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

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

Finally George made a friend, Richard Kibble, a hippie from Tacoma, Washington, who introduced him to the new youth culture that was beginning to sweep the nation. On their first meeting Kibble asked him why he fought with everyone all the time and asserted that fighting was not important. Together they listened to Kibble’s Bob Dylan records, which, according to Foreman, was when his real education began. Although he continued to fight with anyone and everyone, George discovered a love of learning. He learned grammar and vocabulary and for the first time in his life read a book. In fact, he began to devour books, especially the Autobiography of Malcolm X, which given its story of an alienated black young man who descends into crime and prison before being redeemed, must have spoken forcefully to him. It was through Kibble that he also made a few friends, most of whom he had beaten up at one time or another. While listening with them to the radio broadcast of the Muhammad Ali-Floyd Patterson bout on November 22, 1965, one of his new friends asked him why he did not take up boxing, since he liked beating up people so much. Excited by the challenge of the sport and the glamour of the heavyweight champion, six months later George transferred to the Camp Parks Job Corps Center run by Litton Industries near Pleasanton, California. Located about forty miles east of Oakland, the center would allow George to continue his education and make use of its excellent physical education facilities, including an already-established boxing program.

The boxing program at Camp Parks was run by Nick “Doc” Broadus, one of the most important influences in George’s life. More than boxing, the forty-eight-year-old amateur and professional fighter strove to provide Foreman with a discipline, direction, and a strong adult male role model. Only five foot five, Broadus had a boxing résumé and a background in martial arts that earned George’s respect and made the coach fearless toward his towering young pupil with the hair-trigger temper: “You bigger than me, but I can handle you baby. Size don’t mean nothin’ to me.” Broadus told him: “I been in that jungle, too, George. Whatever you did, I was doing’ myself not long ago. But that’s ol’ history now, an’ our job is to make history.” As an amateur boxer Broadus had won one hundred straight bouts and twenty-four out of twenty-five as a professional. As soon as he lost, he turned coach, first in the air force, then in the Job Corps. Even with his vast experience, however, steering the angry Foreman proved challenging. When George threatened a counselor, he was nearly expelled from the Job Corps as an irredeemable hoodlum. “I was held responsible for him,” Doc noted. “It was going to be his last opportunity.”