Was the Rumble in the Jungle fixed?

To me, it seems Foreman rose at the count of 8.

 

George was completely beaten, mentally and physically.

Go look at how Foreman reacts to the stoppage. He doesn’t protest, just walks meekly to his corner.

As for Dick Sadler being fired by Foreman and finding some level of employment (as an ‘advisor,’ not head trainer) with Ali … that’s how it works. If your company fired you and a rival company hired you, are we to assume you were doing espionage for the rival company, lol?

People work to put food on the table. Is he supposed to stay loyal to the guy who fired him?

Sadler worked with Archie Moore and Sonny Liston too. He was more than qualified.

George was just making excuses rather than face up to the fact that the better man beat him.

 

I’ll have to look those details back up. Been a long time since I reviewed it all, I had it on memory he left right after. Guess not.

 

Just watch the fight and see how Ali thinks on his feet.
Luckily Ali had a ATG chin, was well conditioned for the fight and sussed George out rather quickly and
It was just a matter of gritting his teeth and hopeing his plan would work and George gets tired fast in the African heat.

And it did!

 

C'mon man

 

Muhammad was too tough,too skilled and too savvy for George on that night.

 

Probably just the ropes. It's not inconceivable that some stuff was laid out in Ali's favor (Like those ropes that were made for a bigger ring), but I wouldn't consider nothing major like Foreman's water being screwed with.

 

I often wondered this
And a very fast count
Watch how easily Foremans corner accepted it as the fight ended
Also the lack of sensible advice to George during the fight.
I've always thought there were a few suspicious things about the fight .
Foreman certainly didn't throw it so no suspicion aimed at him.
He fought a dumb fight, his gas tank and lack of plan B was exposed.
Ali's corner loosened the ropes earlier in the day , Ali had prepared in training to lie on the roped absorbing punishment. He'd also trained to throw punches whilst on the ropes.
The main thing he'd noticed ( and he said it Pre fight ) was that Foreman didn't move his head and would be easy to hit .
Lots of things about this fight that are fascinating.
I remember reading George saying his trainer slipped something in his water, but this is the same Foreman who claimed he didn't want to knock Jimmy Young out too quickly so that the TV coverage wouldn't be short changed on the number of commercial breaks on the telecast !!
One thing I remember about Foreman was he used to deliberately dry out with no liquid intake in the last day before a fight at this point In his career, which was absolutely insane.
He stopped doing it after this fight.

 

It’s definitely fair to question such things Ney.

Such suspicions shouldn’t be scoffed at amd dismissed out of hand - rather they should be answered logically.

This fight was a long way from home for both men, with the ring and ropes being imported.

At the least the ropes were imported, perhaps the ring was custom built. Not sure. Perhaps someone else can confirm

Before the fight, I believe Ali and Foreman were haggling over a 18ft/19ft vs 20ft/21 ft ring - or something like that.

Ali naturally wanted a bigger ring to allow for greater movement. If anything was wrong I would say it was the ring size, not the length of the ropes. Perhaps both were wrong to polar extremes.

To reiterate also, the canvas was soft and slow, another detractor for Ali and a potential benefit for Foreman -

Dundee did his preflight checks - saw the ropes were too big/long and therefore notably loose.

Before the fight, Dundee in fact tightened the ropes as much as possible but they were still somewhat loose.

Remember, Ali’s team, including Dundee, were screaming for Ali to get off the ropes - seems fair to assume that they weren’t in on Ali’s ad hoc strategy.

Though, to be clear, Ali had long since practiced laying on the ropes in sparring as a “contingent” strategy, to be employed as and when required.

Due to necessity, the “rope a dope” simply manifested into a more express strategy against Foreman than in any other fight.

Foreman’s team tried to adjust the ropes during the fight and Dundee rightfully screamed them away.

George’s team was free to do their own pre fight checks but apparently failed to do so.

When you look out for it, you can see that the Zaire ring was tiny - and much smaller than the ring in Jamaica when Foreman defeated Frazier.

Just several big steps from Foreman and he was immediately on top of Muhammad.

The size of the ring was definitely something Ali would not have wanted - as well as the soft slow canvas.

Those two features alone could’ve been fatal to Ali’s efforts IF he didn’t duly modify his strategy to suit the environment.

I guess we can turn to Ali’s sparring leading into the fight.

We do see Ali laying on the ropes taking some shots - his sparring partner Holmes also noted this tactic but Larry added that he would never have guessed that Ali would actually take the tactic with him into the fight against Foreman.

In sparring, I haven’t noticed loose ropes to prep Ali for same. They just looked normal.

Of course one could suggest that Ali trained covertly with loose ropes - but that’s highly speculative and, just imo, very unlikely.

Finally, I think Ali’s time on the ropes is often somewhat exaggerated. He was doing a lot of good work and punching otherwise.

 

The Spinks fights are the real stinkers in his career. Talk about a fix.

 

Foreman made a lot of excuses for this loss. Not just immediately afterwards, but in his autobiography By George which came out in the 90s. He even claims he was about to knockout Ali but got distracted by seeing his friend in the audience rooting for Ali.

The only one I’d put some possible credence in is the loose ropes. There were some instances when he would lean back and the loose ropes seemed to help him avoid the shot. Mostly though, Ali just outfought him off the ropes. There’s a ton of revisionist history on the whole narrative regarding the rope-a-dope and Foreman tiring. Ali was outfighting Foreman off the ropes and landing most of the clean head shots well before Foreman got tired.

I can’t hear the ref’s count, I just hear Colonel Bob Sheridan’s commentary and his counting. But it just seems like 10 seconds from when he hit the canvas and when he waved it off. As said on earlier posts, Foreman just walks off and doesn’t protest it at all. He was just defeated.

 

He actually found Foreman easy to hit as he kept walking forward with zero head movement.

 

It was a very quick count
However as Ali said , if the fight had continued he'd have made George look stupid ' quote '