Speaker 1: October thirtieth, nineteen seventy four. Kinshasa zaiir.
Speaker 2: Here comes the Ali people out of the dressing room.
Speaker 2: This is an awesome bar of George Foreman against the
Speaker 2: varleyd boxing skills of Muhammad Ali.
Speaker 1: Thirty two year old Muhammad Ali strides through the crowd
Speaker 1: and finds his place at the center of the ring
Speaker 1: for his title fight against the reigning heavyweight champion of
Speaker 1: the World, George Foreman. Their heavyweight title bout is considered
Speaker 1: by many to be the greatest sporting event of all time.
Speaker 1: But what's less well known is that five weeks earlier,
Speaker 1: in that very same stadium, James Brown headlined an epic
Speaker 1: three day long pre fight music festival. This unique event
Speaker 1: brought blackham American musicians like BB King and Bill Withers
Speaker 1: to share the same stage with Afro Caribbean acts such
Speaker 1: as Celia Cruz and African megastars like Miriam Mikiba and
Speaker 1: Hugh Masekela.
Speaker 3: All the biggest Black artist on the planet due a
Speaker 3: concert for this fight.
Speaker 1: It was a musical homecoming for these musicians of the diaspora.
Speaker 1: But all this black excellence in one stadium in Zaire
Speaker 1: during a hot autumn in nineteen seventy four. How did
Speaker 1: this come to be well? The two events were both
Speaker 1: orchestrated and stage managed by, believe it or not, an
Speaker 1: African dictator, Mabutu Seysei Siku.
Speaker 4: Mubuchu is a darling of the West tied to nationalism
Speaker 4: as a way to consolidate his power.
Speaker 1: His full name was Kuku and Bindu Waza Benga. Translated
Speaker 1: into English, it means the all powerful war who, because
Speaker 1: of his endurance and inflexible will to win, goes from
Speaker 1: conquest to conquest, leaving fire.
Speaker 5: In his wake.
Speaker 1: Once the Belgian Congo, Mabutu had rechristened his homeland as Zayir,
Speaker 1: That was the man who was running things well, him
Speaker 1: and the famously colorful boxing promoter Don King. The fight
Speaker 1: and the music festival were originally scheduled for the same
Speaker 1: weekend to be televised across the globe. A music festival
Speaker 1: to warm up the crowds and to reinforce the ascendants
Speaker 1: of black culture on the world stage to mark the
Speaker 1: reconnection of Black America and the Motherland, then to be
Speaker 1: followed by the heavyweight title fight to crown a new
Speaker 1: world champion for a dictator like Mabutu. It was a
Speaker 1: rather masterful bit of international theater. The music festival was
Speaker 1: called Zaire seventy four, a testimony to the growing power
Speaker 1: and glory of Mabutu and his recently liberated African nation,
Speaker 1: and the championship fight became known as the Rumble in
Speaker 1: the Jungle. But as so often happens, Fate stepped in
Speaker 1: to interrupt the carefully coordinated plans of mice and men
Speaker 1: and Central African dictators. Fate also had plans for the
Speaker 1: man called the People's champ.
Speaker 6: We were scared to death for Ali. The people who
Speaker 6: knew about boxing and cared about Ali were really scared
Speaker 6: for George Foreman could literally kill him.
Speaker 1: This is the story of what all went down in
Speaker 1: Zaire in nineteen seventy four, how we get there, and
Speaker 1: for so many reasons. This ultimately is a story of
Speaker 1: excellence in the Key of Blackness.
Speaker 5: Jane Brown said, Said Lois said, I'm Black and I'm Brown.
Speaker 1: Among the numerous legends told lost moments will also be
Speaker 1: revealed in this podcast.
Speaker 5: I'm Niko Ali Walsh.
Speaker 7: I'm a professional boxer and the Muhammad Ali is my grandfather.
Speaker 1: Intertwined with the cultural milestones will come portraits of greatness
Speaker 1: and accounts of rare humanity.
Speaker 5: All the Africans who have been spread around the world,
Speaker 5: we know where you are, we haven't lost track of you,
Speaker 5: and we all hid together on this earth.
Speaker 1: All told, this is a tale of many battles, many fights,
Speaker 1: the wars that rage through both African and American cultures
Speaker 1: in this time, and how these conflicts tested people's values
Speaker 1: and convictions brought into sharpest relief in the story of
Speaker 1: one Muhammad Ali.
Speaker 4: He was a craftsman with the skill of boxing, and
Speaker 4: brilliant a brilliant mind.
Speaker 1: He is our hero and will carry us through all
Speaker 1: the soulful high points, violent lows, cultural chaos, and societal
Speaker 1: craziness to come.
Speaker 8: The military, they mutinied.
Speaker 9: He will not sir in any capacity in a war
Speaker 9: against fellow brown people.
Speaker 3: His life was steadily becoming more and more endangered.
Speaker 1: If fighting was the spirit of the times, you could
Speaker 1: say the soul of seventy four was a rumble. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Rumble, the story of Ali Foreman and the Soul
Speaker 1: music of nineteen seventy four. I'm your host Zarren Burnett,
Speaker 1: the third from iHeart Podcast School of humans. This is rumble.
Speaker 1: I can't remember a time when I did not know
Speaker 1: about the rumble in the jungle. My pops was a
Speaker 1: huge fan of boxing. He told me this story of
Speaker 1: the Ali form and fight like it was Arthurian legend.
Speaker 1: The way he told it elevated their heavyweight bout to
Speaker 1: the level of the champions of old. My pops also
Speaker 1: gave me his name.
Speaker 5: My name is Zaren W. Burnette Junior. I am a writer, observer,
Speaker 5: and chronicler of American history. I particularly focus on African
Speaker 5: American history because I'm an African American, but I focus
Speaker 5: on American history because I'm an American, and of course
Speaker 5: I'm the father of my son, Zaren Burnett the Third.
