The Knockout

When one gets hold of good books, one feels compelled to sit down, set aside one’s daily concerns and find time to read them, cover to cover. That’s exactly what happened to us when six books on professional boxing finally arrived from the States.

We shared one (“The Fight” by Norman Mailer) and, in this week’s column, we provide highlights from two more. These are:  “Reading the Fights: The Best Writing About the Most Controversial Sport” edited by Joyce Carol Oates and Daniel Halpern and featuring the works of, among others, Mailer and Gay Talese and “My View From the Corner: A Life in Boxing” by Angelo Dundee and Bert Randolph Sugar with a foreword by Muhammad Ali and afterword by George Foreman.

The three other books waiting in the wings are:  1. “Ali and Liston: The Boy who Would be King and the Ugly Bear” by Bob Mee; 2. “The Last Great Fight: The Extraordinary Tale of Two Men and How One Fight Changed Their Lives Forever” by Joe Layden; and 3. “Harry Haft: Survivor of Auschwitz, Challenger of Rocky Marciano” by Alan Scott Haft.

Describing the eighth round stoppage by Muhammad Ali of George Foreman for the latter’s world heavyweight title in 1975 in Kinshasa, Zaire, aptly hyped as the “Rumble in the Jungle,” Mailer writes, “Vertigo took (Foreman) and revolved him. Still bowing from the waist in this uncomprehending position, eyes on (Ali) all the way, he started to tumble and topple and fall even as he did not wish to go down. His mind was held with magnets high as his championship and his body was seeking the ground. He went over like a six-foot 60-year-old butler who has just heard tragic news, yes, fell over all of a long collapsing two seconds , down came the champion in sections and Ali revolved around him in a close circle, hand primed to hit him one more time, and never the need, a wholly intimate escort to the floor.

As we stated last week, Mailer, in his inimitable style, used poetry, not prose to describe the hurtful aftermath of the knockout: “The referee took Ali to a corner. He stood there, he seemed lost in thought. Now he raced his feet in a quick but restrained shuffle as if to apologize for never asking his legs to dance and looked on while Foreman tried to rouse himself. Like a drunk hoping to get out of bed to go to work, Foreman rolled over, Foreman started the slow head-agonizing lift of all that foundered bulk God somehow gave him and whether he heard the count or not, was on his feet a fraction after the count of ten and whipped, for when (referee) Zack Clayton guided him with a hand at his back, he walked in docile steps to his corner and did not resist. (Archie) Moore received him. (Dick) Sadler received him. Later, one learned the conversation.

“Feel alright?” “Yeah,”,said Foreman. Sadler: “Well, don’t worry. It’s history now.” “Yeah”, said Foreman. “You’re all right,” said Sadler, “the rest will take care of itself.”

Mailer describes a little known fact: “In the ring, Ali fainted. It occurred suddenly and without warning and almost no one saw it. Angelo Dundee circling the ropes to shout happy words at reporters was unaware of what had happened. So were all the smiling faces. It was only eight or 10 men immediately around him who knew. Those eight or 10 mouths which had just been open in celebration now turned to grimaces of horror. (Drew) Bundini (Brown) went from laughing to weeping in five seconds. Why Ali fainted, nobody might ever know. Whether it was a warning against excessive pride in years to come – one private bolt from Allah – or whether the weakness of sudden exhaustion, who could know? Maybe it was even the spasm of a reflex he must have refined unconsciously for months – the ability to recover in seconds from total oblivion.”

As an aside, Bundini was in Ali’s corner all throughout “The Greatest’s” career up to 1981. A man of many talents, Bundini dabbled in film acting, speech writing for Ali and poetry having crafted one of Ali’s famous lines: “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, your hands can’t hit what your eyes can’t see.”

Talese describes Floyd Patterson’s feelings after being knocked out by Sonny Liston for the second time: “..and then the bell rings, and you go at Liston and he’s coming at you, and you’re not even aware that three’s a referee in the ring with you. Then you can’t remember much of the rest, because you don’t want to…All you recall is, all of a sudden you’re getting up, and the referee is saying. ‘You all right?’ and you say, ‘Of course I’m all right,’ and he says, ‘What’s your name?’’ and you say, ‘Patterson.’ Next week, more on Talese’s account entitled “The Loser.”