OPINION:
ORWIGSBURG, Pa. — Deep in the heart of Africa 50 years ago, Muhammad Ali changed history, upsetting the seemingly invincible George Foreman to win back the heavyweight championship of the world that had been taken from him seven years earlier for his refusal to enter the draft during the Vietnam War.
It was a remarkable moment early on the morning of Oct. 30, 1974, in Kinshasa, Zaire, in a fight financed by the dictator of the country, who put up $10 million to be split between both fighters to bring the world to his doorstep. Norman Mailer, Budd Schulberg, Hunter Thompson and George Plimpton were among the elite press corps who were there to write what they feared would be Ali’s obituary.
The 6-foot-4, 220-pound Foreman had destroyed Joe Frazier — who defeated Ali in 15 rounds in the Fight of the Century in 1971 — in two rounds the year before to win the title and then put a brutal beating on Ken Norton, who had broken Ali’s jaw in a win in their first fight in March 1973. As had been the case with Frazier, Foreman needed just two rounds to knock out Norton.
Going into the Ali-Foreman fight, people close to the former champion feared for his life.
But Ali, using his now famous rope-a-dope strategy, stopped Foreman in eight rounds, regaining his championship and changing the conversation about him forever.
The preparation for taking on Foreman in Zaire began in this small Pennsylvania town about 20 miles north of Reading in a place on Sculps Hill Road that Ali called “Fighter’s Heaven” — the training camp Ali built and drew inspiration from.
From the early 1970s to 1981, this was the place where Ali, who passed away in 2016 at the age of 74, prepared for his toughest fights in the second half of his career. He did so with his door wide open, drawing residents from the surrounding rural towns as well as celebrities like Tom Jones, David Frost, the Jackson Five and other stars. Mike Douglas did a talk show episode from the camp.
It’s been dormant since those days, for the most part, with several attempts to repurpose the camp ending in failure.
But now it has found new life, thanks to the son of the late John Madden, the legendary NFL coach and broadcaster.
Mike Madden grew up an Ali fan and met him once on a family trip to Las Vegas.
The younger Madden eventually purchased the Ali property in 2016 and since then has turned it into a museum, recreating many of the scenes that were part of the camp when Ali trained there — the ring where he sparred, the kitchen where he and the staff ate, his personal log cabin and the mosque where he prayed.
“When I bought it, it was in total disrepair,” he said. “We did a big restoration of the buildings, and that took us about a year and a half. We really didn’t know what we would do with it, other than preserve it. We had a relationship with Gene Kilroy (Ali’s former advisor who convinced the champ to buy the property for $5,000 in 1972), who started sending me pictures, the ones that are hanging in the gym. It slowly evolved.”
It has become a destination for class trips from the Philadelphia area, less than two hours away, and for other events, such as corporate outings and affairs. It is open to the public on weekends, with no charge for admission (donations go to charities) and during the week by appointment.
“Everything we do, how can we make it a good field trip for a school group,” Madden said. “That’s kind of our core audience. If we do that, we are checking a lot of boxes.
“They know of the mythology of Ali,” he said. “To visit this place and see the history … Ali was so generous to people. We are just putting it on display and getting out of the way. There is not much like it in sports history, or even American history. I think it is a piece of American history worth preserving.”
It was a big piece of the history Ali made 50 years ago in Africa. “I am in the last week of training in America,” Ali wrote in his 1975 biography “The Greatest” with Richard Durham before leaving for the Foreman fight. “Almost every afternoon after training, I review George Foreman’s fight movies: his Olympic fight with the Russian, his tough 10-round struggle with Spain’s Jose Peralta, his slaughter of Joe “King” Roman, his murder of Joe Frazier, his destruction of Ken Norton.”
Author Budd Schulberg, in his 1995 book “Sparring with Hemingway,” was with Ali at Fighter’s Heaven the last week before they left for Africa. He wrote, “Ali was in high spirits. He looked fit and was proud that he had been in camp all summer, training harder for this fight than for any other bout since he was allowed to fight again four years ago.”
It is no wonder Ali was in high spirits. He felt peace at Fighter’s Heaven.
“The best times I had were up at Deer Lake,” said Pat Patterson, a former Chicago police officer who worked as Ali’s bodyguard, in the book, “Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times,” by Thomas Hauser. “It was like we had our own little village. Everybody got to be themselves, the family really came together. We’d sit there, talking about whatever crossed our mind. And believe me, it was very special to have those moments with Ali. The rest of the world saw the fights and the glory. But we were there at six o’clock in the morning, when he came back from running with ice under his nose. We laughed with him at night, shared good times and bad.”
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