Speaker 1: Now, back when I was a boy, when my pops
Speaker 1: told me the story of the young brash Cassius Clay
Speaker 1: taking on the former mob enforcer and leg breaker Sonny Liston,
Speaker 1: it was like hearing about David and Goliath. And my
Speaker 1: pops would also light up whenever he told a story
Speaker 1: about Smokin' Joe Frasier, that was his other favorite boxer.
Speaker 1: But as a kid, I was thrilled by the stories
Speaker 1: about Ali.
Speaker 5: When Ali came out, it was kind of an exciting
Speaker 5: moment because he fought like a middleweight. He fought like
Speaker 5: sugar Ay Robinson. He was real fast, he threw a
Speaker 5: lot of punches and get out the wait.
Speaker 1: By the time I came into the world, Ali was
Speaker 1: considered the goat, the actual greatest of all time, so
Speaker 1: naturally I was eager to hear his story. Ali was
Speaker 1: like no one else, both inside and outside the ring.
Speaker 5: He was a provocateur on purpose.
Speaker 1: The perfect champ of his moment. In every way possible.
Speaker 1: Ali was this new sort of fighter.
Speaker 5: We were all young, so it was fun the white
Speaker 5: young person coming there and kick all the old guy's asses.
Speaker 5: And he was doing all his poetry and he was
Speaker 5: telling all his hit It was like wrestling. He made
Speaker 5: it like wrestling.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty four. Ali made boxing seem less like
Speaker 1: the mean, old brutal sport of face smashing violence. He
Speaker 1: wasn't part of its dark and smoky, old fashioned past,
Speaker 1: the one that wreaked a cigar smoke and spilled liquor.
Speaker 1: Ali's fights felt like the future arriving. His fights were different.
Speaker 1: His style in the ring was different.
Speaker 5: He wasn't a puncher, you know, he didn't hurt people anything.
Speaker 5: He would beat you about, throwing eighteen punches so fast
Speaker 5: that he would just be overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: It always sounded fun, especially how Ali felt like change personified.
Speaker 5: This is the early sixties, so this is also the
Speaker 5: beginning of the Black power movement. Black young people are
Speaker 5: feeling in all kinds of ways. So this is a
Speaker 5: black young person who we can get behind.
Speaker 1: These days. When you ask people about Muhammad Ali, especially
Speaker 1: those who actually knew him, you still hear it in
Speaker 1: their voices how Ali was special.
Speaker 10: Ali was smart, he was bright, and he was handsome.
Speaker 2: Ali was extraordinary in every way. I mean extraordinary boxer,
Speaker 2: extraordinarily beautiful person, extraordinarily loquacious, and the master storyteller.
Speaker 6: I loved Ali, not just as a fighter, but everything
Speaker 6: that he stood for.
Speaker 11: Ali is still refreshing because he's real. It's just no
Speaker 11: bullshit about the guy.
Speaker 7: Ali is so handsome you want him to win.
Speaker 1: Over the course of his career, Muhammad Ali stayed a
Speaker 1: media presence, and as such, he gave many interviews. It
Speaker 1: seems like the people's champ was always talking, always trying
Speaker 1: to explain himself, and all those interviews revealed that Ali
Speaker 1: was a man of complex motivations, as Ali tried to
Speaker 1: tell the world, he was both the butterfly and the bee.
Speaker 4: People in America just find it hard to take a
Speaker 4: fighters seriously. They don't know that I'm using boxing for
Speaker 4: the sake of getting over certain points you couldn't get
Speaker 4: over without it. Being a fighter enables me to attain
Speaker 4: certain ends. I'm not doing this for the glory of fighting,
Speaker 4: but to change a lot of things.
Speaker 1: That's a quote of Muhammad Ali from the book The
Speaker 1: Fight by Norman Mahler. It's about the rumble in the jungle.
Speaker 1: Mahler was a prolific fan of boxing, and, like many
Speaker 1: of us, a huge fan of Muhammad Ali. In particular.
Speaker 1: In the first chapter of the Mahler attempted to convey
Speaker 1: what it was like to be in the presence of
Speaker 1: the people's champ.
Speaker 10: There's always a shock in seeing him again, not lives
Speaker 10: in television, but standing before you, looking his best. Then
Speaker 10: the world's greatest athlete is in danger of being our
Speaker 10: most beautiful man, and the vocabulary of the camp is
Speaker 10: doomed to appear. Women draw an audible breath, men look down.
Speaker 10: They are reminded again of their lack of worth. If
Speaker 10: Ali never opened his mouth to quiver the jellies of
Speaker 10: public opinion, he would still inspire love and hate, for
Speaker 10: he is the prince of Heaven, so says the silence
Speaker 10: around his body when he is luminous.
Speaker 1: In order to truly understand what was at stake for
Speaker 1: Muhammad Ali in nineteen seventy four when he stepped into
Speaker 1: that ring against Foreman in Zayir, we must first understand
Speaker 1: that Ali at the time was.
Speaker 9: The hero of the moment, the great freedom fighter, the
Speaker 9: person who would challenge American policy, who would represent freedom
Speaker 9: for African Americans.
Speaker 1: No matter where you looked in nineteen seventy four, the
Speaker 1: sense of a fight about to burst out anywhere everywhere
Speaker 1: was rolling through the culture like thunder. It was a
Speaker 1: time of upheaval. To anyone paying attention, it was abundantly
Speaker 1: clear the world was changing fast. Some folks were busy
Speaker 1: fighting against that change. Others were out protesting and organizing
Speaker 1: to fight to advance it. The rest were caught in
Speaker 1: the middle. The war in Vietnam had reached the peak
Speaker 1: of its unpopularity. After a decade of body bags sent
Speaker 1: home to the United States with little to show for
Speaker 1: their sacrifices. There were groups like the Weather Underground and
Speaker 1: their terror campaign of homemade bombs. OPEC announced an oil embargoed,
Speaker 1: effectively crippling the oil driven economies of the West. News
Speaker 1: cameras recorded the effect for everyday Americans. High and priceikes
Speaker 1: at the grocery store, memorable blocks, long lines formed at
Speaker 1: gas stations. This is when the Detroit carmakers began to
Speaker 1: lose ground to the compact cars built in Japan. The
Speaker 1: steel plants were closing, Big factories were shuttered. Layoffs in
Speaker 1: industries across the board were daily headlines. Many cities were crumbling.
