‘If George Foreman-Muhammad Ali was today, each fighter would make $200m’

On Wednesday, it will be 50 years since Muhammad Ali caused a seismic shock that still reverberates through the sporting world, on grainy color tape and on the pages of magazines that have since faded to yellow.

It was in Kinshasa, Zaire, Africa, that he stunned prohibitive favorite George Foreman, becoming the first man to defeat the big Texan, in an upset for the ages, stopping the heavyweight champion in the eighth round.

Here, Tris Dixon sits down with one of Muhammad Ali’s inner circle, business advisor Gene Kilroy, who reflects on those staggering events from half a century ago – on October 30, 1974.

It was part of history.

You’ve got to remember that Ali won the championship in 1964 and 10 years later he won it back. Now the remarkable thing about this is, at that time George Foreman, he had no humility. Nobody wanted to talk to him and the ones who started the ball rolling were Barry Bernstein and Hank Schwarz, and they put a company together, and they had a guy from London by the name of John Daly [of Video Techniques Inc], he was a big movie producer, he had Platoon, he had Saving Private Ryan, Terminator, he was a good young guy and he got involved with people in Brussels and they put up the money for the fight. 

Now, [ruler of Zaire] Mobutu, he jumped on board. He wanted to promote tourism in Zaire, Africa, well, George Foreman didn’t want to fight Ali. So Hank Schwarz hired Don King to go talk to George up in California and George said, “Nah, if I beat him they’ll just say I’m beating an old man.” Well, Don King said, “Five million dollars.” George said: “Let’s do it.” They signed the contract. 

With the contract signed, George Foreman was fighting Kenny Norton in Caracas, Venezuela. Now, if Kenny Norton wins, the contract is null and void so Foreman wins. Right after the fight, Bob Sheridan, the announcer, did an interview with Ali and I was right there and he said, “You’ve got this big fight in Zaire lined up,” and Ali told him, “I can’t wait, and all you reporters treated me badly in America but when you get to Zaire, Africa, they’re going to put you in a pot and cook you.” Everybody laughed about it. When we got home, there was a guy Moboutu had as a right-hand man, who was tied to Mobutu, and he called me on the phone, I was the liaison between African and Ali. He called me and said: “We’re trying to promote tourism, not kill it. We don’t put people in pots over here and cook them.”

But Ali helped to promote it. Now, we’re getting ready for the fight. And I had Ali watch the fight of Foreman and Joe Frazier, and we got to a knockdown and he’s watching it and George Foreman leans on the ropes to get back to the neutral corner and Ali said: “I’ve got him. No stamina. No stamina.”

The day we were leaving for the fight, Ali had great respect for Cus D’Amato, who was one of the great trainers in the history of boxing, and Cus had a saying about fear. “Fear is like fire, where it can cook your food or burn your house down, you’ve got control it,” so Cus is telling Ali on the phone, “Remember, your first punch has to be with devastating tenacity.” And he said to Cus, “Look what Foreman did to Frazier, though.” And Cus yelled at him. You could hear Cus all the way from his home in New York to Deer Lake, Pennsylvania, without the phone: “But that [Frazier]’s not Ali.”

If you watch the fight, you’ll see George come out and Ali hit him with a left jab and a right hand. And Ali abuses him. He abuses him for so much of the fight. But I’m getting ahead of us.

When George Foreman was training for the fight in Zaire, he got a cut on his eye. So I told Mobutu’s right-hand man, “Take their passports.” George didn’t want that, but Dick Saddler [Foreman’s trainer] handled all the passports. Now, if they would have left Zaire there would have been no fight. They could have flown to England. You didn’t need a passport at that time, and they could have gone to the American Embassy and got passports [to fly back to the US], so without me that fight might not have even came off.

When we’re in Zaire, we had 22 people travelling with us. Nixon was the President at the time.

Ali was a very religious man and he looked out for me in Zaire and he said: “All I had to do was rest, rest and request. I’ve nobody pulling on me, they can’t get to me here,” and then Kirk Kerkorian, who I worked for, he owned MGM, he would send us movies over, and every night we would watch the latest movies and all Ali had to do was relax and enjoy himself and he said if the fight wasn’t in Zaire, he might have lost it.

