Last night I finished reading The Fight by Norman Mailer. I had picked up the book at our local used book sale two weeks earlier. (Oddly, it’s the British first edition – what’s it doing in Canada?) I love boxing and love books about boxing, particularly Muhammad Ali. This is the first time I’ve read anything by Mailer and I was intrigued to see what his writing would be like.

Well, I loved his actual round-by-round account of this amazing 1974 fight between Ali and George Foreman in Zaire but was really disappointed how bloated and egotistical Mailer’s writing style was. The other appealing bit about the book was thinking about the press corps that turned up to cover the fight – it included Mailer, George Plimpton of Paris Review fame, the immortal Hunter S Thompson, football star Jim Brown and British TV star David Frost. In many ways, all the characters surrounding the two boxers are more interesting than the actual fighters.

Mailer never once refers to the fight as ‘The Rumble in The Jungle’. Famously, Ali went on to describe his strategy as ‘rope-a-dope’ where he fought most of the match leaning against the ropes allowing the powerful Foreman to punch himself out (and showing Ali’s amazing capacity for absorbing punishment). During the fight, Mailer continually compares Foreman to a bull until he begins to understand Ali’s strategy.

Naturally, I went to Youtube to rewatch the fight again. I was aghast. The opening round is one of the most brutal things I’ve ever seen. Perhaps only Hearns and Hagler’s opening round in ‘The War’ in 1985 can compare. Also Ali’s clinical knockout of the exhausted Foreman at the end is breathtaking.