessed with the psychic damage of defeat—in the ring and in Vietnam. Foreman’s eventual comeback demonstrated that American culture and society were on the verge of profound transformations that no one could have predicted.
Foreman continued to find it extremely difficult to come to terms with losing in a society that venerated winners and shunned losers. For almost two years he was mired in confusion as he sought to reclaim his identity as a winner and as a man. Yet his confusion did not derive from the loss alone. Indeed, just like Ali, troubles in his personal life threatened to overwhelm him. Just weeks before the Rumble in the Jungle, Foreman had a son born to him and his woman friend Pamela Clay, although the two had already broken up. Despite his desire for a son, Foreman denied that the boy was his because he distrusted women as gold diggers who only wanted the money and luxurious life attached to a heavyweight champion. This led to a court case that prompted Jet to say that the ex-champion had lately been fighting more outside the ring than in it. Clay claimed nothing for herself, but she asked for $3,000 a month in child support, $30,000 for attorney fees, and $5,000 in court costs. The previous June, Clay had brought a $5 million assault and battery suit against Foreman, but that was dropped. The blood tests ordered by Foreman’s lawyer proved the child was his. Now he had two children, and he looked for girlfriends willing to babysit them. That was not the life young women thought association with a rich champion would gain them, and Foreman kept pursuing and discarding one woman after another. None of them brought him the peace of mind he sought.30
Even more confusing, soon after he returned from Zaire, Foreman learned that the man he thought was his father was not his biological father after all. One day his sister Gloria told him that J. D. Foreman was not his father. This revelation quickly produced a torment familiar from his childhood when his brothers and sisters would infuriate him by making fun of him and treating him as somehow different from the rest of the Foreman family. His new knowledge was one more unsettling disturbance to his whole identity.31
Angry and confused, his identity hanging by a thread, Foreman knew he needed help, but where could he turn? Only crazy people went to therapists, he reasoned, and certainly tough fighters didn’t. Meanwhile, his mother and other close relatives were poor, ignorant people whose advice he considered worthless. Normally a boxer would turn to his manager or trainer, but having decided that Sadler was part of the problem, Foreman had only himself to rely on. As a result, he decided to rebuild himself into the man who had not been knocked out in Zaire. To do that he would have to win back his title, but that would prove difficult. As the newly crowned champion, Ali had little incentive to risk his title against someone who would be harder to bamboozle a second time with a rope-a-dope. In this situation, Foreman believed that he would have to force Ali to give him a rematch. To do that he would have to prove to boxing fans that his loss was just a fluke and that he was still the toughest boxer alive. The fans would then demand that a reluctant Ali had to put his title on the line against George.32
To exorcise the ghosts of Zaire and his humiliating loss of manhood, Foreman set out to publicize how tough he was still, much as the prisoners of war were transformed from symbols of defeat into icons of victory, and much as foreign policy makers under President Gerald Ford in the Mayaguez incident in Kampuchea were eager to prove that the United States was willing to use its military might abroad after the debacle of Vietnam. These tendencies culminated in the right wing’s desire to overcome “the Vietnam Syndrome” wherever possible. Having just lost in humiliating fashion to Soviet-backed forces in Vietnam and Kampuchea, the Ford administration set out to demonstrate its resolve and stand up to the Russians by launching a CIA-led war in Angola with the help of President Mobutu of Zaire. Similarly, after the loss to Ali, Foreman became even more obsessed with establishing his tough-guy reputation. He had always kept big animals on his ranch, but now he sought publicity for being a guy tougher than the toughest animals. By having a lion and a tiger as pets, he would demonstrate how mean he was. Other boxers were quick to notice: “’Man, that George Foreman is crazy! He walks around his ranch with a lion and a tiger. George isn’t afraid of anyone or anything! Don’t mess with George Foreman.’” Comments like these were music to his ears.33
