5 Live Boxing with Steve Bunce - Remembering George Foreman: The Rumble in the Jungle

Episode Date: March 22, 2025

As we pay tribute to George Foreman after his death at the age of 76, Mike Costello and Steve Bunce look back on the most famous fight of them all: Muhammad Ali v George Foreman, Zaire 1974 in the Rumble in the Jungle.Episode first released in 2019.

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And this week, a different kind of five live boxing with Costello and Bunts. In response to your many requests, we're delving into the BBC. Sporting Archives, Steve. Dawn in Africa, Mike, unbeaten, untouchable George Foreman and Muhammad Ali. Sure, they gathered for a miracle, praying for a miracle. But let's get it right, they expected something more severe than that. They expected something awful. It was quite simply the Rumble in the Jungle.

I'm often asked, Steve, if there's an event back in history anywhere in sport that you could have covered, what would it be? And that's instantly my reaction. It's the Rumble in the Jungle, October 1970. Mike, is it the fight that you wanted to cover or is it the entire seven, eight weeks, passage, journey? The whole occasion. It's much bigger than a fight.

Yeah. The whole event, the whole event. So coming up, a special documentary that was first broadcast on the BBC back in 2004 to mark the 30th anniversary of the fight. It's now 45 years since Muhammad Ali won the World Heavyweight Championship for the second time,

somehow beating George Foreman early one African morning in what was then Zaire. I'm aware that many of you listening to this weren't born at the time and many more weren't old enough to understand the significance of the contest, Steve. What were you up to at the time?

Well, I was 12 years of age, so I was boxing at the lodge and I'm not going to do one of those things that people do where I'm going to lie and tell you I remember sitting up with my dad and watching it on a colour TV because I don't think we even had a colour TV in 1974 and it wasn't on TV life

so I didn't sit up with my dad and watch it. My dad went to the west end I tried to track him down this week to, sounds like he's a globe draw I just managed to miss him but I tried to I try to track my dad down

no, that came out wrong I did try to get older but find out exactly what cinema it was because he went to several in the 70s he probably went to 15, 12, 15 fights in the 70s and I was trying to work out which one he went to

and I couldn't track him down to nail it down and hand on heart I can't remember the first time I saw it but what I can remember is the by about 1977, 78,

I had a super eight we had a super eight projector in our house. My father had a cine camera because my brother and sister came along in about 73 and 74 or 74 and 75 and so we filmed a lot of their life, none of my life I have to say.

And Mike, that's that's not a being earlier, but I remember I got one Christmas and they came in a box to films. It was a super eight color edition. Now it was only 30 minutes long. So it was all sorts of mayhem and chaos. And it was of the fight.

And there was no sound, but it was colour. And I watched that and watched that. Now, I'm sure that wasn't the first time I saw the fight. Because that was at least, and I did talk to my mum about this. She thought she still had it, but she couldn't find it. And so I watched that for ever and ever. And I remember watching that with a lot of people that you know from the mid to late 70s, all gathered in my room.

And the screen was a sheet. It was a white sheet. not trying to play this down, but, you know, we had a white sheet. So I remember watching that in silence. So there's no words. You can't sense anything. But of course you can sense everything because it's a visual pleasure. As I remember, Steve, my dad went to watch it at Lewishamodian in South East London

and came in to tell me the result in the early hours of the morning before I was going to school. And I remember on the morning that it was announced that Mohammed Ali had died in June of 2016. It was around that same time that I got a call from a five-life-old. producer to come on air and talk about Ali's life. So there was this kind of poignant symmetry there. And of course it was shown only in cinemas live in this country. If you look at the famous poster, which is a great splash of green and yellow, the colors of the national flag of Zaire back then, which is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. And on there, in French, which was the predominant language at the time, it says,

par de radio, par de TV. So no radio, no TV, anywhere in the world apart from in cinemas and theatres, whether that's in the United States, in Britain or anywhere around the world, and still seen by so many millions of people. Like you, I can't pinpoint the exact moment I watched it. I assume it would have been the following evening or maybe a couple of days later. What I do remember, though, right the way back from then until today is Harry Carpenter's commentary on BBC television and a very, very special commentary it was. But let's get on to the fight itself, Stephen, and create the heavyweight landscape as it was

