The Fight

Mailer's account of the Ali-Foreman 'Rumble in the Jungle' in Zaire, 30 October 1974 - Ali's knockout to reclaim the title. The last of his eight consecutive third-person ('illeism') books. Little, Brown, 21 July 1975.

The Fight is Mailer’s account of the Muhammad Ali–George Foreman heavyweight championship in Kinshasa, Zaire, on 30 October 1974 — the “Rumble in the Jungle,” which Ali won by an eighth-round knockout to regain the title he had been stripped of in 1967. Published by Little, Brown on 21 July 1975 (London: Hart-Davis, 1976), 239 pages, $7.95, with no dedication.

It is the last of the eight consecutive books in which Mailer narrates himself in the third person (illeism) — here as an unnamed “Man of wisdom” whose vice is that “he wrote about himself … not only would he describe the events he saw, but his own small effect on events.” The book reads the fight through Mailer’s enduring preoccupations — boxing as metaphysics, Ali as a vehicle of black American will, Hemingway’s shadow — and is widely regarded as among his finest nonfiction. An earlier, shorter version had run in two parts in Playboy (“The Dead Are Dying of Thirst,” 75.8; “All Night Long,” 75.9), which together won Playboy’s 1975 best-nonfiction award. Reviews ranged from Michael Wood’s admiration in the New York Times Book Review to mixed notices from Christopher Lehmann-Haupt and Time; Mailer includes excerpts from eight chapters in The Time of Our Time (98.7).

Related pages

• Playboy serialization: “The Fight, Part I” (75.8), “Part II” (75.9)
• Muhammad Ali | George Foreman | Illeism (the third-person self) | Little, Brown and Company
• “I’m Like a Minor Champ” (75.13) | 1975
• The Executioner's Song (64.18) | In Clay's Corner (67.12) | King of the Hill: Norman Mailer on the Fight of the Century (71.15) | Preface to ...Sting Like a Bee: The Muhammad Ali Story (71.26) | Norman Mailer: I'm Like a Minor Champ (75.13) | Comments in Shadow Box (77.13)
• The Time of Our Time (98.7)

First published: 1975-07-21
Form: nonfiction-narrative
Lennon & Lennon: 75.12
Cite as: /works/1975-07-21-the-fight
Last updated: 2026-06-04