An incident in his life (1997)

To see "When We Were Kings" is to be
ashamed, amazed and awed, in that order.
Forgive me, please, my ignorance.

A punch of Muhammad Ali's was once timed in four one-
Hundredths of a second.

One never throws a right lead to
a professional boxer
Says Norman Mailer for that
would be to insult him.
The right lead takes longer to reach
your opponent, apparently,
And thus to throw it is to say
"You're slow, man, you can't see
this coming, o son,
You're just chugging and ha! ha!
Do I have contempt for you."

Now George Foreman, in those days,
He was built like earth-moving equipment
And he scooped out a hole in the heavy bag
With his shovel-like fists like
no-one had ever seen.

In the film you get to see him
do this and the ponderous blow
by blow has the rhythm
of the pile-driver, the impact
arrival of the swing-ball and he
Has the body-build of the bulldozer
And the skin of the heavy bag ripples from
The epicenter of his landing punches
While his trainer grunts with the effort
Of holding the bag under the impact
Of his landing fists. At the end the bag
Has a moon-like crater in it, is tipped up
from its base. To be
A man watching this is to think of one's own arms
As matchsticks by comparison and (honestly?)
to feel weak at the knees.

What I notice first about Muhammad Ali
Is how handsome he is; how finely carved the face,
full front,
Profile and three-quarters. And then how every part
of his face
Conveys what he wants it to convey; every part
Reacts in its place to what he experiences at the
moment.
It is the face of one, I swear I thought this,
In whom the trinity has been unified.

And he dances.
And he floats.
And he will sweep down on George
Foreman the bulldozer
And bury him in a sandstorm
And mighty George Foreman
Will be swallowed up and
Never be seen again.
So he says
Again and again and again
To all who want to interview him
And they all do; George Plympton,
Norman Mailer, those whitest of white men,
For he is a poet, too, his voice an instrument
That poetry, greedily, uses to find its expression
And he is joyful, so they all want to hear him,
For he makes them glad, that is,
glad to be human,
For he is human, too, so we
must be like him, somewhere.

So he says it, joyful in his mocking of Foreman,
Again and again and again,
In between
Being a hero to the people of Zaire
For refusing to fight
the people of a third-world country
(for which act he was sentenced
to five years in prison and
forced to relinquish his world title,
which means this is the comeback
attempt, only now he is old and Foreman young),
In between
Telling the delegations of the people of Zaire that
they have a dignity in their poverty
that the black, American poor have lost,
In between
expressing the hope that his victory
will allow him to help the poor
of the black community
In America,
In between being a handsome man
Who is witty, charming
and affectionate,
In between answering
When asked what he wants to say
To the children of the world on live TV
That they should live cleanly and then
With no pause in his thought that they
Should not eat candy because what
we really need to do
Is wup Mr. Tooth Decay
And he has three rotten teeth
And he is pointing to them
In his mouth, big hand in his big mouth
Huge biceps appearing as he bends his arm
and I now
Think of my own brain as the head of a matchstick
And I feel very small indeed.

And as I watch, I think, Damn!
This is one fine man
And this is exemplified
In his response to Howard Cosell who,
In the clumsy, cliche-laden speech
Of the falsely-emotive, false-friend
Sportscaster writes him off, over five, long
Minutes, to the television audience and claims
He hasn't a prayer. Fool

Says Ali, all I need is a prayer
For if that prayer reaches the right ears
Not only will George Foreman fall
But mountains will fall
Which he says on live TV, laughing, with
His finger pointing straight at
The rotten heart of America
And is not only clever in itself
But clever as a retort, for Cosell
Said he had not a prayer, not that
All he had was a prayer,
But only long after you notice
The disconnect, so swift he is in his words
As his punches.

And Norman Mailer says
The sparring partners of George Foreman
Would not for their (implied miserable)
$50 a day, throw George right leads.
For to throw a right lead
To a professional boxer
Is to insult him.
For it takes longer to reach its destination and it says
"Fellar, you're too slow to be fighting me,
Man, you blinked, you can't see
And, son, do I have contempt for you."

In the first round Ali throws 12 right leads
And many, many, many connect.
Foreman, the young man, embarrassed beyond measure
becomes irrational
And the bell rings. Nor has Ali danced.

