the last book I ever read (The Rumble in the Jungle: Muhammad Ali & George Foreman on the Global Stage, excerpt nine)

from The Rumble in the Jungle: Muhammad Ali & George Foreman on the Global Stage by Lewis A. Erenberg:

Whatever the causes of Foreman’s defeat, they did little to restore his reputation or his pride after such a humiliating performance. Indeed, Ali’s dramatic victory destroyed the myth of George Foreman’s invincibility. One fight fan put it succinctly. Ali, the Chicagoan Seely Hagan wrote The Ring magazine, “is the only interesting fighter in the business. He made a monkey out of the greatest hitter in years. George knows as much about boxing as he know[s] about flying to Russia. How did he ever stop Joe Frazier?” Promoter Don Fraser was equally adamant. “George Foreman turned out to be the ghost of Sonny Liston.” At the hands of Ali, “within a few minutes, Foreman’s portrait went from invincible, unbeatable powerhouse to pathetic chump.” Indeed, asked Foreman’s supporters, where was the Foreman “who had smashed Joe Frazier down six times to win the championship and destroyed Ken Norton in defense of it.” How could it be that a Foreman who had “mastered those two with contemptuous ease, was a stumbling amateur against their victim.” The answer according to Chicago Tribune sports columnist Rick Talley was this: Ali “did it the simplest way. He just sat back and hit him in the face.” Instead of dancing, he lay back on the ropes and counter punched against Foreman’s head, a target that was always right in front of him.

In destroying Foreman and his myth of invincibility, just as he had done to Liston ten years earlier, Ali sealed his legend as the greatest heavyweight boxing champion of all time. “Can the world beat it?” asked Los Angeles Times boxing columnist John Hall. “If not a legend before, the strutting, swaggering, shouting Ali most certainly is now. Instantly, the promoters rush back to beat upon his door.” The shock of the upset and the seeming magic of Ali’s accomplishment brough the skeptics to their knees. No matter what other fighters thought, and “never mind what the critics say,” Hall continued, “Ali is king. He’s magic. He’s magnificent. He’s a hypnotist. He casts a spell over himself as well as his people, all the people.” Speaking for his former critics, Hall admitted that “we bow and scrape at the Ali shrine.” Even more, boxing experts had to take responsibility for building up Foreman into a myth of invincibility. “It was the ghost of Liston,” he wrote, “another swift disintegration of a myth we all helped to create.”