Speaker 1: The site of them could inspire dystopian fiction. Things did
Speaker 1: not appear promising for the American experiment. Even the President,
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon, spent his days battling for his political life.
Speaker 7: It was almost two years ago. In June nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 7: the five men into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington.
Speaker 7: It turned out that they were connected with my reelection committee.
Speaker 1: Now he still didn't believe it in the spring of
Speaker 1: seventy four, but Watergate that was a fight Nixon was
Speaker 1: bound to lose. Meanwhile, there was the People's chamt Muhammad Ali.
Speaker 6: Standing for principles and willing to give up everything for
Speaker 6: his principles.
Speaker 1: And there was the heavyweight champion of the world, George Foreman.
Speaker 2: Very serious and quiet, incredibly confident. He was gonna talk
Speaker 2: with his gloves, not with his mouth.
Speaker 1: The two men were bound to fight. Everyone knew it.
Speaker 1: It was just a matter of time.
Speaker 3: What was going on in the world at the time
Speaker 3: made this fight as important that anything else is going
Speaker 3: on on the planet. So even if you don't fuck
Speaker 3: with this, if this is not your first language, you
Speaker 3: need to be here.
Speaker 1: This show is about so much more than Muhammad Ali,
Speaker 1: the man, the fighter, the cultural icon. Yet he is
Speaker 1: the focus, and so it is with him, the people's
Speaker 1: champ where our episodic journey begins.
Speaker 5: They float like a butterflies thing, like a bit. You
Speaker 5: gotta be a damn food to get in the ring
Speaker 5: with me.
Speaker 1: He was born Cassius Marcellus Clay Junior in Louisville, Kentucky,
Speaker 1: on January seventeenth, nineteen forty two.
Speaker 9: He grew up in a border state. The worst of
Speaker 9: segregation passed him by. Although Louisville was segregated in neighborhoods,
Speaker 9: most schools, parks, public spaces. But African Americans had the
Speaker 9: vote and some labor power and were able to mitigate
Speaker 9: the worst of the segregation of that era. Still, he
Speaker 9: could look forward to less than full rights as a
Speaker 9: human being.
Speaker 1: That's Lewis Ehrenberg, author of Rumble in the Jungle, one
Speaker 1: of the definitive books on the Ali Foreman fight and
Speaker 1: Ali's place in boxing history. He is a fount of
Speaker 1: all things Ali, As Ehrenberg explains, by the time Ali
Speaker 1: was a young boy, he already fully understood the force
Speaker 1: racism played in reducing the potential of his parents' lives
Speaker 1: under Jim Crow. For Ali, his father.
Speaker 9: In particular, was a very unhappy guy who he wanted
Speaker 9: to be an artist. He ended up a sign painter.
Speaker 9: It was difficult for him to earn a living.
Speaker 1: Cassius Clay's parents warned to their son about the risks
Speaker 1: he'd face in life, not just economic and professional, but
Speaker 1: from believing himself to be free. After all, lynching's were
Speaker 1: still a very real threat in the forties and fifties.
Speaker 9: His father regaled him with tales of how African Americans
Speaker 9: were treated when they stepped outside the black community, including
Speaker 9: the fire bombing of a home bought by a black
Speaker 9: family in a white neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Now you might be asking yourself, as I wondered. Raised
Speaker 1: with ugly racist violence as a constant threat, why would
Speaker 1: young Casius Clay want to pick up boxing gloves.
Speaker 4: At twelve years old? Someone stole my bicycle. I went
Speaker 4: to a home show where the display cars and refrigerators
Speaker 4: and household utensils and everything. And I went there and
Speaker 4: I left my bicycle outside and came out. It was
Speaker 4: drizzling rain that night, Saturday evening, about nine o'clock. My
Speaker 4: bicycle was gone. I just got it for Christmas. I
Speaker 4: asked somebody with the closest police officer, and they said
Speaker 4: in the same building. I just came out.
Speaker 1: Young Cassius Clay went back inside and he founded the
Speaker 1: officer who would go on to become an integral person
Speaker 1: in his formative years. The CoP's name.
Speaker 4: Joe Martin, was training amateur boxes in a room about
Speaker 4: this size, and he asked me to take out an
Speaker 4: application and learned how to fight so I could beat
Speaker 4: the fellow up in a joking fashion who stole my bicycle?
Speaker 12: So I started boxing.
Speaker 1: Ironically, a white cop teaching a young black boy to
Speaker 1: fight was seen at the time to be a way
Speaker 1: to keep him on the straight and narrow. His parents
Speaker 1: were relieved because it kept young Cashius Clay from getting
Speaker 1: caught up in any street crime or random trouble. Now
Speaker 1: he had a focus. This marked the beginning of Cassius
Speaker 1: Clay's road to future greatness, a road that was documented
Speaker 1: by his most authoritative biographer.
Speaker 11: My name is Jonathan Iig, and I am a writer
Speaker 11: and the author of the Muhammad Ali biography called ali Alife.
Speaker 1: Early on in the research and construction of the narrative,
Speaker 1: I was struck with one question.
Speaker 11: What made this kid think he could be special? First
Speaker 11: of all, he just seems to have this appetite for
Speaker 11: attention from a very early age, before he can talk,
Speaker 11: you know, he's just standing up in the crib and
Speaker 11: in the stroller, just wants everybody to look at him
Speaker 11: all the time. And then when he gets to school
Speaker 11: he has dyslexia. He doesn't really know it, but he
Speaker 11: discovers that he can't really get the attention for his schoolwork.