In the following rounds Ali "goes to the ropes"
Which is to say
He leans back on the ropes so far
According to George Plympton, whitest of white men,
"that he looks like a man leaning
from a window to see what's on his roof"
And Foreman hits him with his shovel-like fists
Hits him like a sliding heavy-bag
While the crowd watch silently
(because to "go to the ropes"
is be halfway to the canvas)
In the open-air stadium of the capital city of Zaire
Above the dictator's underground detention cells
As the monsoon rains draw closer by the minute
(No, I am not making this up. How could I?).

Now Mailer says, and he was there, ringside,
With Plympton, Mailer says that
Every time Ali and Foreman came off the ropes
Ali would speak to Foreman and he would say
"Now, George, I'm surprised at how soft you're hitting,"
And, "George, you're not popping popcorn here,"
And it is true because in the slow-mo
Of the fight you can see Ali talking
Directly into Foreman's ear
when they bounce off the ropes
With Ali's arm crooked affectionately
Around Foreman's head, and he looks
Like a man calmly dictating into
a pocket tape-recorder
Not a man who has been
Taking punches from
Ams whirling like
The connecting rods
On the wheels
Of an angry locomotive.

George Foreman wears out. Sand gets in the gears.
He grinds along more and more slowly and shoosh!
Comes to a halt,
Spent, ashen-faced,
Lowering his head, glaring dully at Ali.

Earlier in the movie, in the middle of
A free-running speech, Ali has said
"I am a matador, he is the bull,"
And now he steps forward across the sand
And administers the coup de grace. This,
Realize the whitest of white men, is the culmination
Of a strategy and they cannot believe it
Because he has not taken them
Into his confidence and they did not know
what he was going to do.

(And even now they won't believe it,
That Ali foxed them with his sandstorm,
That they, whitest of white men,
Were elegantly misdirected by the valet,
Who was the hero in disguise,
To the furthest parking lot from the truth.)

George Foreman goes down and down and down,
Down to the canvas, down to a two-year depression
From which he almost fails to recover and Muhammad Ali
Is once again the champion of the world and
Muhammad Ali is, once again, the champion of the world.

The crowd chant, "Ali, bomaye"
Which means "Ali, kill him", which
He has encouraged them to chant
during his training and which,
One-hundred-thousand-voices-strong,
Called forth by him,
Rejuvenates him at the end of round one,
When those terrible right leads did not put
George Foreman on the canvas and he knew
he would have to turn to Plan B.

Within moments of the end of the fight
The monsoon rains arrive and the dressing room
Is three feet deep in water. George Plympton
Is amazed that on the way back to the hotel
People line the streets, "in the rain!", he says,
Chanting, "Ali, bomaye, Ali, bomaye."
Ali stays up all night, "I'm told," says Mailer,
Talking to the people of Zaire
"Simply and with dignity," says Plympton.

I wish you could see the speed of his punches.
It is the right leads of round one I remember.
No-one has thrown a right lead at George
In two years says the announcer, perplexed,
Nor is Ali dancing.

They played the right-lead throw
In slo-mo and I do declare that
Muhammad Ali in Nineteen Seventy-Four
As I see him in that film at that moment
Moved beyond being a handsome, witty, articulate man,
a heavyweight-boxer athlete,
a political spokesman,
As Norman Mailer belatedly ("My God!") realized he was,
and became
An immortal, which is much more interesting.

See, the right hand lead he throws is effortless.
You can only see this in the slo-mo.
In real-time, it's a real fast punch and bam!
George's head rocks back and he gets a left, too,
For his trouble. But in slo-mo
Ali moves his fist forward into a space
That opens and waits for him to put his arm into it.
He moves his fist forward because this is what
The future requires. His face is the serene face
Of the Buddha and why not? He has seen through
The illusion of time; he has understood that
Immortality is not a "lasting forever" but a
"Never taking into account".

Ali has dyslexia, but George Plympton
Remembers him speaking eloquently, subsequently,
To a Harvard graduating class.
'You have had the opportunity
Of an education greater than mine.
Go out and turn the world to a better place.'
Is his message and then, at the end,
Some kid yells, "Give us a poem."
For that talk is the part they can understand:
Entertaining and, they feel, in their service.

The Buddha replies,
Into their expectant silence,
After they have settled like leaves settle
after being stirred by the wind,
Replies, into the air of Cambridge, Massachusetts,
"Me? Oui!"
This is the message of the Buddha.
This is why I say, forgive me, please, my ignorance.