Violent Coronation in Kinshasa

The money alone makes it a unique event. For trading punches next week, George Foreman and Muhammad Ali each stand to collect a minimum of $5 million--the biggest payday in the history of sport. If the fight goes 15 rounds, they will have earned $110,000 per minute per man. In addition to guaranteeing their wages, the government of Zaire has put up another $12 million for the combatants' expenses and to doll up the capital city of Kinshasa.

The big boodle is only one of the fight's unusual attributes. It is the first heavyweight championship to be held in Africa, and the first to be used as a national public relations spectacular. The promoters hope for a TV audience of hundreds of millions in more than 75 countries (closed-circuit arenas and theaters in the U.S. are charging between $12 and $30 a seat). This electronic gate will more than compensate for the fact that there is little chance of filling the Zaire stadium with paying customers. It may be the first championship fight in modern history for which freebies are given out wholesale.

Unusual Aspect. That problem hardly worries Promoter Don King, the first black ever to arrange a heavyweight title bout. For the moment, at least, King has become the most important matchmaker in boxing--quite a distinction for a felon who ten years ago was known as the numbers baron of Cleveland and four years ago was No. 6178 at the Marion (Ohio) Correctional Institution, where he was serving time for killing one of his underlings."

According to the terms of the deal King negotiated, Champion Foreman gets the same basic purse as Challenger Ali. That quirk underscores the most unusual aspect of the bout. Though he won the title 20 months ago with a cruel battering of Joe Frazier, and though he has never been defeated, Foreman is still a relatively obscure figure. For one thing, he has never faced Ali the best heavyweight boxer and one of the most colorful athletes of his generation, a man who lost his title not in the ring but in a hassle over his refusal to be inducted for military service. Foreman has, in effect, been forced to trek to Kinshasa to try to become the true champ--the first in a decade to shed the shadow of Ali.

Feared Puncher. Even if Foreman wins convincingly, the coronation may be incomplete, and the champion knows it. "I can beat him and knock him out in the first or second round," Foreman says, "but that doesn't mean that people are going to follow me with the same enthusiasm as they did him. It's just something God gave him to have."

Foreman also has a present from his Maker--sheer strength--and it would seem to give him an overwhelming advantage next week. At 25, Foreman is at his powerful peak. With legs as thick as railroad ties and arms that resemble oak limbs, the 6-ft. 3-in., 225-lb. (fighting weight) Foreman is the most feared puncher since Sonny Listen. After a few blows from Foreman, the average heavy punching bag begins to look like a pancake. So do most of his opponents; none of his last eight fights have gone beyond the second round. Says his trainer, Dick Sadler, a shrewd old boxing hand who once managed Listen: "Anything George hits, he's gonna hurt."

Foreman's skills are not limited to being a human battering ram. Under Sadler's tutelage, Foreman has learned to box as well as punch. Though he still tends to prowl the ring flatfooted, stalking his opponents like a robot with gloves, he is a master at nullifying the speed of quicker opponents by cornering them on the ropes.

Foreman's prowess has led oddsmakers to rate him a 2-to-l favorite. Still, Ali, though he is 32, may give Foreman his toughest bout in years. "This fight means my whole life to me," Ali says, and he looks as if he means it. The flabby, huffing former champion who managed to gain only a split--and a broken jaw--in two fights with Ken Norton has given way to the lean, lithe boxer who once dominated the ring.

Ali started training in June, six weeks before his training camp officially opened. By last week, just before he left for Zaire, he weighed a rock-hard 215 lbs. With lightness has come speed. Against sparring partners this summer Ali demonstrated the lightning combinations and quick footwork that once were his trademarks.

Quick Kills. Ali's speed and endurance are the keys to the fight. If he can hurt Foreman with his jabs while moving quickly enough to avoid punishing blows, Ali could easily frustrate an executioner accustomed to quick kills. Better yet, he could wear out Foreman, whose own endurance is suspect. Ali, also 6 ft. 3 in., has a l 1/2-in.-reach advantage over Foreman and a habit of standing up straight in the ring--the ideal posture for turning Foreman's dangerous uppercuts into glancing blows. Gauging his chances, Ali declares with customary modesty, "I'll beat him with my brains. Pow! Pow! Pow! I'll be darting in and out, making him miss, whining rounds all the time. When that sucker meets me, he'll need more insurance."

Foreman acts unimpressed. "If Ali dances all night, he'll have to get the championship some other time," he says. Dick Sadler agrees. "Ali can't hide," he predicts. "George Foreman will find his ass." Foreman will concentrate on cutting down the ring, blocking Ali as he shuffles to the left or right, eventually backing him into the ropes.

