The Fight by Norman Mailer

that was what he would need. Training began with a loosening-up procedure other fighters did not employ. Foreman stood in the center of the ring and meditated as a weird and extraordinary music began to play through the public address system. It was pop. As ambitious, however, as pop music could ever become; sounds reminiscent of Wagner, Sibelius, Moussorgsky and many an electronic composer were in the mix. Nature was awakening in the morning — so went one’s first assumption of the theme — but what a piece of nature! Macbeth’s witches encountered Wagner’s gods on a spastic dawn. Demons abounded. Caves boiled vapors. Trees split with the scream of a broken bone. The ground wrenched. Boulders fell onto musical instruments. Into these sounds, lyrical as movie-music dew, the sun slowly rose, leaves shook themselves, and the sorrowful throbs of an aching soul full of vamping organ dumps and thumps fulfilled some hollow in the din.
    Foreman was wearing red trunks, a white T-shirt, reddish headgear, and bright red gloves, a bloody contrast to the sobriety of his mood. As the music played, he began to make small moves with his elbows and fists, miniscule locked-up uppercuts that did not travel an inch, small flicks of his neck, blinks of his eye. Slowly he began to shift his feet, but in awkward steps. He looked like a giant beginning to move after a five-year sleep. Making no attempt to appear impressive, he went through a somnambulistic dance. Near to motionless, he yet evoked the muffled roars of that steamy nature waking up, waking up. All by himself in the ring with a bewildered press and a wholly silent audience ofseveral hundred Africans, he moved as though transition to the full speed of boxing would have to use up its convoluted time. Some Heavyweights were known for how long it took them to get ready — Marciano used to shadowbox five rounds in the dressing room before a title bout — but Foreman’s warm-up suggested that he could become connected again to reflexes in himself only by separating himself altogether from time.
    Yet as the music became less of a tone poem to Hieronymous Bosch and more like hints of
Oklahoma!
coming through Moussorgsky — what sweets and sours! — Foreman’s feet began to slide, his arms to parry imaginary blows. Moving forward, he shadowboxed, cutting off the ring, throwing punches harder at the unstoppable air, working into the woe of every heavy puncher when he misses target (for no punch disturbs the shoulder more than the one that does not connect — professionals can be separated from amateurs by the speed with which their torso absorbs that instant’s loss of balance). Now, Foreman having passed at last through these stages, Sadler cut off the music, and Foreman came to the corner. Wholly remote, he stood there while Sadler carefully greased his face and forehead for the sparring to come. But he was already returned to the full melancholy of isolation and concentration.
    He sparred a round with Henry Clark, not trying to hit hard but enjoying himself. His hands were fast and he held them well out in front, picking off punches with quick leonine cuffs of his mitts, then countering quickly with lefts and rights. He had much to learn about moving his head, but his feet were nimble. Clark, a cherubic-looking BlackHeavyweight with a reputation of his own (eighth-ranking Heavyweight Contender), was being handled with authority by Foreman. A favorite of the press (for he was friendly and articulate), Clark had been declaring Foreman’s praises for weeks. “George does not hit like other fighters,” he would say. “Even a punch on the arms leaves you feeling paralyzed, and that’s with heavy gloves. Ali is a friend of mine, and I’m afraid he’s going to get hurt. George is the most punishing human being I’ve ever been in with.”
    This afternoon, however, with the fight five days away, Foreman was not working to punish Clark (who was due to fight the semifinal with Roy