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''Soul Power'' was the original project ''When We Were Kings'' director Leon Gast hoped to complete when he went to Africa. Segments of the music performances by James Brown, B.B. King, The Spinners, and Miriam Makeba did make it into ''When We Were Kings'' and also serve as the soundtrack for interesting B-roll footage. Many of the performances appear to be from rehearsals, with the performers enjoying themselves among one another rather than playing to an audience. No trace of an audience, in fact, is ever shown. Neither are any of the many African performers, with the unfortunate exception of Miriam Makeba. | ''Soul Power'' was the original project ''When We Were Kings'' director Leon Gast hoped to complete when he went to Africa. Segments of the music performances by James Brown, B.B. King, The Spinners, and Miriam Makeba did make it into ''When We Were Kings'' and also serve as the soundtrack for interesting B-roll footage. Many of the performances appear to be from rehearsals, with the performers enjoying themselves among one another rather than playing to an audience. No trace of an audience, in fact, is ever shown. Neither are any of the many African performers, with the unfortunate exception of Miriam Makeba. | ||
''Rolling Stone'' reported that only 8, | ''Rolling Stone'' reported that only 8,000 attended the first two nights of the festival, which may explain the dearth of crowd shots accompanying the performances. The 80,000 seat stadium filled on the final night only because President Mobutu “convinced” concert promoters to give away the remaining tickets.{{sfn|Gehr}} Included on the Blu-ray version are brief interviews with Gast and co-producer David Sonenberg. For those devotees of Norman Mailer not interested in accumulating another piece of plastic in their home, both films are available via streaming on Amazon Prime, minus the extra content. | ||
The fact that ''When We Were Kings'' was ever completed and released in 1996—more than twenty years after the fight—is a tribute to the perseverance of director Leon Gast. An entire book could be written about the legal and logistical rigmarole required to recover the exposed film, edit it, arrange for music rights, add additional interviews, and finance what eventually became the movie. | The fact that ''When We Were Kings'' was ever completed and released in 1996—more than twenty years after the fight—is a tribute to the perseverance of director Leon Gast. An entire book could be written about the legal and logistical rigmarole required to recover the exposed film, edit it, arrange for music rights, add additional interviews, and finance what eventually became the movie. | ||
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The fight starts and Mailer does a brilliant job of describing the action, summarizing his even-better blow-by-blow account fleshed out in ''The Fight''. Norman is at his best here, nearly equaling his famous description of the 1962 ring death of Benny Paret at the hands of Emile Griffith and his piece for ''Life'' magazine on the first Ali-Frazier fight. | The fight starts and Mailer does a brilliant job of describing the action, summarizing his even-better blow-by-blow account fleshed out in ''The Fight''. Norman is at his best here, nearly equaling his famous description of the 1962 ring death of Benny Paret at the hands of Emile Griffith and his piece for ''Life'' magazine on the first Ali-Frazier fight. | ||
In round two, Ali begins the rope-a-dope, so it’s time to shine some light on the myth of Ali’s trainer, Angelo Dundee, loosening the ropes prior to the fight. Mailer has, to some degree, helped to perpetuate this myth. Ac- cording to Dundee’s autobiography, My View From The Corner (a great read for all boxing fans), upon inspecting the ring the afternoon before the fight, Angelo and assistant Bobby Goodman discovered it had been set up by | In round two, Ali begins the rope-a-dope, so it’s time to shine some light on the myth of Ali’s trainer, Angelo Dundee, loosening the ropes prior to the fight. Mailer has, to some degree, helped to perpetuate this myth. Ac- cording to Dundee’s autobiography, ''My View From The Corner'' (a great read for all boxing fans), upon inspecting the ring the afternoon before the fight, Angelo and assistant Bobby Goodman discovered it had been set up by people who had never seen a boxing ring.{{sfn|Dundee|p=181}} Having set up a ring myself several times before matches I promoted, I can attest to the fact that it requires experience to do so properly. | ||
The ring in the | |||
Dundee also found the canvas and padding on the ring floor to be | The ring in the 20th of May Stadium had a pronounced list, one corner support having sunk into the turf. The ropes were sagging due to improper installation along with the tropical heat and humidity. Angelo and Goodman worked for several hours to jack up the sunken corner and install blocks under it. As for the ropes, they had to scrounge up a razor blade and use it to cut over a foot of slack from each rope before reinstalling and tightening them. According to Dundee, if they hadn’t attended to the ring, by fight time the ropes would have been sagging onto the canvas.{{sfn|Dundee|p=182}} His account is verified by Goodman in a separate interview.{{sfn|Hauser|p=272}} | ||
