Memories of Ali the King

Movie brings back a title fight covered 23 years ago

Author: By Bud Collins

Date: SUNDAY, October 12, 1997

Page: M10

Section: Travel

``Could have,'' says a neighborhood lady, Constanza Borde. Her husband, Dom, nods with, ``But you'll have to wait for the next life to ask him. Same with Joyce, Stein, Fitzgerald, Picasso, and the rest of those `Lost Generation' foundlings.''

``Maud Morgan could have been right here, too. She was one of them,'' says friend Aurelio, citing the painter, Boston's luminous and illuminating 94-year-old art treasure-in-progress. ``I'd ask her, but she's probably too busy creating to return my call. What a vintage champ! Maud's the George Foreman of painters. Aging winners. Great right hands -- ''

``Foreman?'' interjects Constanza. ``Did you see the movie? Fantastic. After that I had to read Norman Mailer's earlier narrative, `The Fight.' Paperback. Also fantastic.''

I'd heard of the flick she means, ``When We Were Kings.'' A 1997 Oscar winner, it documents the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman heavyweight title fight scene that I covered in Zaire 23 years ago, dubbed ``The Rumble in the Jungle'' by Ali. Regrettably I missed the Boston run.

``It's here now, a theater in Montparnasse. Go!'' commands Constanza.

Her directive stirs the neural mush. As did the recent overthrow and subsequent death of the longtime despot Mobuto -- couldn't have happened to a more deserving guy -- and the further bloodshed and turmoil brought on by yet another dictator, Kabila.

Poor Zaire, formerly the Belgian Congo before re-baptism by Mobutu. Not even Zaire any more. Papered over again as just plain ``Congo'' by Kabila, who may think his massacres in a country by any other name will smell more sweetly.

I think back to the kind and welcoming people under the cruel and greedy thumb of Mobutu Sese Seko as we hurry to catch the film's next showing, and wonder if they can ever regain the joyful spirit that was on display when Ali and Foreman turned worldwide attention on their homeland.

Inky clouds bump through the sky as we exit the Metro. They remind me of Mbula, the rainy season that Ali beat by minutes in knocking out and dethroning the younger, favored champ, Foreman, in the eighth round. He chortled that Allah would show a powerful sign of approval -- and the cloudburst, flooding the outdoor stadium, was it.

``I knew the rain would wait for me to win,'' Ali exclaimed hours later. Was this American king's babbling a reworking of French king Louis XV's prophecy: ``Apres moi, le deluge''?

The splendid film, long forgotten but disinterred and successfully marketed, uncorks a deluge of memories of two autumn journeys to central Africa in 1974. Though an unlikely setting for such an extravaganza, it all came to pass because the con man with the inverted waterfall coiffure, boxing promoter Don King, hustled the conscienceless man in the leopardskin toque, Mobutu, out of $3 million to guarantee the site. No more than ``chump change,'' as Ali would put it, for a tyrant who drained his countrymen of billions.

Journey I in September was a flop. No fight. Foreman's eyebrow was gashed in training by a sparring partner's elbow. Just as well, because the capital, Kinshasa -- hardly the jungle portrayed by Ali's hype -- nonetheless wasn't ready to connect and communicate as the rest of the world demanded. Later discovery that the the TV and press installations were insufficient to get the message across the planet meant it would have been a secret and losing proposition.

Postponement to a late October date remedied that shortcoming and Foreman's eye but risked the predictably moist wrath of Mbula. No problem. Expressed by Zaireans in French, ``pas de problemme,'' it was heard over and over again from the fight's carefree press agent, Tsimpupu wa Tsimpupu, and soon recognized as the confident -- and empty -- answer to any question. ``It's the `manana' of this country,'' said Angelo Dundee, Ali's trainer.

Described in dictatorspeak as Mobutu's ``gift'' to his beloved people, the fight may for a while have taken the minds of many off their situation, to which ``no problem'' definitely didn't apply. Journey I did immerse us in the surreal cult of Mobutism, the brilliant PR godding-up of a steely mortal. TV and radio were recitals to his glory. As a special-effects deity, he floated in the clouds at the opening and closing of TV programming.

