So while a guy like Jesse Jackson will be out there preaching in a spiritual vein and a guy like Martin Luther King showed us the mountaintop and took us to the promised land, I’m trying to take you to the bank.
DON KING, BLACK COLLEGIAN, 1981
In 1996 Muhammad Ali and George Foreman stepped back into the ring once again in the Academy Award–winning documentary When We Were Kings. For many Americans the film account of the Rumble in the Jungle was a revelation in its depiction of the two old warriors at the peak of their prowess in Africa, along with two other major figures who had made the epic international prizefight possible: promoter Don King and President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire. As the documentary looked back twenty years, filmgoers entered a world as exotic as the African setting of the fight. For younger viewers, Ali was not merely an ailing, nostalgic figure—a ghost from the past—he was once again a vital political force from a time when sports carried overt political weight and Ali served as an outspoken exemplar of the black freedom movement. With the primary focus of the film firmly fixed on Ali’s quest to reclaim his title and achieve personal redemption, Foreman once again came off as merely the foil for Ali’s ambitions, the victim of the rope-a-dope, and the spectacular loser who had performed his brief function and now could shuffle back into history as a character deserving to be forgotten. Despite his being a heavyweight champion of the world at the time of the documentary’s release, Foreman’s accomplishments and his comeback since 1987 received nary a mention.1
What is surprising, however, is how much had changed in the twenty-two years since the actual fight. In 1996 it appeared that a gigantic reversal of fortune had occurred in the lives of the two men. The fifty-four-year-old Ali may still have been revered by the public, but he was a nostalgic reminder of a heroic past, something of a pathetic public figure suffering from Parkinson’s disease and a reputation tarnished by bad business decisions and marital disappointment. Increasingly removed from the public eye, the once-voluble champion trembled noticeably and could hardly speak above a whisper as a result of his illness. In addition, by the late 1980s and 1990s, the rebellious black spirit of the 1960s had waned, as had the antiwar movement and, along with it, Ali’s reputation. In fact, as Michael Ezra has documented, When We Were Kings was one of many conscious attempts to resurrect Ali from the historical graveyard by rehabilitating his reputation.
While Ali seemed a shadow of his former physical and political self in the mid-1990s, George Foreman had surprised everyone by successfully returning to the ring in 1987 after a ten-year layoff. In 1994, almost twenty years to the day of his disastrous loss in Zaire, he won the heavyweight crown once again at the age of forty-five, the oldest man ever to accomplish that feat. Equally surprising, while the once outspoken Ali could barely speak, the previously sullen and withdrawn Foreman spoke endlessly about God, grills, mufflers, McDonald’s, and his color-blind allegiance to the American dream. Witty and self-assured, Foreman was born once again, as if he had assumed the mantle of Ali’s verbosity. Older, smarter, patient, and humorous, he had seemingly exchanged personalities with his old foe. To Budd Schulberg, who had covered the Rumble in the Jungle, Foreman’s reversal of fortune seemed the stuff of movies. When he fought for the title in 1991, in what turned out to be a losing effort against Evander Holyfield, Foreman appeared to Schulberg to have been transformed into a black Rocky or a black Lazarus, not the man Schulberg had seen as a gold medal Uncle Tom back in 1968. Now a humble preacher who exorcised the painful ghosts of Zaire, Foreman stood as an ordinary everyman hero, someone with whom all could identify.2
By the 1990s, the once triumphant Ali was on a downward spiral. It started with his last few years in the ring, when he barely survived against often inferior opponents. Then came his ill-advised mission to Africa to garner support for the American-led boycott of the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow. Since he first won the title and announced his allegiance to the Nation of Islam, Ali claimed that boxing was of secondary importance; his primary concern was his religion and his access to world leaders. As he prepared for the Foreman battle, Ali repeatedly declared that once he retired he would serve Islam as a preacher and use his fame to bring about world peace. In 1979, retired from the ring, he got his chance. This time, however, it was at the behest of the Carter administration, which chose him as its representative to convince independent black African nations to boycott the upcoming Moscow Olympic Games to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Relying on his enormous prestige in Africa, Ali flew across the globe only to be met with criticism and disillusion. Most African leaders expressed outrage that the United States sent an athlete—even one as celebrated as Ali—rather than a diplomat to discuss matters of such political significance. In addition, they pointed out to the former champion that he did not fully understand the issues and that the Carter administration was using his fame and his race in an attempt to manipulate them. When the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa had promoted a boycott of the 1976 Montreal Olympics in protest against the New Zealand rugby team’s visit to South Africa, the United States had refused to join the black African effort. The Soviet Union, however, had supported the boycott and various other black anticolonial efforts. As a result, many African states refused to align themselves with the United States in this renewed Cold War flare-up. Ali’s mission proved a humiliating failure. A grand diplomatic career seemed out of the question.3
Bored and humiliated, Ali decided to return to the ring in a match promoted by Don King at Las Vegas’s Caesars Palace in 1980. Although he came in lithe and trim, the former champion was no match for reigning heavyweight champion Larry Holmes. Despite Ali’s boasts, Holmes’s strong left jab and overhand right were too powerful for Ali. The rope-a-dope tactic that had served him well against Foreman in Zaire proved of little avail. Unable to mount any offense, he spent most of the bout in the corner or on the ropes as the younger and stronger Holmes treated him as a human punching bag. By the tenth round Holmes was in tears as he destroyed his idol. Herbert Muhammad had seen enough and signaled Angelo Dundee to throw in the towel. It was clear to fans everywhere that Ali was a shell of his former self, but he tried one more time, against Trevor Berbick in 1981, only to meet the same fate. He had long claimed that unlike other black heavyweight champions, with Joe Louis especially in mind, he would leave the ring victorious. It was not to be.
