In the next minute, Ali proceeded to hit Foreman with a combination rare as plutonium: a straight right hand followed by a long left hook. Spring-zing! went those punches, bolt to the head, bolt to the head; each time Foreman would rush forward in murderous rage and be caught by the neck and turned. His menace became more impressive each time he

“I’m going to win.” “You might have to work like you never did before. Foreman has become a sophisticated fighter.” “Yes,” said Ali, in a quiet voice, one line for one interviewer at last, “yes,” said Ali, “I know that.” He added with a wry small touch, “George is much improved.”

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

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

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

These were no ordinary swings. Foreman was working for the maximum of power in punch after punch round after round fifty or a hundred punches in a row without diminishing his power — he would throw five or six hundred punches in this session, and they were probably the heaviest cumulative series of punches any boxing writer had seen. Each of these

“It’s hard,” said Foreman, “to concentrate and be polite when you’re asked questions you’ve heard before.” He subscribed to the principle that repetition kills the soul. “You see, I’m preparing for a fight. That’s my interest. I don’t want distraction. I have no quarrel with the press, but I like to keep my mind working on the things I set for it.

Prizefighters do not, of course, train to kill people at large. To the contrary, prizefighting offers a profession to men who might otherwise commit murder in the street.