“Rumble in the Jungle” – Muhammad Ali vs. George Foreman: Hype and Reality

Do you know Eliud Kipchoge? The Kenyan long-distance runner won the Berlin Marathon in September 2022 and set a world record for a short time, which was already broken by his compatriot Kelvin Kiptum in October 2023, who ran 34 seconds faster in the Chicago marathon. In the world of competitive sports, spectacular victories are constantly being achieved and new records are being set. But when does this become a world event or even a once-in-a-century event?

One such event was the “Rumble in the Jungle” boxing match: the men’s heavyweight world championship bout in 1974 in Kinshasa, the capital of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo). In tropical heat, George Foreman and Muhammad Ali dueled in front of 80,000 spectators for the world title in professional boxing. It was the first major professional sports event on the African continent that could be followed around the world via press coverage and television broadcast.

Genesis of a battle of the century

The boxing match “Rumble in the Jungle” became an epochal event because it stands for black power and black emancipation: on the night of October 30, 1974, the black American Vietnam conscientious objector defeated Ali – world-famous for his statement “No Viet Cong ever called me nigger” – his opponent Foreman, also a black boxer, who, however, posed with a Belgian shepherd dog, a symbol of Belgian colonial rule, in post-colonial Africa. The Soviet sports newspaper “Sovetski Sport” therefore commented: “Muhammad Ali’s victory over George Foreman is a symbol of his courage and his loyalty to his principles.”

Referee Zack Clayton was also not chosen at random. He was the first African-American to receive a referee’s license in the United States in 1949. The whole boxing spectacle was orchestrated by black boxing promoter Don King. His later career as the “King of the Twilight,” as the sports journalist Bertram Job dubbed him, began in this mega-fight. There is the unflattering assessment of King: “If you have a quarter, he wants the first 26 cents of it.” It is questionable whether the constellation that existed at that time would have even come about without his ambition and greed.

Bertram Job, “FAZ” boxing journalist and author of the visually stunning work “Ali vs. Foreman – 50 Years,” describes the sporting situation in his book: “A USA Olympic champion from 1968 against an Olympic champion from 1960, a powerful, undefeated puncher against a gifted stylist and strategist. From a sporting perspective, it was unclear before the fight whether Ali would still be in the same class at the end of the 1960s, after his three-year break due to his conscientious objection and at the age of 32.

David versus Goliath

But in this fight Ali won, as Job summarizes, “brain over brawn, brains over brawn: that was the key to success in many fights that would later be called historic.” It also fits that, as Job corrects in his book, the “Rumble in the Jungle” was not marketed in advance as a “fight of the century”. For the betting providers, Foreman was the clear favorite with odds of 3:1 and the boxing summit was not seen as a fight between two equal competitors. So did the fight become an event because it repeated the – politically charged – story of David against Goliath, in which the physically weaker one also emerged victorious due to his cunning?

No, it wasn’t like that. Ali was already ahead on the scorecards until Foreman knocked him down to win. A computer analysis, which became technically possible ten years after the fight, also showed that Ali had increasingly taken control round after round. Ali’s knockout victory over Foreman was the result of an adept fighting strategy and was therefore neither a ruse nor a mystery.

Pop culture processing is also helpful in ensuring that a contemporary historical event is burned into the collective memory. One such treatment was the documentary “When We Were Kings” by Leon Gast from 1996. He brought around a hundred employees with him to the Congo to capture everything on film from the weeks before the fight in Kinshasa. But it took a good twenty years (due to disputes over money, including with Don King) until the film was shown in cinemas. For this he was awarded the highest awards available for this genre.

Motive der Mega-Events

Ever since the World Cup in Qatar, many sports fans have been asking about the motives of the financiers of mega sporting events that cost increasingly absurd sums of money. In this respect, too, the fight in the African jungle in 1974 set new standards: both boxers received a fee of five million dollars. The entry fee was therefore twice as high as usual for such top fights.

This world event lifted post-colonial Africa, and with it Zaire’s dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, onto the international stage. A good decade after independence and three years after its renaming to République du Zaïre, Zaire had become the site of a world event, paid for from the dictator Mobutu’s coffers and financed by the country’s natural resources. So was the “Rumble in the Jungle” a gigantic “sportwashing” for a dictator who, together with Western companies, plundered his country like no other over three decades? The political scientist and journalist at “Table.Media”, Alex Veit, contradicts this to the “nd”: “For sportwashing, Mobutu would have had to have had a very bad image ‘to wash off’, which was not the case. Especially not in the Western world, except among radical leftists.

Alex Veit, a specialist for the region, sees Mobutu’s approach as more of an attempt at his own version of modernization, which many other leaders in Africa, Asia and Latin America would have strived for in the 1970s. “The relatively high income from mining during this time meant that large infrastructure projects could be financed, universities were founded, and the country was renamed Zaire,” explains Veit. “The boxing match was intended to convey the new self-confidence internally and externally.” In the end, when Mobutu died in 1997, he was remembered as one of the richest men in the world, who parked his billion-dollar estate in Europe instead of investing in Africa.

The global event lifted post-colonial Africa, and with it Zaire’s dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, onto the international stage.

For several years now, another country has been the focus of professional boxing, namely Saudi Arabia. All of the important boxing world championship fights of recent years have taken place in Saudi Arabia under the label “Riyadh Season”. The comparison between today’s sports marketing of “Riyadh Season” and the former “Rumble in the Jungle” is obvious. According to Sebastian Sons, author of the book “The New Rulers of the Gulf and their Quest for Global Influence,” “Riyadh Season is primarily a national project and is intended to strengthen the country’s entertainment offerings with high-profile events.” But, Sons told “nd”, it is also a brand that Saudi Arabia wants to sell all over the world.

“For Saudi Arabia, it’s always about return on investment, even with Riyadh Season,” explains Sons. “Such projects are intended to raise awareness, but there should not be a bottomless pit left behind,” rather, the aim is simply to generate income through sponsorship contracts and TV contracts. Last but not least, this should diversify the Saudi economy and make it fit for a future without oil. The accusation of sportwashing, which is quickly being made today, overlooks the fact that in the economics of professional sports, new players from beyond the West are simply entering the business, not only with a lot of money, but also with, above all, economic interests – i.e. with an interest in the future more money. The “Rumble in the Jungle” paved the way for this.

Fabian Kunow oversees the “Sport and Society” event series at the Berlin educational association “Helle Panke eV – Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Berlin”.

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