Even worse, in 1984 at the age of forty-two, the symbol of fluid, graceful movement in the ring was diagnosed with a form of Parkinson’s disease. There had been signs of physical deterioration since the late 1970s, but Ali and his handlers ignored the problem. Ferdie Pacheco, for example, noticed that he was receiving injections for various ailments and concluded that Ali was suffering from malfunctioning kidneys. When no one took his warnings seriously, Pacheco quit after the Shavers bout, worrying that the problems would only get worse. Around the same time Hank Schwartz and Jerry Izenberg, among many others, began to notice that Ali was slurring his words. Because of his age in 1980 (thirty-eight) and concern for his health, he was required by the Nevada State Boxing Commission to undergo a complete physical at the Mayo Clinic before it would issue him a license to box against Holmes. Although he appeared to pass with flying colors, there was a disturbing indication that there was a hole in the membrane covering his brain. By 1984 the signs of trouble were too much to ignore. Slurring of words, sluggishness, feelings of weaknesses, stiffness, and the inability to perform normal household tasks finally sent Ali to a neurologist, who diagnosed him with Parkinson’s syndrome. While Ali continued to deny it, the physicians concluded that over the course of his boxing career he had suffered repeated brain trauma.4
Prescribed a course of L-DOPA, the former champion experienced a relief from his symptoms, and he appeared generally cheerful as he rejected signs of pity on the faces of his many fans. Still, the disease continued to ravage his body until the trembling, slurring of speech, stiffness of movement, the stolid facial appearance, and an inability to speak very loudly were noticeable to all. At the same time, his personal life deteriorated. His philandering proved too much for Veronica, and his third marriage ended in divorce. Along with the financial burden that the divorce entailed, the failure of his marriage added to a sense of depression and failure.5
Ali had always claimed he would not end up like Joe Louis, broke and sick, an object of pity rather than pride, but it looked more and more as if he was following Joe down that well-worn path. This was especially true of his finances, which by the late 1980s were in a perilous state. With his boxing career over, the periodic infusions of millions of dollars stopped abruptly. Little was coming in, but a lot continued to flow out. He had three wives to support and six legitimate children, as well as several he sired outside of marriage. In addition, for years he had given huge donations to the Nation of Islam, and he continued that practice with the branch he supported after the split. Along with that, he gave generously to a wide variety of political and race organizations, among them the United Negro College Fund, the NAACP, and campaigns for black hospitals and other similar ventures. The champion also continued to be the main support of his family, including his brother Rahman and his parents, Cassius Clay Sr. and Odessa Clay, who had separated and maintained separate households. Equally draining, he maintained a huge entourage of friends, family, and hangers-on who looked to him for financial support. Then, of course, were the women, who continued to come and go, usually with some financial sweetener attached. Like Joe Louis, he was very generous to anyone with a sob story.
One would think that a champion of his stature would attract huge endorsement contracts for a variety of prestigious products. Despite being one of the most recognized people on the planet, however, the face and fist of Ali adorned only Roach Motel boxes during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Ali still conjured up images of black rebellion and black pride and was thus seen as too reminiscent of the 1960s to attract white consumers. Plus, Ali had little interest in business. In 1978, Robert Abboud, the chief executive officer of First National Bank of Chicago, volunteered to set up a group of financial counselors to help Ali gain control of his money and guide him toward secure and lucrative investments, including commercial endorsements. After some initial success, the financial advisers quit in frustration. The people around Ali undercut the committee’s advice as they instead promoted competing deals and schemes from which they sought to benefit. Moreover, the advisers were hamstrung by deals Ali had already made. They would suggest lucrative endorsements with athletic shoe and clothing companies, for example, only to discover that Ali had signed a half-baked contract with a fly-by-night competitor that just wasted his money. The situation worsened after Ali moved to Los Angeles and then fought Holmes. Frustrated that the former champion was undercutting their efforts, his advisers eventually gave up. Ali’s finances continued their downward spiral.6
Equally disturbing, the retired champion’s name was tarnished when it was used by Harold Smith to embezzle $21.5 million from Wells Fargo Bank. Later in the decade an Ali business partner, Richard Hirschfeld, used his ability to imitate the champ’s voice over the phone for his own political and economic projects, thereby dragging Ali’s reputation through the mud. When he moved to Los Angeles in 1980, moreover, Ali bought the most expensive mansion ever purchased by a heavyweight champion and lived a seemingly out-of-touch luxurious life with Veronica and his children in Fremont Place, an elite black enclave in the city, far removed from the many black fans who had so idolized him and made him “the people’s champion.” When he and Veronica divorced in 1986, the ever-generous Ali invalidated their prenuptial agreement to give her the mansion, half his trust fund, and millions in alimony and child support.7
