The match which for some is the culmination of the centuries-old history of boxing, for others the beginning of an irreversible transformation, for still others the beginning of its end, was exactly fifty years ago, on 30 October 1974, and was held in Kinshasa, capital of the newborn Zaire, the Congo which had just passed from the colonial and slave regime, formerly the property of Leopold II of Belgium, the genocide, to the regime of Mobutu, the former follower of the revolutionary Patrice Lumumba who soon became the autocrat of an authentic kleptocracy.
Thanks to the resourcefulness of a fixer such as Don King and the intuition of some television corporations, the match was presented and indeed offered to Mobutu as The rumble in the jungle, no less, and in terms of a symbolic return to the origins and the myth itself of neigritude. Although polar opposites in nature, culture and technical caliber, African-American blacks were both the reigning champion and the challenger, whose portraits open a book worthy of the anniversary for its wealth of information, narrative quality and typographical clarity, Giù la testa. Kinshasa, 30 October 1974 – Ali against Foreman, the dawn of a revolution (Hoepli, «Storie di sport», pp. 238, 24.90 euros): it is signed by a master of boxing criticism, Claudio Colombo, a life among Gazzetta dello Sport e Corriere della Seramost recently the author of two beautiful collections of portraits, Reports from ringside (2021) e Giants of the ring (’22) both released by Edizioni InContropiede. With a large following of technicians, relatives and parasites as well as several hundred journalists, the two boxers who arrive in Kinshasa, to fight before the rainy season opens, could not be more opposite.
The reigning champion is the Texan George Foreman, 25 years old and 100 kg. of weight, a difficult childhood and a small past as a pickpocket redeemed by boxing which in him is an elementary prodigy of strength and continuity in hitting a steamroller in the best way: he has no fencing skills nor marked mobility but his scoresheet is eloquent , with 40 fights won, 37 of which by knockout and he has rarely gone beyond the eighth of the fifteen rounds of practice.
But in the eyes of the Zaireans Foreman, a laconic and introverted man, has the serious flaw of presenting himself as the classic “white negro” (the Uncle Tom who accepts white society and willingly brandishes the stars and stripes flag).
There’s more because, unaware of colonial history, he shows up at the airport with a sheepdog, the same one that was thrown against fugitives from the plantations, in short a grim synonym of Belgian domination. The Zaireans will repay him by shouting excitedly from the stands “Ali boma yè, boma yè”, Ali kill him, kill him.
Because the challenger is precisely Muhammad Ali, aka Cassius Clay, who is now 32 years old, denouncing his worrying weight of over 98 kg. but the myth of rebellious youth remains in Africa as in the entire West. Kentuckian son of the black middle class, Olympic champion in Rome in 1960 as a light heavyweight, ten years earlier in Miami he wrested the heavyweight crown from Sonny Liston (an altogether extraordinary athlete and yet already undermined by self-destructive conduct) maintaining it until ’67, when Clay refuses to go to fight in Vietnam, he is tried, his title is stripped and he is suspended for over three years. But it is in that moment that, together with the name of Muhammad, Ali his myth was born, the image of boxing danced by the one who, literally, flies like a butterfly and stings like a bee. Since his return, Ali has lost two matches (with Joe Frazer, his arch-enemy for life, and Ken Norton). No one knows what his limit of resistance is in the face of Foreman’s excessive physical power but the Zaireans adore him and, praising him , they also accept the excesses and insults in which they like to drown their opponent (in which case a former fan of theirs) even in the preliminary weigh-in ceremony. That October 30th the match takes place in front of 60,000 people, in the capital’s stadium, and there are 800 million viewers: Rai snubs direct commentary, even if there is the crew of a very young Gianni Minà, and at four in the morning only those who live on the Adriatic (the writer is a witness) have the privilege of seeing the live broadcast thanks to the Slovenian TeleCapodistria with commentary by Sandro Damiani.
For his part, Colombo organizes the story by alternating round and italics, that is, the minute round-by-round report on the historical and sociopolitical pasts that made it possible. The match, the self, has a paradoxical course because if Foreman fights according to expectations, advancing like a steamroller and waiting for a final demolition of the opponent, Alì instead refuses to dance as his supporters and his coach himself would like, the ‘ineffable Angelo Dundee: Ali on the contrary merges with the opponent, shortening the trajectory of the blows and therefore the power, or rather he makes even creative use of the ropes of the ring because he forces Foreman to follow his inertial motion backwards and to exhaust himself in useless and frustrating clinch. So much so that when the other is induced to pause before restarting his predictable perpetual motion, Ali enters his guard and hits him with the most classic of one-twos, jabs and direct shots that shake Foreman and fill him with unexpected events amazement.
In the seventh round, when the Texan begins to feel tired and, even before that, unaccustomed to prolonged matches, Ali has the clear sensation of being ahead on points (and in fact, sitting at the edge of the ring, the unforgettable Rino Tommasi gives him all the wins restarts, minus the fourth and fifth at par). The real apotheosis occurs in the eighth and this is how Claudio Colombo describes the crucial moment, when Foreman suffers all the violence exploded by Ali’s blows: «The direct right that lands in the middle of his face has a crack that can be heard all the way to the stands He bends forward, almost stumbles on the mat – his legs no longer support him – he turns around and collapses on his back right in the center of the ring, his left leg extended, his right leg slightly curved, his head raised on the stiff neck, the last part of the body to rebel against martyrdom.”
This is the incipit of an apotheosis that will give rise to a huge literature, sinceinstant book by an old friend of Ali, the American novelist Norman Mailer, author of The Fight (of which we have two different editions: It matchesMondadori 1976 e The challengeEinaudi 2012). In the press gallery, Mailer takes the place of Nat Fleischer, a small Jew from Brooklyn and the greatest interpreter of boxing, who unfortunately passed away two years before the fight of the century. Present there among the Italian journalists is an exceptional outsider, Giovanni Arpino, correspondent of the Press (and surprisingly it is not mentioned at all by Columbus). Arpino dictates his article on the telephone (“Ali has now returned invincible”, The PressNovember 1) while the hurricane that inaugurates the rainy season is unleashed on the stadium and seals the match with an indelible epigraph: «Negritude won, the criterion of spectacle won, Ali won. And Great Mother Africa devoured Foreman, making him play the role of the sacrificial lamb.”
