Muhammad Ali and George Foreman met in the boxing ring in Kinshasa, Zaire* in October 1974 for the epic fight known as “The Rumble in the Jungle” and rope played a prominent role (obviously)! When it was over the result of the bout (a stunning Ali victory) shared top billing with a phrase that arose from the rumble: “rope-a-dope.”
Reporting on the fight by novelist and fight fan Norman Mailer suggested that the “rope-a-dope” technique was aided by some pre-fight equipment adjustments by Ali’s trainer Angelo Dundee — an accusation that Dundee denied for decades.
The phrase “rope-a-dope” was so pleasingly eurythmic and so concisely descriptive of the strategy Ali used to beat Foreman that it achieved instant linguistic stardom. It joined the memorable lexicon around the highly quotable Ali, which included the classic “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee, the hands can’t hit what the eyes can’t see” and many others.
The rope in this case were the lines used to delineate the perimeter of a boxing ring. The ropes are suspended in the middle of the ring platform with short ropes attached to metal posts sited at the platform’s four corners. These short ropes keep the ring perimeter ropes away from the posts so the boxers aren’t injured by the unforgiving metal. The tension of these short ropes, and thus the perimeter ropes, are adjusted by the use of turnbuckles. More on this and the accusations against Dundee below.
In most cases in boxing, the ropes represent peril for a boxer. Getting pinned against them, being “on the ropes” usually means that defeat is imminent. Muhammad Ali, however, decided to use the ropes to his advantage. During his sparring sessions while training for the fight, Ali covered up and leaned against the ropes and allowed his sparring partner to hit him. It was viewed as a way to toughen up in preparation for Foreman, who had one of the hardest punches in boxing. According to one account, a sports photographer who often spent time in Ali’s training camp by the name of George Kalinsky observed this covering up behavior by Ali and reportedly said to Ali that he should do the same thing during the Foreman fight. “Act like a dope on the ropes.” Ali is said to have responded to this statement by saying, “So, you want me to be a rope-a-dope?” It was this clever restatement of Kalinsky’s words by Ali that launched the phrase.
Leaning back against the ropes, which were likely made of natural fiber hemp or manila, and covering up Ali would absorb Foreman’s punishing blows. While they would sting, Foreman’s punches ultimately did little more than wear Foreman out. Once Foreman was suitably worn down, Ali would leave his defensive stance and attack.
Ali’s ingenious strategy was to use Foreman’s aggressiveness against him. That was how the fight played out, with Ali’s counterattack in the eighth round knocking Foreman down and the referee stopping the fight.
The Rumble in the Jungle had received so much advance publicity that numerous well known journalists attended and wrote their accounts. One of these was the pugnacious Norman Mailer, who a year later in 1975 published a nonfiction book on the rumble called The Fight. In this account Mailer made the accusation that before the fight Dundee had adjusted the ring ropes to aid his fighter.
“Angelo Dundee from Miami, went methodically from ring post to ring post and there in full view of ringside and the stadium just as methodically loosened each of the four turnbuckles on each post which held the tension of each of the four ropes, and did it with a spoke and a wrench…. And when the ropes were slack to his taste, loose enough for his fighter to lean way back, he left the ring and returned to the corner. Nobody had paid any particular attention to him.”
If Mailer’s accusation is true, then when Ali was doing his rope-a-dope, the loose ropes absorbed some of the energy of Foreman’s punches, aiding Ali’s strategy.
Dundee, however, always denied the accusation that he loosened the ropes. In a 2010 interview with James Slater on the Boxing 247 website Dundee repeated his denial.
“I went to the arena that day at 4P.M, and I tried to tighten the ropes, Bobby Goodman and I. They were 24-foot ropes for a 20-foot ring. It wasn’t easy, but we tightened them, not figuring on the heat in Zaire. The fight wasn’t until 4A.M the next morning, and the heat loosened the ropes again.”
Were the ropes loose due to Dundee’s efforts or because of the heat in Kinshasa? We’ll likely never know, but it appears that either way the ropes were loose and they may have assisted Muhammad Ali in his daring approach to defeating George Foreman.
*(Zaire has since been renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo)