Or, Butterflies on the Grill.
Last night I was watching When We Were Kings, an excellent documentary on the 1974 Ali-Foreman “Rumble in the Jungle” title fight in The Congo-Zaire-Congo.
Ali had his hands full with George Foreman, whose punching power is legendary. Ali came up with a winning strategy. First, he antagonized Foreman in the first round by tagging him with a number of right-hand leads, considered a dangerously amateurish punch to throw, particularly against a guy like George. Foreman was angered, and went hard after Ali.
Then, Ali went into something known as the “Rope-a-Dope”. Rather than dancing, for which Ali is better known, the Rope-a-Doper leans far into the ring’s ropes and defends against (and presumably absorbs some of) the other boxer’s punches. In Ali’s case, it worked. An angry Foreman wore himself out pummeling on Ali, and Ali knocked Foreman down and out in the eighth round.
Okay, so I think I know what happened, but I can’t figure out how the Rope-a-Dope works. It seems counter-intuitive to me. The rather limited fight footage in the documentary shows George Foreman delivering punishing body blows to Ali. I mean really punishing.
So my question is this: does leaning into the ropes somehow reduce the effect of the blows delivered by the “attacking” boxer, or does the “defender” simply use the ropes to keep from falling down? And more generally, I’d like to know if this tactic predates the 1974 fight and if it has been used with any success since.
I saw the same documentary. And I can answer some of your questions with some certainty. Remember in the few clips that you could see Ali turning a little when he was nailed by foreman? Obviously Ali would hold his elbows close to his sides, but watch when he is hit, he moves a little to each side he is being hit from. This is a very common technique to turn a little to absorb as much of the punch into your obliques. When you are on the ropes with your back on the ropes you can take some of the pressure of your feet and quads and tense up your abdomen and obliques whilst you turn into each blow. As the blow hits your obliques the person hitting you is exerting quit a bit of force while you are pivoting on the rope and your legs absorbing their blows, in effect exerting way less force than they are, therefore conserving energy for later in the fight.
As for if the tactic predates the fight, I am uncertain. But I can only assume it does, because someone would have had to test it out to see if it works. Ali was a technical fighter, and I bet he observed someone doing that in the past and incorporated it into his style. Of course this is all IMHO.
It is my recollection that Ali was the first fighter to use that strategy. It was coined “rope-a-dope” by Howard Cosell, and only after the fact - because it worked. Before that, it was completely unheard of for the boxer to lean on the ropes way back. It also seemed ludicrous at the time for him to stand there and get punched round after round and not do much back.
Regarding leaning back on the ropes - you put yourself farther away from your opponent, so you are farther away from his effective power range. Power comes in close, not far away. True, there is a certain amount of range that is where your muscles are building force, and the more motion you make in that range the more force you add. But at the extremes of reach the power tapers of because your muscles can’t push there. I’m not sure about the “taking the blows on the obliques part” - could be true, could also be relying on his arms to help deflect the blows a bit.
It is conceivable that Ali copied the style from some other unknown boxer somewhere, but he was the first to implement it on the world scene, and is usually credited as being the inventor of the strategy.
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Note that the link to “rope-a-dope” from there, Ali says he didn’t want to rob Foreman of his power, so he seems to state it didn’t have that much of an effect.
Ali discovered early in the fight that the ropes were looser than normal. This allowed him to lean way back, so that if a head punch landed, it was at the “end of the stroke”.
Of course, this was not the case with body punches, but Ali proved on many occassions that he had the the ability to withstand numerous body blows. Recall how he often allowed heavy bangers like Shavers, Frazier and Chuvalo to pummel him at will, and then suddenly unleash a barrage of lightning combinations.
Ali also knew that Foreman’s stamina was suspect and his boxing skills rudimentry, so it was no big stretch for a smart boxer like Ali to come up with the perfect stragety to defeat a limited fighter like Foreman.
But that was Ali. He always found a way.
“The bull is stronger, but the matador is smarter.”
Muhammed Ali, about the fight
“Magnificent patsy.”
Ali, after Zaire
“He stinks. He’s got a hard jab. If it misses it, it goes off balance… And as for his big punches, you can pack a lunch before they get there.”
Ken Norton, on George Foreman
I think I could react in time to some of Foreman’s punches. I’d get hurt, but I could see the punch coming. I probably couldn’t even keep track of most other champions’ position in the ring. In the movie, they mention that Ali trained to take body shots, and Foreman throws a lot of those “Rock-em, Sock-em Robots” hooks to the body, so Ali had planned for this though he may have gotten lucky with loose ropes.
You would probably have to go back to Jack Johnson (1910, or so) to find a fighter who taunted as well as Ali did. It does seem counterintuitive to let someone hit you, but another way of looking at it is that Ali worked Foreman up, then took a rest, flinching, while Foreman did all the work. When Foreman couldn’t raise his arms anymore, he decked him.
A bit of trivia:
The day after the fight, Foreman complained that the ropes were too loose and the count too short.
Ali: “If he wants a rematch, we’ll tighten the ropes and lengthen the count.”