Rope-A-Dope

Don't let down your guard. Even when they are on the ropes.

I loved boxing as a kid.

My dad boxed some when he was growing up and he was also a big fan of heavyweight boxing matches. He had a story about my grandfather, Grumpy, who he claimed could pick flies by their wings out of the air around boxing rings due to his lightning fast reflexes which he had attained by training to box. It was a tale he told me more than once.

I don’t know if I fully believed it or not but I do remember thinking that Mississippi flies must have been a lot more lethargic, or a lot more stupid, than Texas flies.

We listened by radio to the memorable heavyweight championship match between Sonny Liston and Cassius Clay in Miami Beach, Florida in 1964. In many ways, listening to a boxing match was much more exciting than watching it. An excitable announcer who could convey the gladiatorial nature of the sport could ramp up a listener’s nervousness, anticipation and anxiety in a way video could not. Of course, if the radio cut out or faded out briefly, or the announcer was drowned out by the crowd, it only added to the excitement.

Cassius Clay beat Liston, the heavyweight champion at the time, in seven rounds. Their rematch a year later had the same results, only the second time around Liston was dispatched in the first round. And Cassius Clay, known as the ‘Louisville Lip’ for his non-stop braggadocio, had changed his given name to Muhammad Ali because, as Malcolm X had taught him, the name Clay could be traced back to the slaveholders who owned his ancestors.

I have a framed poster in my spare bathroom of the iconic photo taken during that second match when it was clear Liston was defeated. It captures a chiseled, triumphant Ali goading a prostrate Liston to either get up or stay down.

Ali was boxing’s greatest salesman.

Here’s the poem Ali wrote prior to his first championship match with Liston, who, at the time, was as feared a boxer as Mike Tyson ever was and had been favored to defeat Ali 8 to 1:

Clay comes out to meet Liston and Liston starts to retreat, 

If Liston goes back an inch farther he'll end up in a ringside seat.

Clay swings with a left, Clay swings with a right,

Just look at young Cassius carry the fight.

Liston keeps backing but there's not enough room,

It's a matter of time until Clay lowers the boom.

Then Clay lands with a right, what a beautiful swing,

And the punch raised the bear clear out of the ring.

Liston still rising and the ref wears a frown,

But he can't start counting until Sonny comes down.

Now Liston disappears from view, the crowd is getting frantic

But our radar stations have picked him up somewhere over the Atlantic.

Who on Earth thought, when they came to the fight,

That they would witness the launching of a human satellite.

Hence the crowd did not dream, when they laid down their money,

That they would see a total eclipse of Sonny.

Muhammad Ali was one of my boyhood idols.

I was strangely drawn to ‘show-boaters’, like Ali and Joe Namath, the New York Jets quarterback who brazenly guaranteed a Super Bowl victory over Johnny Unitas and the Baltimore Colts in 1969, even though ‘show-boating’ was not my style. When Ali was stripped of his title by the U.S. Government for refusing to appear at his military induction and sentenced to five years in prison, I was devastated. He was in the prime of his career and a five year hiatus was tantamount to an automatic retirement.

I bemoaned the fact that we would never see him fight in his prime.

He managed to regain his boxing license and return to the ring in late 1970 where he began his tortuous ascent to fight once more for the heavyweight crown. When he finally managed to get a shot at the championship, he took Joe Frazier for the full 12 rounds but lost to the judges.

By the time Ali got his second shot at the heavyweight championship following his imprisonment, Joe Frazier had succumbed to George Foreman, a 25 year old mountain of a man who had endeared himself to Americans as an amateur at the 1968 Summer Olympics by waving a tiny American flag after every lopsided boxing victory.

No one, except Ali himself, expected Ali to defeat Foreman in what was being billed as the Rumble in the Jungle. The odds before the fight were 4 to 1, but they seemed much more bleak than that. The fight was to be held in 1974 in Zaire, or what used to be known as the Republic of Congo. The tropical heat was not seen to be favorable to the 32 year old Ali who was not the same fighter who had stood over a fallen Sonny Liston.

George Foreman had crushed Joe Frazier and Ken Norton and an aging Ali seemed a mere speed bump. Fans speculated that Ali was merely out for a payday and on the brink of retirement.

I recall listening to that fight and hearing the announcer bemoan how the ‘float like a butterfly, sting like a bee’ Muhammad Ali was nowhere to be found in that ring in Zaire. That he was flat-footed and relying on the ropes to hold him up while Foreman pummeled him mercilessly. But even though Foreman threw haymaker after haymaker, Ali kept upright absorbing the blows.

I think I remember that Foreman had never had to box more than a few rounds. He had always eliminated his opponents in the early rounds. I boxed some in the backyard and at the gym as a teen and I can tell you that holding your arms at the ready, throwing punches, protecting your face for three minutes - the length of a round - can be enormously exhausting.

Ali’s tactic, which ran counter to his usual dancing away from blows, was to allow Foreman to exhaust himself by flailing away for several rounds at a listless body using the ropes as support. It came to be known as the rope-a-dope technique. It worked like a charm for Ali on that hot October night in Kinshasa. Muhammad Ali knocked out the previously never knocked out George Foreman in the eighth round.

I thought about the rope-a-dope strategy this morning while listening to the news.

Coronavirus cases are running amok in the Deep South. Jeffery Epstein’s right hand confidant and jill-of-all-trades was arrested by the FBI. The media is still in a frenzy over the bounties placed on American soldiers by Russia’s CIA as if it is a surprise to anyone that the president continues to kowtow to Vladimir Putin. The Supreme Court is dragging their feet over releasing some portion of the Mueller report to Congress. Oklahomans (Oklahomans!) voted to expand Medicaid! Oklahoma is redder than a Valentine’s Day card. Murder hornets have taken up residence in Washington State’s governor’s mansion.

(Okay. I made that last one up. Just wanted to see if you were still paying attention.)

I bring it up not because I think there is a grand Republican strategy to the madness going on in our country but because I want it to be a precautionary tale.

No matter how much it seems we have these bastards - or dopes - on the ropes, we have to remember to conserve enough energy to finish them off come November 3rd.

My favorite rallying cry these days?

Flush the turds, November 3rd!

###

Ever skip rocks as a kid?

Also, while we are on rock-skipping, check out Mother Nature taking a whack at rock-skipping.