The Fight

by Norman Mailer

  “Do you think it’ll be a good fight?”

  He thought for a while, as if bringing up to date his latest assessment of Ali. “I think it’ll be a rightful fight,” he replied at last with dignity in his soft voice.

  “George, you seem relaxed,” a reporter said.

  Now he was actually merry. The admiration of the men questioning him must have been palpable to his flesh. He looked near to sensuous in his calm. “You guys relax me,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because you love me,” he said (He could sure hit a reporter on the jaw fast enough).

  The next question had the harsh and inimitable sense of transition reserved to British reporters. “Of course, Ali doesn’t love you,” said an English voice. “What do you think of his comment that he’s going to tell you something just before the fight begins which is going to affect your mind?”

  Foreman shrugged. “I guess he’ll have to say it.”

  “Do you like to speak during a fight?”

  “I never do get a chance to talk much in the ring. By the time I begin to know a fellow,” George remarked, “it’s all over.”

  That was the interview, short, tasty, no heavy punches, full of confidence. It ended a few minutes later with a conversation on dreams. Already, it has been recorded (by Plimpton in fact) that Foreman recalled a rather complicated dream in which he was teaching a dog how to ice-skate. That dream was a month old and a reporter asked for a new one. Foreman allowed that he sometimes dreamed of eating ice cream cones and woke up with a stomachache. On reflection, one could wonder if that had anything to say about a fear of the world’s riches. When it came to emoluments, George had been a modest champion. On the night he defeated Norton, he had been so modest as to get a friend to invite a number of girls up to his suite for a party, and yet he soon retired to another room, where he went to sleep by himself. So it had been reported.

  But talk of dreams seemed to irritate Dick Sadler. Near to forty years of managing fighters told him there was nothing good about eating ice cream cones and waking up sick. So he terminated the interview. “George,” he said, “I didn’t know how big a man you was until they started to ask about your dreams.”

  Never had the confidence of Foreman’s camp seemed stronger than on Monday night. Jim Brown, scheduled to do some of the TV commentary, had arrived in town, Jim Brown the sternest living legend of professional football and he looked like what he had been, a professional gladiator. On this night, thirty hours before the fight, Jim Brown was all out for Foreman’s chances, all man about it and no charm. Hard, implacable, and humorless as he described the oncoming fight — correction: possessed of a hard close-out humor. “If Ali wins the fight,” he whispers in your ear, “it’s been fixed.”

  For any supporter of Ali, Brown was hard to be with. Yet like all heroes he was magnetic and you hung in to hear his words. Out of his dark steely presence came one full clean force, the clear force of his own knowledge — what Brown knew, he knew. No one else had been able to acquire that knowledge in the way he had, and so one was obliged to listen and weigh his confidence, and try to discount it with the thought that Jim Brown could be in the direct grip of jealousy. If not for Ali, Jim had to be the most important Black athlete in America.

  There were other voices to hear that night in the lobby of the Inter-Continental, Marcellus Clay for one, Muhammad’s father, but indeed by his features he could have been as easily the father of Jim Brown for he looked to have Indian blood, and took to drink like firewater. One quality the son shared however with the father — nobody was going to lick them — Clay, Senior, ready to drink with anybody, there to curse and bet, wink at anybody — better be female — was popular with the press, although it was hard to capture his dialogue for he had a fast Louisville patter full of slurred sounds and intricate pieces of talk, steeped was he in a Southern Black culture of sign painters, barbers, bootblacks, short-order cooks. The press nonetheless loved what they could catch of his sardonic, whining, leaping, snuffling, feisty, rumbling, stumbling, salty, in-and-out whiskey talk. “They’s more good-looking womens in Louisville than’s showing forth here.” Clay, Senior, existed long before Cassius Clay, a classic father of a pugilist — maybe the son can’t fight, but the old man sure can!

  At the other end of the lobby was Mrs. Clay, who had given Muhammad her good looks, and she was chatting now with Dick Sadler, the two engaged in the most enjoyable conversation and who could guess what it was about? It took all of the good manners one had left to fight down the journalistic lust to eavesdrop on Mrs. Clay and Dick Sadler.

