the torrent, in that long protracted moon-green dawn, rain fell in silver sheets and silver blankets, waterfalls and rivers, in lakes that dropped like a stone from above, and with a slap of contact louder than the burst of fire in a forest. It came in buckets, a tropical rain right out of the heart overhead. He had not seen a rain so bad in thirty

Bantu philosophy, he soon learned, saw humans as forces, not beings. Without putting it into words, he had always believed that. It gave a powerful shift to his thoughts. By such logic, men or women were more than the parts of themselves, which is to say more than the result of their heredity and experience. A man was not only what he contained, no

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?

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.

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 wa

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 heavy training fighters live in dimensions of boredom others do not begin to contemplate. Fighters are supposed to. The boredom creates an impatience with one’s life, and a violence to improve it. Boredom creates a detestation for losing. So the furniture is invariably every shade of dull gray and dull brown, the sparring partners beaten half in

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

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