The Fight

Ali came off the ropes in the most determined embrace of his life, both gloves locked around the back of Foreman’s neck. The whites of Ali’s eyes showed the glaze of a combat soldier who has just seen a dismembered arm go flying across the sky after an explosion. What kind of monster was he encountering?

In the second of their two rounds, Ali stepped off the ropes for the last two minutes and proceeded for the first time in the afternoon to throw punches. His master’s assortment leaped forth, jabs with a closed glove, jabs with an open fist, jabs with a twist of the glove to the right, jabs with a turn to the left, then a series of right-hand leads

“Are you concerned,” one of them asked, “that Ali might be faster than you?” “It’s all a matter of what you call fast,” Foreman said. “I don’t run ’cause I don’t have to. I can hit a man on the jaw fast enough.”

But Sadler, Moore and Saddler had been teaching him to recover from mistakes. So his voice was quiet again and he added quickly, “I don’t think I’m superior to any previous Champion. It’s something I’ve borrowed, and I’ll have to give it up.” He turned expansive. “I even love to see young cats looking at me and saying, ‘Aaah, I can take him,’ and I

Let us quote Plimpton’s account here: He repeated, at times so slowly that it seemed as if he were stumbling through a written text, what he had so often said in dressing-room statements following his victories: “There is never a loser. No fighter should be a winner. Both should be applauded.” The reporters stood around uncomfortably, knowing that

Just as a man serving a long sentence in prison will begin to live in despair about the time he recognizes that the effort to keep his sanity is going to leave him less of a man, so a fighter goes through something like the same calculation. The prisoner or the fighter must give up some part of what is best in him (since what is best for any human

Then they discover that Zaïre is not an African word. It happens to be Old Portuguese. Be certain, he’s not about to admit the error and open himself to ridicule. On the contrary that’s probably the moment he decides not only the country but the money and the gasoline and the cigarettes and, for all I know, the contraceptives are going to be called

To celebrate, he hit Foreman another straight right. Up and down the press rows, one exclamation was leaping, “He’s hitting him with rights.” Ali had not punched with such authority in seven years. Champions do not hit other champions with right-hand leads. Not in the first round. It is the most difficult and dangerous punch. Difficult to deliver a

Watching Terry’s talented imitation of Ali, yet seeing how cleverly and often Foreman was eating up room on the ropes and herding him toward a corner, it seemed certain that if Ali wished to win, he would have to take more punishment than ever before in his career.