  Joe Frazier in an elevator taking notes with Big Black on the problem of getting a good fit for the shoulders when buying a jacket. Frazier is all-out for Foreman. It is possible Joe Frazier will never forgive Muhammad Ali for calling him ignorant.

  John Daly: In the lobby, Daly, who brought the first big money to Don King’s promotion, $2,000,000 from Helmdale Leisure Corporation. He is a young man, with a bright and happy London face, small, rugged and good-looking, as cheerful as a happy jockey or successful soccer player, and his father is visiting the Inter-Continental now, Tom Daly, a veteran British boxer was something like three hundred fights to his record, a small intelligent man who presents a nose with a number of hammered angles and a little damage to his ears, but nothing to his mind, a fine gentleman, Tom Daly, who speaks with respect of Muhammad Ali although he shakes his head, “Does everything wrong and gets away with it.” Tom Daly runs a boxing school in London and speaks of fighters as craftsmen or laborers, and lets you in on the rueful situation that all his young hopefuls try to imitate Ali. “Can’t be done,” he exclaims, “they don’t even have the fundamentals.”

  Bundini: He is telling the crowd, “Today I went to the Black House. Today I met the man and kissed him on the cheek. You got the White House, but I got the Black House.”

  At dinner: After all this mirth in the lobby, Clarence Jones, a bright well-equipped Black lawyer from New York, is full of the horrendous news that Leroy Jackson, Foreman’s lawyer, is now in London attempting to get an extra $500,000 for the fight, and claims Foreman will not appear in the ring until he is given the bonus. It seems much of his $5,000,000 is already attached — he feels there is nothing left for himself. If Foreman fails to appear in the ring, boxing is not going to recover in a hurry.

  “Do you think he’ll get it?”

  “I’ll never speak to John Daly again if he gives another dollar to him,” Clarence Jones says in pain. “Foreman is the Champ. He shouldn’t act that way.”

  Now on the following night, after the fight tickets have been safely acquired, Plimpton and Mailer are still talking about the incredible and ugly timing of Foreman’s demands. The conversation takes up a good part of the long drive to Nsele, a long forty miles after the number of times they have driven it. The lights of the stadium are lit, however, as they pass; the fight night is here. They ruminate on the peculiarity of Foreman’s good mood at his press conference the afternoon before. Were those good spirits rising at the thought of a half-million-dollar gouge? Plimpton talks of how Daly is reputed to be handling it. “I gather he’s talking of contracts for future fights. Before long, it’ll be time to go into the ring, and too late for Foreman. They say Daly is a master at that.” Yet what a peculiar tension for a fighter to put on himself the night of a big bout. Can it do Foreman any good to wonder whether his demand is only a bluff that will be called minute by minute as he gets ready for the ring? It is not only an ugly maneuver, but a foolish one, and makes one begin to wonder at Foreman’s confidence. Why would a man who expects to be Champion after this fight look for such an advantage? Yes, there must be two souls in Foreman’s body and one of them is not so visible in press conferences. They drive in the African night on the long deserted four-lane road to Nsele — a night of history for Zaïre — but the road is as empty as one’s sense of how the fight is going to turn out.

  11. A BUS RIDE

  BEFORE THE DRIVE,
they stopped, however at Kin’s Casino, and there each man lost a little at Black Jack. That was about the way Norman wanted it. He was feeling empty — the hour in the Press Room of the Memling had been no good for n’golo. To lose, therefore, was a confirmation of his views on the relation of vital force to gambling. Feeling low in luck, he would just as soon squander this bad luck at the Casino as visit it on Ali. There had been a temptation these last few days to take another walk around the partition on the balcony, only this time do it sober. He had resolutely refused to get into the stunt again, but knew the price: the sense of force within himself would diminish. He even felt a bit of shame at rooting for Ali if he was not ready to take this small dare with himself.