Speaker 11: He's not as good as he should be in terms
Speaker 11: of you know, reading, writing, and arithmetic. But he can
Speaker 11: make people laugh and he can make people pay attention
Speaker 11: with his wordplay, and he seems to really need that,
Speaker 11: so I think that's a key too. When he discovers boxing,
Speaker 11: he doesn't really show what he interested in other sports
Speaker 11: because it's not enough of a spotlight for him. I
Speaker 11: guess boxing it's if you're the one winning, you're the
Speaker 11: one getting all the attention.
Speaker 1: And he was good, like so good that when the
Speaker 1: fledgling fighter wanted to get on a local Louisville TV
Speaker 1: show called Tomorrow's Champions Piece of k done, he moved
Speaker 1: on to new goals, bigger goals. Casius Clay became an
Speaker 1: amateur boxer on the rise. He won the Golden Gloves,
Speaker 1: he won the National AAU, and eventually he qualified for
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixty Olympics. He would travel to Rome to
Speaker 1: represent the United States on the world stage, and he
Speaker 1: won the goal. He was only eighteen years old when
Speaker 1: he returned home to the American South. It took him
Speaker 1: only a few days to realize winning gold for the
Speaker 1: US of A did next to nothing to change how
Speaker 1: he was treated in Louisville, Kentucky.
Speaker 4: It made me popular for a few days, but I
Speaker 4: wanted to do something good with it. So I went downtown.
Speaker 4: At the time, black people was marching to eat in
Speaker 4: the white restaurants. They wanted rights to go where they
Speaker 4: wanted to. And I said, so I'll take this medal
Speaker 4: and I'll go downtown and I'll sit down at the restaurant.
Speaker 4: I got him on the spot now, and then I'll
Speaker 4: order something to eat. So I go downtown and I
Speaker 4: have the medalon, and the lady was looking and I said,
Speaker 4: I'd like a cheeseburger. She said, we don't serve negroes.
Speaker 4: I said, and I don't eat them either. Just give
Speaker 4: me the cheeseburger.
Speaker 1: That's one version of the story Ali would later tell.
Speaker 1: There were a couple others, like how Ali.
Speaker 9: Went into a bar and the owner chased him out
Speaker 9: even though Cassius Clay was wearing the metal. He also
Speaker 9: said that he was chased out of the bar by bikers,
Speaker 9: white bikers.
Speaker 1: Then there was the story about the Ohio River. This
Speaker 1: river held specific meaning. It had always been the line
Speaker 1: that demarketed freedom when black people were enslaved in America.
Speaker 1: Those close knew, if you can cross the Ohio, you free.
Speaker 9: Now a whole legend has grown up around this. He
Speaker 9: was so bitter, he threw his medal away. It's just
Speaker 9: not clear what happened to the metal. He may have
Speaker 9: just misplaced it, but he definitely stopped wearing it.
Speaker 1: The way he tells it, Young Cashius Clay, well, he
Speaker 1: took his gold medal and tossed it right into that
Speaker 1: river and proclaimed himself free. And the river was his witness.
Speaker 1: In his hometown of Louisville, segregation didn't stop local white
Speaker 1: businessmen from making money off a piece of Young Cashu's clay.
Speaker 1: If anything, That's what the South was best at, finding
Speaker 1: ways to profit off a black body while limiting what
Speaker 1: that same person could do with their body. It didn't
Speaker 1: take long for Louisville moneymen to see dollar signs in
Speaker 1: the form of Cash's clay.
Speaker 9: Once he won the gold medal as a light heavyweight
Speaker 9: at the nineteen sixty Olympics, he attracted the attention of
Speaker 9: various white businessmen in Louisville. The owners of distilleries, newspapers,
Speaker 9: et cetera, who put up money for his training, put
Speaker 9: money in for bank account that would accrue earnings over time,
Speaker 9: and in fact, Clay had a boost that few not
Speaker 9: only African American athletes, but any American athlete had. He
Speaker 9: was like the first corporate athlete.
Speaker 1: What those white businessmen did not expect is that Ali
Speaker 1: was going to do Ali as a kid, Cash's love
Speaker 1: to watch the pro wrestler Gorgeous George perform on local
Speaker 1: Louisville TV. He studied how Gorgeous George hyped up an
Speaker 1: upcoming match, boasting about what all he planned to do
Speaker 1: next time he was in the ring. His hyperbolic bravado
Speaker 1: stayed with Cassius Clay. He later said, you know.
Speaker 4: He makes a lot of money with that kind of talk.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna be like him and liven up the fight game.
Speaker 1: Notable fight writer, best selling sports biographer, and ESPN commentator
Speaker 1: Mark Krigel believes that Gorgeous George's influence was absolutely key
Speaker 1: to who Ali would become as a boxer and as
Speaker 1: his own hype man.
Speaker 12: If you look at the wrestling construct, it's not an
Speaker 12: accident that Muhammad Ali said that he learned from Gorgeous George.
Speaker 12: I mean, Gorgeous George himself is like a very American archetype,
Speaker 12: and Ali used that stuff. Glitz, the razzle, the braggadocio,
Speaker 12: whatever you want to call it. He used that to
Speaker 12: connect with the audience. And the audience can hate you,
Speaker 12: they can love you, but they can't feel neutral, and
Speaker 12: that was part of Ali's genius.
Speaker 1: Ali seized on the symbolic power inherent in the narratives
Speaker 1: of pro wrestling.
Speaker 12: You can't understand boxing. I don't think you can understand
Speaker 12: American culture without understanding wrestling, and wrestling as a construct
Speaker 12: requires a couple of things.
Speaker 1: You need a babyface and a heel. The babyface is
Speaker 1: the protagonist, the hero.
Speaker 12: The protagonist needs to have that great, resourceful sense of narcissism.
Speaker 12: It would help them measurably if he has a sense
Speaker 12: of humor, which Ali had in abundance.
Speaker 1: And the heel is, of course the antagonist the villain.
Speaker 1: But you need other dynamics and a role playing for
Speaker 1: the wrestling construct to be compelling.
Speaker 12: The protagonist, the leading man, whether he's the heel of
Speaker 12: the babyface, usually has a valet. For a great part
Speaker 12: of Ali's career, that was co Cell.