Other events further dented the champ’s reputation. In 1984, he, like former heavyweight champions Floyd Patterson and Joe Frazier, endorsed Ronald Reagan for president after Jesse Jackson withdrew from the battle to become the candidate of the Democratic Party. Ali’s motivation remains unclear. His opposition to the Vietnam War was rooted in his religious identity as a member of the Nation of Islam, which opposed wars that were not religiously sanctioned by Allah. Moreover, the Nation’s denunciation of alcohol and drugs and the promotion of patriarchy and personal self-discipline could push him toward conservative political positions as the world altered around him. Reagan’s support for school prayer might offer some explanation, since Ali himself continued to see himself as a promoter of religion in an increasingly secular world. A more cynical interpretation involves Ali’s relationship with President Jimmy Carter. After President Ford invited Ali to the White House following his victory in Zaire, Ali announced, in response to a reporter’s question, that if he voted it would probably be for Ford. However, at Don King’s behest, Ali refused to endorse the president and cost Ford critical black votes in Ohio. Courted by Carter, Ali was again invited to the White House, but even more was offered the important diplomatic role in the administration’s effort to garner the support of African nations for a boycott of the Moscow Olympic Games of 1980. Because Ali was embarrassed in that effort, four years later he may have been susceptible to more conservative appeals. Liberal opinion might ignore the endorsement of Reagan by other former champions, but Ali’s actions engendered disappointment that a former figure of dissent had moved so far to the right, much like the nation itself. The collective sigh of regret and the general head shaking by black liberals like Andrew Young and Julian Bond and his former antiwar white followers did nothing to preserve Ali’s reputation.8
While Ali entered the 1990s something of a forgotten man, his old nemesis George Foreman, a truly forgotten man, was on the verge of the most remarkable comeback of his career, becoming not only the world heavyweight champion but also a full-fledged crossover star. To some extent, the chain of events that occurred in Zaire now came full circle. After his born-again experience in 1977, Foreman stayed away from boxing and shunned the limelight for ten years. Having fought in the ring fueled by anger and hatred, he came to consider boxing incompatible with Christianity’s ethic of love. How could he hit another man with anger and malice, he wondered, especially if that person had done nothing to him? Remarried and content, the father of many children, he ministered to his flock and helped troubled youth at what became the George Foreman Youth Center. The youth center was his way of helping young people stay out of trouble and out of jail by developing individual skills of self-discipline that would benefit them in their future lives, just as the Job Corps had done for him.
By 1987, however, Foreman discovered that trying to keep the youth center alive was draining his savings, which he would need for the education of his many children. He began speaking in churches and other venues to raise money, but he quickly tired of what seemed like begging. Applying for government grants, moreover, was time wasting, and he was far more comfortable with working to save individuals one by one than chasing ever-diminishing amounts of government money for youth programs. Rather than begging, he realized that he could raise more money by returning to the ring. Unlike Ali and other former champions who made the mistake of coming back against a current champion and losing badly, Foreman was determined to start over again from the bottom and gradually work his way into contention and, equally important, shape. After ten years away from boxing, his weight had ballooned to more than three hundred pounds, and getting in shape would take some time.
When he first announced his return to the ring, most observers were incredulous and treated him and his quest as a joke. Not only was it ridiculous that a grossly overweight thirty-eight-year-old wanted to reenter the ring to fight for the heavyweight title, but his quest also underscored how the heavyweight field had hit bottom, splintered as it was by champions recognized by numerous competing sanctioning bodies. Champions came and went, and no one could remember who they were. Only in this environment could a comic figure like Foreman even dream of a championship fight. As one sports reporter put it: “But, my friends, it is now official. Professional boxing is now a monumental joke, an iota away from wrestling, which at least makes no pretense about being anything other than a mockery for money.”9
Ironically, however, instead of avoiding a hostile press and sulking in isolation as he would have done in the past, Foreman showed off a totally different personality that eventually won the press and the public to his side. When he was called fat he made jokes about his eating habits. Called slow, he remarked that he was as fast as it took him to get to the refrigerator. After years of preaching, he had developed a sense of humor and a confidence in himself in public that he had never displayed during and immediately after his championship years. Indeed, many commentators acknowledged that while Ali was relatively silent, Foreman was now the garrulous and verbose one. The difference was that while Ali had used his wit against his opponents or his ringside straight man, Howard Cosell, Foreman turned the joke on himself, thereby anticipating and neutralizing criticism and taking his own celebrity image down a peg. In a very real sense, he was humbling himself before the public but in a humorous way that invited boxing fans to identify with him rather than root against him. Everyone who encountered Foreman remarked on the fact that he seemed to be a totally different person from the dope who was roped by Ali in Zaire: “Eighteen years later, Foreman has rope-a-doped us all.” For four years he’d let the world make fun of him—his age, his belly, and his comeback: “Not only has he allowed it, he has encouraged it and contributed to it. You had a Foreman fat joke? He had one funnier.”10
