Today marks the 50th anniversary of Muhammad Ali regaining the world heavyweight title when he knocked out George Foreman in the “Rumble in the Jungle.” It’s a fight that has been endlessly written about since, so trying to uncover more than one or two facts that are not common knowledge was far from an easy task. 

1. On April 1, 1974, Radio Cameroon celebrated April Fools’ Day with a spoof report that stated “Cassius Clay” was in Yaounde, the country’s capital, to start training camp for his contest with George Foreman. The joke was intended to be an obvious one – particularly when someone who had a deep African accent pretended to be Muhammad Ali – but when the station offered 50 free tickets to a bogus Ali exhibition, its offices were suddenly swamped with listeners eager to get their hands on one.

2. A vast number of media members were expected to descend on Zaire for the fight, which was originally scheduled to take place on September 25, 1974. Zairian officials established a procedure for applying for accreditation, with American and European journalists sending their requests to Murray Goodman in New York and journalists from the rest of the world to contact the Union of Journalists in Zaire. The media was invited to apply from July 10.

3. All members of the media who attended the contest were warned beforehand that should they “fabricate, print, sell, circulate or distribute” any of the publicity materials for the fight, they would be imprisoned for one year.

4. Ali was supposed to have an exhibition on June 10 in Libreville, Gabon. The Gabonese press reported, “One more proof of fruitful exchanges which characterize excellent relations between the US and Gabon.” However, with Ali packed and ready to head to Gabon, the exhibition was cancelled because his contract with the government of Zaire “precludes any fight in Africa prior to bout in Kinshasa.”

5. On June 22, at the Boxing Writers’ Association dinner at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, Foreman and Ali tangled on the podium in front of the 900 guests in attendance. As the fighters were separated, Ali picked up some drinking glasses from the dais and threw them at Foreman, shouting, “You tore my suit! You tore my suit!” 

6. Foreman wasn’t in much better shape himself; by the time he entered an elevator with Joe Frazier, his shirt was torn almost completely off. The world heavyweight champion was heard to say to Don King as he left, “You’d better get me two bodyguards any time I’m going near him again.”

7. Video Techniques, a company owned by Henry Schwartz that filmed and distributed major sporting events, acted as the co-promoter alongside Hemdale Film Corporation. The Rumble in the Jungle would mark the first telecast from the former Republic of Zaire. Schwartz was a close ally of Don King, who gained the signatures of Foreman and Ali on the strength of a promise to pay them $5 million each.

8. King did not have $10 million, however. Fred Weymar, a U.S. advisor to Zaire’s dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, was used as the middleman to get the funding in place.

9. Recognizing the likelihood of problems that may arise due to staging such a huge event, the American embassy in Kinshasa sought advice from its equivalent in Caracas, Venezuela, the site of Foreman’s victory over Ken Norton. The response, via telegram, from the Caracas embassy read in part: “My recommendation is that both fighters and managers come with visas of equivalent validity. For example, Henry Schwartz skipped out of Venezuela the day after the fight, leaving behind a TV crew of 20 and a million-dollar TV van, to say nothing of the two fighters, one of whom, Foreman, languished about the hotel pool for a week until he could get permission to depart after his income tax was paid.”

10. The telegram concluded: “Having seen my mutual gentle friend Foreman hit, I should say that if Muhammad gets in the way of such a fist, he will be rapidly translated to his Muslim masters, either Allah or Shaitan.”

11. Prior to staging the Rumble in the Jungle, the Stade du 20 Mai played host to a soccer match in front of 38,000 spectators in May. Some rather ambitious plans for renovation were reported in August; increasing the capacity to 120,000 with 4,000 “ringside” seats to be sold for $250. There were hotel expansions planned alongside housing projects to accommodate the anticipated 12,000 foreign visitors, with an extra 200 buses to be added to the city’s existing fleet of 500.  “Oh, well,” wrote Randy Neuman in The New York Times, “it’s cheaper than hosting the Olympics.”

12. On September 17, 1974, Foreman – during one his final sparring sessions – was caught by Bill McMurray’s elbow and left with a cut above his right eye that would need a reported 11 stitches. Suddenly, Foreman-Ali was in jeopardy. 

13. Zaire 74, a three-day music festival designed to take place in the build-up to the fight, carried on regardless. The September 22-24 extravaganza included performances from James Brown, Celia Cruz, Fania All-Stars, B.B. King, Miriam Makeba, Bill Withers, the Spinners, the Crusaders and Manu Dibango.

14. On the afternoon of September 25, a press conference was called during which Foreman refused to confirm that he had agreed to the rescheduled date of October 30. Appearing somewhat agitated, Foreman responded to a reporter questioning him about the new date. “You want to fight now?” Big George said when asked if the fight would take place on October 30. “Come on up here and we’ll fight now. Otherwise, shut up.”

15. After being persuaded by Don King to stay in Africa and fight on October 30, reporters were called back in the evening to “clear up a few things.” Foreman, who claimed his earlier address was facetious, said: “The promoters say it will be the [30th], then I will have to fight on the [30th] if I want the money.”

