The Fight

by Guest Tue Aug 23, 2016 7:44 pm

In 1974 in Kinshasa, Zaïre, two African American boxers were paid five million dollars apiece to fight each other. One was Muhammad Ali, the aging but irrepressible “professor of boxing.” The other was George Foreman, who was as taciturn as Ali was voluble. Observing them was Norman Mailer, a commentator of unparalleled energy, acumen, and audacity. Whether he is analyzing the fighters’ moves, interpreting their characters, or weighing their competing claims on the African and American souls, Mailer’s grasp of the titanic battle’s feints and stratagems—and his sensitivity to their deeper symbolism—makes this book a masterpiece of the literature of sport.

https://www.amazon.com/Fight-Norman-Mailer/dp/0812986121/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1471998660&sr=8-1&keywords=the+fight

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This book is about the Rumble in the Jungle, the famous fight between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali which took place in Kinshasa, Zaire. The author, Norman Mailer, is the only person to have won one Pulitzer prize for fiction and another Pulitzer prize for non-fiction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Mailer

There exists a Norman Mailer society to promote Mailer's views. To get some idea of what the book is about, watch this video:

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xo4l8l_leon-gast-1996-when-we-were-kings-partie-2_sport

Mailer is the man in the video explaining what a "right hand lead" is all about. Besides the actual fight, Mailer draws interesting character sketches of all the prominent figures associated with this fight including Ali and Foreman but also Dundee, Bundini, Don King, and others.He also writes about what he saw and observed and experienced living in Zaire and he writes about the two and a half mile early morning run he took with Ali just a few days before the actual fight after having stayed up all night eating and drinking late into the night. He was 51 at this time.

He was treated with a lot of respect because people had come to know that he had won a million dollar contract for his new book. This was of course big money in the 1970s. It was felt by the fight enthusiasts that a man who can make so much money with his brains without having to fight was a man worth respecting.

Mailer is at his best in this book when writing about other people and when explaining something like what a "right hand lead" is and how Ali fought this fight like a chess player would. (The chess analogy is only to be seen in the book, and not in the movie 'When we were kings', the final portion of which may be seen in the link i have given in this post.) Mailer is at his worst when he is introspecting, and he does this a lot in this book, much to my annoyance.

by Guest Tue Aug 23, 2016 8:02 pm

the person other than Mailer commenting on the fight in the video link i gave is this gentleman:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Plimpton

by Guest Tue Aug 23, 2016 9:29 pm

In Mailer's book 'The Fight', Mailer writes that by far the best round in the Ali vs Foreman fight in Rumble in the Jungle was Round 5. Watch it yourself (from 37:00 onwards) to know what boxing is all about:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55AasOJZzDE

by Guest Tue Aug 23, 2016 10:01 pm

watch ali's interview with Sir David Frost where he says:

"I've done something special for this fight. I've wrestled with an alligator. I've tussled with a whale. I done handcuffed lightening, thrown thunder in jail. Now you know i am bad, only last week I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalized a brick. I am so mean i make medicine sick."

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He would make all these braggadocio remarks before every fight in order to promote his fights and make more money for the organizers.

by silvermani Tue Aug 23, 2016 10:45 pm

Didnt he also say something like be at the thrilla in manila where I whup the gorilla? In today's politically sensitive environment such words would have drawn gasps of horror and shock.

by Guest Tue Aug 23, 2016 10:50 pm

silvermani wrote:Didnt he also say something like be at the thrilla in manila where I whup the gorilla? In today's politically sensitive environment such words would have drawn gasps of horror and shock.

"its going to be a thrilla and a chilla and a killa when i get that gorilla in manilla." actually, i think it would be as acceptable today as it was back then as long as its a black person using these words against another black person.

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