at the time. Muhammad Ali had returned from his Vietnam exile in 1970. In 1971 he was beaten on points by Joe Frazier. Frazier in turn was beaten by George Foreman. So George Foreman was this monster of a world champion, very similar to the aura around Sunny Liston, who Ali had beaten 10 years earlier in 1964 and beaten again in the rematch. Who had been a Foreman's friend in the late 60s, Liston and Foreman, had forged a friendship Fulman came along, Mike. Getting into the ring that night in, or that morning rather, in Zaii was 40 fights unbeaten, 37, bludgeoned, knocked out, stopped, ruined, smashed to bits,

including not just Joe Frazier, but also Ken Norton, who also had a win over Ali and the Norton fight, which took place in Caracas, Venezuela, is a genuine watch-through-your-Thingers fight. It was absolutely incredible. So those are the raw stuff. that's him getting into the ring. But before we get on to the audio mic,

which is thankfully Plattitude 3, I'm just going to read you three short bits from three people heavily involved in the fight. And to just point out just how scared everybody was for Ali and just how feared George Foreman was. Archie Moore, who was in the George Foreman business, so some might say he would say that, wouldn't he? He said, I was praying and in great sincerity

that George wouldn't kill Ali. I really felt that was a possibility. That's what Archie Moore said. Now, these two men are not in the Archie Moore business or the Muhammad Ali business. They're in the journalism business and they're two of the great names of American journalists. Jim Murray from the L.A. Times.

He said about Foreman, he doesn't fight you, he mugs you. His fights, I was one-sided as a snake bite. And I love this line. Whatever he hits, clots. And then Dave Anderson, perhaps an even bigger member of the American writing press. He said sooner or later, the champion will land one of his sledgehammer punches. And for the first time in his career, Muhammad Ali will be counted out.

That could happen in the very first round. And the great Yumackalveni talked about Foreman's right hand being obscene. It was that powerful. It was that strong. It was obscene. As a young kid in my early teens, Steve, I idolathe. Mohammed Ali and I had that great sense of fear that something awful was going to happen that night. Looking at the weights, Steve, and I'm quite surprised how close they were, because Foreman was

deemed as this great monster was so much bigger than Ali, and yet when he weighed in, he was 15 stone 10, Ali, 15 stone, six and a half. And again, comparing that to today, that's like three stone lighter than the fights we're going to see in all of the big heavyweight fights coming up, whether it's Joshua against Rees, the rematch, and the rematch between Fury and Wilder. But you may be a lot of, but you mentioned Ken Norton and Joe Frazier, Steve, who had both been beaten by George Foreman at this stage and who each had a win over Muhammad Ali. George Foreman got rid of them in less than four rounds in total, nine knockdowns in those two fights alone. There was a postponement, Steve. It was meant to happen on September the 24th. He eventually went ahead 36 days later on October the 30th.

I have this theory that that might have changed the result of the fight because I felt that Ali was more comfortable in the surroundings in Zaire and they were forced to stay on. They couldn't go back to the States in the meantime. They were forced to stay on after George Foreman had been cut in sparring. I think that it's in that cancellation and the minutes, hours and days after that cancellation, that lots of the fantastic stories, I want to say myths and rumors and tall towels emerge from the whole period in Africa. And I agree completely with you. Had the fight gone ahead on the 24th, 25th, the original date,

I have a feeling then that we would have seen a different George. Without a doubt after that, from that date, from the date of the cut through to the night of the fight, it was clear that it was during that period that Ali truly grows in to his status out there. And I know we're going to hear from some people outlining that. So I don't want to give away too much. of some of the fine stuff we're going to hear in a few moments. But they, you know, in all fairness, let's name drop.

The people we're going to hear are people that you and I spent an awful lot of time with over the last 30 years. So I heard these stories for the first time. And they're kind of myth-busting stories. Some of these are myth-busting stories and some of these are myth-enforcing stories. For instance, there's several quotes you're going to hear now that could be attributed to at least three or four people. But wait for it.

I don't want to sort of take this down a notch. Mike, so many people, so many witnesses from this are dead. I mean, you know, you know, you and I did a little thing a couple of weeks ago where we tried to recreate every person that was in the George Foreman dressing room before the fight. And every person that was in the Muhammad Ali dressing room before the fight. So allowing for there to be about eight or nine in the room. And we even want to be one or two unknowns. Mike, there's no more than one or two people alive.