Foreman’s obsession with publicizing his masculinity led to a cover story in late 1974 in People magazine, a new venture in celebrity journalism at that time. The idea was to “‘prove’ that I was the world’s strongest man,” by seeming to hold a cow aloft by himself so that people “will realize that I must have been robbed in Africa in that fight against Ali.” On his ranch in Marshall, Texas, Foreman stationed five guys at the head of the seven hundred pound animal and five at the tail. When the photo was cropped, it would appear that he alone was holding up the huge animal. Unfortunately, one of the men slipped and then all of the others let go. Foreman was left with the cow wrapped around his shoulders, proving in fact how strong he actually was. When the photo appeared, his friends and enemies in the boxing world were astonished that he could hold a cow in the air by himself. He hoped they got his point: “Something must have been really wrong with George when he fought Ali in Africa. I mean, the man can carry a cow! Surely he was strong enough to have beaten Muhammad Ali.”34
While Foreman and his publicist Bill Caplan staged the photo as a way to convince the public, it seems apparent that the strategy was aimed equally at bolstering the ex-champion’s own self-confidence in his shaken identity. It took him six months after Zaire to get back into the ring at all. When he started boxing again, on April 26, 1975, however, it was for a hokey exhibition against five opponents in one night, each of these bouts to go three rounds. “It was a crazy thing to do, but to tell you the truth, I was a bit unhinged during that period of my life.” Although Foreman was skeptical, promoter Henry Winston convinced him that fighting five men was a way to prove his toughness. Beating five guys would convince the world that the loss to Ali was a fluke.35
Once promoter Don King entered the picture based on his ability to nail down a suitable arena and attract a national television network, the promotion turned into a three-ring circus. Five fighters agreed to appear at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens, among them Alonzo Johnson, Jerry Judge, Terry Daniels, Charlie Polite, and Boone Kirkman. All five were eager to increase their name recognition and boost themselves into the big money by beating a former champion on national television. On the surface Foreman appeared content with his performance. He knocked out Johnson, Judge, and Daniels, and battered Polite and Kirkman. However, King hired both Muhammad Ali and Howard Cosell to do the commentary for ABC Television. Instead of Foreman being able to demonstrate his strength and prove he deserved another shot, he set himself up to further humiliation at the hands of his tormentor and his sidekick at ringside. As he recalled, throughout the bout Cosell kept repeating that the match was a “travesty,” a “disgrace,” and a “discredit” to a great sport. Indeed, some of the fighters were so upset with the judging that a near riot erupted in the ring, with some of the corner men getting into it with each other. Jerry Judge pushed Foreman after their bout, Foreman then punched Judge, and the two men wrestled each other to the canvas until their trainers pulled them apart. Terry Daniels also showed no respect for the ex-champion. After the decision went against him, he and Foreman ended up throwing punches at each other. Then Foreman shoved one of Daniels’s corner men, who was also punched by one of Foreman’s seconds. Ali, meanwhile, piled on by heckling Foreman from his ringside seat. Although George felt he proved that he had the stamina to go at least twelve rounds, he and the public could not ignore the verbal battle between him and Ali. That turned Ali’s fans against Foreman and reduced the exhibition to the level of professional wrestling. Chanting “Ali, Ali,” the crowd booed the star of the show, and some even threw garbage into the ring. To show he was not bothered, Foreman flexed his muscles like a muscleman, which made him seem sour and surly.36
Instead of boosting Foreman’s stock, the exhibition extravaganza turned into a further humiliation. Jet magazine found his behavior in the ring ludicrous. According to the magazine, he hopped like a bunny and danced like an elephant on a string. Plus, few took his foes seriously, and his angry verbal exchanges with Ali convinced Jet that he was no longer “Mr. Nice.” When a woman friend told him that he had become “a mad man, a bad man,” he realized that the rest of the world must have seen him as “Jack the Ripper. I guess the camera doesn’t lie. It had captured me perfectly: George Foreman, the man you love to hate. I was shattered.” While some boxing fans thought Foreman might have a shot at the title again once Ali retired, his actions after Zaire increasingly alienated the public. John T. Hale, of Buffalo, New York, attended what he called “the Foreman Circus” in Toronto and found it “a disgrace.” In his opinion, Ring magazine should have hollered against the whole thing: “It was a badly managed show and Foreman ran through the five like a tyro.” He predicted, “It will take George a long time to get over the effects of the injuries he suffered in the public mind.” This was on top of what Joric Kellogg, of New York, called “all of those pitiful excuses after losing.” If he was so tough, why did he not quit stalling and get back into the ring for a real fight?37