As he fought his way into contention and turned the criticism of his age and condition against himself, Foreman also transformed his image for a new era in American culture. As Budd Schulberg remarked, Foreman’s improbable quest turned him into a black Rocky, who like the character created and portrayed by Sylvester Stallone, pursued a million-to-one shot against external forces that gave him no chance. Unlike the flashy and arrogant Ali-like champion who possessed superhuman skills, Foreman-Rocky sought redemption in the eyes of a hostile public and in himself. Starting in the late 1970s and continuing throughout the Reagan years, political and cultural observers bemoaned the absence of “true” American heroes—usually white and male—who could stand for old-fashioned values of individual success, straight masculinity, and patriotism. There had been oppositional figures like the Ali of the late 1960s or mid-1970s, but no “true” hero all Americans could look up to. As Foreman pursued the title, he attracted a wide swath of fans who turned out for his bouts. Contrary to what promoters expected, his fights began to sell out. He not only still carried the memory of his patriotic image going back to the 1968 Olympics—now suitable to a more patriotic era—he also had become an ordinary American fighting against the skepticism of society, the ravages of time, and his own personal limitations to keep hope alive. Fans flocked to him, Foreman believed, because they were middle aged and hoped that he could recapture some glory for them. Rooting for this past champion gave them a second chance to see history: “They’d grown up and had kids, and wanted their kids to love America. So they appreciated me for what I’d done. At least, that’s what I was thinking as the cheers increased.” A key element in his new identity was his refusal to discuss race or promote himself as a black hero. Instead, he connected with ordinary white and black Americans as one who would succeed on his abilities as an individual rather than the member of any particular group.11
His moment back in the spotlight first came again in 1991, when after three and a half years of fighting himself into shape, he secured a title fight against Evander Holyfield in Las Vegas. Foreman faced the usual criticism—he was too fat, too slow, and at age forty-two, too old. But he also attracted a good deal of respect as a man transformed by his religious awakening into a clean, honest, hardworking, blue-collar guy who had overcome his losses in the past and deserved a chance to show what he could do. Like the country, he had experienced defeat and humiliation, but he had endured. Foreman’s comeback was part and parcel of renewed national pride and patriotism. To everyone’s surprise, he gave Holyfield a real fight. Although he lost the decision, he established himself as a worthy contender for the title and redeemed himself in the eyes of the boxing world. And true to his image, the next day he was back in Houston for Sunday-morning services at his church.12
His newfound celebrity as an American everyman traveled far beyond the ring. In fact, his facility with the press and the media, and his “friendly” color-blind image, attracted major corporations eager for a crossover star who could appeal to blue- and white-collar customers regardless of color. Like O. J. Simpson, who sold cars for Hertz, and more spectacularly, Michael Jordan, who served as the face of Nike, Foreman became a pitchman for Meineke Mufflers, McDonald’s, and in 1996 the George Foreman Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine. He also became a respected boxing commentator for HBO. By the end of the 1990s, Foreman had earned millions through his endorsements of commercial products. Moreover, like O. J. Simpson or Michael Jordan, he never made any hint of race or politics. Although Foreman never went so far as to say, as Simpson did, “I’m not black, I’m OJ,” he had little interest in political or racial statements. His ultimate triumph was thus as a hero who showed that ordinary Americans—black and white—could achieve success as individuals within the confines of the capitalist system if only they held onto their dreams. By the 1990s he was part of a larger trend among black athletes to downplay race and racial solidarity as they reaped the rewards as individuals who were now included in American life and the American economy.13
Foreman’s improbable comeback reached its apogee on November 5, 1994, against Michael Moorer at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Despite a seventeen-month layoff after a disappointing loss to Tommy Morrison for the vacant World Boxing Organization title, the forty-five-year-old Foreman managed to become the oldest man to fight for and win the heavyweight crown. As he told trainer Angelo Dundee, who also had come full circle since Zaire to work in his corner, for twenty years Foreman had been haunted by the ghosts of Zaire. In his attempt to exorcise those ghosts, he came into the ring wearing the faded boxing trunks with World Heavyweight Champion printed on them that he had worn the night he was humiliated by Ali. As the match progressed, however, the left-handed Moorer held all the cards, moving away from Foreman’s power while stinging the slower challenger with right hand jabs at will, followed by powerful left hands. Bloodied and behind on the judge’s cards going into the tenth round, Foreman had to knock out the champion to have any chance of victory. To do that, he had to wait for Moorer to stand in front of him so George could hit him with a powerful right. Despite warnings from his corner to keep circling away from Foreman’s right, the overconfident Moorer went for a knockout standing right in front of George. That was all Foreman needed. While old and slow, he still had his power, and it was that power that knocked out Moorer. Twenty years after Zaire, Foreman was heavyweight champion of the world once again.