The witnesses are gone. We've got them on this tape. That's what makes it, as I said, platitude free. And let's hear some of those glorious memories. Let's wander back in time now to October the 30th, 1974. Zaire, Africa, and the Rumble in the Jungle. Two black Americans face to face on the black man's continent, fighting for the richest prize in the history of all sports.

I was in row two next to a woman from African embassy who was breastfeeding a child at two in the morning, an unlikely combination. There were mosquitoes so big you could ride them. Crocodile were floating in the backyard. I'm so fast, I can run through a hurricane and don't get wet. Then about the seventh round, I hit him so hard in the side, and he fell over on me, and I thought he was going to.

on a foal, he whispered in my ear. Did all you got, George! And really, it's no exaggeration to say, of all of us here, that this is the fight of a lifetime, an extraordinary and colourful setting. I'm Neil Allen, and I was a boxing reporter for 40 years, and I covered the Rumble in the Jungle for the Times of London. Having reported 14 summer and winter Olympics, and having seen the four-minute mile by Roger Bannister,

still nothing ranks higher in all the great events and personalities I've seen than the fight in Zaire. The whole atmosphere, the scene and the result will never be eradicated from my memory. While you are waiting for the first and exciting round, Mohammed Ali has some boxing advice the sound. When all is said and did and done,

man, George Forma might fall in round one. So remember, I'm smart, fast and quick. And when the cards are down, I always do the trick. Ali, of course, had been controversial because he'd moved into the black Muslim faith, and he never minded too much what he said. He'd been accused of being a draft dodger as well. But by the time they got there, I think people concentrated on the fact that they were two incredible heavyweight champions.

Ali had dazzled the world with his science, and then George Foreman had come along, and he was the blockbuster. Nobody, we thought, could ever hit as hard as George. George had been knocking people out. He hit Joe Frazier so hard in Jamaica when he won the title. Joe is in the air. He knocked him into the air.

Now, Joe was a good fighter. He had done it with absolutely masterful execution. Look at the form. Ali, 15 rounds with Joe Frazier, then has a 12-round fight with him as well. he'd never blasted Fraser out like that. Ali, there was a feeling, not that he was all washed up, but that the fine edge had gone

and the king of the jungle was going to be the big hitter, big George Warman. I was the heavyweight champion of the world and I felt I could beat any man and easily beat Mohammed Ali. It wasn't going to be a problem to me at all. As a matter of fact, I would shout, I'm going to kill him, I'm going to kill him.

I'm not going to beat him up. When he was training to fight me, I was training to kill him. Muhammad Ali is the grace I've ever seen, in and out of the ring. He's done so much for boxing. He's made people appreciate boxing, and there'll never be another guy like him. Angelo Dundee, his manager chief trainer, he kept his spirits high. They'd been together right the way through, and they were a good pair.

Dundee had a special role, but Gene Kulroy had another role. He was the mover and the shaker, the organizer, and Ali knew how efficient he was. Now, when you think that Ali was besieged wherever he went, you needed the general. in Co-roy, to make things smooth. We got in at night, about 2.30 in the morning. When we're getting off the plane, Muhammad turned to me. He said, Gene, who don't they like here? I said to Belgium.

So we got off the airplane, and you couldn't even see people. You were screaming, Ali, Ali. So Ali put up his hand and went silence. And everything hushed up. He said, George Foreman of Belgium. And everybody starts screaming, Ali Bumay. Ali Bumayye. And I turned to our interpreter.

I said, what is that? He said, that's in Swahili. That's Ali. Kill him. So that was the cry over there. Then George Foreman landed a week later, and he walks off the airplane with a German shepherd dog. Now, the Belgium used to come into the Belgium Congo

and slaves those people, and they would put them dogs on them. So when George came off with a police dog, he didn't look too good. Everybody heard of Vietnam, and everyone heard of Korea because of a war, but they never heard of Zaire Africa. So the country over there, they figured it was cheaper to have a fight than a war. Everybody was looking for a place

to not only be paid a lot of money, but to walk away without not so much taxes being taken. Zaire, this president, Mabuto, wanted to introduce his country there as a progressive new place. He wanted to show it off, so he put up this enormous amount of money to bring the heavyweight title match to his country. to his country. Gallup did a survey, and Muhammad Ali was the most recognizable man on planet

