The Fight

Foreman came out for the sixth looking like an alley cat with chewed-up brows. Lumps and swellings were all over his face, his skin equal to tar that has baked in the sun. When the bell rang, however, he looked dangerous again, no longer a cat, but a bull. He lowered his head and charged across the ring. He was a total demonstration of the power of

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

The punches got weaker and weaker, and Ali finally came off the ropes and in the last thirty seconds of the round threw his own punches, twenty at least. Almost all hit. Some of the hardest punches of the night were driven in. Four rights, a left hook and a right came in one stupendous combination. One punch turned Foreman’s head through ninety deg

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?

Boxers were liars. Champions were great liars. They had to be. Once you knew what they thought, you could hit them. So their personalities became masterpieces of concealment. There would be limits to what he could learn of Ali and Foreman by the aid of any philosophy. Still, he was grateful for the clue. Humans were not beings but forces. He would

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

Foreman caught him with the best punch he had thrown in many a minute, landing just before the bell, and as he turned to leave Ali, he said clearly, “How’s that?” It must have encouraged him, for in the fifth round he tried to knock Ali out. Even as Ali was becoming more confident on the ropes, Foreman grew convinced he could break Ali’s defense. C

With twenty seconds left to the round, Ali attacked. By his own measure, by that measure of twenty years of boxing, with the knowledge of all he had learned of what could and could not be done at any instant in the ring, he chose this as the occasion and lying on the ropes, he hit Foreman with a right and left, then came off the ropes to hit him wi

When every word reverberates to the end of the earth, a weak word can bring back an echo to punish the man who spoke; a weak action guarantee defeat. Therefore, a man must not play with his dignity unless he is adept in the arts of transformation.