Free The Fight by Norman Mailer Page A

gave the summation. “Foreman fought a bum a month. In all, George Foreman fought five men with names. He stopped all five, but none took the count of ten. Of the twenty-nine name fighters I met, fifteen stayed down for the count of ten.” With all the pride of having worked up a legal brief well organized and well delivered, Ali now addressed the jury. “I’m a boxing scholar. I’m a boxing scientist — this is scientific evidence. You ignore it at your peril if you forget that I am a dancing master, a great artist.”
    “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,” shouted Bundini.
    “Shut up,” said Ali, slapping Bundini’s bald spot. Then he looked hard at the press. “You are ignorant of boxing. You are ignorant men. You are impressed with George Foreman because he is so big and his muscles seem so big.”
    “They ain’t,” rumbled Bundini, “they ain’t.”
    “Shut up,” said Ali, rapping him.
    “Now,” said Ali, “I say to you in the press, you are impressedwith Foreman because he looks like a big Black man and he hits a bag so hard. He cuts off the ring! I am going to tell you that he cannot fight. I will demonstrate that the night of the fight. You will see my ripping left and my shocking right cross. You are going to get the shock of your life. Because now you are impressed with Foreman. But I let you in on a secret. Colored folks scare more white folks than they scare colored folks. I am not afraid of Foreman, and that you will discover.”
    Next day, however, Ali varied the routine. There was no press conference. Instead, a drama took place in the ring. But then the fact that Ali was boxing today was in itself an event. In the last week and a half, he had sparred only three times, a light schedule. Of course, Ali had been training for so long his stablemates were growing old with him. Indeed, there was only one left, Roy Williams, the big dark gentle fighter who at Deer Lake had acted as if it were sacrilege to strike his employer. Now he was introduced by Bundini to the audience of several hundred Africans: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Roy Williams, Heavyweight Champ of Pennsylvania. He’s taller than George Foreman, he’s heavier than George Foreman, his reach is longer, he hits harder, and he’s more intelligent than George Foreman.” Bundini was the father of hyperbole.
    His remarks were translated by a Zairois interpreter to the Black audience. They giggled and applauded. Ali now led them in a chant,
“Ali boma yé, Ali boma yé,”
which translated as “Kill him, Ali” — an old fight cry when all is said — and Ali conducted his people through the chant, but strictly, laying firm strokes on the air, a choirmaster with a boy scout chorus, stern, not fooling, proud of his chickens,except a smile seemed to come off the act. Everybody was happy about it and the cry was without menace — nothing of cannibals savoring the meal to come or grunts and growls, more like a high school crowd crying “Slay Sisley High,” a testimonial to Ali’s good spirits. He looked eighteen this morning and he got ready to spar with Roy Williams.
    They hardly boxed, however. After weeks and months of working together, a fighter and his sparring partner are an old married couple. They make comfortable love. That is all right for old married couples, but the dangers are obvious for a fighter. He gets used to living below the level of risk in the ring. So Ali dispensed today with all idea of boxing. He wrestled through an entire round with Williams. To the beat of Big Black on the floor beating on his conga drum, one sullen throbbing rhythm, Ali grappled up and down the ring. “I’m going to tie George up and walk with him,
walk
with him,” Ali said in a loud throttled voice through his mouthpiece. “Yes, I’m going to walk with him.” Occasionally, he would fall back to the ropes and let Williams pound him, then he would wrestle some more. “We’re going to
walk
with him.” When the round