Earth, so they decided to have a fight. They got in touch with Herbert Muhammad. He sent an ambassador over there, and they said $3 million, and Herbert said, no, $5 million. Then they said, okay, each fighter gets $5 million. Well, then they put it together, but everybody thinks that Don King promoted to fight in Zaire Africa. Well, it wasn't the choice of Africa originally. It was the choice that we were searching for money to substantiate the promises that I had made to the fighters. I had committed myself to the fighters that I would deliver them $5 million apiece. Two super great athletes, you know what I mean, that are returning home to fight on the land of their heritage.

When the fight started to get going and they needed some more money, they contacted a guy from England, the guy by name of John Daly, who was Video Hemdale. And he just came off as big movies. He had all types of financing available. So they went in, and they were really the promoters, video Hemdale. Every night television would show a floating head of Sessi Mabutu, Notre Pair de, Notra Nautra Nassian, our father of our nation, like some God. And I remember in my room, the man who came in to clean up, he stood there, he said,

Here's our father, here's our father. And you're dealing with a country, it had had a terrible war. And suddenly, in have come these black Americans. It was incredible, the country, the feeling out of tremendous. and his bloodshed had come, some kind of government, even though it was run by a crazy man who's dead now, and they were immensely proud. Muhammad sat at the press table, and he told all the press,

he said, and all you press people who fool with me, when we get you till the Mumbaland, he didn't know nothing about Zaire, he wasn't too familiar with it at that time. When we get to the Mumbar land, he said, we're going to put you in the pot and cook you. Everybody laughed and they wrote about it. So three days later, we're in Tampa,

we get a call from the Prime Minister of Zaire Africa. And he said, Gene, you tell Muhammad we're having this fight over here for tourism. We're not cannibals. We don't put people in the pot and cook them. I said, well, you tell them. So I put Muhammad on the phone. And Muhammad said, I'm just selling tickets. I'm going to sell this place out. By the time I get done, Zaire is going to be a household word. Everybody's going to know. Zaire is a household word. I think it's true that Ali was more at ease there. though I remember when I arrived and he heard me talking to a Zaireo girl in French, which was the official language, he said,

you only been here two days and you're making out with the foxes. He said, we're so bored here, we're betting on the lizards, me and Angelo Dundee. So he certainly found trouble and he really did want to go home because he's not speaking French, let alone native dialects. So he found it very hard, but he was always a man to suck up the scene and use it. It's what Dundee said. Well, the other guy's human. My guy ain't.

Nobody liked the place. There were mosquitoes so big you could ride them. Crocodile were floating in the backyard. We were all under house arrest. We couldn't send anything out that didn't pass government censorship. It just wasn't a pleasant place to be. It was quite incredible that we should go to this African country of which most Americans had never, ever heard.

And that set the scene. Two black Americans were going to go unfight in what people said, was the jungle. That's why it was called the Rumble in the Jungle. You wanted to make certain that the whole world, especially America, who would pay for a lot of expensive pay-per-view seats in theaters, the fight had to accommodate the crowd in America to make sure that the pay-per-view audience would see it at a comfortable time. So because of the time differences, it had to be early in the morning in Zaire.

This is Bert Sugar. I'm the author of a few books on boxing, about eight of them. That was a strange fight, the rumble in the jungle. In fact, it had been canceled once. It was originally scheduled in September, rather than October when it took place. Foreman suffered a cut in training, and he took, I think, eight butterfly stitches to close it, and couldn't train for a while, and he wanted to go back to the United States. And President Mobutu would not let him, he put him under house arrest,

fearing that if he let him out, the whole promotion would have gone downhill and deflated. All the black American pop stars who'd come out for the original fight said, we're going home, we've got another gig. And Mabutu Seseko, the dictator of Zaire, was determined that this fight was not going to explode. So they needed to build up the event again, and the two fighters had to stay there, which must have been crushingly boring, and also very tense, because you've built up for a fight,

and you've got to wait another month at least. Only last week I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalised a brick. I'm so mean, I make medicine sick. Yesterday I went out in the jungles, I rouser with an alligator. I tusset with a well. It started raining. I handcuffed lightning, throw thunder in jail. It was Ali who caught on quickly to the fact he was going to go back and be with his kinfolk.

