The 50th Anniversary of The Rumble in the Jungle

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Mismatches and upsets don’t age well. After enough time and distance, all you remember is the end result instead of the angst and the build-up. The fight itself gets lost in the hubris of the protagonist’s life story: Why, of course Joe Namath and the Jets beat the Colts! He’s Joe Namath after all!

And that’s a fair point: Joe Namath wouldn’t have been Joe Namath if he choked in Super Bowl III. Still, it skews how we remember the past.

It also applies to ancient combat: When you’re told the story of David and Goliath in 2024, you already know it’s a huge mismatch — but not in favor of Goliath. Turns out he was just a big giant dude, whereas David was anointed by God Almighty to rule over the Jewish Kingdom, write His psalms, and father a lineage that transforms the world. 

So, yeah: David versus Goliath was a colossal mismatch! Just not in the way we’re expected to imagine.

And this brings us to October 30, 1974: The Rumble in the Jungle — the legendary showdown between undefeated George Foreman and an overaged, past-his-prime Muhammad Ali.

Just like David and Goliath, this was supposed to be a mismatch, too.

Ali was a 4-1 underdog. And not because the oddsmakers were sniffing glue: George Foreman was slaughtering people. Even Ali’s closest friends were legitimately scared for his life.

Nearly a decade earlier, it was Muhammad Ali who was the young, undefeated world champion. Then known as Cassius Clay, he “shook up the world” by making Sonny Liston quit on his stool to capture his first world title at the tender age of 22. 

Ali took on all comers, ducking no one. After KO’ing Liston in the first round of their rematch (where it’s still unclear if Liston took a dive or was actually hurt), he stopped former champ Floyd Patterson before slicing up British folk hero Henry Cooper, who had dropped Ali (then Clay) on his butt in their first fight before getting TKO’d from cuts.

Then, over a span of just five months, Ali defeated Cleveland Williams, Ernie Terrell, and Zora Folley. Williams was once a formidable fighter but had been shot by a policeman a few years earlier, lost a lot of weight, and was never the same. Zora Folley was too old (36) and a shell of his former self. Fun trivia fact: Ali’s fight with Folley was his last fight before he was banned from prizefighting for three years after refusing to be drafted into the United States Army.

Of those last three fights, it was the Terrell fight that stood out — and not in a good way.

Usually, Ali was the fighter who’d use psychological warfare against his opponents, but this time, Terrell put Ali on tilt: Ernie Terrell refused to call Ali by his new name, insisting on calling him Cassius Clay. Ali told him to stop. 

Terrell refused.

When they met on February 6, 1967, Ali annihilated Terrell, blasting him, torturing him, and embarrassing him. Instead of knocking him out, Ali would let Terrell recover — just so he could continue beating the holy hell out of him. Throughout the entire bloodbath, Ali kept yelling at Terrell, “What’s my name?! Say my name! What’s my name?! Say my name, you Uncle Tom! WHAT’S MY NAME?!”

Ali won the unanimous 15-round decision but was crucified in the press for his lack of sportsmanship. The Daily Telegraph called it “the nastiest display of Ali’s celebrated career. …The fight will be remembered for Ali’s constant taunts of ‘what’s my name?’ to an opponent he was apparently content not merely to defeat, but also to belittle and humiliate.”

After his three-year boxing exile ended (an 8-0 ruling from the Supreme Court overturned his earlier conviction), Ali returned to the fight game.

But he wasn’t the same fighter.

Before, he could dance, move, shuffle, and slide for 15 rounds. He was a speedster — there had never been a heavyweight in history who fought like him. His uncanny athleticism and lightning-quick reflexes allowed him to get away with things other fighters couldn’t — like keeping his hands far too low.

In fact, Ali was so ridiculously fast, the durability of his chin was a big unknown: After Henry Cooper knocked him down and had him hurt (his trainer, Angelo Dundee, cheated to give Ali more time to recover by deliberately opening a bigger hole in Ali’s glove), we assumed his Achilles heel was his ability to take a shot. 

