Boxing's greatest day

By Nirmal Shekar

CHENNAI, APRIL 21. As Lennox Lewis gets into the ring to defend his world heavyweight titles against Hasim Rahman in the African continent around breakfast time in India on Sunday, older fans of the oldest sport in human history would surely recall the last great title fight staged in that continent.

On October 30, 1974 in which has come to viewed as the most famous and dramatic a fight ever staged in the heavyweight division, Muhammad Ali, inarguably the most widely recognisable sportsperson in the planet, took on a rampaging, in-form George Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire.

Billed as the ``Rumble in the Jungle'', the fight was widely expected to be a lopsided contest between a 32-year old has-been and a ruthless 25-year old champion in his prime.

What actually happened in eight unforgettable rounds of hand-to- hand combat in front of thousands of bewildered on- site spectators and millions of television viewers is a piece of history that would favourably compare with any slice of high drama in the entire history of modern sport.

Ali was such a colossal figure in the world of sport, and an incomparable hero in the Civil Rights movement in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, that the fight had received tremendous publicity in the preceding weeks, even months.

Although Foreman himself was black, the lines were clearly drawn. Ali, the champion of black freedom and rights in the role of the Challenger and Foreman, the darling of the White majority and their unofficial representative, starring in the role of the Champion.

At a time when television was hardly a part of even the affluent households in this country, and when newspapers offered very little coverage of boxing events, it was still possible for millions of Muhammad Ali fans in this country to follow the developments on radio, thanks to BBC.

In the event, many sports fans kept awake on the night of October 29 and into the wee hours of October 30, 1974 to see if Ali would be able to pull off what was generally regarded by boxing critics as the Impossible.

Foreman was going into the fight with a magnificent record. Seven months before the Ali fight, Foreman had destroyed Ken Norton with such violent rage that those who watched the fight did not really watch all of it - many had to close their eyes in sheer disgust.

What is more, it was the eighth fight in a row in which Foreman had got his job done in two rounds. His title fight victory over Joe Frazier had been equally impressive and even the most fanatical of Ali fans would have realised that these were the only two men - Frazier and Norton - who had beaten their hero.

In what is perhaps the finest book ever written in the English language on a single sporting event - The Fight - the American author and boxing fan Norman Mailer describes the atmosphere in the respective dressing rooms before the fight as only he can.

The silence is almost sepulchral in the Ali dressing room while the chirpy champion shares a few laughs with his men in the other room.

So, who can save Ali? What can save him from the ferocious fists of one of the most feared fighters of all time?

Nobody had the answer....nobody, that is, barring The Greatest!

As the fight unfolded like a great play, a masterpiece authored by someone like Shakespeare, few could believe what they were watching.

For long years after the historic fight had been won and lost, many were insistent that Ali had devised his tactics months earlier and had specifically trained to wear down Foreman with his famous rope-a-dope tactics.

Yet, this was far from truth. Quite the master of instant improvisation, the great man had simply dreamed up just the right thing in the ring itself as he allowed Foreman to waste away all his considerable energies before coming up with that famous downward-right that felled Foreman in the eighth round amidst cries of ``Ali, bomaye!''

In millions of replays of that great fight, that cry by local fans, meaning ''Ali, kill him``, comes as something of a memorable background score.

Indeed, it was a day when a killer got killed and Ali was quite simply what he always said he was: The Greatest.

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