George, much quieter. He would talk about black identification, but he was very, very much. the quarter of the two press conferences, he would be very, very difficult at times and very cut off, whereas Ali, of course, having got there, took on the fact that he was where his king folks had come, he claimed. I liked Africa, I really loved the people.

But for a while, it was almost like I had come from Mars or something, and Ali was from right down the street in his eye. I mean, it was obvious that he was the people's choice there. This is a dictatorship. There had been a bloody war there before. when Belgians had been murdered on the floor of the hotel, we ended up staying in Kinshasa, Kinshasa being the capital.

And Mabuta was very worried because there had been accusations on the first trip that some, maybe some of the jazz musicians who came out had had their pockets lifted. Because like every big city, there were criminals there, he took 24 of the well-known thieves, and he hanged them, 12-1-go-posts and 12-1-go-posts in the football stadium

where we were going to have the fight. This fight hasn't stopped. The most expensive fight in the history of boxing is on its way. I was in row two next to a woman from African embassy who was breastfeeding a child at two in the morning, an unlikely combination. The people of Zaire were waiting for only one man, Ali, because he'd whipped them up. He'd whipped them up by being accessible, by playing with kids,

by shouting Ali Bommaye. And as he arrived, he is walking round the ring and he is waving his hand up and they are roaring him on. I'm told that when he was. went into the dressing room to get ready. His camp was sitting there and they all had solemn faces. And he said, what's the matter with you? This is just another chapter in the eventful life of Muhammad Ali. Then I there fired, I went over to George Foreman's dressing room and they were taping George's hands and George looked me dead in the eye and he said, you tell your man they're

taking them home in a casket. I feel dead in the air and I went back to Harley's dressing room and Ali asked me, what is he saying? I said, he said something. He said, something. about putting your kids in an orphanage and Ali start jumping up with that, oh, I can't wait to get him. Bring him in here, I'll whip his butt. He fed on the crowd, and the crowd fed on him.

He lent over the ropes before the first bell, Anne was saying, Ali Beaumaye. He's like a conductor. I'd never seen that in a fight. And of course, they responded. They all loved him.

It was his show. Ali had spoken with Casamato before he left the Deer Lake, Pennsylvania, and he asked, Cuss, how do I fight this guy? And Cuss said, he's just a bully like Sunny Liston. Your first punch, you must hit him so hard. You must throw it with bad intentions. Real bad intentions. Ali put him on the phone to me. I said, Cuss, what he did to Kenny Norton, look what George Foreman did, the Fraser.

And Cuss told me, but they're not Muhammad Ali. We went out to the fight on Ali's his first punch. He went up and he hit him so hard with that first right hand. All the people who seen the fight, he hit him with that first right hand. bang right on the jaw. Ali says it's his last fight and he's going out fighting. What a start to a heavyweight championship and people all around the stadium

are getting to their feet and clapping their hands above their heads. What a start. That magical night or morning because they held it at 4 o'clock in the morning because of American TV seemed like an absolute dance of destiny. Aalise a night standing on the road Ford than I've ever seen him before.

They couldn't believe it should stay on the ropes. Some people say the ropes were specially loosened. That is not true. What happened was the ring got heavy in the heat, the padding of the ring. One corner of the ring was sagging in the mud because Zaya was weren't used to putting on boxing like that. And the heat made it slow.

That was another reason. Ali knew he wasn't going to be able to dance too much. He had to seek the refuge of the ropes. Ali again. No dancing, no running away, toe-to-to-toes plugging. Ali gets on the ropes and lets Foreman wail away at him in that woodman-like approach. And Ali would take it for two minutes and forty seconds, and for the last twenty seconds, he would flurry. Foreman had no jab to speak of. He just wailed at you, two hands. You could see him almost perceptibly melting in front of your eyes as the power of being.

as the power began to drain. It seems to me that Ali has deliberately taken these punches to try to make form and fire himself. But my word, that's playing with fire. Those were really big blows, and the angle at which Ali lent out across the ropes was extraordinary. Somebody said he was like a boy leaning out of his window

to see if the cat was up on the roof. It was an unnatural stance to lean out like that, and he took some big shot. I beat him up second, third, round, fifth round. round, fifth round. Then about the seventh round, I hit him so hard in the side. Maybe it was the sixth round. And he fell over on me and I thought he was going to fall and he whispered in my ear. Did all you got, George? You could hear George grunting. And then you'd hear Ali through the mouthpiece. Is that all you got? That all you got? In fact, the referee, Zach Clayton took him. Ali stopped talking.

