Today, George Foreman is a lovable, squeezably soft, cartoonish character.

	THE RUMBLE REVISTED
	The 25th Anniversary of Muhammad Ali's win over George Foreman in Zaire -- "The Rumble in the Jungle" -- is Oct. 30. ESPN.com's Greg Garber takes a look at the fight and its impact in a special two-part series.

But 25 years ago, heading into his "Rumble in the Jungle" fight with Muhammad Ali, he was very much the baddest man on the planet. The grim Foreman had won each of his 40 fights, a staggering 37 by knockout.

"I was the favorite for good reason," Foreman said earlier this week from his Houston home. "I had done some serious damage."

One of his casualties was Joe Frazier. In Jan. 1973, Foreman took him out in the second round of their world title fight in Kingston, Jamaica. This, after Frazier had handed Ali his first professional loss in March 1971 after a three-year sabbatical from boxing courtesy of the U.S. government. The fight with Ali was a savage 15-round fight and anyone who saw the ease with which Foreman later dispatched Frazier feared for Ali's well being when he rumbled with Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire, on Oct. 30, 1974.

"The only time I was ever absolutely convinced he was going to lose," said journalist and long-time Ali friend, Dick Schaap, "was to George Foreman in Zaire. I knew he did not have a chance."

Ali, 32, was a 7-to-1 underdog. He didn't seem to mind. Maybe it was because he had a plan. During training sessions that summer at his Deer Lake, Pa., training facility, Ali first considered a defensive strategy against Foreman. In Africa, when members of the Ali camp casually wandered from their villas and spied on Foreman through a long telephoto lens, they observed the champion relentlessly forcing his sparring partners into the corner. Ali then knew a great deal of his effort would be given to escape.

Why not conserve energy and let Foreman punch himself out? If he could withstand the early barrage (a monumental if), it would neutralize Foreman's clear advantage. The only time Foreman looked indecisive in his previous fights was when things didn't go as planned. Here was a way to get inside his 25-year-old head.

Stinging like a bee
In the weeks leading up to the fight, Ali did everything he could to provoke an assault from Foreman. He called him "The Mummy" and offered lurching, stiff-armed impersonations of Foreman's ring style. He performed his trademark poetry:

You think the world was shocked
When Nixon resigned?
Just wait 'til I whup
George Foreman's behind!

Float like a butterfly
Sting like a bee.
His hands can't hit
What his eyes can't see!

Dr. Ferdie Pacheco was one of Ali's most trusted cornermen.

"Everybody agreed," Pacheco said of the consensus pre-fight strategy. "Do not get on the ropes and let this guy pummel you. He's like a big siege gun, those World War I guns that just blasted you until everything starts to fall apart."

When the fight finally began at 4 a.m. local time to accommodate the closed-circuit television feed to the United States eight time zones away, Ali did not respond to the chants of the 60,000 in Stade du 20 Mai:

"Ali, bome aye! Ali, bome aye!"

Translation: "Ali, kill him."

	Ali tricked everyone -- including his corner -- with this strategy.

Indeed, Ali seemed content as a lamb offering itself for sacrifice to a lion. He took a few steps toward the middle of the ring, then backed himself into a corner. Foreman, who could scarcely believe his eyes, immediately began raining blows on Ali, who leaned out over the loose ropes and covered his head with forearms and gloves.

After the first round, Ali came back to his corner.

"I chewed him up, tore into him," remembers trainer Angelo Dundee. "I screamed, 'You're crazy! You've got to keep him in the middle, keep him turning."'

Ali glowered. "Shut up!" he snapped. "I know what I'm doing."

Indeed he did. Like a quarterback who calls a sweep to the right, then sprints left on a naked bootleg, Ali had sold everyone, from Foreman to his own confidants, on a different play.

	“	It makes you rethink your whole idea of who you are. There was nothing I wanted to remember from that fight. ”
		— Foreman

Foreman on the ropes
As the fight wore on, Foreman seemed to tire. After the fourth round, Ali returned to his corner.

"Now I got him," Ali said. "I can knock him out anytime I want."

Dundee interjected shrilly, "Then do it now!"

Ali said no. "I want to play with him a little first."

And so he did. Finally, late in the eighth round, Ali pounced.

Even as Foreman was offering rubbery, pawing punches, as if from memory, Ali slipped around him. Suddenly, Foreman was on the ropes and Ali was pressing the attack. After a looping left hand stung Foreman's cheek, Ali dropped in a fierce, chopping right hand to the chin. Foreman spun around wildly, grabbing at Ali's white trunks on the way down. Ali, poised to hit Foreman again should he regain his balance, watched him crumple to the floor. Before referee Zack Clayton had finished counting Foreman out, Ali's arms were held high in triumph.

Ali would hold the title for more than three years before losing it to Leon Spinks in 1978. Foreman, who was despondent over his performance as much as a year later, eventually quit boxing in 1977 to become a preacher. He returned 10 years later and in 1994 he regained the title in shocking triumph over Michael Moorer.

The Rumble, with all its attendant plot lines and drama, remains one of boxing's most delicious matchups. Certainly, it helped define the careers of both fighters.

"It was," Schaap says, "the peak of Foreman's career as he entered the ring. It was the peak of Ali's career as he left the ring."

For Foreman, the defeat marked a point of departure.

"I was devastated," Foreman says. "It makes you rethink your whole idea of who you are. There was nothing I wanted to remember from that fight."

But four years later, about the time Ali was fighting Spinks for the second time in the fall of 1978 (and regaining the title), Foreman sat down for an interview with Los Angeles sportswriter Alan Malamud.

"I just thought I would try something different," Foreman says. "I said, 'Yeah, I got whupped by Muhammad -- I've got the tapes to prove it.' And he laughed. I thought, 'I can turn this whole thing around by being humorous and truthful at the same time.' And that's what I've done."

A few weeks ago, another African ruler tried to capture lightning in a bottle for a second time. Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II, monarch of Buganda, a kingdom of Uganda, tried to lure the upcoming heavyweight title fight between Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis to Kampala, the capital of the east African nation.

Mutebi reportedly had lined up more than $15 million in backing from commercial sponsors.

"We're hoping to appeal not just to the financial side, but the historical side," said Mutebi's London-based spokesman, Kizzi Nkwocha "It's time for a heavyweight title fight to go back to Africa."

The fact that Mutebi was hopelessly late in his bid for the Nov. 13 Las Vegas fight was almost beside the point.

For Dundee, recent interest in the 25th anniversary of "The Rumble in the Jungle" has brought a sparkle to his days. When Ali fought, Dundee says he could barely get a word in edgewise. Today, with Ali nearly silent with Parkinson's syndrome, Dundee says he is Ali's "fistic voice."

He laughs out loud at the wonder of that great spectacle.

"Do I remember it like yesterday?" Dundee asked himself rhetorically. "God, yes. Once in a lifetime, this was.

"And I was there."