By winning the title, Foreman achieved “the impossible dream” and exorcised the ghosts of Zaire. Once a monster superhuman, now he was an overweight, funny teddy bear who made whites feel comfortable. Unlike ex-champ Mike Tyson, moreover, who went to prison as a convicted rapist, the very symbol of an angry, out-of-control superpredator who was the face of trapped angry ghetto youth, the new champion was a born-again preacher, a humble giant, and a million-dollar pitchman for a wide range of American products. Foreman made a fortune in ads and endorsements. Starting in 1995, he earned 40 percent of the profits of each Foreman grill sold, or $4.5 million a month. In 1999 Salton Inc. bought out the use of his name for $127.5 million in cash and another $10 million in stock. Overall, Foreman earned more from his endorsements than he ever made in the ring. In fact, when he lost his last fight and the title to Shannon Briggs in November 1997, he used his brief postfight interview with ring commentator Larry Merchant to promote the grill. Eventually, the popular kitchen device went on to sell eighty million units and Foreman became one of the wealthiest athletes in the world. In the 1990s, according to the Foreman perspective, for “good” African Americans, as well as for white America, all things were possible if one believed in oneself and the beneficence of American society. And it was with that message that Foreman went on to become a “success” preacher over the next ten years, advising listeners to his lectures and readers of his advice books that to be a “knockout entrepreneur,” all one needed to do was believe in oneself, never give up, not recognize any obstacles, and believe in God. If one followed those rules, nothing could stop you—even racism, about which he had nothing to say—because in America success was available to all.14
George Foreman was not the only one rehabilitated by the 1990s. For Muhammad Ali the process began slowly. In 1986 he married Lonnie Williams, an intelligent and supportive young woman concerned about his physical, financial, and spiritual health. Over the following several years she worked hard to shrink his entourage and reclaim his cultural authority. She and Ali hired Thomas Hauser to oversee a vast oral history account of his career, Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times which came out in 1991 and served as a counterweight to his autobiography, The Greatest. The book sought to revive Ali’s legend as an antiwar and antiracist hero, and along the way criticized his ties to the Nation of Islam and diminished his antiwhite sentiments.
The culmination occurred at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. Ali opened the games by lighting the Olympic flame. Broadcast by NBC television, the surprise appearance by Ali galvanized the stadium and the viewing audience at home. Visibly trembling with the effects of Parkinson’s, the champion returned to the national and international stage once again as a popular hero. Announcer Bob Costas acknowledged Ali’s debility in his commentary but emphasized that he was “still a great, great presence. Still exuding nobility and stature, and the response he evokes is part affection, part excitement, but especially respect.” In turning him into an all-American hero, Olympic officials and NBC had to counter the lingering memory of Ali as an unpatriotic oppositional figure, his years as a crusader for the antiwhite Nation of Islam, and his opposition to the Vietnam War. In fact, the broadcast transformed him into a more generalized figure of inspiration. A key to this new gloss occurred at the half time of the US Dream Team’s gold-medal basketball match against Yugoslavia, when IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch gave Ali a replica of the gold medal he had claimed to have thrown away in protest against the racist treatment he had received in a segregated Louisville restaurant and a confrontation with white supremacist bikers shortly after winning his gold medal at the 1960 Rome Olympics. Detailed as a key event in becoming a radical Black Muslim in The Greatest, the backstory now was declared untrue. Rather than a protest symbol, the medal had instead been lost. Forgiven by the nation, Ali saw his role as “Mankind coming together. Martin Luther King’s home. Muslims see me with the torch.”15
Visibly struggling to hold the torch steady, Ali stood as a heroic symbol of inspiration and persistence against all obstacles. Despite some initial reluctance, he agreed to serve as the face of the Michael J. Fox Foundation’s campaign against Parkinson’s. Similar to Foreman’s championship victory, he showed that not even a devastating disease could stop him. In that sense, Ali became a generalized symbol of moral transcendence and possibility rather than a crusader for a particular religion or politics. His Muslim past was diminished and his critique of racism was now generalized as criticism of all forms of religious and racial discrimination; he became an icon of persistence. Yet he was not just a figure of moral inspiration; he was finally a safe figure available for commercial exploitation. His danger lessened, advertising contracts began to roll in until his death: Gucci, Movado, Adidas, and countless more. By the time the Muhammad Ali Freedom Center was inaugurated in 2005, the family was able to attract the major corporate backing of Ford, General Electric, and Yum Brands. There was also a partnership with the United Nations for a venture that said nothing substantial about his religious and political past and a good deal about his role as a fighter for global peace and tolerance, civil rights, and equality. The center’s mission statement said it all: “To promote respect, hope, and understanding, and to inspire adults and children everywhere to be as great as they can be.” Based on the ads, the Olympics, and the Freedom Center, Ali was once again the Greatest, but few could comprehend why he had ever been so controversial.16
Aside from the two major protagonists in the Rumble in the Jungle, When We Were Kings reminded the public of the crucial roles in that colossal sporting event played by two other black men, promoter Don King and President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire. Along with Ali, both King and Mobutu turned out to be the big winners of the fight. Officially, King was a vice president of Video Techniques in 1974. Over time, King mentioned Video Techniques and Hank Schwartz less and less and Don King Productions more and more. In the public’s mind, King was the only man who could have put together an international championship bout of this magnitude. Almost as much as Ali, he represented the aspirations and potential achievements of black America as central players on the American and world stage.17
The public role he played at the Rumble in the Jungle and his association with Ali propelled King to the forefront of the boxing world. Along the way he shouldered his partner Schwartz into a secondary role in the Ali-Bugner fight in Malaysia. By the time of Ali’s Thrilla in Manila against Joe Frazier, according to a disgruntled Schwartz, King “had effectively hijacked the event and established himself as the promoter of the event.” Their partnership was essentially over, forcing Schwartz to rebuild Video Techniques to concentrate once again on the satellite communications end of the business.18
King’s growing reputation for underhandedness did not go unnoticed. After Manila, Ali’s manager Herbert Muhammad stepped back from too close an association with King because he did not think the promoter could be trusted. For the third Ken Norton bout in 1976, in fact, Herbert had King’s old enemy Bob Arum handle the promotion. To a degree he was right. By the time of Ali’s disastrous comeback against Larry Holmes, King was the promoter but he skimmed off $1 million from Ali’s promised $8 million prize; Ali was forced to sue him in court. Through the promise of huge paydays for heavyweight championship fights, however, King was able to control the heavyweight division. Banking on black pride and racial solidarity, as he had with Ali and Foreman, as well as promises of great wealth and fame, King used his control of heavyweight champion Larry Holmes to become the kingpin of boxing. He remained so through the next century. Holmes eventually sued King for skimming from his purses, as did many other black heavyweights who came under his charge.