Imagine trying to stop Ali talking. And Ali looks out and he winked at somebody over the rope. There's the bells. It's the most of amazing fight I've ever seen how did he come back in the last 30 seconds like that after standing on those ropes and taking everything. And in the eighth round, Ali hit him with 11 straight punches and spun him around and Foreman went down. And I don't think Foreman's going to get up. I was truly devastated. Couldn't believe it.

You get knocked down and my corner told me to stay down and wait for them to tell me to get up. When I jumped up, the fight was over. It was a horrible thing for me to live with. I'd wake up in the nights months afterwards, reliving at one, two, three. Your whole life in 10 seconds. He's trying to beat the count, and he's out. He's won the title back at 32. Mohammed Ali, and everybody is fighting to get into the ring now.

Ali is heavyweight champion of the world at 32. in the eighth round by a knockout. He took on foreman at his own game, and he beat him at it. Have you ever in your life seen anything like that? I told you that I was the greatest of all times when I beat Sunday Listern. I told you today, I'm still the greatest of all times.

Never again make me the underdog until I'm about 50 years old. Then you might get me. So the fight that took place in Kinshasa, the cost-fiest fight of all times, turned out to be the most sensational fight of all time, and the scenes in the ring at the end are some of the most sensational of all time.

A night that will go down in the history book as one of the most extraordinary in the whole long history of boxing. I told you, I'm the real champion. I told you, I'm the champion of the world. All of your bow, all of my critics crawl, all of you suckers who write the ring magazine, Boxing Little Star,

all of you. suckers bow because the stage was set. You made him great. You made him a hard puncher. But I want everybody from this moment on to recognize me as the scholar of boxing. Get it there, insire, torture there, inside. Finally, there was an incredible storm which most of us missed. We got back in time. The whole ground absolutely wiped out, as if the gods had said this was a great victory. And Ali went off in a car with his wife and he always says he always remembers driving into the dawn because the fight was so late.

And he felt the dawn was a great future for him. The lightning struck twice in the night. When you lose the heavyweight title, it's not like you lost a match, like you've lost you. You don't even exist anymore. I was constantly ashamed of myself. For years, I'd go into the room and it would be filled with girls, women, and I'd think they know that I'm not half the men and I used to be.

He lived with that defeat, his first. ever. So long that when he recaptured the title from Michael Moore, he was wearing the trunks he wore in that fight in Zaire, almost 20 years to the day before. Even after he won the title, one American writer went back at five in the morning. He found Ali on the doorstep playing magic tricks with two kids. He just won the greatest fight in history and he's just happy making them giggle. I can't believe there'll ever be an event like that in boxing, Steve, in our lifetime for sure, just to pick up on the judges' score cards at the end of those seven completed rounds

going into the ultimately final round in the eighth. Ali leading on all three cards by two rounds, three rounds and three rounds, but so much to pick up on on what we heard there, Steve. I'm not sure where you start, because it was a magical mix there. you know, about this whole magical miracle that happened at dawn in Africa when, I mean, the song itself. I mean, I don't know about you,

I kept listening back to some of the words in the song. Some of the words in the song I've forgotten about. Inz, I hear, insa, you know the song, but actually listening to the words, especially the words coming from the song, then the words coming from, you know, Neil Allen or coming from Gene Kure or coming from Bert Randolph-Sugar.

I mean, that was just a living, breathing. I mean, you felt like you were stepping back. there. You could sense it. I mean, the piece starts with Neil Allen sitting next to a woman from the, I love it. She's from the African consulate. Just a general African consular. Did you not pick up on it? I love Neil or death. I mean, you and I wrote his funeral a few weeks ago, and he was a great man and he was without a doubt, you know, I think he was underestimated his importance over the year. Some of the stuff he wrote over the years was really important. You know, man first went to an Olympics on a boat for God's sake. That's how long he was around.