I went into the dressing room when they were taping Foreman’s hands and Dick Saddler was there, and Foreman said he didn’t want to be there and Ali said, “What’s he sayin’? And I said, “He’s talking about putting your kids in an orphanage.” And he said: “I can’t wait to get him.”

In the movie [about the fight], they had a scene where everyone was scared [in Ali’s locker room]. That didn’t happen. Ali couldn’t wait to get him in the ring. And Ali abused him in the ring. You’ve gotta remember, in the ’68 Olympics you had black athletes raising their fists [in a display of racial pride] and George Foreman was waving a little flag, after he won the Olympics, Ali called him Uncle Tom and abused him. No one talked to Foreman like that. He terrorised everybody. Because of the location. Because of Cus D’Amato. Everything worked out great. 

There were 2,000 people outside the stadium that night before the fight and I told Mobutu’s assistant – Mobutu didn’t go to the fight – everybody loved Ali, and I brought back the assistant and Ali told him: “If you don’t let them in the fight, I’m not gonna fight.” You can’t sell another ticket. So he opened the gates and all those people came into the fight, and during the fight, you could hear the chanting, “Ali Bomb-aye, Ali Bomb-aye,” and that affected George Foreman a lot. He wanted to be loved, and they were yellin’ “Ali kill him.” 

You’ve got to remember, Foreman was so big and strong. Foreman looked so big and muscular compared to Ali, but Ali’s chest was just as big as George’s, his thigh measurement, his forearms, his arms, but George was more muscular.

Ali had no fear. Elijah Muhammad would call him before every fight and say: “Allah is in your corner, how are you going to lose?” And that was his booster rocket.

There was no one closer to Muhammad Ali than Gene Kilroy and his brother Rahman, now Rahman and I are the only ones left. Ali believed in it. “He [Foreman] doesn’t have Allah, I have Allah.”

The rope-a-dope was all Ali’s idea. He’d lean on the ropes and let George throw wild punches. The will will determine the skill and Ali was askin’ him: “Is that all you have, George?” And then in that eighth round, when Ali hit him with the jab and then the right hand, George went into that spin and after the fight I said to Ali, “You could have hit him on the way down,” he said, “He had enough.” I said, “If that had been George, he’d have kicked you.” Then George complained the ropes were too loose, the matt was too soft, his corner traded him in, but because of that fight, George Foreman got a lot of humility. It changed his whole attitude in life. He was a mean guy, didn’t want to talk to people and after that he found God and became very religious. And he became a big success, because of the humility he learnt from Muhammad Ali. 

Right after the fight there was a typhoon. All the rain came down at about 3 o’clock in the morning before we went back, but the weather had been nice, the people had been nice. It couldn’t have been laid out better. If a great artist was working, he’d have to have the right canvas, the right paint, the right environment, and that’s what it was for Ali. If that fight would have been somewhere else, he might not have been victorious. He was always so accessible, it was a blessing and he said, “I’m here, no one can bother me.”

One hundred per cent it was the highpoint of Ali’s career. Ten years later he was back [after beating Liston]. For Ali against Liston, you didn’t have that much media at that time, you didn’t run in to people who had seen the Liston fights, everyone saw the Foreman fight. You didn’t have the media as it was at that time. This was the biggest sporting event in history. Nothing was as big, and nothing will ever be bigger. This was as big as the Olympics. Even today, people don’t know who the heavyweight champion is. Nobody cares. Go to a store, ask them if they know who the heavyweight champ is, then ask them about Ali and they’ll all tell you. 

Right after the fight, I pleaded with him to retire. The honorable Elijah Muhammad, the religious leader, wanted him to retire, and here he was offered Joe Bugner for $3m and he said, “I might not hire Joe Bugner as a sparring partner and I’m getting $3m?”

You can’t stay too long.

Ali-Foreman was a remarkable fight. If that fight was today, each fighter would receive maybe $200m. It was the most spectacular thing on planet earth. Everywhere I go, people tell me, “I remember that fight. I was just a kid.”

Even on the airplanes, they announced Muhammad Ali had beaten George Foreman. Everyone here in America, older people, remembers where they were when Kennedy was assassinated and when Ali beat Foreman. It was a part of history.