As the best-known promoter in boxing, King illustrated the rising prominence of African Americans in many areas of American life while at the same time demonstrating the harsh reality of the prejudiced “free” market to which minorities were forced to adapt. The emergence of closed-circuit television, satellite communications, and the eagerness of foreign and domestic millionaires to invest in international matches worked to transform boxing into a worldwide business. With his ability to negotiate with foreign governments and black boxers as he chased capital wherever it existed, King could promise black heavyweights that he would protect them from rapacious white promoters and bring them huge paydays in bouts around the globe. In the process, King became a millionaire who liked to remind people of his success. “I will never apologize for possessing wealth,” King noted. “I have nothing to apologize for. I have earned every penny of it.” As a former hustler he achieved that wealth by understanding the dog-eat-dog nature of the boxing business and by skating along the edges of illegality. Throughout his career, he found himself in and out of court for a series of crimes. Although he was never convicted, several aides were not so lucky.19
Perhaps the most notorious case was the United States Boxing Championships Tournament in 1977. Cosponsored by ABC and The Ring magazine, which validated the credentials of the contestants and originated the idea, the tournament was intended to create bouts for American fighters up and down the weight divisions to bring American boxers back into the prominence they had lost in the lesser divisions to fighters from other countries. As a sign of the tournament’s high profile, Howard Cosell and then heavyweight contender George Foreman were hired as broadcasters. With his genius for grasping the cultural moment, King publicized the tournaments as a boost to American patriotism and a free gift to armed forces personnel “as thanks to them for protecting us around the world.” The US boxing team at the 1976 Montreal Olympics won a record number of gold medals, led by the clean-cut Sugar Ray Leonard, Howard Davis, and the two brothers Michael and Leon Spinks. Building on the nationalist fervor that boxing witnessed as a result of these victories and as an antidote to losing the war, King publicized the tournament as an opportunity to foster a whole new crop of Rocky Balboas who otherwise would never get a chance to shine and succeed.20
That King had his finger on the nation’s desire for patriotic heroes is hard to deny. In pursuit of the widest possible audience, he secured the cooperation of ABC and the US Navy. A memo to King from the navy pledged support for the tournament in exchange for King’s helping the armed forces attract black recruits. In a post-Vietnam era when the draft no longer existed and recruitment had dropped considerably, the Defense Department signed on to this unprecedented program, agreeing to hold the elimination bouts at air force and navy bases and aboard a US Navy aircraft carrier. This delighted American service personnel but also ABC, which would save on expenses and achieve a respectable, patriotic setting far removed from the grimy clubs associated with boxing’s seamy past. As one Defense Department official put it, boxing was popular, and “King is boxing.” While King denied that any deal was made, he emphasized his willingness to recruit for the armed services. “To be able to serve your country is what a man is all about,” and the military was great “for blacks to learn how to use their skills.”21
Had the tournament run its course it might have been remembered as a great American sporting spectacle and a precedent for future endeavors to boost American boxing. Unfortunately, after several rounds, rumors emerged of gross irregularities, and ABC had to appoint a special investigator to look into the matter. According to Edward Kiersh, “The Watergate of boxing” had begun. Managers of fighters not invited to participate charged that they were excluded because they failed to agree to kick back a portion of their prize money or because they did not agree to have King’s partners manage their fighters should they win. In addition, several fighters claimed that they lost their bouts because they refused to knuckle under to King’s control. Heavyweight Scott LeDoux and his manager charged that two of King’s advisers, Al Braverman and Paddy Flood, controlled most of the fighters in the tournament and influenced who would win. To take part, LeDoux claimed he had to pay a booking fee between 10 percent and 15 percent, as did other fighters. Finally, investigators charged that The Ring failed to adequately vet the rankings of several boxers. Its own reputation at stake, ABC canceled the rest of the tournament, several King associates were fired, and both Ring associate editor John Ort and James Farley, the tournament’s commissioner, had to step down. While King’s reputation was tarnished, he escaped prison.22
Because of his promotion of six Ali bouts and control over Larry Holmes, however, King managed to rebuild his reputation through hard work, big paydays, growing connections to the WBC, which had control of Mexican and Latin American fighters, and his tireless work ethic. Through it all there remained an odor of corruption and illegality, however. King’s response was that he was a black man from the ghetto who was a target for the boxing establishment that could not accept a black man in such a prominent position. At the same time, he argued that he did not do anything differently than other major boxing kingpins, whether Frankie Carbo or Mike Jacobs. In addition, King maintained that having his son manage fighters that King promoted—a clear conflict of interest—was no different from the way the Lou Duva family or the Dundees operated. However, what was also true is that he was charged by black boxers with cheating and mistreating them, and this story recurred from Ali through Earnie Shavers, Larry Holmes, Tim Witherspoon, and Mike Tyson. As Larry Holmes put it, “Don King looks black, lives white, and thinks green.”23