Now, you know, and he's talking about, you know, he's opening that piece there with, you know, I was ring in the second row and there was a woman from the African consulate breastfeeding the baby next to me. It's just glorious stuff. And then you've got Bert Sugar riding into town on the back of a mosquito. I mean, that sets the tone might because the more I read about it, and you've got to throw away an awful lot of the junk written about it. But the more speak and sit, and I've had the pleasure of sitting of all three of those men in there, as I mentioned. and lots of time with them and stuff that wasn't in that dock,

stuff that they can recall bits and pieces, they remember. And oh boy, it's a transport back. It's an instant transport back. And it's that longing to have been there. And I know Eddie Hearn and everyone around the rematch coming up, Steve, between Anthony Joshua and Annie Ruiz is talking about this being special and exotic

and taking it to a different part of the world where boxing hasn't been known of before. But you mentioned the song there and how that struck a chord with you. There was a song, there was the famous documentary when we were kings, which was all about the fight, but the music festival, which ran alongside it at the same time and which won an Oscar in 1996. And books like The Fight by Norman Mailer, somebody of the calibre of Norman Mailer,

feeling the need to write an entire book. So a book, a song, a documentary about not just a life and a critic, about a single fight. You just can't imagine that happening again. And other points that came to mind, Steve, I was looking at Muhammad Ali's record in between those two seismic fights. The fight of the century, March 1971 at Madison Square Garden,

and then the rumble in the jungle in Africa three years later. Ali fought 14 times in those three years. Again, a very different landscape. And Neil Allen mentioned the monsoon rains and there were three feet of water in Ali's dressing room about an hour after the fight and there had been, if you read Norman Mailer's book

the fight, there had been such concerns about the monsoon rains which had already been delayed and remember the fight was meant to happen a month earlier which would have been free

of any threat of the monsoon but by the time they got to October the 30th the monsoons were a serious threat and they were worried that it would come on the day of the fight and therefore cause the fight

to be postponed. As it happens, the rains came an hour afterwards and of course Muhammad Ali said, the weather gods waited for me to finish my work. Until I was finished, they couldn't come. And he rode into that storm when he was leaving the arena.

And of course, the good thing about the rains coming, Mike, is they washed away all of the blood of the thousands of people that Mabutu, the despot had managed to butcher in the stadium. I mean, the level of stories, you know, was it 22 men hanging from the different crossbars in the stadium from the goals, just as a bit of light entertainment for, for the traveling press,

the fact that they were, you know, they were, you know, insisting they were all under house arrest and couldn't, I mean, there's just so many bits and pieces attached to it that weren't, the,

that, a kind of top, top spin. But Mike, these guys were going a bit stir crazy. Some of our colleagues that were there were going stir crazy. An awful lot of people

asked to come home, including Larry Holmes, the young boxer who was there. He came home. He begged Gene Kilroy to come home. As a sparring partner, as a sparring party, for Ralee.

He begged Gene Kiorway to come home. But, because he, you couldn't take it anymore. And these guys, even allowing for access to Ali and even allowing for all sorts of stuff coming out of Mobutu's propaganda department, you've still got to be there seven weeks or so.

It's an awful lot of stories. It's an awful lot of stuff. And they were some of them going out of their minds. There was a phrase used around the fight, Steve, about the miracle of Mohammed Ali. And you think back in time to 1974, you know, there's nothing like the internet that, you know, telecommunications were relatively still so primitive.

Muhammad Ali goes to Africa where most of the people in the surrounding villages around the capital of Zaire, as it was then, Kinshasa, and he was staying in a village called Insali. You see this footage of the villagers running alongside him, idolizing him, and yet these are villages without television. How did the message about Muhammad Ali seep through to them? And you understand why people start to use the phrase miracle. Well, images lasted longer before the modern age because there were fewer of them.

So there was a front cover. There was a radio piece on the World Service, perhaps, spreading the word about some cricket match that had taken place in Australia, spreading that to India and Pakistan. Things lasted longer. Images and words lasted longer. And in fact, it worked two ways, Mike. People were waiting for the first edition of the Evening Standard to find. out what had happened, not necessarily in the fight, but to find out what was going on out there, they were waiting for Neil Allen's column. They were waiting, well, not the I think he was working

for the Times. They were waiting for columns. They were waiting for that stuff to land. That was how they, that was how people found out. And it wasn't that long ago. And, you know, speaking to different people that are, that are still alive that were out there, it's a, because just a whole mishmash of bits of, I mean, some of the stuff, there was a great line from Neil Allen in there, and it was about sucking up the scene and using it. And the rest of that sentence is using it and using it and using it. And when I started sitting ringside, Mike, which was bizarrely, I was really mad to think about it,

but it was only 10 years after this fight, which I find really odd. Because 10 years ago in my life now is nothing. I can remember what we ate, you and I after a Ricky Hatton fight. It's ridiculous. So I sat ringside with these guys. And bear in mind,

I'm sitting ringside sometimes at fights in America or even big fights here. And there's 25 people in the ringside pit that were at the Rumble. Think about that, Mike. I'm rubbing shoulders with some of these guys. And they're not even getting on. They're not geriatrics.

They might have been 40, 38, 50 when they were at the Rumble. So when I'm sitting with them, they're still all under 70 years of age. And you're picking up things. And I tell you what, they never printed a badge saying I was there. But boy, oh boy, those old boys, they never took that badge off,

the one they never made, I can assure you. To this day, they never took it off. Just to emphasise the state of the media landscape at that time, Steve, you know, if you'd gone to bed at 10 o'clock the previous evening, there was no 24-hour TV, no 24-hour radio at the time, you'd have had to wait until you woke up and got the early morning news on the radio to get the result unless your dad, as in the case of us, came through and told you the result, having watched it at a cinema somewhere around the country.

But one or two myths that were destroyed as well in that documentary, Steve, about the apparent loosening of the ropes by Angelo Dundee and also in his book My View from the Corner he talks about actually tightening the ropes. But also you mentioned a phrase from Neil Allen there. I remember a report that I read in an anthology of the work of Hugh McElvaney, another man that we've mentioned here this week.

And he was talking about the difficulties of getting his copy, his reports, back to the Observer Office. He was working for the Observer at the time in London. And he said, at times, I reckon I'd have more success if my telephone was connected to my sock. You can imagine the difficulties in getting reports through.

But look, we could talk all the way through to it's time to record next week's podcast, Steve. Just to sum up at the end, Muhammad Ali as not just a figure who had such an influence outside of boxing, but now talking about Muhammad Ali, the heavyweight, in the context of the entire history of the heavyweight division, I'm not prepared to listen to an argument that he isn't number one. Any man who's beaten Joe Frazier twice, Ken Norton twice,

Sonny Liston twice and George Foreman, with Foreman and Liston 10 years apart, two of the great monsters, the most fearsome punches in the history of the sport. Anyone with that record has to be the all-time number one heavyweight. I had no argument with that at all. I think there are different heavyweights in time

that have had great periods, great during their peaks that could go back like those guys you mentioned there and have a fight with Ali, don't get me wrong. I think they can go and compete with Ali. The best this, you know, the best this, the best this. They can all go and have a fight with Ali. But I think he showed with that little list you've run off there,

the men he did be at their primes and when they were in their peaks and when they were in their sentencing, when they were unbeatable. You know, I feel deaf in the air. George Foreman of Archie Moore said, and they both said it. And that was right.

That was the sort of atmosphere going in here. So that was the Foreman, the Ali beat. But what I would like to see is maybe a little bit more recognition, higher recognition, for some of the men on that list. So consequently, for some reason, Joe Frazier seems to get sort of jettisoned from most lists when they're compiled. And bear in mind, he beat Ali, OK, Ali, that maybe he'd been out in the ring for too long. And George Foreman sometimes doesn't get included in there. And you watch some of his devastating stuff. And Ken Norton never gets included in there.

And Sonny Liston gets some sort of asterix or some kind of feared man because he went to prison a couple of times and died. suspiciously, I'd like to see some of those great fighters in there included in longer lists, but no argument from me whatsoever, even allowing for the giants that we've got now. Well, we've relished wandering back in time. Thank you for all of your requests,

and maybe we'll do it again at some time in the near future when the boxing schedule allows, but for now that's it from Five Live Boxing with Costello and Bunce. Let's get ready to rumble. Five Live Boxing. The best best best B2B marketing gets wasted on the wrong people.

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