And he did descend from the clouds to appear at a public viewing of the imposing young kings, Ali and Foreman, an open house for a feverishly cheering multitude of 100,000 at the stadium days after Foreman had been cut. This prelim was a freebie for the locals, most of whom would be shut out of the fight by high-priced tickets and closed-circuit TV beamed elsewhere.

Entering via helicopter, Mobutu was hailed by frenetic dancers and chanters in native garb, and escorted to his box by heavily armed guards to be greeted by the two fighters. Soon enough he was upstaged by Ali, a common experience for ``the other guy'' on any bill with Muhammad, but the boss didn't appear overly amused.

It was the Mu and Mo Show for an anxious instant as Ali pushed through soldiers bearing machine guns to hug his host. Alarmed at such an informal and intimate thrust at their highness, the gunners seemed perplexed whether to press triggers, the panic button, or the famous flesh themselves. Foreman stood by stoically, perhaps hoping it would be the first option.

Pregnant pause. Then Mo smiled broadly at Mu to let his people know all was well, and hugged back. Cheering resumed. Their hearts belonged to Mu if their lives to Mo.

The upstaging accelerated, but in another direction as Ali and Foreman took to the running track, fronting a gang of eager spectators in a victory lap. But Ali, no amateur as propagandist himself, turned it into an anti-Foreman parade. He'd picked up the phrase ``bouma-ye!'' (``kill him!'') in the Lingala dialect of the 'hood, and became a cheerleader for his own cause. ``Bouma-ye!'' he shouted, pointing at Foreman.

Quickly, thousands responded, intoning, ``Ali -- bouma-ye! Ali -- bouma-ye!'' again and again as the huge block called Foreman, 6-3, 220, seemed to erode before their eyes.

Ali won the psych before he won the fight. In captivating Zaireans, he became one of them, somehow cleverly transforming equally black Foreman to invading honky. Foreman wasn't lovable then. A sullen, suspicious 26-year-old in silver-studded bib overalls, squiring a fearsome police dog, he clearly resented the way Ali painted him the bad guy. It was years before George became today's jovial and avuncular middle-aged huckster, still battling selected opponents while the dashing Ali has been shackled and slowed by Parkinson's disease.

Getting out of Zaire the first time wasn't simple, since promoter King had booked American reporters on Air Zaire -- he got a cut, of course. The airline was revealed to be a one-jet fleet, a plane available to paying customers only when Mobutu and his family didn't need it to go shopping in Europe. The wait was several days. The fighters couldn't get out. Mobutu was taking no chances on liberating them before the show went on.

Journey II was made reasonably uneventful by avoiding Mobutu's airspace. Returning reporters found the fighters and their retinues, stranded two months, suffering from homesickness, and other maladies, some cured by penicillin that Dr. Ferdie Pacheco, Ali's physician, brought in ``to ease the romantically inclined.''

``Worse than jail,'' Ali rated the extended stay, ``and I know. I been there.''

One fringe participant who didn't mind staying was a journalist known to colleagues as Dr. Gonzo. ``Best, cheapest marijuana I've ever encountered,'' was his booster's tribute to Zaire. Dr. G. may still be there.

I am there again in the movie house. The fight goes on at the zany, sleepy hour of 4:15 a.m. to reach East Coast US viewers at 10:15 the night before. Foreman goes to sleep just before 5, sedated by Ali's astounding flurry of combinations, long enough -- 10 seconds -- to lose his title. As promised, Ali ``would out-think George like Einstein and superiorally beat him.'' The ``Rumble'' ends with the first thunderclap of the morning, shortly followed by the real thing as Mbula knocks out Kinshasa at dawn.

Smiling, I recall the wet retreat from the stadium after typing my story. Shoes off, trousers rolled up, reporters waded to higher ground through knee-deep torrents.

It is raining as we leave the theater, but Mbula doesn't visit Paris. I keep my shoes on.