Singer recalls Ali's "butterfly" effect

By Sananda Maitreya

Special to ESPN.com

Editor's note: Oct. 30 marked the 31st anniversary of "The Rumble In
The Jungle," Muhammad Ali's stunning eighth-round knockout of George
Foreman to regain the heavyweight title. The fight in Kinshasa,
Zaire, is the subject of the Academy Award-winning documentary "When
We Were Kings." It was here that Ali unveiled his rope-a-dope
fighting tactic, leaning against the ropes and absorbing Foreman's
blows before emerging to counterattack.

Singer/musician Sananda Maitreya, a former Florida Golden Gloves
boxer himself, is a longtime fan of Ali's. Better known as Terence
Trent D'Arby, Maitreya is a Grammy Award-winning singer
whose "Introducing the Hardline" debut solo album sold more than 8
million copies worldwide. Now recording in Italy, he shares his
boyhood recollection of "The Rumble" and his thoughts about Ali.

Before having emerged as a tubby, Madison Avenue-friendly Squeeze Me
Elmo, George Foreman was the flameholder of menace between Sonny
Liston and Iron Mike Tyson.

He was so feared that even the tax man sent him fruit baskets
requesting his money. To Muhammad Ali, however, Foreman was to be
another stepping stone to an immortality that laid the foundation of
his villa on Mount Olympus.

I was 12 in 1974, yet felt like a pensioner already and never
doubted -- like most of the adults around me -- that Muhammad would
prevail.

How? I knew not. What I pictured was another Liston summoning, with
Ali smacking and dancing and Foreman grunting and lunging. I had a
sense that Muhammad would win because, if nothing else, he had a
great sense of his own theatre and knew that this was a great fight
to win, a must-win on the road. A win he had to have. One thing was
certain: We wouldn't be bored.

It was fitting (in retrospect) that the rebirth of a legend would
take place inside of a cocoon.

For several disbelieving rounds, while the rest of the world counted
the moments until he would crumble beneath the plunder, a butterfly
was stretching (that same butterfly, perhaps in the Amazon, that
affects the weather by sneezing). That butterfly was unfolding and
attaining freedom from the chrysalis that big George so thunderously
helped to break open. And upon being greeted by the spirit he helped
to free, Foreman soon was baptized in it.

At that time in my life, only Stevie Wonder and a couple of rock
bands meant anything even close to the idolatry I lavished upon the
former Cassius Clay.

He was the Picasso of sport and to see him now is to be reminded of
the sacrifice great warriors are willing to make to reach in as deep
as necessary to move us.

After the heroics of "The Rumble In The Jungle" and "The Thrilla In
Manila," there where no real challenges left to mount, nothing left
to prove, so he drifted. It is a drift of meditation on what it was
like to have born the spirit of Dionysus into a soul whose wings
were shaped like gloves.

As an 118-pound boxer who claims the 1980 Florida Golden Gloves
title (by injury default, he admits), Sananda Maitreya patterned
himself after another hero, Thomas "The Hit Man" Hearns. He trained
in Orlando under the tutelage of Jimmy Williams, who had once been a
friend and confidant in Harlem of Sugar Ray Robinson. Visit
Maitreya's Web site at www.sanandamaitreya.com

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