No forgetting Ali, 50 years after Rumble In The Jungle

It's Zaire, 50 Octobers ago and somewhere past 4am. Sweat is raining and George Foreman's fists striking like a blacksmith's hammer. In January 1973 he sent Joe Frazier to the canvas six times in the first two rounds. Now it's 1974 and he's trying to put a dent in Muhammad Ali's head.

- Rohit Brijnath Assistant Sports Editor

The fifth round ends, the air is heavy with violence, which is when Jim Brown, former gridiron star, says in commentary about Ali...

"I thought he was hurt... "And he winked at me."

Ali fooled everyone. In 1964, when he fought the fearsome Sonny Liston, some feared for his life. The New York Times asked correspondent Robert Lipsyte to check the route to the nearest hospital. "(They) didn't want me wasting any deadline time," wrote Lipsyte, "getting lost on the way to the intensive-care unit".

Ali beat Liston and the legend of The Greatest commenced. If you didn't believe that, he'd tell you he was. After the Foreman fight, where his instinctive tactical genius lay in leaning against the ropes, absorbing punishment and tiring his rival, he said: "Everyone stop talking now... I told you all that I was the greatest of all times... Never again say I am going to be defeated. Never again make me the underdog until I am about 50 years old. Then you might get me."

There was no athlete like him before nor might there be again.