The Rumble in the Jungle
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"A three-night-long music festival to hype the The Rumble in the Jungle fight, Zaire 74, took place as scheduled, September 22–24, including performances by James Brown, Celia Cruz and the Fania All-Stars, B.B. King, Miriam Makeba, The Spinners, Bill Withers, The Crusaders, and Manu Dibango, as documented in the 2008 film Soul Power." --Sholem Stein |
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The Rumble in The Jungle was a historic boxing event that took place on 30 October 1974, in the Mai 20 Stadium in Kinshasa, Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo). It pitted then world Heavyweight champion George Foreman against former world champion and challenger Muhammad Ali.
The event was one of Don King's first ventures as a professional boxing promoter. He managed to get both Ali and Foreman to sign separate contracts saying they would fight for him if he could get $5 million to be their prize. However, King did not have the money. So he began looking for an outside country to sponsor the event. Zaire's flamboyant president Mobutu Sésé Seko asked for the fight to be held in his country, eager for the publicity such a high-profile event would bring. King had pulled together a consortium that included a Panamanian company called Risnelia Investment, the Hemdale Film Corporation, a British company founded by film producer John Daly and the actor David Hemmings, Video Techniques Incorporated of New York and Don King Productions. Although King is most closely associated with the fight it is Hemdale and Video Techniques Inc., with whom King was a director, who were the official co-promoters of the fight.
