in the kidney, hit you in the heart, hit you in the kidney again. Oooh! George does more things than Muhammad. Punches better, better all around, he’s fast and more complete. George can slip, George can parry, George is going to catch you inside, spin you, hit you on the side of your head. You’ll know and maybe you won’t know.” Sadler stopped, looked down, let himself wobble like a drunken man. “Your legs will know it.”
Asked if there might be last-minute shifts in Foreman’s training or strategy, Sadler shrugged at the flatness of the question. “I’ve been doing this for a gang of years with a gang of Champs. We’re not worried. We don’t have to dip into my
intuition
at the last instant. Ali can run but he surecan’t run for long. We’re confident. There’ll be no surprises. This ought to be the easiest fight George is going to have.” He nodded to the press and took off with his fighter. “Gangway for all this talent,” he cried out.
Something of this was clear in the way he had Foreman work next day. There was no boxing, and no fancy sparring, just the eerie sounds of Foreman’s nature music (“I Love the Lord” — Donny Hathaway) and after fifteen or twenty minutes of loosening, brooding and shadowboxing, Foreman went to work on the heavy bag. Sadler stood holding it, a rudimentary exercise usually given to beginners who first must learn to punch into a stationary object. But Foreman and Sadler were practicing something else.
It is punishing for a boxer to have a long workout on a heavy bag. It hurts one’s arms, it hurts one’s head, it can spring one’s knuckles if the hands are not wrapped. Big as a tackling dummy, the bag weighs eighty pounds or more, and when a punch is not thrown properly, the boxer’s body shudders with the shock. It is like being brought down by an unexpected tackle. One bad punch is enough. Now Foreman began to hit this bag with lefts and rights. He did not throw them slowly, he did not throw them fast, he threw them steadily, putting all of his body into each punch, which came to mean that he was contracting and expelling his force forty to fifty times a minute for he threw that many punches, not fast, not slow, but concussive in their power. Sadler leaned forward, braced to the back of the bag, like a man riding a barrel in a storm at sea. He was shaken with every punch. His body quivered from the impact. That hardly mattered, that was part of the show.When the impact of Foreman’s fist on the other side of the bag was particularly heavy, he grunted, and said “Alors” in admiration.
Fifty punches a minute for a three-minute round. It is one hundred and fifty punches without rest. Foreman stopped hitting the bag for the thirty-second interval Sadler allowed between each round, but Foreman did not stop moving. The bag free, he danced about it, tapping it lightly, moving his feet faster and faster, and the thirty seconds up, Sadler was back holding the bag, and Foreman was pounding punches into it. These were no ordinary swings. Foreman was working for the maximum of power in punch after punch round after round fifty or a hundred punches in a row without diminishing his power — he would throw five or six hundred punches in this session, and they were probably the heaviest cumulative series of punches any boxing writer had seen. Each of these blows was enough to smash an average athlete’s ribs; anybody with poor stomach muscles would have a broken spine. Foreman hit the heavy bag with the confidence of a man who can pick up a sledgehammer and knock down a tree. The bag developed a hollow as deep as his head. As the rounds went by, Foreman’s sweat formed a pattern of drops six feet in diameter on the floor: poom! and pom! and boom!… bom!… boom!… went the sounds of his fists into the bag, methodical, rhythmic, and just as predictably hypnotic as the great overhead blow of the steam hammer driving a channel of steel into clay. One could feel the
Asked if there might be last-minute shifts in Foreman’s training or strategy, Sadler shrugged at the flatness of the question. “I’ve been doing this for a gang of years with a gang of Champs. We’re not worried. We don’t have to dip into my
intuition
at the last instant. Ali can run but he surecan’t run for long. We’re confident. There’ll be no surprises. This ought to be the easiest fight George is going to have.” He nodded to the press and took off with his fighter. “Gangway for all this talent,” he cried out.
Something of this was clear in the way he had Foreman work next day. There was no boxing, and no fancy sparring, just the eerie sounds of Foreman’s nature music (“I Love the Lord” — Donny Hathaway) and after fifteen or twenty minutes of loosening, brooding and shadowboxing, Foreman went to work on the heavy bag. Sadler stood holding it, a rudimentary exercise usually given to beginners who first must learn to punch into a stationary object. But Foreman and Sadler were practicing something else.
It is punishing for a boxer to have a long workout on a heavy bag. It hurts one’s arms, it hurts one’s head, it can spring one’s knuckles if the hands are not wrapped. Big as a tackling dummy, the bag weighs eighty pounds or more, and when a punch is not thrown properly, the boxer’s body shudders with the shock. It is like being brought down by an unexpected tackle. One bad punch is enough. Now Foreman began to hit this bag with lefts and rights. He did not throw them slowly, he did not throw them fast, he threw them steadily, putting all of his body into each punch, which came to mean that he was contracting and expelling his force forty to fifty times a minute for he threw that many punches, not fast, not slow, but concussive in their power. Sadler leaned forward, braced to the back of the bag, like a man riding a barrel in a storm at sea. He was shaken with every punch. His body quivered from the impact. That hardly mattered, that was part of the show.When the impact of Foreman’s fist on the other side of the bag was particularly heavy, he grunted, and said “Alors” in admiration.
Fifty punches a minute for a three-minute round. It is one hundred and fifty punches without rest. Foreman stopped hitting the bag for the thirty-second interval Sadler allowed between each round, but Foreman did not stop moving. The bag free, he danced about it, tapping it lightly, moving his feet faster and faster, and the thirty seconds up, Sadler was back holding the bag, and Foreman was pounding punches into it. These were no ordinary swings. Foreman was working for the maximum of power in punch after punch round after round fifty or a hundred punches in a row without diminishing his power — he would throw five or six hundred punches in this session, and they were probably the heaviest cumulative series of punches any boxing writer had seen. Each of these blows was enough to smash an average athlete’s ribs; anybody with poor stomach muscles would have a broken spine. Foreman hit the heavy bag with the confidence of a man who can pick up a sledgehammer and knock down a tree. The bag developed a hollow as deep as his head. As the rounds went by, Foreman’s sweat formed a pattern of drops six feet in diameter on the floor: poom! and pom! and boom!… bom!… boom!… went the sounds of his fists into the bag, methodical, rhythmic, and just as predictably hypnotic as the great overhead blow of the steam hammer driving a channel of steel into clay. One could feel the
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