16. Ali labelled the fight “the biggest event in the history of the world since Roman gladiators.”

17. Though Foreman had been only 10 rounds on three occasions and his previous eight fights had all ended before the third round, he said: “I’m made for 15 rounds, I’m the champion. I feel 100 per cent confident. I just feel I’m getting better and better.”

18. Angelo Dundee, Ali’s trainer, predicted a knockout victory for his charge. “My man is gonna knock out George Foreman in nine, 10 or 11. It’s not gonna be leg speed that wins this. It’s gonna be movement – head movement, hand movement, body movement.”

19. On October 26, it emerged that experienced official and chairman of the Pennsylvania Athletic Commission Zack Clayton was the “foremost candidate” to be the referee. Dundee approved of Clayton, who had refereed the first fight between Rocky Marciano and Jersey Joe Walcott. But Dick Sadler complained that both Clayton and Ali were from Pennsylvania, alluding to the challenger’s Deer Lake training camp.

20. Asked whether he would lodge an official complaint about Clayton’s expected appointment, Sadler said with a smile, “[No] I don’t want to go to jail.” The only other official in the running to be the referee was Ghana’s Godfrey Amarteifio. The following day, Clayton was confirmed as the man in the middle.

21. The weigh-in took place late (11 p.m.) on October 27, three days before the contest. It was held at Stade du 20 Mai – the fight venue – in front of an enthusiastic crowd of 12,000. One excited local onlooker told The New York Times, “I will tell my children and their children of what I saw tonight.”

22. Ali, wearing a green shirt with a picture of Mobuto upon it, arrived at the weigh-in at 10:15 p.m., and Foreman – dressed in a long, brown African robe – showed up a little under 10 minutes later. By then, a carnival atmosphere had gripped the stadium as a band played and a male chorus sang, “George Foreman and Muhammad Ali, you are not foreigners but sons of Africa.”

23. Ali weighed 216.5lbs compared to Foreman’s 220.

24. Before the fight a confident Foreman claimed he had handed his trainer, Dick Sadler, $25,000 to give to referee Zack Clayton. This was not a bribe in the common sense of the word – he merely wanted to make sure that Clayton pulled Foreman away from Ali so that he wouldn’t hit him when he was down and get disqualified.

25. The scheduled 15-round contest, in which Foreman was reported as either a 3-1 or 4-1 betting favorite, began at 4 a.m. local time to accommodate American TV audiences. Ordinarily, at 4 a.m. in Zaire in 1974, only laborers at the textile factory would be up and working.

26. The undercard – designed purely for the television audience – took place in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and featured victories for Terry Rondeau, Paul Osborne, Joey Hadley and Bobby Stewart. The only fight other than Ali-Foreman to take place in Zaire saw Shako Mamba knock out Antonio Oke in six rounds.

27. Foreman was driven from his Intercontinental Hotel to the stadium in a Citroen, whereas Ali was transported, alongside his sizable entourage, in a Mercedes-Benz bus on the 40-mile trip from his villa at the N’Sele Diplomatic Complex.

28. Foreman entered the arena and arrived in the carpeted dressing room situated underneath the stadium at 2:30 a.m. Ali would arrive 30 minutes later.

29. Zaire’s plans to host 120,000 fell substantially short. Even so, 60,000 was an impressive attendance and an estimated 50 million watched on television.

30. The reason for Ali’s tardiness was his robe. “Somebody forgot his robe,” a member of his entourage explained, “and they had to send back to get it.” In the meantime, Ali walked out to survey the swelling crowd, taking in the multitude of the occasion, albeit unseen to almost everyone.

31. Before the main event the national anthems of America and Zaire were played. During this time, Ali mocked an oblivious Foreman and, when the champion sat to have his gloves tied, the challenger swooped and taunted him, much to the delight of the pro-Ali crowd.

32. At the end of the first round, Ali sat on his stool and looked across at Foreman and winked at him.

33. After the third round, Ali took a detour to his stool via a closed-circuit TV camera and made a face.

34. Before the sixth round, an increasingly concerned Angelo Dundee hurried across the ring to confront a Zaire official who was trying to tighten the sagging top rope. Dundee told him, with obvious annoyance, that he was in fact loosening the boundary and making it worse. The trainer then told Ali to stay off the ropes – which he did for most of the round.

35. After Foreman was counted out in Round 8, Ali sat down in the ring for several moments. Almost immediately, fans swarmed around him, eager to congratulate their hero. It would take several minutes before the Zairian police and paratroopers could return a semblance of order to the scene.

36. Perhaps the greatest misconception regarding the fight was that Ali had taken a one-sided pasting before he burst from the ropes to score a knockout in the eighth. At the time of the stoppage, Ali led on all three scorecards: referee Zach Clayton had Ali leading by 68-66 (4-2-1 in rounds); Nourridine Adalla liked Ali by 70-67 (4-0-3); and James Taylor had the challenger 69-66 (4-1-2) in front.