After the fiasco in Toronto, Foreman began to take real steps toward a rematch against Ali when he fought hard-hitting Ron Lyle, a ranked contender, at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas on January 24, 1976, fifteen months after the disaster in Kinshasa. Like Foreman, Lyle had suffered a major setback against Ali in May 1975. Whoever lost this match would probably fall out of contention. To get him in shape, Foreman hired a new trainer, the veteran Gil Clancy, who had him fight a tune-up with Jody Ballard, against whom he exhibited a viciousness that was really intended to punish Ali, the family members and friends who had betrayed him after the defeat, every teacher who had dismissed him, and every kid who had called him a bad name. One more tune-up, this time against Eddie Brooks, and he and Lyle were set to lay it on the line in what turned out to be a no-holds brawl.38
After a feeling-out period in which both men exchanged jabs during round one, Lyle unloaded an overhand right to Foreman’s jaw, which stunned him but left him still standing as the bell rang. Lyle came out for round two looking to finish the job. Using his jab, though, Foreman held him off until he smashed Lyle with a left upper cut and then a combination that sent Lyle to the ropes, where Foreman continued to punch away. An accidental early bell saved Lyle from a knockdown. In the third round the two men punched away at each other with little concern for defense. Then came the fourth round. Lyle hit George with a powerful right and a flurry of hooks. Foreman went down in a heap. It looked like his worst nightmare all over again. Unlike Zaire, this time he could not blame his water, loose ropes, or anything else. He jumped up quickly, but Lyle immediately floored him again. As he sat on the canvas, Zaire flashed through his mind once more. In Africa he had not fought back when he was knocked down, but this time he got up determined to win or die in the ring. As Lyle came in for the finish, Foreman knocked him down, and when he got up, Foreman knocked him down again. The carnage continued through round five, when Foreman’s punching power overwhelmed Lyle and knocked him out. Foreman felt restored by the conviction that he could get off the mat and fight to the death. Redeemed as a man again in his own eyes, he was once again Big Bad George with the sportswriters. Next stop, Ali?39
Not so fast. After his grueling fourteen-round brawl with Frazier, Ali preferred easier prey. Various promoters insisted that Foreman fight Joe Frazier instead. Aware of how dangerous Frazier still was, despite losing to Ali in Manila several months earlier, Foreman was reluctant. Everyone in boxing knew that Ali might retire, so getting to him soon was imperative. However, George and his trainer Gil Clancy were hopeful that if Foreman beat Frazier convincingly, Ali would put off retirement because of public demand and because he would not want boxing fans to think that he was afraid of a renewed Foreman. For Frazier, the June 1976 bout was his last hurrah. Having lost to Ali the previous fall, Frazier had little left. Once again, though, Foreman was the villain. Most fans at New York’s Nassau Coliseum rooted for Frazier, who entered the ring with his head shaved and booed Foreman. However, “Smokin’ Joe’s” fire was soon extinguished. In the fifth round Foreman had him on the ropes and caught him with a punch that opened a cut over his eye and sent his mouthpiece and a number of teeth flying into the seats. Another hard shot and a flurry of punches and Frazier hit the canvas. He got up at four but took the mandatory eight count. Another Foreman combination and Joe was down again. He got off the deck, glassy eyed, bleeding from his nose and his right eye, completely defenseless. His manager signaled to the referee, and at 2:26 of the fifth round the referee stopped the fight. The end, noted The Ring’s John Ort, was “a sorry picture of a once great champion, bleeding and hurt, in the ring which once brought him wealth and glory.” As Foreman stood over him, glaring, the crowd booed. With a 42–1 record, however, Foreman had demonstrated that he deserved a rematch with Ali.40