In many ways, Foreman is the ideal foil for Ali. He is the guileless good guy facing the wily, witty operator. He hangs back from prefight hype. Recalling the time last June when Ali lured him into a public spat--they tore each other's clothes--Foreman says, "I should have conducted myself better. I was acting a little boyish. We both have something to apologize for."

Ali is addicted to people; he gets his high from entertaining them. Foreman yearns for privacy. While Ali loudly preaches the teachings of the Black Muslims and Elijah Muhammad, Foreman practices Christianity ("I ain't got no denomination. I just go to church regular"). In prose or doggerel, Ali is always The Mouth, chatting incessantly. Foreman is reticent, talking slowly in a monotone with just a hint of a lisp.

Buffalo Fish. The contrasts are evident in everything the two fighters say and do, even in the things they own and the way they train. Ali's training camp in Deer Lake, Pa., overlooking Amish country, could be described as rich rustic. The $200,000 compound consists of five buildings in a log-cabin motif, including a fully equipped gym. Foreman trains in the drab mineral and gem exhibition hall at the Alameda County fairgrounds in Pleasanton, Calif., near Oakland. For dressing quarters he uses the ladies' room.

After workouts this summer, Foreman relaxed at his ranch house in the dry foothills outside Livermore, an agricultural community near Pleasanton. There, behind the locked gates of an imposing cyclone fence, he watched past fights on a video cassette machine, played pool in the downstairs den, and ate the steamed vegetables and lean steaks he prefers (when not training, he relishes fried buffalo fish and gargantuan vanilla ice cream sundaes). But most of all Foreman played with his pets--four dogs and two horses. Foreman is particularly proud of his two German shepherds, Pasha and Daggo. He commands them with a smattering of German. "Platz, Daggo!" he will yell. "Stay. Stay." Daggo joined him on the trip to Zaire.

Ballet Lessons. "I like to work with animals," explained Foreman recently after tossing his Doberman, Stocky, into the swimming pool and riding his aging mare, Lady, around his backyard corral. "Some day I'll have as many dogs as you can count," he says. Considering the sort of dogs he buys, that could come to quite a sum. This summer Foreman paid $27,000 for yet another prizewinning German shepherd.

Compared with Ali's endless repertory of wit and rhyme, Foreman's verbal acrobatics seem hopelessly square. "Do you know the Pledge of Allegiance?" he will ask someone for fun. Or Foreman may test a visitor by asking him to recite the Lord's Prayer. Ali may soon lose his claim to being No. 1 in fast footwork. Last winter, when Foreman was living in Los Angeles, he studied ballet. Though he demonstrates plies only when photographers' backs are turned, Foreman says, "I took up ballet after seeing a dance show in Las Vegas. You know, I enjoyed it. I didn't think I'd like the sissy stuff, but I really had fun. When this fight is over, I plan to take some more lessons."

Aside from his penchant for expensive dogs and an addiction to luxurious cars--he owns a Cadillac, Rolls-Royce and Mercedes--Foreman has few of the trappings of a superstar. One of the reasons may be that until recently Foreman actually had very little money. In fact, during his divorce proceedings earlier this year, Foreman's lawyers indicated that the champion was very nearly bankrupt. The tangle of old contracts and deals that was consuming his income has since been cleared away.

Like many black athletes, Foreman grew up poor. He was the son of a railroad worker in Houston's Fifth Ward, a ghetto that even today throbs with uneasily repressed violence. His parents separated when George was a boy, and he dropped out of school in the eighth grade, quickly becoming a terror on the streets. Drunk on rotgut wine, "Monkey" Foreman was a savage gang fighter. "When we started a fight, we'd look around to see if Monkey was there," recalls Don Thomas, a former gang member with Foreman. "You had two or three cats whipped if he was."

Nancy Foreman, George's mother, supported the family and was a harsh disciplinarian to her seven children. "I didn't spare the rod," she says. "I whipped good. I'd get off at 10 o'clock and sometimes I'd whip the rest of the night. Sometimes I took that long to straighten 'em out."

The turning point in Foreman's life came in 1965 when he joined the Job Corps. His first assignment was at a corps center in Grants Pass, Ore., where he learned carpentry ("I felt I was somebody"). Later he was sent to Pleasanton, where he started to box.

Foreman's troubled youth has left a deep impression on him. In Kingston, Jamaica, the morning after he became heavyweight champion, 100 reporters gathered around Foreman. They expected to hear about future fight plans. Instead, Foreman simply said: "I'm going into the streets to talk to the kids and set them straight. Get them off the dope and all that bad stuff. Tell them they can make it, just like me."