37. In a program produced for Channel 4 in the U.K. in 2002, the fight between Ali and Foreman was named as the seventh-greatest sporting moment in history. For context, the rather British-centric list had Steve Redgrave winning his fifth Olympic gold medal at the top, Diego Maradona’s handball against England in 1986 as high as sixth and Torvill and Dean’s “Bolero” routine just below the Rumble in the Jungle at eighth.

38. In a nod to the fight’s significance, a photo of Foreman falling to the canvas with Ali standing over him was the lead image on the cover of several major American newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and the New York Daily News. This is even more remarkable when one considers that, on the same day, Richard Nixon (who had resigned from the American presidency less than three months before) was in critical condition in hospital after going into shock post-surgery – the lead story for The New York Times.

39. According to Ali’s biographer, Thomas Hauser, the tactics that would be immortalized as “rope a dope” were not preordained and were, in part, inspired by the great Archie Moore. “Against George, the ring was slow,” Ali told Hauser as they watched the fight together in 1989. “Dancing all night, my legs would have got tired. … In the first round, I used more energy staying away from him than he used chasing me. I was tired-er than I should have been with 14 rounds to go. … I decided to do what I did in training when I got tired. It was something Archie Moore used to do. He let younger men take their shots and blocked everything in scientific fashion. Then, when they got tired, Archie would attack. Not everyone can do that. It takes a lot of skill.” 

40. On November 4, 1974, George Foreman demanded that the WBC and the WBA investigate the fight, citing three irregularities. One, the count was too quick. Two, the ropes had been tampered with. Three, the canvas was soggy and soft. The aim was not for the result to be overturned but for an immediate rematch to be ordered. 

41. On the same day, Angelo Dundee responded to Foreman’s claims. He said that he and Bobby Goodman went to the stadium at 10 p.m. on the eve of the fight and worked on the ropes for five hours. “The ring was in terrible shape,” Dundee said. “The ropes were as loose as clotheslines. If they had been left like that, a fighter could have broken his neck. … Instead of complaining, Foreman should thank us.”

42. Also on November 4, referee Clayton’s memories of the fight were published by newspapers. They focused on Ali baiting Foreman throughout the contest. “During one of the clinches, Ali told Foreman that he looked tired,” Clayton remembered. “Then Ali said: ‘This is the worst place to get tired, young fella. You're here all by yourself and the referee can't help you.’”

43. Many years later, a mellowed and reflective Foreman said about Ali’s victory, “It was the performance of a lifetime. I just wish I’d been able to tell him right after it happened.”

44. At the time, however, Foreman struggled to cope. According to his brother, Roy, George spent $400,000 in three months after being knocked out by Ali, with much of the cash going on gifts for friends and family. “He was afraid people wouldn’t love him anymore,” Roy said.

45. Foreman focused on making his in-ring persona grow even more menacing. When he floored Joe Frazier in their 1976 rematch, he stood over him and sneered at the audience. “I was one step away from putting my foot on the man’s chest,” he said afterwards. “I thought if I killed a man, it would only make me more vicious. After I’d lost to Ali, I’d decided I needed more hate.”

46. In March 1977, a sequel between Ali and Foreman was close to being finalized. Thirteen million dollars were to be shared between them; all George had to do was beat Jimmy Young. Still haunted by losing in Zaire, Foreman cornered Young in Rounds 3 and 7 but later claimed he wanted to prove that he had the stamina required for a distance fight. In the end, Young deservedly won the decision, Foreman had his famous religious episode in the dressing room, and he wouldn’t fight again until 1987.

47. In 1978, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Foreman would admit – for the first time – that the loss to Ali was fair and square. “I just got beat,” he said. Thirty years later, he identified that interview as the moment he started to move on.

48. Foreman and Ali would become friends of sorts following the former’s first retirement. Foreman would worry about Ali, often urging him to retire. They squabbled about their religious beliefs, with Foreman futilely asking his old rival to embrace Christianity. Prior to the Larry Holmes fight in 1980, Foreman had visions that Ali would end up in a coma and called to warn him. “If that’s true, George,” Ali responded, “God’s gonna mess up a good man because I’m gonna give all my money to poor folks.”

49. In 1984, Ali and Foreman were reunited by ABC on a broadcast to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the Rumble in the Jungle. Foreman was disturbed by Ali’s deteriorating health. Afterwards, he said: “I’m trying to find the right words. He was a tough old boy – I’ll be honest – a better fighter than me. But now I just feel sorry for him. I just want him to have some dignity. … I’d like to teach Ali how to fish. He needs something so he don’t just sit there staring into space. I think that’s why my mind keeps going back to him. Deep down, me and him are the same kind of person.”

50. In 1994, Foreman sensationally regained the world heavyweight title at the age of 45 when he knocked out Michael Moorer. It was widely reported that he wore the same shorts that he sported in Zaire, 20 years previously. Foreman would later explain that they may not have been the exact pair: “Everlast had made a series of trunks for me when I was heavyweight champion the first time. There was a tag on them that said, ‘Specially made for George Foreman, heavyweight champion of the world.’ I had held on to a couple of pairs, and I said to myself, ‘When I go into the ring this time [against Moorer], even though I’ll be introduced as the challenger, I’m going to feel like the champ.’”