King was probably correct in his assertion that he did not do anything different from other boxing promoters. Still, he was and is a figure of black sporting business success, and in that he is a pioneer, as he would tell anyone who would listen. Up from the ghetto, a former numbers king, a former murderer, a former prisoner, he managed to succeed in a hostile white world—but in an era when his talents of nurturing black pride in boxers made it all possible and when he had white mentors who needed his skills to relate to black fighters. This is indeed remarkable, but it was clear that King quickly adapted to the capitalist system that boxing so often symbolized. A giant success with a vast farm in Ohio, offices atop Rockefeller Center, and worldwide influence, he represented the conclusion of the era by the 1990s. As he told one interviewer: “Martin Luther wanted to take us to the promised land. Jesse Jackson wanted to take us to church. I want to take us to the bank.” For all the talk of black pride and solidarity, King was a symbol of success in a dog-eat-dog realm where only the top dogs survived.24
In When We Were Kings, as in real life, President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire was the distant presence who loomed over the Rumble in the Jungle. With his leopard-skin hat, glasses, and distinctive walking stick, his portrait graced Mai 20 Stadium as the powerful figure most responsible for delivering this gift to his people and the world. In the immediate aftermath of the bout it appeared that he had established himself as a strong leader and a symbol of African grandeur. With his authenticity policy and his move toward nationalization of foreign-owned businesses, he seemed to have successfully navigated a third way between communism and capitalism. At the same time, it looked like he had managed to take control over the identity of his African nation for the first time. In an era of Black Power and Pan-African hopes, for a brief moment he attracted a portion of the American black community with his nationalist rhetoric. Whatever they might have thought privately, both Ali and Foreman—and members of their entourages—paid homage to the beneficence of this strong, independent African leader.
Only the Nation magazine initially dissented from this glowing picture of a leader who symbolized African grandeur and Third World independence versus neocolonialism. In his postmortem of the fight, Stephen Weissman pointed out that the secretive Risnelia corporation was in fact owned and controlled by Mobutu. The offshore company was a shell entity designed to transfer money from the Zaire national treasury to Mobutu. As a result, Risnelia paid for the fight out of public funds, but banked the profits for the private benefit of Mobutu. Profits were not the major issue initially, however. For the regime, the goal was attracting foreign investment with an image of stable political and economic leadership. Over time, however, the balance shifted as Mobutu increasingly skimmed millions of the public’s money. Yet in the growing era of global capitalism, the fight’s promoters proved willing to overlook this financial abuse because they themselves engaged in similar practices. Chartering their own companies in Panama was a way to avoid American taxes and public scrutiny and facilitate their economic involvement around the world. In the modern world of boxing, capital moved freely, if often secretly, from the constraints of any particular nation. With its reliance on offshore shell companies to hide profits and avoid taxes, boxing helped pioneer the emergence of unregulated global capitalism.25
By the late 1970s, Zaire’s image as a symbol of African greatness and enemy of neocolonialism was shattered. While the afterglow of the fight still lingered in the world’s imagination, the economy of Zaire plunged into chaos. The policy of nationalization known as Zairianization turned over the foreign control of agriculture and commerce, especially by Belgians, to local control in 1973. The result was a scramble for wealth among Mobutu’s supporters and a division of the spoils to major ethnic groups. Expatriates fled and businesses failed. At about the same time, the nation suffered from the steep rise in the price of oil after the oil embargo by the Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries, and the simultaneous drop in the price of copper. In the subsequent turmoil of inflation and depression, the economy never recovered. Mobutu abandoned authenticity and he was forced more heavily than before to rely on brutality to remain in power as he and his allies became even more corrupt. Zaire came to be known as a kleptocracy. By the 1980s and 1990s, public investment in infrastructure had collapsed and nothing seemed to be working—telephones, roads, electricity.26
Mobutu’s delicate balancing act of Africa, the West, and the Third World also unraveled after the Rumble in the Jungle. He had forged an in-between identity that relied on an increasing anticolonial image as well as an alliance with the United States. After losing so badly in Vietnam, President Ford and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger saw Angola as the place for a muscular response to the Soviet Union and communism. Prompted by the United States to invade Angola in November 1975, to preserve the Portuguese colonial regime in alliance with South Africa, Mobutu lost his gloss as an independent leader and reconfirmed his status as a puppet of the Central Intelligence Agency. Increasingly, through two wars occasioned by the invasion of former Katanganese province secessionists living in Angola, he received the backing of the United States against communism and chaos in Africa. Supported by the United States, though sometimes with distaste, Mobutu’s authority and brutality went unchecked.27