Flying Lessons. Muhammad Ali, of course, is a success story too. But Ali does not dwell on his background (the son of a Louisville sign painter, he had a more stable childhood than Foreman and finished high school). Ali lives in the present and future. For relaxation, he does anything but escape behind a locked gate. During the summer he interrupted workouts to take helicopter flying lessons. For long trips, he bought a full-size Scenicruiser bus and refitted the inside as a plush mobile home. Truckers who heard a strange voice jabbering away over the Citizen's Band radio frequency in Missouri recently were listening to none other than Muhammad All. "This is Big Bopper," Ali broadcast. "Watch out for Smokey Bear [truckers' code for a state trooper] at marker 139, westbound on Interstate 70."

Ali has mellowed in recent years. In the early mornings, when he is being rubbed down after roadwork, he can actually become contemplative. "People ask me why I'm constantly talking and performing. It's because I've been blessed with showmanship. People come to see me expecting verbal contact and I give it to 'em because I like to talk. I'm not some illiterate pug. Boxing will survive without me though. The presidency has survived without Nixon. Boxing will get by without the king."

Boxing will indeed survive, but championship prize money will not be the same. Ali's charisma has helped a number of heavyweight opponents into the upper-income brackets. During his own career, Ali has earned more than $10 million in purses alone, not including next week's fortune. Were George Foreman fighting anyone else, the take would not be half as large.

Outmaneuvering Arum. For this fight, Ali did more than simply agree to appear. He helped arrange the deal. Last February Ali met Zaire's President, Mobutu Sese Seko, while both were visiting Kuwait. Mobutu proposed the idea of bringing the greatest black American fighters to their ancestral homeland for a championship match. He and Ali parted in agreement that Zaire should make a bid to have what was then only a potential Foreman-Ali fight.

The prospect of that match in any location was enough to make promoters clamor. Only one seemed to have the inside track: Robert Arum, Ali's lawyer and the president of Top Rank, Inc., a closed-circuit TV company that has always telecast Ali's fights. To Arum's astonishment, he was quietly outmaneuvered by Don King. Since being paroled from prison in 1971, King had put together a small stable of fighters. He had also had a run-in with Arum over TV rights in Ohio for the second Ali-Frazier fight.

The dispute made King furious and he vowed to beat Arum to the Ali-Foreman fight. Soon King was appealing to Ali and his manager, Herbert Muhammad, to deal with a fellow black instead of Arum. King used every selling technique he knew, including quoting the teachings of Herbert's father, Elijah. After weeks of frantic pursuit, Ali agreed. Immediately, King was off to California to approach Foreman. Catching the champion in a parking lot, King pointed to the skin on his arm, and said, "This is my promotion. And I'm black." After several hours, Foreman shook hands on the $10 million deal.

With his partners Henry Schwartz and Barry Burnstein, two Runyonesque New York promoters, King raised start-up cash from Hemdale Leisure, a British show-business production company. The fighters' $10 million was not as easy to find--until Zaire came through. After a few days of negotiation in Paris between the promoters and a Mobutu emissary, letters of credit were deposited in the boxers' banks.

Since that day in mid-March, Kinshasa has been agog. Though initial predictions that 30,000 foreign visitors would descend on the ill-equipped capital have proved far too optimistic, fight preparations are still elaborate. Thousands of precooked frozen meals have been flown in. As le super combat approaches in the former Belgian Congo, the weed-infested median along Kinshasa's main boulevard has suddenly blossomed with flowers; new street lights have been installed and virtually every building in town has been scrubbed or painted.

The biggest face-lifting has been at the national soccer stadium where the fight will be held. A battalion of 500 workers has swarmed over the 60,000-seat arena day and night for three months, replacing the seats, installing lavatories and building new dressing rooms. Much of the effort aimed at impressing foreigners will go for naught. Few Americans or Europeans were willing to pay the $2,500 tab that Schwartz originally put on flight-fight packages. Zaire declined to deal with other tour promoters, and a number of airline charters were canceled. Still, Kinshasa is a prettier place for Mobutu's effort, and he has certainly succeeded in drawing international attention.

Anti-Foreman Fetishes. Fight sentiment in Zaire strongly favors Ali, President Mobutu's friend, and the government-controlled press has been careful to censor such patronizing Ali comments as "We're gonna have a rumble in the jungle." Indeed, loyalty to Ali, America's best-known athlete abroad, is so intense that officials are concerned about Foreman's safety. Many Zairians are expected to carry anti-Foreman fetishes into the stadium. Their passions will hardly be reduced if Foreman floors Ali in the first few rounds.

Win or lose, Ali is talking about retiring after this fight. When he is sitting quietly on the lawn in front of his house, George Foreman contemplates the same idea. "I'd like to be a veterinarian," he says, "and I can't wait forever to get started." Fighters often talk that way between matches. Then the sound of the bell and the clang of the cash register remind them of who they are and what they do for a living. At 3 a.m. next Wednesday in Kinshasa, two of the best will earn their pay.

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