On the surface, the victory “leaves George Foreman as ‘King of the Mountain’ again,” noted John Ort, “or maybe it only looks like it.” Despite a convincing win and clear signs that he was back, Foreman had to battle the hostility of fans. Against Frazier, Norton, and Ali, “the heroes of our time,” he looked like a “heavy” not a “hero,” a bad guy. This was demonstrated versus Frazier when the crowd booed him and cheered for Joe. But “what,” wondered Ort, “turned the cheers that he received in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City to boos today?” He had no explanation, other than the fact that “everyone wants somebody to hate in boxing. George fills the bill, a big strong guy, who represents the ‘bully on the block.’” Although he was a former patriotic hero, Foreman’s anger and surliness since winning the title had turned him into a bully. He was not only a loser who had disappointed his fans by failing so badly against Ali, he was a bad loser. No longer seemingly a humble nice guy, Foreman now appeared to be someone whose pleasant demeanor had tricked fans into seeing him as something he was not. The only thing he could do was keep fighting and winning in the hope that the boxing federations or the fans would force Ali to give him the return match.41
To force Ali to fight him, Foreman agreed to Don King’s idea that he fight three showcase bouts on ABC television during 1976 and 1977. After knocking out unbeaten Dino Dennis in four rounds, the number one contender did the same against Pedro Agosto in January 1977. Foreman was set for the third match two months later against Jimmy Young in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Young had proved himself one tough customer. In his recent fight against Ali, he had outboxed and outsmarted the aging champion, although he lost the bout in a disputed decision. As a result, both Young and Foreman saw the fight as an unofficial elimination bout, with the winner getting a rematch against Ali for the heavyweight crown. In fact, the WBA was planning to strip Ali of his title if he refused to meet Foreman should he beat Young. Despite universal predictions that the powerful ex-champion would easily knock out his opponent, Young himself asserted that he would win via knockout in what would be his “shining hour.” His quick hands and feet, along with his six-foot-two height would allow Young to stay away from the still-robotic Foreman, tire him out, and then dispatch him in the later rounds, just as Ali had done. The bout proved the turning point of Foreman’s life.42
On March 17, 1977 Foreman and Young, a 3-1 underdog, squared off on a steamy night in San Juan’s Roberto Clemente Stadium for the right to face the increasingly vulnerable Ali. As in Zaire, the match did not go Foreman’s way. The fight started slowly, with Foreman pursuing Young but not cutting off the ring against his fast-moving opponent. Each round he survived, the more confident Young became. According to John Ort, for the first six rounds “George did little more than hold, grab, and wrestle in his efforts to corner Young.” Foreman ascribed his slow start to what promoter Don King had told him a few days before the match. Knocking guys out too quickly, King advised, was hurting the ability of the television networks to run commercials and make a profit off his fights. If he wanted a big payday for the rematch with Ali, he should avoid an early knockout. In response, Foreman toyed with Young, jabbing him into the ropes. When he hurt Young in the third round, he claimed to have backed off because it was too early. Young’s confidence only grew the longer he lasted. In the seventh, Foreman landed a big left hook to Young’s forehead, followed by a hard right, buckling his knees. Instead of launching the knockout blow, Foreman hesitated, wondering if King would be satisfied with a seven-round bout. George’s brief hesitation gave Young the chance to move out of danger. Although Foreman pursued him for the next two minutes of the round, Young escaped. At the bell, Young lifted his hands in victory while the crowd chanted his name.43
Having expended so much energy trying for the knockout in the seventh, Foreman was drained. By contrast, Young felt he had escaped disaster and was now emboldened. He fought more aggressively, while in the eighth and ninth Foreman appeared very tired. An energized Young came back “like gang busters, moving in and out, landing short rights to the head and body of George.” In the tenth Foreman again tried but failed to land the shot that would turn the tide. Instead, “he punched himself out and let Young come back toward the end of the frame.” According to The Ring, Young won the last two rounds. In the twelfth, Foreman needed a knockout to win. He chased Young, attempting a desperate right uppercut. Young countered with a wild shot that caught Foreman as he was coming forward and dropped him to one knee. In a frenzy, Foreman rose at the count of one and went after Young hoping for a knockout. At the bell, he believed he had won, but deep down he knew that the judges had already given it to Young. Indeed, the decision was unanimous for Jimmy, who was now on top of the world. Foreman declared that, “I took at least eight of the 12 rounds, but lost anyway because the judges went with the crowd,” who cheered Young and booed Foreman throughout the match. George claimed he understood because he was no hero. In his dressing room, George hit rock bottom.44