  Muhammad was still sleeping when they arrived, or at least was not available to visitors. So they dropped in on Angelo Dundee at his villa and sat there for a while in the quiet boredom of men who were obliging themselves not to feel tension too early. Dundee was the perfect host for such sentiments. He had been living for six weeks in the kuntu of boredom. A wise man from Miami, the banks of the Zaïre were not for Angelo. “I got so bored,” he said once to Bud Collins, of the Boston Globe, “I was teaching the lizards push-ups.” Considered one of the smartest men in boxing, he had managed a number of champions; Carmen Basilio, Willie Pastrano, Jimmy Ellis, Luis Rodriquez, and Ralph Dupas came immediately to mind, and a formidable slew of contenders and TV main-eventers like Mike De John and Florentino Fernandez. Yet Dundee was not Ali’s manager, more a glorified trainer. His relation to Ali, while long-standing and professionally intimate, could hardly be called authoritative. Ali would listen to him, but critically. Ali had been in charge of his own training for years. To Dundee, working for Ali was lucrative but could hardly prove satisfying. He was used to taking charge of a fighter. It had been more in his line to work with good fighters and get the most out of them. So, for example, had he schooled Jimmy Ellis on how to back up when fighting Jerry Quarry. “They won’t like it,” Dundee warned Ellis the night before. “They’ll boo you. But you’ll win the fight.” Dundee had won many a fight like that, and saved many. For one fight, he was famous. There was the legendary moment when Dundee got Cassius Clay back into the ring at the beginning of the fifth round of the first Championship fight with Liston. Clay had been blinded at the time. As afterward reconstructed, the caustic congealing a cut over one of Liston’s eyes stuck to Clay’s gloves, and between rounds was wiped by accident into his own eyes. Since he could not see, Cassius had a natural reluctance to go out for the fifth round and take the chance of discovering a vision in the light of Liston’s punches. Dundee, however, was thinking of higher matters. Reputed to have friendly connections — how could an Italian manager working out of Miami not have such repute? — there would be screams if Cassius Clay refused to come out for the round when ahead on points, double screams when the world learned that Dundee had just been washing his face and the fighter couldn’t see. So, at the bell, Angelo pushed him into the ring. Wonders in the ring. Cassius got through the round. Then he went on to win the Championship in another round. His genius for recovery had been disclosed for the first time. What a setback it could have been to his career if Dundee allowed him to stay in the corner. Angelo had been with him ever since.

  Now, Dundee was in an armchair watching the television set, and there was nothing on but a three-month-old interview of Ali. Dundee watched it with the animation he would give to an empty screen. A small man with dark hair, olive skin and silver-rimmed eyeglasses, Angelo’s exterior was modest. He could pass for an Italian businessman — he offered Sicilian concentricity; himself in the first circle, family in the second, friends and associates in the third.

  Sitting with him was Ferdie Pacheco, Ali’s doctor, a pleasant-looking man with a meaty face and a New Orleans accent. He was never particularly happy with Ali’s condition. A powerful pessimist, he obliged himself when facing reporters to speak like an optimist, but was last known to be confident about a fight the night Jimmy Ellis fought Joe Frazier to settle the Heavyweight title between the World Boxing Association and the New York State Boxing Commission. Frazier was a 4–1 favorite, but Pacheco did not see how Ellis could lose. Frazier knocked out Ellis in five rounds. Pacheco’s natural pessimism had been allowed its space ever since. Now, he was also watching television. The TV screen looked like the definitive mandala of monotony. Sitting with them was a small old Black man, an old fight trainer perhaps, with huge somewhat arthritic knuckles. The skin of those knuckles was exceptionally scaly, and he was peeling at the back of his hands. Morose was the mood. You could think the fight had already taken place and Ali lost and they had returned to this villa empty of promise. They looked about as happy as Patterson did coming into the ring for his second fight with Liston.

  “Where is Bundini?” Norman asked.

  “The star,” Angelo answered, “will make his grand entrance in the dressing room. The rest of us will go by bus.” It was impossible to tell if this was an old feud, or Dundee’s fury was local. Bundini, after all, can live in the Inter-Continental while Angelo is stuck in the mass phallic rectitude of Mobutu.

  As good reporters, they inquired of Angelo how Ali had spent his day and were surprised at the news that he jogged out to the pagoda at three-thirty in the afternoon. Was it restlessness? Then he ate, slept, and spent time writing his name on fight tickets being given to friends and guests. Later he watched a movie: Joseph Cotten in Baron Blood, a horror film.