Dundee also found the canvas and padding on the ring floor to be improperly installed, but there was no time to rectify it. The foam padding underneath the canvas had turned mushy from the humidity, making it a very slow surface on which to box, much less dance. This he reported to Ali. Still, as far as Angelo or anyone else knew, the plan was for Ali to dance. | |||
“I saw him dancing for five or six rounds,” Dundee recalled, “Then I imagined him picking up the pace when George got tired and knocking him out in the late rounds, but everything was planned around not getting hit . . . when he went to the ropes I felt sick . . . that shows what I know”.{{sfn|Goldstein|p=109}} | |||
Joyce Carol Oates points out in her small classic, On Boxing, that “boxers, like chess players, must think on their feet—must be able to improvise in mid-fight, so-to-speak”.{{sfn|Oates|p=77}} Ali personified this and explains what happened in his own words: | Joyce Carol Oates points out in her small classic, On Boxing, that “boxers, like chess players, must think on their feet—must be able to improvise in mid-fight, so-to-speak”.{{sfn|Oates|p=77}} Ali personified this and explains what happened in his own words: | ||
I didn’t really plan what happened that night. But when a fighter gets in the ring, he has to adjust according to the conditions he faces. Against George, the ring was slow. Dancing all night, my legs would have gotten tired. And George was following me too close, cutting off the ring. In the first round, I used more energy staying away from him than he used chasing me. I was tireder than I should have been with fourteen rounds to go. I knew I couldn’t keep dancing, because by the middle of the fight I’d be really tired and George would get me. So between rounds I decided to do what I did in training when I got tired . . . It was something Archie Moore used to do. He’d let younger men take their shots and blocked everything in scientific fashion . . . when they got tired, Archie would attack . . . So starting in the second round, I gave George what he thought he wanted.{{sfn|Hauser|p=277}} | |||
Bullshit, George. Joyce Carol Oates, a far more practical observer of the sweet science, quotes a smart fighter in her book, who explains: “Boxing is a game of control, and, as in chess, this control can radiate in circles from the center, or in circles toward the center . . . the entire action of a fight goes in a circle; it can be little circles in the middle of the ring or big circles along the ropes, but always in a circle. The man who wins is the man who controls the action of the circle”.{{sfn|Oates|p=78}} | |||
Ironically, Archie Moore had helped to train Foreman and was in his corner that night. In the film, Mailer goes on to do an admirable job of describing the ebb and flow of the contest. | |||
Fast forward to Round 8. Foreman has punched himself out and here comes the succubus again. Her leitmotif builds up slowly behind the action and Makeba’s ominous, hissing mouth is superimposed over the boxing. Ali connects, Foreman topples over. Plimpton recalls, “I turned to Norman and said, “The succubus has got him!” | |||
Bullshit, George. Joyce Carol Oates, a far more practical observer of the sweet science, quotes a smart fighter in her book, who explains: “Boxing is a game of control, and, as in chess, this control can radiate in circles ''from'' the center, or in circles ''toward'' the center . . . the entire action of a fight goes in a circle; it can be little circles in the middle of the ring or big circles along the ropes, but always in a circle. The man who wins is the man who controls the action of the circle”.{{sfn|Oates|p=78}} | |||
Ali had done exactly that, from the outset. His lateral movement, circling first to the right and reversing to the left, had opened Foreman up to the right hand leads he threw so effectively in the first round. It had likewise opened Foreman up to the one-two combination that floored him in round eight, when Ali spun in a tight arc off the ropes. Boxing, not hoodoo, had won the fight. | Ali had done exactly that, from the outset. His lateral movement, circling first to the right and reversing to the left, had opened Foreman up to the right hand leads he threw so effectively in the first round. It had likewise opened Foreman up to the one-two combination that floored him in round eight, when Ali spun in a tight arc off the ropes. Boxing, not hoodoo, had won the fight. | ||
Foreman, initially, made all kinds of excuses for losing. Years later, in | |||
Foreman, initially, made all kinds of excuses for losing. Years later, in retrospect, he was incredibly insightful and gracious. “Muhammad amazed me”, he recalled. “He out-thought me; he out-fought me. That night, he was just the better fighter . . . I went out and hit Muhammad Ali with the hardest body shot I ever delivered . . . anybody else in the world would have crumbled...I could see it hurt . . . he had that look in his eyes, like he was saying I’m not gonna let you hurt me. And to be honest, that’s the main thing I remember about the fight. Everything else happened too fast. I got burned out . . . I was the aggressor . . . but I knew in some way I was losing”.{{sfn|Hauser|p=277}} | |||