For the second time in his career, Foreman left the ring as the loser. Everything he had been working toward, revenging himself against Ali, becoming a winner again, exorcising the humiliation of Zaire, restoring his tough masculine identity went down the tubes. In his agony and despair, he experienced a profound but frightening transformative experience: a “born-again” religious conversion that would lead to his retirement from the ring. As sports columnist Jerry Izenberg noted, based on a two-hour phone call at 1:30 in the morning from the former champion, Foreman underwent “an incredible emotional and physical odyssey.” Whatever happened in the dressing room, “it changed the course of George Foreman’s life in one sweeping, agonizing trauma which still inspires amazement in his voice when he tries to verbalize the incredible impact on him.”45
This is a story that Foreman has told repeatedly as he sought to spread the good news of salvation through Jesus and answer questions from a skeptical sporting world. While there have been many other conversions from the secular to the religious realm in African American history (Henry Armstrong, Little Richard, Al Green, and numerous others), Foreman’s conversion came at a time when the renewal of evangelical Protestantism was on the rise in American life in general. Having survived the perilous era of Vietnam and Watergate, many Americans turned to evangelical Christianity for solace and meaning. At the same time, African Americans were no longer flocking to a splintered Nation of Islam as Ali had done in the early 1960s. As black energies shifted toward practical politics, there was also a growing movement toward self-reform removed from the lures and temptations of modern America. Seeking an identity beyond winning and losing, Foreman stood at the tip of a vast iceberg that counseled black and white Americans to remove themselves from the stresses and strains of the material world.
As he related to Izenberg: “I was in the dressing room after the fight and I was weak. I started to talk and I began to realize that every sentence I spoke . . . had the word ‘death’ in it. Then it was like every three words and then it was every word . . . ‘death . . . death . . . death.” Foreman amplified the experience in his two autobiographies. The dressing room was so hot, he recalled, that he started to panic. “Maybe it was the heat that made my thought come in such a rush.” He reminded himself that despite losing a fight, he was still all right. He could retire, do television and films, comment on boxing. He told himself: “You’re still the world-famous George Foreman. You can always find something to do.” He had money and houses, he reminded himself: “You can retire and die.” Over and over death intruded into his thoughts. “You believe in God,” he heard. “Why are you afraid to die?” Was that the voice of God? he wondered. If so, he tried to make a deal with the Almighty: “I’m George Foreman . . . I can still box. I can give money to charities.” But the voice thundered in response: “I don’t want your money. I want YOU.”46
At that point, Foreman believed he was in fact dying. “The invincibility I’d always felt had been an illusion,” he said. His knees buckled and he entered a deep dark void. He was totally alone, filled with panic, hopelessness, sorrow, and isolation. In that realm of death and nothingness, everything that had formed Foreman’s identity melted away to nothing—money, cars, houses, clothes, women. All the things of the American dream that he thought would satisfy him, all the riches that being champion conveyed, all the outer markings of success that he craved, all the winning that had brought him no peace—feeling that he truly was dying, he cried out: “I don’t care if this is death. I still believe there’s a God.”47
At that instant, he felt a gigantic hand reach out and lift him out of that terrifying place. He found himself back in his dressing room lying on the floor, surrounded by his frightened handlers and corner men who lifted him back onto the table. For the first time in his life he felt at peace. To everyone’s astonishment, he cried out: “I’m George Foreman! I just lost that boxing match. I don’t care where You’re taking me—I lost the fight, and I’m who I want to be. I don’t want to be anyone else!” When Dr. Keith West attempted to move his head, George had the sensation of blood flowing from thorns in his head. Everyone in the dressing room looked at him as if he had lost his mind. In frustration he sat up on the table and yelled at the top of his lungs, “JESUS CHRIST IS COMING ALIVE IN ME!” Spilling out of his mouth came snatches of the Bible, and instead of his lifelong anger, there came the language of love. He jumped in the shower, and continued to shout, “HALLELUJAH, I’VE BEEN BORN AGAIN!” He was so filled with peace and love that, stark naked, he tried to get out of the dressing room to spread the word. All assembled thought he had gone crazy and tried to stop him. “As for me,” he recalled, “I had never felt that wonderful in all my life! This born-again experience was everything I ever wanted.” It was joy and euphoria. For the first time in his life, he felt at peace. He was a new man. The old George was gone; a new George emerged.48
