" As a huge paw sent him flying into the ropes, it was obvious to all 60,000 fans in the Stade du 20 Mai in Kinshasa, Zaire, and millions more watching live on closed-circuit television, that things were beginning to go horribly wrong for Muhammad Ali.
It was October 30, 1974. More specifically, it was the third round of his heavyweight championship fight with George Foreman, a giant of a man, a fearsome specimen of gleaming muscle with the cold, dead eyes of someone who has seen much more of the human condition than society deems healthy.
Foreman, placidly moving every bit as robotically as Frankenstein's monster, much the way Ali had comically suggested in one of the endless pre-fight press conferences, stalked him. Now, in the ring with the champion, however, it wasn't so funny.
Without mercy or the slightest sign of empathy, Foreman pursued the former champion around the 20-foot ring, launching punches from odd angles, winging hooks and power shots that thudded into Ali's body, inhuman blows that seemed too much for any man to withstand.
This was what Foreman prepared for, endlessly chopping wood and training partners in equal measure in the months leading up to the fight. This was why he threw hundreds of punches in succession during training, each one thudding into the heavy bag, each one designed to daze and destroy.
This was the onslaught that felled the great Joe Frazier, sending Ali's first conqueror flying around the ring and spawning the most iconic call in boxing history. Howard Cosell, mesmerized by what he had seen, shouted over and over "Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier."
But Ali was no ordinary mortal. On a mission, he believed from God himself, Ali withstood Foreman's offense. Instead of wilting before the storm, like a great sequoia Ali bent, leaning back into the loose ring ropes, avoiding the worst of Foreman's fury, gritting his teeth and bearing that which he could not dodge.
"What I remember most about the fight was, I went out and hit Muhammad with the hardest shot to the body I ever delivered to any opponent," Foreman later told Ali's biographer Thomas Hauser in Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times. "Anybody else in the world would have crumbled. Muhammad cringed; I could see it hurt. And then he looked at me. He had that look in his eyes, like he was saying 'I'm not going to let you hurt me.'"
Ali would take all that Foreman had, opening up his body and welcoming Big George to come into his embrace. His mouth, much like his mind, was always moving.
One was devoted to processing the nuances of the ring—angle, speed, force and intent, moving faster than any computer, a natural gift that the true masters of the ring hone to a science. The other, less science and more art, alternating between a whisper and a roar, no matter the volume, sending the same message:
"Is that all you got, George?"
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