Speaker 1: As in the legendary sports commentator Howard Cosell and Cossell.
Speaker 1: He was the star of.
Speaker 12: All those wide world of sports broadcasts that went into
Speaker 12: everyone's living room. There was co Cell this like kind
Speaker 12: of goofy Jewish guy from Brooklyn. What's he doing there?
Speaker 12: But he's got some sort of rapport with Ali and
Speaker 12: it was comic, but it was also meaningful and no
Speaker 12: one had seen that before.
Speaker 1: Now, along with the valet, a wrestling hero also needs
Speaker 1: a hype man.
Speaker 12: What he didn't have until Zayir was the ring master,
Speaker 12: the barnum, another narcissist at the center of the ring,
Speaker 12: screaming and yelling, you know, selling tickets. Come see this,
Speaker 12: Come one, come all. It's a freak show. It's crazy.
Speaker 12: It's a race war. It's not a race war. It's brutality.
Speaker 12: You'll never see this again. Whatever, It is a shameless
Speaker 12: presence in the center of the ring, and that, of
Speaker 12: course is Don King.
Speaker 1: The impress Sorio of the fight game. Don King had
Speaker 1: the same love and talent for spectacle, much like Ali.
Speaker 1: He also could elevate boxing with his flare for storytelling.
Speaker 1: But Don King also represents the more sinister side of boxing,
Speaker 1: the mob connections and fixed fights that dark past we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier. It was still the norm when Ali was
Speaker 1: coming up, but again, Ali was different at.
Speaker 12: The end of the day. One of the things that
Speaker 12: got him over certainly with the American public and probably
Speaker 12: around the world, was a sense of humor.
Speaker 5: But that's not all.
Speaker 1: Ali also had one other key aspect to his character.
Speaker 12: The second thing, and maybe the most important thing, was
Speaker 12: his undeniable courage, and that is the revelation of Zayir.
Speaker 1: The Rumble in the Jungle takes place in nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: but you cannot really understand what all goes down in
Speaker 1: that boxingering in Zaire without first understanding what Muhammad Ali
Speaker 1: stood to win, or rather to regain in that title fight.
Speaker 1: Thus we must go back to nineteen sixty four, when
Speaker 1: a young Cassius Clay first stood in the ring fighting
Speaker 1: for his chance to claim the title of heavyweight Champion
Speaker 1: of the World. Cassius Clay was up against a serious,
Speaker 1: real life villain. As Lewis Ehrenberg recalled the champ at
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 9: Sonny Liston was a bad man. I mean that is
Speaker 9: bad in the folkloric sense. He was so good he
Speaker 9: was bad.
Speaker 1: Sonny Liston went to prison for armed robbery, sent to
Speaker 1: a hell hole that Time magazine once described as quote
Speaker 1: the bloodiest forty seven acres in America. Yet Liston thrived
Speaker 1: in that gladiator pit. In fact, his future in the
Speaker 1: fight game first opened up to him while he was
Speaker 1: locked up. The way my pops told.
Speaker 5: It to me, he was boxeding and wound guys who
Speaker 5: fixed who arranged spouts, bringing in other fighters to fight.
Speaker 5: The prisoners saw Liston fight, said that's the man we
Speaker 5: need to They went back talk to the boys, got
Speaker 5: in parolled parole from the federal prison and the condition
Speaker 5: was to them that you fight for us now.
Speaker 1: The they is the mob, and that also meant Sunny
Speaker 1: Liston had already made job.
Speaker 9: And still after coming out of prison, he attracted mob
Speaker 9: figures who wanted to help his boxing career and make
Speaker 9: money off in at the same time, and Listen began
Speaker 9: to rise in the ranks.
Speaker 1: Sonny Liston worked collections for the mafia as they waited
Speaker 1: for his fight career to take off.
Speaker 9: He was a enforcer for the Saint Louis mob, a
Speaker 9: leg breaker and a fearsome guy.
Speaker 5: You know when they say a leg breaker, Listen actually
Speaker 5: would break the leg with his fists. He would he
Speaker 5: would stretch your leg across two chairs and punch the
Speaker 5: shinbone and break it. He was known for kicking cop
Speaker 5: of acid. He beat a cop inality one time, took
Speaker 5: his gun and walked away, just left and land there.
Speaker 5: So then and then didn't he run handing on a
Speaker 5: yellow sweater. Papers is looking for a negro on a
Speaker 5: yellow sweater. That's how he found it. He didn't take
Speaker 5: it off.
Speaker 1: You see why my pops couldn't help but love him.
Speaker 1: Sonny Liston's hands were so large fifteen inches he needed
Speaker 1: custom made boxing gloves. When he sparred, he fought two
Speaker 1: and three men at a time. Sonny Liston broke bones
Speaker 1: in the ring. He had no pity or human feeling
Speaker 1: about anyone who stepped in the ring with him. Sunny
Speaker 1: Listen was absolutely merciless. Also, Liston famously hated the press.
Speaker 1: While young Cassius Clay took his inspiration from pro wrestling,
Speaker 1: Liston said of himself.
Speaker 4: A prize fight is like a cowboy movie that has
Speaker 4: to be a.
Speaker 5: Good guy and the bad guy.
Speaker 3: Only in my cowboy movie, the bad guy always win.
Speaker 1: Good to his word, Liston did win. He became the
Speaker 1: heavyweight champion of the World in nineteen sixty two, and
Speaker 1: for those who don't know boxing's history, this early sixties
Speaker 1: marked a new era for the sport, mostly due to
Speaker 1: the entrance of one man, Muhammad al Lee, then known
Speaker 1: as Cassius Clay.
Speaker 9: Nobody took Cassius Clay seriously, especially the way Sonny Liston was.
Speaker 9: I mean, just the smile of Cassius Clay made him
Speaker 9: a different sort of person. Liston was the scowl, Clay
Speaker 9: was the smile.
Speaker 1: And Clay's fast mouth talk did very little to impress
Speaker 1: anyone in the world of boxing.