Following the fight, on a whim, writer Pete Bonventre commandeered a car and driver and rode through the monsoon to Ali’s compound, the twenty-mile trip taking two hours. The compound was deserted, with the press all having filed their stories and the entourage gone to party. “Three hours after the greatest victory of his life, Muhammad Ali was sitting on the stoop, showing a magic trick to a group of black children. . . . And it was hard to tell who was having a better time, Ali or the children.” Ten years after upsetting Sonny Liston and seven years after he’d been stripped of the title, Muhammad Ali was once again the heavyweight champion.{{sfn|Hauser|p=279}} | Following the fight, on a whim, writer Pete Bonventre commandeered a car and driver and rode through the monsoon to Ali’s compound, the twenty-mile trip taking two hours. The compound was deserted, with the press all having filed their stories and the entourage gone to party. “Three hours after the greatest victory of his life, Muhammad Ali was sitting on the stoop, showing a magic trick to a group of black children. . . . And it was hard to tell who was having a better time, Ali or the children.” Ten years after upsetting Sonny Liston and seven years after he’d been stripped of the title, Muhammad Ali was once again the heavyweight champion.{{sfn|Hauser|p=279}} | ||
Zaire. Act Three begins with winning the epic Thrilla in Manilla rubber match with Frazier, losing the title to Leon Spinks, who had only eight | While the Rumble in the Jungle may have been Ali’s greatest boxing victory, I think of it as the high point of the second act of his four-part dramatic career. In Act One, he defeats Sonny Liston and is stripped of his title for re- fusing induction into the military. In Act Two, after a three-year legal battle, his boxing license is reinstated, he loses to Frazier, and regains the title in Zaire. Act Three begins with winning the epic Thrilla in Manilla rubber match with Frazier, losing the title to Leon Spinks, who had only eight professional fights, defeating Spinks in the rematch to win the title for the third time, and ending his ring career with several tragically bad performances. In Act Four, Ali goes into serious physical decline and begins to slip into obscurity. Then he reemerges—more popular than ever—when he unsteadily lights the 1996 Olympic torch in Atlanta. To me, his greatest victory took place not in the ring, but in foregoing his physical peak as an athlete and defeating the United States government in the courtroom. | ||
Muhammad Ali died in | |||
Foreman stayed away from boxing for ten years. He watched no television and didn’t follow the sport, concentrating on his preaching. Then, at age | Muhammad Ali died in 2016. George Foreman remains alive, and, by all indications, is well at this writing. His career after Zaire is equally remarkable to Ali’s. Two years after losing to Ali, following a savage fight with slugger Ron Lyle, Foreman lost a decision to slick boxer Jimmy Young in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Afterward, George collapsed from heat stroke in his dressing room and had a near-death experience. He claimed God pulled him from the brink of an abyss and gave him a mission in life. He returned to Houston, stopped boxing, gained a hundred pounds, and began preaching on street corners. He established a church and built a congregation. | ||
Foreman stayed away from boxing for ten years. He watched no television and didn’t follow the sport, concentrating on his preaching. Then, at age 38, weighing over 300 pounds, he began a comeback. His goal was to raise money to build a youth center for his church and—to everyone’s amusement—regain the heavyweight championship of the world.{{sfn|Dundee|p=281}} | |||
The New George looked nothing like the original. He’d always been big, but now he was huge. And he’d learned to relax in the ring, no longer tensely stalking opponents and wasting energy as he had in those few short rounds in Zaire. The New George waited patiently, sometimes absorbing terrible blows, for his chance to land a short, sneaky right, and when he did, the ef- fect was devastating. Somehow, he’d retained—even refined—his jab into something akin to a pile driver. His style was anything but pretty, but he had enough weapons to remain dangerous.{{sfn|Dundee|p=281}} | The New George looked nothing like the original. He’d always been big, but now he was huge. And he’d learned to relax in the ring, no longer tensely stalking opponents and wasting energy as he had in those few short rounds in Zaire. The New George waited patiently, sometimes absorbing terrible blows, for his chance to land a short, sneaky right, and when he did, the ef- fect was devastating. Somehow, he’d retained—even refined—his jab into something akin to a pile driver. His style was anything but pretty, but he had enough weapons to remain dangerous.{{sfn|Dundee|p=281}} | ||
Another thing happened. He became a nice guy. A very funny guy. His self-deprecating humor charmed the press and the public alike, especially anyone old enough to remember his earlier incarnation. We’d always wanted to like George, but he wouldn’t let us. Now, when asked by a reporter with tongue-in-cheek, “When do you think you’ll fight for the title?” George replied, laughing, “Today, the biggest decisions I’ll make aren’t related to the | Another thing happened. He became a nice guy. A very funny guy. His self-deprecating humor charmed the press and the public alike, especially anyone old enough to remember his earlier incarnation. We’d always wanted to like George, but he wouldn’t let us. Now, when asked by a reporter with tongue-in-cheek, “When do you think you’ll fight for the title?” George replied, laughing, “Today, the biggest decisions I’ll make aren’t related to the | ||