  “Did he enjoy it?”

  “He said he did. He seemed to.”

  How did Dundee spend his day?

  “I was fixing the ring. It was in terrible shape. They didn’t have enough resin, and we also firmed up the ring posts. Bob Goodman and I even had to put shims under the floor to tighten the canvas.”

  One could interpret such details. A tight canvas would be good for Ali’s footwork. Dundee was famous for collecting small advantages. Whether he was born with the philosophy or acquired it, his faith was that no advantage could prove too small to take. He even changed a new reporter’s money at the official rate of fifty Zaïres for one hundred dollars, when you could get up to eighty on the black market. It was a philosophy that could apply itself to ring posts and resins.

  At two in the morning, word came that Ali was ready to leave for the stadium. Plimpton and Mailer got up with the others and walked out to the bus. A small caravan was being set up. Something like five cars and two buses were going to travel in convoy to the stadium. Ali, dressed in a dark shirt and dark pants, was striding about on the grass looking first at one vehicle and then another. He was deciding which one to ride. For a moment he entered the bus, then jumped out again, went to a black Citroën, which he got into with his brother Rachman. He looked nicely keyed up, ready at last for the fight. His careful study of each vehicle did not seem odd to Norman, who had long had the idea that some vehicles promise more luck than others. What is Bantu philosophy ready to say if not that? Luck is the first kuntu.

  The convoy set out and proceeded only half a mile. Then it stopped. Word came back along the line. Ali had forgotten his robe. So the vehicles waited at the exit from the press compound of Nsele until the robe was picked up, then set out again.

  Mailer and Plimpton were riding in the big bus with Dundee and ten or twelve other people. Few sat together. The loneliness of Ali’s camp was evident again. So many of his people were white or pale black. It was the continuing irony of his career. In contrast to Foreman’s camp, where Dick Sadler was Black, Sandy Saddler was Black, Henry Clark was Black, Elmo was Black, where the marrow of the mood was Black, Bundini had to be the blackest man in Ali’s camp and he was a converted Jew and not even on the bus, and a space existed on the bus between each member of Ali’s entourage — how could that not be? Ali’s friends and assistants were spokes and Ali was the hub. Take away the hub, and you had a rim with loosened spokes.

  There was fear of the fight to come. The mood of the bus was like a forest road on a wet winter da
y. Only one person seemed cheerful, Aunt Coretta, Ali’s cook, whom he had brought from Deer Lake to Nsele. Taking care of his stomach she had the keys to his confidence. She was a big woman, who could have been sister to Ali’s mother for they looked something alike, but she was in fact his father’s sister, and in her finery tonight, and proud and more than conspicuously careful of her hair, which had been straightened and marcelled and worked upon by an artist who must have been the equivalent of a high pastry chef, yes, there had been collaboration between subject and artist for Aunt Coretta’s hairdo, and she had exactly that sense of the worth of her own physical bulk which big hardworking Negro women invariably present when they are dressed and on their way to a special evening. She worked hard enough to enjoy a good time when she had a good time, her life on occasion must be as simple as that, and she was looking forward to the fight. She was confident.

  Ali’s wife, Belinda, sat at the front of the bus. In Muslim dress with a skirt that came to her ankles, and a white cloth turban close to her head, she was a statuesque woman — precisely the word. Over six feet tall, as well proportioned as her husband, she had features sufficiently classic for the head of a Greek statue. In fact if these features were not one chiseled touch smaller than Ali’s she could have been his sister in appearance or, better, his female surrogate. They would not have to live together for forty years to look alike. She was also a black belt in karate. She was also shy with strangers. She had the stiffness Black Muslims exhibit in the company of whites. During the trip she spoke only once to the bus at large. “There is,” she said, “an ESP psychiatrist in Vegas who said Foreman is going to win. He’s going to be psyched tonight.” A pause followed in which she may have heard the uncertainty of the silence for she added, “I hope.” Yes, that was the mood: hollow, I am nonetheless here to hope.