Unleashed by Sigmund Brouwer

Author:Sigmund Brouwer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: JUV021000, JUV039010, JUV013000
Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
Published: 2015-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

The best boxing match—I mean ever—was Muhammad Ali against George Foreman. Zaire, 1974. It’s called “The Rumble in the Jungle.”

I watch it twice a month, pulling it up from video archives. Foreman went into the fight as a twenty-four-year-old heavyweight who had demolished opponents with his punching power and sheer size and physical dominance. Ali had speed and boxing skills but was eight years older than Foreman and considered a worn-out underdog.

But Ali had a secret plan. He called it the rope-a-dope. When the second round began, Ali began leaning on the ropes, covering up. Foreman threw tremendous punches, but Ali deflected them away from his head and fired occasional jabs that were straight punches to Foreman’s face.

In clinches, Ali leaned on Foreman, to make the bigger man support Ali’s weight, and taunted him, telling him to throw more punches. Enraged, Foreman threw them harder and harder.

In the seventh round, seemingly beaten, Ali held Foreman in yet another clinch and whispered into Foreman’s ear, “That all you got, George?”

That’s when the bigger, stronger and favored fighter realized the fight wasn’t what he thought it was. His first premonition, his first tremor of fear. In the eighth round, all those wild angry punches took their toll, and Foreman started losing strength.

It gives me an adrenaline rush to watch it in slow motion, the five-punch combination that Ali threw after a series of right hooks as Foreman tried to pin Ali against the ropes. Five punches, rapid-fire, precision missiles ending in a left hook that brought Foreman’s head up into a vulnerable position, followed by a hard right from Ali that sent Foreman to the canvas, the knockout punch that ended the fight.

I’ve counted the punches that Ali took during those eight rounds. Hundreds. Thunderous blows from the world’s most powerful puncher. Blows to Ali’s sides. To his kidneys. To Ali’s forearms. To Ali’s biceps. Blows that bounced off his skull. Ali’s response will always echo for me. That all you got, George?

I’d been living in a household dominated by a man the entire world believed to be a hero, and I’d seen what the world hadn’t seen. I’d endured it since I was a boy. Blow after blow—not physical, but worse: blows of scorn and insults. Now here I was, climbing a rope on the side of a hospital building, trying to put in place a combination of counterblows to bring him down.

Yeah, I was scared of gravity. But I kept whispering to myself, That all you got?

Halfway up the wall I realized I was winning the fight against my fear. The process just took determination and a willingness to believe that if you hung in there—ha! Nice pun, given the rope that dangled three stories down the side of the hospital in the dark night—you’d win in the end.

I’d pull on the Jumar with my left hand, trusting that the mechanism would lock and hold. With my right hand, I’d slide the other Jumar up as high as I could.

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