Speaker 9: He attracted a lot of attention. Nobody, however, gave Clay
Speaker 9: a chance against Liston.
Speaker 1: Now from my pops, the list In Clay fight was
Speaker 1: a moment when America revealed itself in terms of who
Speaker 1: a person rooted for in the ring.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was That was an interesting moment. First, a
Speaker 5: lot of people wanted to shut Ali's mouth, Then an
Speaker 5: equal to number of people wanted Ali to beat the criminal.
Speaker 5: So at that moment, they both were favored by one
Speaker 5: faction of America or another.
Speaker 1: For the boxing insiders, though they mostly believed that Cassius Clay.
Speaker 9: He seemed too lightweight to be a heavyweight champion, and
Speaker 9: people just took him as a bragger. The sports writers
Speaker 9: in the black and the White press just felt he
Speaker 9: was a bit of a buffoon.
Speaker 1: Cassius Clay did not act the way any professional fighter
Speaker 1: was expected to act, especially a black boxer. Clay was brash, disrespectful,
Speaker 1: he talked over white reporters. What really upset many folks
Speaker 1: black and white was how Casius Clay was a new
Speaker 1: sort of proud black man.
Speaker 5: He was a shit talker that was considered poor sportsmanship,
Speaker 5: and it was like it was frowned on as calling
Speaker 5: unnecessary attention to yourself, you know. So, so he came with,
Speaker 5: oh I'm so pretty all that, guys. The people liked
Speaker 5: it at first, then he just kept on doing and
Speaker 5: then the people in the barbershops would turn on him.
Speaker 1: Where black men gathered, the talk often turned to boxing,
Speaker 1: and Cassius Clay and Sonny Listing Liston's fight skills were admired,
Speaker 1: but the man was hard to love. While Cassius Clay
Speaker 1: was new in the fight game and was fast, but
Speaker 1: just as cocky and always telling the world how pretty
Speaker 1: he was. For the workaday men of the era, regardless
Speaker 1: of race, talk like that made him hard to love
Speaker 1: for his own reasons. The champ Sonny Listen wouldn't ever
Speaker 1: agree to fight the new Lippy contender, So in order
Speaker 1: to get his chance at a title fight.
Speaker 9: Cassius Clay has to follow Listen around. Listen just doesn't
Speaker 9: take him seriously, but Cassius Clay tracks him down, ridicules
Speaker 9: him in public shows no respect.
Speaker 1: Cassius Clay showed up whenever and wherever he could find
Speaker 1: Sonny Listing. Then he'd mock Listen to his face as
Speaker 1: Clay's young fans laughed at the spectacle. Cashus Clay knew
Speaker 1: one sure way he could get a fight was to
Speaker 1: piss off Sonny Listen. No one else thought that was
Speaker 1: a good idea. It worked, though, Sonny Liston agreed to
Speaker 1: a title fight in Miami in the spring of sixty four.
Speaker 1: This first title fight tells us a great deal about
Speaker 1: where all Lee is going to go, both inside and
Speaker 1: outside the ring. Not only that, it also almost mirrors
Speaker 1: the events of the Rumble in the Jungle, and all
Speaker 1: Lee said as much to the legendary sports broadcaster Howard
Speaker 1: Cosell in an interview in the days just before he
Speaker 1: stepped into the ring for the Rumble in the Jungle.
Speaker 4: This present fight with George Foreman is only a reflection
Speaker 4: on my past fight with Sonny Liston.
Speaker 1: There was one other key parallel for the two title fights.
Speaker 9: And they thought he was going to be killed in
Speaker 9: the ring.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty four, Cassius Klay faces Sunny Liston in
Speaker 1: a championship bout in Miami, Florida. In nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: Muhammad Ali faces George Foreman in a championship bout in
Speaker 1: Kinshasa's Zaiir to Muhammad Ali the boxer in both fights,
Speaker 1: it was one story, one long fight to regain his crown,
Speaker 1: But he was two very different men in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: four and nineteen seventy four. He changed in those ten years,
Speaker 1: just as the whole world would change dramatically in many
Speaker 1: ways thanks to Ali. In Norman Mahler's book The Fight,
Speaker 1: the author focused on the value of emotion to young
Speaker 1: Casshiu's clay.
Speaker 10: Part of Ali's strength in the ring was fidelity to
Speaker 10: his mood. If when speaking to the press, a harsh
Speaker 10: and hysterical tone intoed his voice as easily as other
Speaker 10: men would light a cigarette. He was never frantic in
Speaker 10: the ring, at least not since the fight with Liston
Speaker 10: in Mya in nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 1: There were many men who were integral to Casius Clay's rise,
Speaker 1: like his trainer Angelo Dundee, who will meet later. But
Speaker 1: few were more colorful or more ever present than his cornerman,
Speaker 1: Drew Bundini Brown. He was like a second heart.
Speaker 5: True.
Speaker 9: Bundini Brown was a guy who came out of the
Speaker 9: boxing world. I mean he hung around boxing, He hung
Speaker 9: around nightlife. He hooks up with Muhammad Ali early on
Speaker 9: and it helps Aali challenge the accepted ways that a
Speaker 9: black champion should behave.
Speaker 6: And I got to hang out with him a little bit.
Speaker 6: He was a very fascinating guy.
Speaker 1: That's Gary Stromberg. He's a huge fan of the fight game.
Speaker 1: And also I.
Speaker 6: Did the public relations for festival in Zaire.
Speaker 1: And he recalls well his time spent with and near
Speaker 1: Bundini Brown. It was self evident Bundini loved Ali.
Speaker 6: I got to watch it and that was really impactful
Speaker 6: to me to watch how much he loved him. He
Speaker 6: loved him like a father, you know. I got to
Speaker 6: go to training a couple of times and watching Bundini
Speaker 6: watch Ali take punches, he suffered for it was like
Speaker 6: a father watching his son. If Ali said something that
Speaker 6: was hurtful or somebody was insulting Ali or in any
Speaker 6: kind of situation that was impactful to Ali, Bundini would
Speaker 6: get emotional about it, and if he would cry, I
Speaker 6: thought he was a remarkable guy.
