It is 50 years on Wednesday since Muhammad Ali shocked the world to knock out George Foreman in Africa and regain the title of world heavyweight champion.
The Rumble in the Jungle took place in Kinshasa, Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo). It remains one of boxing’s most significant and talked about fights – and one of sports all-time greatest events.
Ali pulled off the famous ‘rope-a-dope’ tactic before knocking Foreman in the eighth round in the early hours of October 30, 1974. Now half a century on, we speak to two people who were there that night to remember the night Ali returned to the top against the odds.
The most significant fight in history “When you ask older people, ‘Where were you when John F Kennedy was assassinated?’ they can tell you. And when you ask them ‘where were you when Muhammad Ali won the fight in Zaire?’ They can tell you too. It is the most significant fight of Muhammad Ali’s career and it is the most significant fight in boxing history.”
Few knew Muhammad Ali better than Gene Kilroy. He was the first man in the ring when George Foreman failed to beat the count in that eighth round.
“To me it felt like I’d come back from the dead myself,” said Kilroy. “I was so happy. I knew we didn’t have to go to hospital.”
Kilroy was one of Ali’s closest confidants. He was his business manager and he ensured everything worked smoothly in the camp of ‘The Greatest’. He would go on to become a Las Vegas fixer for the casinos on the Strip.
That night his main concern was not if his friend would lose to feared puncher Foreman – who had recently flattened Joe Frazier and Ken Norton – but what would happen if they needed to go to hospital.
“The medicine was not very advanced over there,” said Kilroy. Over there? He was talking about Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Ali had arrived in Africa with Kilroy more than 50 days earlier. “We land in Zaire, it’s about 2am in the morning,” said Kilroy. “All the people are there yelling. Ali asked me ‘Who don’t they like here?’ and I told him, ‘The Belgians because the Belgians put dogs on the black people over here’.
“They’re yelling ‘Ali, Ali’. Ali put his finger to his lips to shush them and then shouted ‘George Foreman is a Belgian’. They started screaming “Ali, boma ye’.”
Ali was the master of the wind ups and he had got Africa on his side to get inside Foreman’s head as they chanted “Ali, kill him” relentlessly.
Then there was the sparring cut suffered by the champion which delayed the fight and Kilroy’s idea to get Foreman’s passport confiscated to stop him fleeing as the pressure grew.
Why were they even there? Mobutu Sese Seko was the leader of Zaire and wanted the fight to “boost tourism” in the country.
It sounds eerily familiar to what is going on nowadays with Saudi Arabia but Ali and Foreman faced little criticism for going to the country for $5m pay days. The bout was promoted by Don King but there were many involved in the making of the fight.
“You wouldn’t have given a nickel for Ali to win,” said Jerry Izenberg, the legendary boxing scribe who was ringside for the Newark Star-Ledger.
“But only two US journalists picked him to win. I was one and Jerry Lisker was the other.” The pair of journalists had visited Ali at his famous Deer Lake training camp and seen him smash the heavy bag with previously injured hands which had been helped better with a special paraffin treatment.
“I remember going to the dressing room when Foreman was getting his hands wrapped,” said Kilroy. “Dick Sadler [his trainer] was there and he said ‘I feel death in the air’ and I went back and told Ali and he said ‘I can’t wait to get him’.”
Ali would get him. In the eighth after pulling off the rope-a-dope tactic. Then a monsoon hit the football stadium which staged the bout and it emptied.
Izenberg and former New York Times sports columnist Dave Anderson decided they needed to find the newly-crowned champion for an interview.
“Ali went back to the military compound where he was staying,” said Izenberg, who described the fight as the “Strangest sports event in history” in his book Once There Were Giants, the Golden Age of Heavyweight Boxing.
“I had a feeling he would be by the river there because I knew he felt it spiritual down there. “So we go and we can see him, we can see he is shouting by the way that he is moving but we can’t hear what he’s shouting. It’s clear he’s venting.
“All of the struggles he’s been through. Then he puts his arms up to the sky in the Rocky stance. He is alone and he thinks he’s the king of the world. He was at that moment.”
It was a decade since Ali had beaten Sonny Liston to become heavyweight champion for the first time and here he was after all he’d been through as champion again following the fall out of his refusal to be drafted into the US Army.
The build-up had been bitter but over the years Ali and Foreman would become friends.
“George was a bully then,” said Kilroy. “When George lost that fight, because of losing that fight he got great humility.”
Ali’s legacy is unmatched. “Without doubt the most significant win of his career,” said Kilroy. “Ali told me once, ‘I wanted Joe Louis to know my name’” Everyone knows his name. So many now try to follow in his footsteps.
“There’s only one original,” added Kilroy. There’s only one Rumble in the Jungle, too.
