1:09:01
'Ali had his right cocked
for one more punch
1:09:04
'but he never threw it,
1:09:06
'as though he didn't want to ruin the
aesthetic of this man going down.'
1:09:11
One has mixed emotions
when you see the end of a fight.
1:09:15
'I always feel sympathy
for the man losing it,
1:09:18
'particularly when you see
a titanic, formidable figure
1:09:22
'suddenly on the ground.'
1:09:24
(Mailer) 'Now,
when we see George on TV,
1:09:26
'and know that after that knockout
1:09:29
'he went through two years
of the deepest depression,
1:09:33
'he almost didn't come out of it.
1:09:35
'To see the man who's come out of it,
1:09:38
'the way he reconstructed
his personality,
1:09:41
'it's hard to find anyone in America
more affable than George Foreman.
1:09:46
'Foreman has become
a fabulous person in American life.'
1:09:50
Just as the fight finished,
1:09:52
the monsoons, the African rains,
came, and they came so hard
1:09:56
that the waters were about
three feet deep in the dressing rooms
1:10:00
where we'd just been an hour ago,
I'd never seen such a downpour.
1:10:04
And we rode back
through the African night
1:10:07
from the boxing ring into Kinshasa
1:10:09
and there were crowds on the roads
standing in the pouring rain
1:10:13
leaping up and down because
news had got around that Ali had won.
1:10:17
(Mailer) 'He stayed up all night
from what I heard,
1:10:21
'and in the morning he spoke to
African groups who'd come to see him,
1:10:26
'and they more than revered him,
he was a god.
1:10:29
'And he spoke to them
very simply and beautifully,
1:10:33
'and he said,
"Afro-Americans, in America,
1:10:37
'"we're not as good as you are.
1:10:39
'"Some of us are richer than you are,
1:10:41
'"but you have a dignity
in your poverty that we don't have.
1:10:45
'"We are spoiled in America,
1:10:47
'"we have lost what you still have
in Africa and you must keep that."
1:10:51
'And I thought, on top of everything
else he's a political leader
1:10:55
'and he's gonna be
a great political leader.'
1:10:59
I have a lot of things to do
in the Black neighbourhoods,