Rumble in the Jungle - Not what I expected!

Although I know many of the historic fights and the outcome I have seldom watched many before the early 1980's.

From what i've read of the above fight I always thought Ali absorbed huge punishment and took a beating for the first half of the fight until Ali started punishing a drained Foreman and stopped him in the 8th. Basically a one-sided until Ali turned it around.

I watched it last night and was surprised that it was pretty even until the stoppage and I would actually have had Ali maybe ahead!

Yes, Ali took some huge body shots but Ali was peppering Foreman as well and had Foreman in trouble before the 8th.

I know there are many misconceptions of famous fights but the fight was pleasing to watch as wasn't what I expected.

FYI - I saw the fight on a ITV4 programme around 8pm last night. It's a series where Barry McGuigan goes through Ali's greatest fights and they show the whole fight. Last night's was The Rumble fight and was in very good quality.

I have no idea if this series is old or new but will look on linen and try and find more.

The series was on during the week of his birthday mate, I thought it was pretty well covered.

I agree with your take on the fight a little that most people would have you believe that Ali just lays there and does nothing for the whole fight up until the knockdown. He is hitting George, tugging his arms, pulling his head down etc which would completely knacker the best of us. And another thing I think thats played too much is how Foreman was this massive giant and Ali was tiny in comparison. Foreman only weighed in around 3/4 lbs heavier and was about an inch taller. Not really that much of a beast in comparison.

Cheers Reborn.

Yeah Foreman wasn't hardly any bigger.

I couldn't believe how wild and awful Foreman looked at times as well. I'm sure this has something to do with Ali making him look silly but at times he looked like a kid swinging in the playground!

I don't really think that it comes across as Ali getting tanked round after round more that Ali stood in front of foreman absorbing shots well while hitting him whenever he got the chance but in the end he did take some very big hooks (mostly to the body) from someone who could knock anyone out at the time. It was whether you liked ali's cleaner punches or foremans aggression

It wasn't one sided but not many fighters could have taken those shots without some give

Good post, VC. And quite right, too - Ali lost no more than a couple of rounds in Zaire that night. A boxing lesson it certainly was; Ali himself said that if Foreman had got up, "I would have humiliated that boy".

Remember that Ali had a proper mean streak as a fighter. I don't quibble with that; every great fighter needs one. However, there is a tendency to view him as some sort of teddy bear. In this case, Ali was piqued by the mean, moody, bullying persona that Foreman had adopted as champion - again, forget the smiling George of his second boxing incarnation. "I talk plenty, but I don't act up like George," Ali said, and he made it his business to humiliate the champion, finishing a number of his combinations with a jab. "Joe Frazier might have taken those punches, but they sickened George," Ali said afterwards.

I envy you, by the way, VC. So many great fights pre-1980 for you to see and so many readily available to you. Good on you for getting started; I would urge you to delve as deep as you can.

Cheers Captain - The reason why i don't watch many older fights is i don't like watching if the quality is poor which is often the case.

I actually made a list last year of about 20 older fights I need to watch. I'll have to dig it out.

Official scorecards had Foreman winning just three rounds between them. If the Rumble had gone 15, the scorecards would probably have shown a runaway win for Ali. As exemplified by the Thrilla in Manila, where Frazier's huge contribution was almost ignored by the judges, Ali's fights in the back of beyond had the useful ancillary benefit of virtually guaranteeing him a decision from star-struck judges if they went to the cards.

Willing to be corrected Captain but I always thought the official scorecards were missing in action. Remember reading an article in Boxing News where they tried to track them down or put the issues of scoring to bed once and for all and their findings were hardly conclusive, most of it seemed cobbled together from newspapers at the time which seemed to contradict each other.

However I do generally agree with the main point of the article that the fight was a lot closer than is often portrayed. Whenever I have watched the fight and it is pretty often I have Ali winning plenty, is a quality over quantity argument. George throws plenty but most is landing on arms, the quality shots in most rounds are from Ali.

