Rumble in the Jungle: The Battle That Shaped a Decade, 50 Years Later

CNN
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In many ways, Muhammad Ali vs. George Foreman in the “Rumble in the Jungle” did not begin on this day 50 years ago at 4:30 a.m. local time (10:30 p.m. ET).

Nor did it begin seven weeks earlier, when the fighters arrived in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), where the fight was to take place, or when promoter Don King struck a multi-million dollar deal with the country's president, Mobutu Sese Seko, to become Africa's first heavyweight title fight to take place at all.

In fact, the narrative that would define the fight began ten years earlier.

“You can't just look at the Rumble in the Jungle as a fistfight and ignore everything that goes with it,” recalled Thomas Hauser, Ali's biographer and friend, in an interview with CNN Sport.

“1974 in Zaire was really the symbolic confirmation of what the 1960s stood for.”

Ten years before Ali shocked the world by knocking out Foreman and capturing the heavyweight championship of the world, he had done exactly the same thing – albeit under the name Cassius Clay – with Sonny Liston, three months after the assassination of John F. Kennedy Weeks after the Beatles stepped off the plane for the first time in New York.

“The 1960s as we imagine them really began in these three months,” said Hauser, who himself was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2020.

The following month, just as Cassius Clay was becoming a household name, he changed it to Muhammad Ali in keeping with his membership in the Nation of Islam. Three years later, Ali refused to be drafted into the US armed forces.

“Why would you ask me to put on a uniform, go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negroes in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied basic human rights?” he asked at the time.

Ali was arrested and stripped of his heavyweight title, passport and boxing privileges. It would be another three years before he received a fighting license, and another seven years before he was offered the chance to regain his title at the Rumble in Jungle.

“There was a period within a little over two months in 1974, ten years (after 1964),” Hauser recalled. “First, Richard Nixon resigned as president because of the Watergate scandal. And after that, Muhammad Ali went to Zaire and reclaimed the heavyweight throne.”

As the war in Vietnam ended, one of its biggest supporters had resigned and one of its most famous critics had fought his way back to the top.

“These two events seem to justify everything that was fought for in the 1960s and what the 1960s represented,” Hauser said.

But there was another narrative, also beginning a decade earlier, that also helps define how we remember Ali-Foreman. After President Mobutu seized power in a coup in 1965, he and the event's organizers viewed the fight as an opportunity to promote Africa, and Zaire in particular.

The fight was intended to be a return of Ali and Foreman to their African roots and was even intended to be tagged “From Slave Ship to Championship!” before Mobutu noticed and had all the posters burned, according to History.com.

Upon his arrival, Ali was escorted through the airport by a man in traditional clothing, and Foreman wore traditional West African clothing in the lead-up to the fight. A three-day music festival featuring artists such as James Brown, BB King and Bill Withers was scheduled to accompany the fight, but was held six weeks beforehand as the fight was delayed due to Foreman suffering a cut to his head.

For Mobutu, perhaps more importantly, it was an opportunity to promote himself.

“A fight between two black people in a black nation, organized by black people and seen by the whole world; This is a victory for Mobutism,” declared signs around Kinshasa. That night, a large portrait of the president hung above the two fighters, in the very stadium where Mobutu had held political prisoners.

Although Ali had no special ties to Mobutu or Zaire, he was happy to be able to bring the fight to Africa.

“Symbolically speaking, it was very exciting for Ali to return to the motherland, so to speak, and fight in the land of his ancestors,” explained Hauser.

“I wanted to build a relationship between American blacks and Africans,” Ali continued. “The fight was about racial issues, Vietnam. All that.

“The Rumble in the Jungle was a fight that made the entire country more conscious.”

Although Ali privately expressed that he was tired of Africa, according to Hauser, local audiences liked “The Greatest.” The chant “Ali, bomaye“ (“Ali, kill him”) was omnipresent throughout the battle.

Attempts to focus attention on Zaire and Africa worked – the fight was watched by up to a billion people worldwide and Ali's victory was seen as a victory for the continent.

It helped that the fight itself was a slow burner. Foreman had won all 40 of his previous fights, 37 of which were by knockout. He was 25 years old, in his prime, and many considered him the strongest puncher in heavyweight history.

“For me it was like a charity fight,” Foreman later told the BBC. “I had heard that Ali was completely broke so I thought I would do him a favor. I got $5 million and was willing to give him $5 million.”

Meanwhile, Ali was considered finished. At 32, he had lost a significant portion of his career to the ban and since his return he has been beaten by Joe Frazier and Ken Norton, two fighters Foreman had recently knocked out.

Foreman was considered a three-to-one favorite by the bookmakers and there were real fears, not least from Ali's managing director Gene Kilroy, that the challenger could be seriously injured or even die in the ring.

“Big George” started with momentum, Ali survived the first round. Then, 30 seconds into the second round, the man famous for the “Ali Shuffle” introduced a bizarre new tactic.

With Foreman back on the offensive, Ali retreated to the ropes and leaned back, blocking some punches, absorbing the ones he couldn't block, and still managing to throw some of his own back in his opponent's direction.

As the round continued, Foreman began to tire. At the end of the eighth round, Ali saw his chance and recovered with a vicious left-right combination, knocking Foreman to the ground and causing delirium at the Stade du 20 Mai. Within seconds the ring was full of trainers, officials and fans, shortly followed by Zairian police and paratroopers.

Boxing is still an extremely popular sport. When Floyd Mayweather defeated Manny Pacquiao in May 2015, the fight reportedly grossed $425,000,000 from 4,400,000 pay-per-view (PPV) buys.

But according to Hauser, nothing today can compete with the shockwaves that the “Rumble in the Jungle” sent around the world.

“Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk have just fought for the undisputed world heavyweight championship in Saudi Arabia, a certainly exotic place. “You could even compare President Mobutu’s dictatorial regime in Zaire with today’s conditions in Saudi Arabia,” said Hauser.

“If you go out on the street after our conversation and ask 20 people, 'Who is the heavyweight champion of the world?' How many of them do you think will say Oleksandr Usyk?

“If you had walked out on the street after Muhammad Ali defeated George Foreman and asked, 'Who is the heavyweight champion of the world?' How many out of 20 people would have said Muhammad Ali?” Hauser continued. “I say 19.”

That's why we still remember the battle half a century later. Just as the story of the “Rumble in the Jungle” began a decade before the actual fight, what Ali did in the early hours of the morning in a soccer stadium in Zaire is still being discussed, dissected and praised in 2024.

“He was as close to pure fire as you can get in the 1960s and early 1970s,” Hauser said. “So if you ask, 'Could this fight happen today?' No – because Muhammad Ali couldn’t happen today.”