Speaker 1: Bondini Brown was not only Ali's cornerman and his hype man.
Speaker 5: He was like your own personal cheerleader. And he was
Speaker 5: a trainer. He worked with Angelo Dundee, but he was
Speaker 5: like a psychological coach.
Speaker 1: Bondini Brown was also the man who first got Ali
Speaker 1: spouting poetry and dropping his famous bars, his taunting couple
Speaker 1: about his opponents. As Jonathan Ig notes.
Speaker 11: Bundini was Ali's muse in a way, and his tormentor
Speaker 11: and his best friend. And you know, Ali was a
Speaker 11: great rhymer, but Bundini was better and really helped him
Speaker 11: polish his act.
Speaker 1: The memorable taunts of Bundini gave more sting to all
Speaker 1: these punches in the ring. It's like my pop used
Speaker 1: to tell me.
Speaker 5: Bundini Brown he kept Ali focused on on hurting people.
Speaker 5: Ali is mean, but I don't think I don't think
Speaker 5: he has a natural desire to hurt people. And Bundini
Speaker 5: Brown knew he could direct that meanness.
Speaker 9: He really went along with all these poetry recitations.
Speaker 5: Say like a butterflas thing like the you gotta be
Speaker 5: a damn food to get in it ring with me. Rumble,
Speaker 5: young man, rumble, and they would say it face, face
Speaker 5: to face. It would be hollering. That shit. That was
Speaker 5: that was fun, that was entertainment.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind, this was all new. The idea of
Speaker 1: an influencer was decades away. MTV didn't even exist. No
Speaker 1: one talked about themselves the way Ali did in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four. Love it or hate it, the people ate
Speaker 1: it up. And so when young Cashus Clay prepares to
Speaker 1: fight Sunny Listen, Bundini Brown knows his fighter needs the
Speaker 1: sort of energy that only comes from good hype. At
Speaker 1: the Fighter's Way In, separated by police and boxing promoters,
Speaker 1: the two fighters, dressed in their satin boxing robes, square off.
Speaker 1: Young Casius Clay shouts at listen over the heads of cops, Hey, Sonny.
Speaker 4: You ain't nothing, You ain't got a chance.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna dance. Then Cashus Clay tells the gathered press.
Speaker 4: I predict that somebody will die to not a rightside
Speaker 4: from shop.
Speaker 9: Clay just uses the way in in a way that
Speaker 9: no fighter had to just create havoc and get to listen. Psychologically,
Speaker 9: he and Bundini are yelling and screaming at the way
Speaker 9: in Rumble young Man, Rumble and roaring, and it just
Speaker 9: people think that Clay has gone nuts.
Speaker 1: Cashus Clay is so fired up most of the boxing
Speaker 1: press believe the young fighters trying to mask his fears
Speaker 1: of facing sunny Liston.
Speaker 9: But then when he gets back to the dressing room,
Speaker 9: they take his temperatuist pulse rate and it goes down immediately,
Speaker 9: so people have concluded but since then that this was calculated.
Speaker 9: He wasn't afraid. He was running a game on listen,
Speaker 9: essentially to undermine his confidence.
Speaker 1: You see, Cashus Clay starts to fight his opponents inside
Speaker 1: their minds, long before they ever step inside the ring.
Speaker 1: The night of their title fight finally arrives, the stars
Speaker 1: gather in Miami. The world turns its attention to see
Speaker 1: if there will be a new heavyweight champion crown and
Speaker 1: to see if Clay is all talk or not there
Speaker 1: with him. Cassius Clay has another boxing legend at his side,
Speaker 1: his trainer, Angelo Dundee. He runs a historic boxing gym
Speaker 1: down in Miami Beach Dundee takes an interest in the
Speaker 1: young Olympic champ and helps turn Casius Clay into a
Speaker 1: true contender. Now, before the ring bell dings for the
Speaker 1: World Heavyweight Championship bout, Dundee knows his guy is ready,
Speaker 1: and so on February twenty fifth, nineteen sixty four, Casius
Speaker 1: Clay steps into the ring to face Sunny Listing.
Speaker 9: It opens with Clay just peppering Listing with jabs and
Speaker 9: right crosses. I mean he's moving and grooving, and Listing
Speaker 9: is you need to look older and older and clumsier,
Speaker 9: which is very surprising because this is a very deadly fighter.
Speaker 1: Rounds one through four are close as far as the
Speaker 1: judge's scoring, and the audience is a gay stunned by
Speaker 1: how Cashius Clay is cool as a cucumber in a
Speaker 1: bowl of hot sauce, to quote my man MCA. Now,
Speaker 1: in these first four rounds, Ali keeps the upper hand
Speaker 1: battling against this villain that just about any sane man
Speaker 1: would fear, and then something unexpected happens.
Speaker 9: It's only in the fifth round that the bout is
Speaker 9: in doubt because something gets in Cassius's eye and he
Speaker 9: can't see very well.
Speaker 1: It's a caustic substance. It stings and it burns. Clay
Speaker 1: can't see much of anything, so.
Speaker 9: He says to his trainer, Angelo Dundee, take off the gloves.
Speaker 9: I can't see.
Speaker 5: Cut my gloves off.
Speaker 4: I want to prove to the world there's dirty work
Speaker 4: of foot.
Speaker 1: But Dangelo Dundee tells his fighter mid round, whoa, whoa,
Speaker 1: back up, baby, Come on now, this is for the title.
Speaker 5: What are you doing?
Speaker 8: Sit down?
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Dundee still needs to figure out what is in
Speaker 1: his boxer's eyes as Dundee tails it, so I get
Speaker 1: him down, I get to sponge and I pour the
Speaker 1: water into his eyes, trying to cleanse whatever's there. But
Speaker 1: before I did that, I put my pinky in the
Speaker 1: eye and I put it into my eye. It burned
Speaker 1: like hell. There was something caustic in both eyes. Dundee
Speaker 1: also knows if Cash's Clay doesn't come out of his corner,
Speaker 1: the fight will be called.