There are a number of fights where a story grows up around them that does not support what happened. Froch Taylor is one of the more recent ones where the story seems to be that Froch got his arse handed him before landing one shot in the last round to turn things round, nowhere near supports the fight I saw, which after the fourth was pretty even

Jeff, I had also heard the story of the missing scorecards in Zaire. However, a number of sources now seem to give the figures as: referee: Zach Clayton 68-66, judge: Nourridine Adalla 70-67, judge: James Taylor 69-66, so it may be that they were ultimately found.

Much the same applied to the Thrilla in Manila, by the way, alma. One well-known judge, two local nobodies and all three had Ali by a landslide. One of the great scandals that has never been explored because the fight didn't quite go the distance.

yeah its abit of a myth that ali was getting a beating, it was close and i always have foreman ahead through purely agression. but its close because all the cleaner work was done by ali. ali barely gets hit in the face all night. everything that lands on him is on his body and arms

Think you have to see this in context. No one gave Ali a prayer. It was the underdog defeating the 'giant' that makes the story so high profile... And the manner of victory and tactics involved that make it so unforgettable. Because it was rope a dope, people might assume it was a one way pounding, but I think it'd just a misconception. No one who's seen the fight sees it that way.

In terms if size differential, foreman was like Liston before him and Tyson afterwards... A terrifying opponent. He was big for a 70's heavy but no giant, however he was a larger man than Ali, who 's weight, in his 2nd incarnation was gathering round his midriff by that stage

I guess it's the general media who explain the fight as I said to casual or passing fans.

I understand all the hype and the history or what went on before and Ali's big underdog status but was just surprised to see Ali holding his own from the off and not as one-sided as I assumed.

Regarding the rope-a-dope, isn't this all a bit OTT and wasn't it more the fact Ali didn't have the legs as he used to more than a specific plan conjured up and that he did have the legs?

I remember Foreman describing the rope-a-dope like firing an arrow into a barn door and then drawing the target around it!

Exactly that, VC. Ali said that George was too big to dance around, so getting him to the ropes was the next best thing.

It's quite amazing, really, how toothless Ali made Foreman appear in the end. Another example of why the sport is called 'boxing', not just 'fighting.' George was shown, in his 1974 form, to be a one-paced bully, albeit a brilliant one.

"I've seen George Foreman shadow boxing - and the shadow won!" Muhammad Ali.

Who would have won a rematch. Bear in mind that George would not have been suckered into punching himself out again.

Ali again for me, Az. The defeat in Zaire blew some serious holes in Foreman's psyche and mindset, the kind of devastating craters which, in the end, only a ten-year hiatus from boxing could repair.

Foreman seemed to become less indomitable and invincible almost immediately afterwards, as shown in his fights with Lyle and Young. I think Ali would have decisioned Foreman in a disappointing fight.

Would have to agree Chris, Ali had many aspects and gears to change into which Foreman to me didn't.

I have my doubts because Ali at that time had lost his legs and wasn't the mover he was in his early career. Foreman wouldn't gas as he did or go all guns blazing. Yeah his mystique had gone. Ali fought the perfect fight. He would have to change tactics and I doubt if he could sustain it for 15 rounds.

That said I'd still have him as favourite. Re Jimmy Young fight. He kept foreman at the end of a jab by utilising his legs. Plus Foreman was lacking in self belief I reckon. Seeking revenge is another matter.

Ali actually tried to get Foreman interested again, but as McIlvanney puts it, Foreman was behaving like a modern Achilles: "not so much sulking as demoralised, an Achilles whose tent has fallen about his ears."

It took Foreman about a year to take on the fights that he needed to regain his confidence, and they failed to do so, which led, in my opinion quite as much as his finding of God, to his decade+ hiatus from the sport.

Any rematch within18 months of the Rumble would have led to much the same result, I would strongly suggest, such was the psychological battering that George received in Zaire.