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“Ali, Bomaye! Ali, Bomaye!” The chant rumbles around the Stade 20 Mai, increasing in volume and intensity. It is the start of the 8th round. For the past three the crowd has been subdued as George Foreman, the heavyweight champion of the world, crashed blow after crunching blow into Mohammed Ali’s midriff. But all those huge punches have taken a toll.
“That all you got, George?” Ali taunts.
The atmosphere has changed in the stadium. It is no longer fearful that Ali, their hero Ali, is going to be beaten by this extraordinary young fighter. Ali comes out in the 8th looking the fresher of the two. Foreman throws a couple of tired punches. The referee pulls them apart again and again; Forman is still doing all the work. The fight moves across the ring. Foreman lifts his arms like his gloves are made of lead and his arms water. Twenty seconds to go in the round, 19, 18. Ali moves from his corner. A flurry of blows opens up Foreman’s exhausted defense. 17, 16, 15, 14. Foreman stumbles under the leather hail of Ali’s fists. 13, 12. Ali fires a final right cross. Forman staggers, twirls, falls. Ali pulls back for a final punch that he never throws.
“Ali, Bomaye! Ali, Bomaye!”
In 1975, that was boxing and it bestrode the world of sport as its greatest spectator event. It is now 42 years since the legendary Rumble in the Jungle and boxing has tumbled far from those heights. While over the intervening years we have seen extraordinary boxers, extraordinary rivalries—and it is always the rivalries that made this sport: Bowe/Holyfield, Morales/Barreira, Pacquiao/Marquez—and extraordinary fights latterly, we are treated only to the farce of big money fighting. If Ali-Frazier was its apotheosis, Mayweather-Mcgregor was something of a nadir. Floyd ‘Money’ Mayweather is the greatest fighter of his generation but represents everything that is wrong with the sport in 2017.
What is it about boxing? Why is watching two people hitting each other in an elevated canvas floored ring, cheered on by a baying audience, considered sport at all? People die in the ring. They suffer irreparable brain damage. They bleed for our entertainment. It is savage. It is brutal. But in that savagery, it can be glorious.
Boxing at its best runs the spectrum from bloody wars of attrition, where the two fighters might as well be boxing in a ring only a couple of yards square, to tactical battles that more resemble bruising games of chess. The latter is Mayweather’s great skill: reading the ring, reading the fighter opposite him, fighting like smoke, like a ghost, and counter punching like he’s throwing rocks. His last fight, with Ultimate Fighting Champion (UFC), Conor Mcgregor was the most valuable fight in history generating hundreds of millions of dollars. Mayweather even dragged it out so the millions of paying viewers would get their money’s worth. And that is not boxing. That is fighting for money. They are not the same thing.
It is what drives boxers to compete, to risk everything, that makes the sport so compelling. Perhaps more than any other, boxing is the sport for young men to drag themselves out of poverty, or the ghetto, or the gutter, call it what you will. In its rigor, its discipline, and routine; in its toil, sweat, and yes, in its blood spilled, boxing makes those boys men. Remember as you sit there with your bucket of chips and cold beers cheering or booing, that the men fighting before you didn’t have those luxuries while they were growing up. There are mean streets out there; boxing is the escape, even if you don’t make it to the big time, the values it instills are irreplaceable. In the risk-everything, no-place-to-hide world of the ring, the boxers reveal more about themselves than any other sportsman.
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What Next?
In an age where football is in the spotlight for the way its physicality damages players’ brains so severely, that when they do finally pick up that gun to end the torment, they shoot themselves in the chest to preserve those brains for research, what place can boxing possibly have? There is no denying that it is violent, that people get injured, that careers are destroyed by one unlucky punch. Such is the nature of boxing. But sport is dangerous. Boxing is no more so than other physical sports; football, or rugby, or those sports where other impacts can be equally lethal; Formula One, horse racing, Nascar.
Boxing has, in its stripped back viscerality, a purity and nobility that fascinates. A great rivalry, a great bout has everything that a spectator sport demands. Rules, tactics, strategies, controversies; breathtaking courage, stamina, determination. Literally blood, sweat, and tears. At its best, boxing still has the power to be the greatest of all spectator sports.
“Ali, Bomaye!”
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Read more, here on GMP:
Muhammad Ali: A Good Men Project Compendium
Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE)
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Photo credit: Getty Images