Speaker 9: So Dundee says, you're going out there. You just keep moving.
Speaker 1: Dundee shoves his fighter back out into the ring to
Speaker 1: face list it half blinded.
Speaker 9: By the end of the round, it clears and in
Speaker 9: the next round of sixth Clay is hitting him from
Speaker 9: all angles and Listening cannot respond, and the fight is stopped.
Speaker 1: The ref announces the new heavyweight champion of the world.
Speaker 1: Cash's Clay runs to the ropes and shouts at the
Speaker 1: press and the news cameras.
Speaker 5: I shook up the wild. Ah, I shook up the world.
Speaker 5: I'm taking the world.
Speaker 10: Ah.
Speaker 5: Pretty, I'm a bad man.
Speaker 1: He's just twenty two years old.
Speaker 9: Cassius Clay becomes the heavyweight champion of the world and
Speaker 9: becomes a major cultural and political figure as a result.
Speaker 1: Sonny Liston was a big reason boxing was synonymous with
Speaker 1: the mob in the early sixties. He didn't even try
Speaker 1: to hide it. Liston was also why folks shouted that
Speaker 1: the fix was in when he faced a young Cassius
Speaker 1: Clay a second time in nineteen sixty five in Lewiston, Maine.
Speaker 1: That fight ended in the first round when Ali threw
Speaker 1: what he called an anchor punch that caught Liston off guard.
Speaker 1: Others referred to it as the phantom punch since no
Speaker 1: one really saw it. What they did see was Listen
Speaker 1: fall down on his back. When he struggled to get
Speaker 1: back up, he rolled over and was counted out to
Speaker 1: this day, Folks like my pop, they won't let it go.
Speaker 5: First of all, he didn't beat Saint Listen. That was
Speaker 5: the first I've seen fixed flights in my life, and
Speaker 5: that was a fixed fight. I don't give it dwn
Speaker 5: what anybody says. Ali never knocked out one more person
Speaker 5: with one punch in his whole career, and the one
Speaker 5: he did was Sunny Listen. No, and the odds are
Speaker 5: nine to one on this inside.
Speaker 1: That's a tempting payoff for a mobster looking to fix
Speaker 1: a fight, which is why, as Mark Krigel points out.
Speaker 12: The fixed fights were not a rumor, was a way
Speaker 12: of doing business. But it also becomes part of the
Speaker 12: folklore of boxing. And I think that the role of
Speaker 12: the mob was really not unlike Bud Schulberg's were on
Speaker 12: the Waterfront, whatever that famous speech is, you know, that's
Speaker 12: pretty much.
Speaker 1: How it worked. In the film On the Waterfront, Marlon
Speaker 1: Brando plays Terry Molloy, a former boxer turned doc worker.
Speaker 1: Rod Steiger plays his brother Charlie, a gangster who works
Speaker 1: for the mob boss and fix his fights. In that
Speaker 1: famous taxi cab scene, Terry tells his gangster Big brother
Speaker 1: Charlie that he should have looked out for him, acting
Speaker 1: his ass off. Brando says, you don't understand. I could
Speaker 1: have had class, I could have been a contender. I
Speaker 1: could have been somebody instead of a bum, which is
Speaker 1: what I am. Let's face it, it was you, Charlie.
Speaker 1: That scene was still resonating in the culture when Sonny
Speaker 1: Liston looked like he took a dive, so it was
Speaker 1: easy for boxing fans to shout the fight's fixed. And
Speaker 1: due to this shadow cast over the two Listen fights,
Speaker 1: it would take Casius Clay a long time to shake
Speaker 1: the whispers that he was an illegitimate champ. In fact,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be until the Rumble in the Jungle in
Speaker 1: Zyere that that kind of talk fully stopped. But for now,
Speaker 1: legitimate or not, Ali was the heavyweight champion of the
Speaker 1: world and the stage was set for new phase as
Speaker 1: the people's champ and the boxer who did not want
Speaker 1: to fight. On the next episode of Rumble.
Speaker 3: Suddenly he's like rubbing shoulders with Miles, and he's meeting
Speaker 3: Monk and all these dudes.
Speaker 9: This guy is dangerous. He's speaking his mind.
Speaker 4: I know where I'm going and I know the truth,
Speaker 4: and I don't have to be what you want me.
Speaker 5: To be as black power shit. You know, like this
Speaker 5: is some more shit to fuck with people about.
Speaker 8: Rumble is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 8: Rumble is written and hosted by Zaren Burnett. The third
Speaker 8: produced and directed by Julia Chriscau. Sound design and scoring
Speaker 8: by Jesse Niswanger. Original music by Jordan Manley and TJ. Merritt.
Speaker 8: Our senior producer is Amelia Brock. Series concept by Gary Stromberg.
Speaker 8: Executive producers are Jason English, Sean t Toone, Gary Stromberg,
Speaker 8: Virginia Prescott, L C. Crowley, and Brandon Barr. Production manager
Speaker 8: Daisy Church, fact checker Savannah Hugley. Additional production by Claire Keating.
Speaker 8: Legal services provided by Canoel han Lee PC. Casting director
Speaker 8: Julia Chriscau. Episode one cast Abraham Amka as Mohammad Ali,
Speaker 8: Jonah Weston as Norman Mailer, John Washington as Sonny Liston.
Speaker 8: Casting support services provided by Breakdown Express. Special thanks to
Speaker 8: Lewis Ehrenberg. Check out his book Rumble in the Jungle.
Speaker 8: It's a great resource. Also thanks to Jonathan I for
Speaker 8: his book Ali A Life, and finally, thanks to Zarenz
Speaker 8: pops Zeke who grounds this material like no one else.
Speaker 8: If you like the show, let us know, like subscribe,
Speaker 8: leave five star reviews. It really helps. Also check out
Speaker 8: our show note for a full list of reference materials.