After all, we never really saw his chin get tested.

During his government-imposed hiatus, a kid named Joe Frazier emerged as the new world champion. Frazier was short, compact, and needed a few rounds to start “smoking,” but was a devastating hooker with an indomitable will to win. He was also undefeated.

When Ali and Joe Frazier collided on March 8, 1971, in Madison Square Garden, it was the first time in boxing history where two undefeated heavyweights — each with legitimate claims to the world title — would meet in the ring to settle the score.

It was a huge event. Public interest was off the hook. Frank Sinatra couldn’t land tickets for the fight… so he swung a deal with Life magazine to be their ringside photographer!

Frazier won. This time, Ali paid a high price for keeping his hands too low: Frazier rocked him with a brutal left hook in round 15, dropping him on his back.

And suddenly, Ali was no longer undefeated.

Undaunted, he hit the comeback trail and rattled off 10 quick wins. But two years after losing to Frazier, he suffered an even worse defeat to a little-known ex-Marine named Ken Norton. Not only did Norton dominate Ali and win the fight, he even broke the Louisville Lip’s jawbone — wiring Ali’s mouth shut.

Ali continued to fight. He continued to tell everyone he was still the greatest of all time and blah-blah-blah. But everyone knew it was over. He was a speedster who had lost his speed. Sure, Ali was still a draw because of his name, but in the minds of boxing fans, his day was done.

Meanwhile, a new world champion had just captured the crown. Big George Foreman was an absolute powerhouse with sledgehammers for fists. Between 1970 and his fight with Ali, Foreman fought 27 times. Not only did he win every fight, but only one man (George Peralta) went the distance!

Foreman seized the heavyweight title by blasting Frazier into smithereens. It wasn’t a competitive fight: Foreman knocked him down six times(!) before stopping him in the second round. (That’s where the classic Howard Cosell cry, “Down goes Fray-zuh! Down goes Fray-zuh!” is from.)

For his first title defense, Foreman KO’d Jose Roman in round one. For his second, he met Ken Norton — the same man who broke Ali’s jaw — and knocked him down three times before putting him to sleep in the second. Again, it wasn’t even close.

So, when Big George signed to fight Ali in Zaire, it was seen as an easy fight for Foreman. After all, he slaughtered all the guys that Ali struggled with — and Ali was in his 30s now.

By contrast, Foreman was 25 and in his athletic prime.

That was the backdrop for The Rumble in the Jungle. This is the fight that cemented the Ali legend.

In the first round, you can see Ali try to dance and move. That’s what we all expected: Ali would try to dance, because standing in front of Foreman was suicidal. (Eventually, most assumed, George would catch Ali on his whiskers and send him to bed. But hopefully, it would be fun while it lasted.) If Ali couldn’t dance, Ali wouldn’t survive.

But what he did next surprised everyone… and made a dope out of George.

He didn’t dance. He leaned on the ropes and unveiled the rope-a-dope strategy: Ali let George wail on him with those powerful, clubbing blows, but would use the bend in the ropes to conserve energy and avoid clean shots.

Meanwhile, George wasn’t conserving anything. Every punch had murderous intentions — every shot an attempted decapitation. Big George had absolutely no interest in getting a decision victory. He wanted a knockout!

All the while, Ali would enrage him further by whispering in his ear, “That all you got, George? Everyone told me you were strong, George! Can’t you hit me harder than that?”

Seeing red, Foreman would uncork furious combinations of long, clubbing blows, trying to detach Ali’s head. Which Ali would respond to with another round of, “That all you got, George? That all you got?”

Around the eighth round, Foreman thought to himself, “Yup. This IS all I’ve got!”

That’s when an exhausted, fatigued Foreman lumbered after Ali, still trying to land the kill-shot, when Ali suddenly moved off the ropes, pirouetted, and nailed Big George in his big jaw.

Down goes Foreman.

The winner — and new world champion: Muhammad Ali!