This severed the fight from the music festival and forced the fighters, their entourages, and the media to remain in Zaire for the duration of the delay. King anticipated thousands of well-heeled Western fight fans willing to pay top dollar to travel to Zaire to see the fight live; fewer than 50 turned up. Foreman and his trainer, former champion Archie Moore, on their way to Kinshasa, 10 September It functioned as spectacle to promote the real business, which lay in the closed-circuit television and rebroadcast rights.
When free TV and rebroadcasts around the world are factored in, perhaps half a billion people eventually saw the fight. An article from The Lantern, the student newspaper of Ohio State University, reporting on spectators in Columbus watching the televised Ali-Foreman fight, 31 October The fight itself was dramatic and entertaining.
Foreman was favored. Much of the boxing press, especially those rooting explicitly or implicitly for Ali, feared that he might be humiliated or seriously hurt if he took any other approach. Instead, Ali came out aggressively in the first round, taking the fight to Foreman with a series of dramatic right-hand leads. Ali absorbed enormous punishment in the process. His strategy was nevertheless eventually effective, and in the eighth round Ali knocked out an exhausted Foreman with a series of powerful combination punches.
George Foreman vs Muhammad Ali, October 30, Ali was only the second man ever to regain the heavyweight title, and the first, Floyd Patterson, had done so in an immediate rematch.
Having lost the title as a result of his personal politics rather than in the ring, he regained it in dramatic fashion in front of the entire world. American troops left Vietnam in , and opposition to the war gradually diminished as a marker of controversy. In the wake of his death, his movement split into two branches.
But the show must go on … and it did. First, Zaire 74, the music festival featuring Brown and King, went ahead as scheduled in September. And after some tense negotiations, and anxious anticipation among boxing fans across the world, so did the fight.
Muhammad Ali punches George Foreman during their world heavyweight title boxing match in If anything, the delay of the epic bout helped King and others build even greater anticipation and excitement for the event, says Newman. Kimbangu turned European religious evangelism upside down. With its breathtaking views of tea fields, volcanoes and beaches, do you need more reasons to take this stunning drive?.
Sacked by militants in , Goma in eastern DRC is now emerging as a symbol of defiance through art, tourism and entrepreneurship. So wrote the Chicago Sun-Times sportswriter Jack Griffin in a dispatch 10 days before the prizefight in Kinshasa, Zaire, where Ali would stun the world by wresting the heavyweight championship from the undefeated strongman Foreman, knocking him out in the eighth round, thus becoming only the second man in boxing history to regain the title. Seventeen months later, on February 25, , Liston would surrender his heavyweight crown to year-old Cassius Clay.
It was by that name—one of the most common in the Muslim world—that he would arguably become the most recognized, controversial, and beloved human on the planet. During his lifetime, he showed us there are no neutral corners. One should take a stand on the great issues of the day—war and peace, inequality and injustice. His great gifts as both prizefighter and showman made him a citizen of the world, though he was vilified and punished for his refusal to fight in the Vietnam War.
That was the greatest test of his character. But no physical challenge was as daunting as the Rumble in the Jungle, some 47 years ago. Zaire would also prove to be a watershed moment for the handful of American writers who accompanied Ali to Africa. Norman Mailer, Hunter S.
Thompson, and even George Plimpton were thought by some to have passed their prime as writers. Neither Ali nor the writers who left Zaire after the historic fight would ever be the same. This is their story. It was more than just a prizefight. Though opinion was fiercely divided, only a few years earlier Ali had been one of the most hated men in America. Having been stripped of his heavyweight title in for refusing induction into the army, he had faced prison time and had his boxing license revoked for three and a half years.
Mobutu wanted to advertise his country, the success of the revolution, and himself. He wanted to put Zaire on the map, wiping out all traces of its colonial past. The Belgian Congo had become Zaire. The fight was held in a soccer stadium originally built for an Olympics that would never come: Stade du 20 Mai. He became the only authentic, living hero on the face of this planet.
For the writers, this fight would be the defining sporting event of their careers. Most picked the formidable Foreman to win, predicting an early knockout victory for the Texas-born year-old with a string of 40 wins and no losses, including 37 wins by knockout. Added to the hard-core sportswriters were what you might call the celebrity writers, the marquee names of the New Journalism, writing for magazines and for books and for themselves, out of their love of the sport and their fascination with Ali and their need to be where the action was: Bill Cardoso, Mailer, Plimpton, and the most outrageous New Journalist of them all, Hunter S.
Budd Schulberg—sportswriter, screenwriter of On the Waterfront, author of the great boxing novel that became the Humphrey Bogart film The Harder They Fall —was there, too, with a foot in both the Ali and Foreman camps. The big event was originally scheduled for September 25, but eight days before the fight, Foreman got cut in a sparring session.
A number of the sportswriters returned to the States for the five-week postponement, but some stayed on in Zaire. In addition to the unrelenting heat, there was the boredom of waiting. Active 4 years, 3 months ago. Viewed 4k times. Then why was not it held in USA? Improve this question. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Wikipedia Don King arranged this fight with the music businessman Jerry Masucci, who took his famed musicians, Fania All Stars, to play at the venue. Improve this answer.
Macaco Branco Macaco Branco 9, 2 2 gold badges 17 17 silver badges 49 49 bronze badges.
0コメント