While the Ali-Foreman fight highlighted a new image for Zaire, in the end the collapse of the economy and the rise of authoritarianism in the country failed to change the West’s perception of the former Congo as the heart of darkness. In fact, during the run-up to the bout, American and other Western writers and reporters were increasingly baffled by the regime’s censorship policies, the inexplicable bureaucratic delays, and the role of the military in walling off Foreman from the press. One of the major images taken away from the country was that during the delay forced by Foreman’s cut, both fighters were prisoners of the government. Similarly, images of backwardness and exoticism still reigned among sportswriters at least, and perhaps among fight fans in general. After all, the title match has continued to be known as “The Rumble in the Jungle,” which the Zairian government detested. George Plimpton spent an inordinate amount of time investigating the role of witch doctors in the fight’s outcome; Henry Schwartz celebrated the fight’s successful conclusion by traveling to the interior to dance with the Watusi warriors, followed by a special dinner that featured the hands of a gorilla as the main course. In the 1990s, When We Were Kings added to the imagery by treating the African drumming that filled the stadium before, during, and after the fight, as well as Miriam Makeba’s darting, snakelike performance at Zaire 74 as major leitmotifs of the event. In an Africa as primitive as this, according to the movie, the strong hand of a Mobutu was required.28
By the 1990s, the Congo once again had become the symbol for all that was wrong with Africa. Zaire looked like a failed state as rebellions grew, internal wars over territory increased, and Mobutu seemed brutal and out of touch. Finally, in 1996, as Ali and Foreman were enjoying their renewed fame, Mobutu was forced to flee. Riddled with cancer, he died in 1997, his illness serving as a symbol for the corps politique of the land he had ruled since 1965. It was easy to blame Mobutu as a symbol of modern Africa, and less easy for Western powers to accept complicity for supporting such a dictator in return for access to Zaire’s vast mineral riches and assistance against communist rebels in Africa. Similarly, it was difficult to accept colonial and imperialist responsibility for insisting that such a vast territory made up of more than two hundred ethnic groups could form one national entity. The lines on the map created by Henry Stanley never fit the realities on the ground. Tragically the citizens of Zaire paid for the sins of the West as well as for the authoritarian policies of Mobutu.
In the end, When We Were Kings offered a nostalgic look back into the past when great black figures walked the land. That it was primarily nostalgia was created by the shift in the public images of Ali and Foreman. By the 1990s Ali was in the midst of transformation into a religious saint whose humanism knew no bounds and hence was suitable for lionizing and commercializing. Foreman’s religious conversion transformed him into a friendly giant, an ordinary American hero who, like Ali, was depicted as a model of success. Gone was racism and poverty, present was the idea that if one believed and persisted—against obstacles of poverty or Parkinson’s—one could succeed. In this subdued political atmosphere, Don King stood out as the representative of the system’s willingness to accept new voices and new peoples on an equal basis—much like Zaire was able to compete with New York for the bout—but also with the understanding that this was a rapacious form of equality in a world dominated by the market. In their ability to navigate the dog-eat-dog nature of this neoliberal and neocolonial world, both Don King and Mobutu symbolized that only the strong survived and the weak would have to look out for themselves. Still, while Foreman seemed the perfect embodiment of a market society open to all, there radiated out from his friendly visage the idea of Christian love that could be utilized to overcome society’s artificial barriers between people. As for Ali, although his image, too, had softened and his rebellious edge had been transmuted into a soft and fuzzy portrait of rectitude, principle, and brotherhood, there would always remain the image of the fighter who was willing to challenge the world’s most powerful government in the name of religious duty and racial protest. Faded, to be sure, but not forgotten, Ali, with his use of sports as a platform to challenge American policy, would find new life as an inspiration to black athletes such as Colin Kaepernick and LeBron James, who decades after Ali have unleashed a wave of protests against police brutality and the murder of African Americans.
Despite the fate of the individual participants, the Rumble in the Jungle stood as a spectacular event balanced between two worlds. By bringing black champions to the heart of Africa, the fight emphasized the entrance of new players in the world’s cultural and political firmament. Ali, Foreman, King, and Mobutu were all signs of the growing power and presence of African Americans, African American culture, and the Third World. At the same time, new technologies such as the communications satellite, the computer, and the jet plane meant that different cultural figures—especially sports and musical celebrities—would play a much greater role than particular nations in the creation of world culture. Modern technology and communications also meant that huge sporting and musical events could be held anywhere on the globe—hence Zaire, Malaysia, and the Philippines. However, to put these superevents together required vast amount of capital, made possible by deals with various dictators and secretive offshore banks and corporations. In this way, the new global sporting world was a harbinger of the world we live in today—towering figures of sport from minority backgrounds operating in a world dominated by market values. The stars reap the benefits, and lesser lights, like so many poor African Americans and Africans, are left far behind.29