The Fight by Norman Mailer Read Free Book Online Page B

in Africa,” he remarked, “he can’t win anywhere.” The paradox, however, on meeting the Champion was that Foreman seemed more black. Ali was not without white blood, not without a lot of it. Something in his personality was cheerfully even exuberantly white in the way of a six-foot two-inch president of a Southern college fraternity. At times Ali was like nothing so much as a white actor who had put on too little makeup for the part and so was not wholly convincing as a Black, just one of eight hundred small contradictions in Ali, but Foreman was
deep
. Foreman could be mistaken for African long before Ali. Foreman was in communionwith a muse. And
she
was also deep, some distant cousin of beauty, the muse of violence in all her complexity. The first desire of the muse of violence may be to remain serene. Foreman could pass through the lobby like a virile manifest of the walking dead, alert to everything, yet immune in his silence to the casual pollutions of everybody’s vibrating handshaking hands. Foreman’s hands were as separate from him as a kuntu. They were his instrument, and he kept them in his pockets the way a hunter lays his rifle back into its velvet case. The last Heavyweight reminiscent of Foreman had been Sonny Liston. He used to inspire fear in a man by looking at him, his bad humor over intrusion into the aura of his person seethed like smoke. His menace was intimate — he could bury a little man as quickly as a big one.
    Foreman, by comparison, might as well have been a contemplative monk. His violence was in the halo of his serenity. It was as if he had learned the lesson Sonny had been there to teach. One did not allow violence to dissipate; one stored it. Serenity was the vessel where violence could be stored. So everyone around Foreman had orders to keep people off. They did. It was as if Foreman was preparing to defend himself against the thoughts of everyone alive. If he entered the arena, and all of Africa wanted him to lose, then his concentration would become the ocean of his protection against Africa. A formidable defense.
    Watching him in training, impressions were confirmed. The literary champ of Kinshasa was only a boxing expert of sorts; of sorts, for example, was his previous knowledge ofForeman. He had seen him once four years ago in the course of winning a dubious decision in ten rounds over Gregorio Peralta. Foreman looked slow and clumsy. Then he never saw Foreman again until the second round against Norton. Having arrived late at the theater, he saw nothing but the knockdowns in the second round. It was hardly a complete picture of Foreman.
    But seeing him in the ring at Nsele, it was obvious George had picked up sophistication. Everything in his training pointed toward this fight. His manager, Dick Sadler, had been in boxing just about all of his life. Archie Moore and Sandy Saddler, together with Sugar Ray Robinson, were precisely the three fighters who provided the most brilliant examples of technique for Ali’s developing gifts. Foreman was one champion, therefore, whose training was being designed by other champions; it gave an opportunity to watch how a few of the best minds in boxing might work.
    Against the perils of Africa and mass hysteria, the antidote was already evident; silence and concentration. If Africa was not Ali’s only weapon, psychology must be his next. Would he try to punish Foreman’s vanity? No physical activity is so vain as boxing. A man gets into the ring to attract admiration. In no sport, therefore, can you be more humiliated. Ali would use every effort to make Foreman feel clumsy. If, at his most fearsome, Foreman looked and fought like a lion, he had, at his worst, a resemblance to an ox. So the first object of training was to work on Foreman’s sense of grace. George was being taught to dance. While he was still happy in the fox-trot, and Ali was eras beyond the frug, monkey, or jerk, no matter, Foreman was now able toglide in the ring, and