His hatred and anger toward Ali and those who had betrayed him in Zaire and thereafter slowly ebbed away. Before his born-again experience he had hated Ali with a passion. It was an anger that knew no bounds. After losing his crown to him in Zaire, “I would have loved nothing more than to kill him in the boxing ring.” Foreman also wanted to kill everyone who had undermined him, such as his friend Leroy Jackson and most of all Dick Sadler, whom he blamed for poisoning him in Zaire and preventing him from winning in the most crucial match of his life. Now, filled with love, he began to forgive everyone, Ali included, and he let his identity as “big bad George” fade away. In one of many late-night phone calls, he even spoke to Ali about his love for the man who had defeated him and who Foreman unsuccessfully tried to convert to Christianity.49
Foreman’s experience was not unique in the late 1970s. A strong impulse in the culture of the era was the survival of the apocalypse—of disaster, war, floods, fire. Unlike Ali, who triumphed and retained his heroic image, even as it faded into nostalgia, Foreman survived losing and the descent of his life into near madness by turning to evangelical religion. By retiring from boxing and withdrawing into street preaching, he slowly took on a much more humble role in the cultural firmament. At first, of course, he thought he could continue to fight again, “because maybe I could treat the whole thing like it was a dream. But I couldn’t,” he said. Instead, he soon began giving his testimony to various churches, including Dr. Robert Schuller’s Church of the Garden Grove.50
Having been given a choice of how to live his life, Foreman believed he could not fight again. He had been a fighter and a sinner, he related: “And now, without fighting, without fame, without fuss, I’m a happy man.” Starting with himself, he learned to accept his losses. Rather than treat defeat as the equivalent of spiritual death, Foreman began to see his defeats as an indication that he must change himself. As a result, he sought a simpler, more disciplined, and conservative mode of existence. This included giving up fornication, excessive consumption, and hanging out with the wrong crowd. While Ali’s womanizing was revealed to the public, Foreman followed a different path. Losing turned out to be the key to victory. As he had reformed himself, he sought to help others reform as well. He became a street preacher, a man who belonged to no organized religion but converted sinners one by one on the streets of Houston and spoke to congregations wherever he was invited. Acutely aware of the poverty around him, Foreman ignored government programs as a solution, but he worked on a personal basis to help people who had suffered economic, racial, romantic, and other forms of loss to overcome their own personal defeats. His evangelical street pitch made it clear that he too was familiar with loss. “I’m George Foreman, ex-heavyweight champion of the world,” he declared on a Houston street after leaflets with his picture as an Olympian waving his small American flag circulated, “and I’m here to tell you about Jesus Christ.” His mission was to forge a personal transformation in the lives of individuals one person at a time and as someone who had suffered great loss he felt he had the background and the experience to help others. Eventually he headed his own small congregation, the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, and soon he was involved in creating a gym for underprivileged youth in a Houston ghetto, working individually there, too, to keep them on a righteous and law-abiding path. It appeared that he had put boxing behind him.51
For ten years—until 1987—he fulfilled his promise never to fight again. But then everything changed once more for Foreman, as it did for Ali, too. During the 1980s both men were out of the ring. While Ali still enjoyed a public presence all over the world and remained perhaps the best-known individual across the globe, another divorce, the onset of Parkinson’s disease, the collapse of his fortune, and several embarrassing scandals dimmed his heroic image. Foreman, meanwhile, stayed away from boxing and led a happier life as a preacher. In 1987, though, he returned to the sport to raise money for his youth gym and soon embarked on a comeback. For both Foreman and Ali, as well as for two other principals in the Rumble in the Jungle—Don King and Mobutu Sese Seko—the 1990s would bring another surprising turn.