Rumble, Old Man, Rumble!

A story of a boxing match that helped me learn to manage my AxSpA flares.

October 1974. I am 16 years old.

Outside the sun is yet to rise, and upstairs my Dad is sleeping like a baby in his bed. He and I live on the Linksfield Road council housing estate, which nestles on the very south-eastern tip of England, some thirty-plus miles north of the Dover Straits.

I am not asleep. I am wide, wide awake and I am alone, downstairs, in the front room. The early morning skies are heavy with clouds and the cold October winds are already starting to gust across the empty streets. I switch the fire on. It’s one of those old-fashioned fires with molded plastic logs at the base that glows red and convince me I am warmer than I am.

I switch on the TV next

I switch it on, and I wait.

I am here to witness the death of my hero. He is a 4-1 underdog. A 32-year-old man who the experts say is over the hill and so far past his prime not even he can remember when his prime was or what it looked like. No longer able to stick and move. No floating like a butterfly. No stinging like a bee. And not one single ounce of rumble left in him.

5000 miles from where I am sitting, in a place I’d never heard of, Muhammad Ali steps into the ring to face the monster known throughout the boxing world as ‘Big’ George Foreman. An undefeated terror of a man. A man so powerful he has knocked out 37 of his previous 40 opponents.

The bell rings

The bell rings and despite the advice of his manager and his cornermen to keep moving, Ali covers up and goes onto the ropes. All his fighting life Ali has danced, elegant as a ballerina, away from danger, only to return a moment later to pick and a poke at his baffled opponents until they inevitably fall defeated at his dancing feet.

I sit clutching a battered old cushion to my chest, my eyes glued to the screen, willing Ali to move.

Move, Muhammad! You’ve got to move.

Get off the ropes! He’s going to kill you!

‘Big’ George is going to kill you!

I flinch in my seat as punch after punch rains down on Ali’s flanks and on his head and on his biceps and shoulders, too. Huge punches. Punches that would drop an elephant. Ali, serious as a judge, rolls with each crashing blow. Absorbing one punch after the other like he is as immune to them as the heavy bag hanging in ‘Big’ George’s gym. Occasionally, Ali's tormentor needs to pause in his onslaught, to catch his breath. And whenever he does, Ali’s face appears from behind his gloved hands, to mock him –

Is that all you got, George?

They told me you could punch.

Ali once wrote how all experienced fighters know about the dream room. It’s a special room that rooky fighters are yet to encounter. A room where fighters go when they are out on their feet and only moments from defeat. Once a fighter enters that room they must learn how to stay upright, stay calm, stay relaxed, and keep their composure despite the pain and the feelings that every ounce of their energy is draining out through their boots. To hang on in there until the bell rings and signals that, for now at least, the fight is over.

With each round that passed, ‘Big’ George grew ever more tired. And when the moment was right, he struck.

Ali, the old man, rumbled.

And it was as if the young man had never gone away.

He rumbled.

And in that moment, a flurry of punches caught Big George about his head and face, and he span and toppled like a giant oak felled by a woodsman’s axe.

I’ve carried the events of that night with me my entire life

And never have I needed that memory and the understanding that there is more than one way to win a fight than I have since being diagnosed with AS over 20 years ago. I have tried to live by Ali’s example so that when the bell rings, and the AS rises off its stool and makes a beeline for me, I am ready. And we all know, every one of us, that those days will come. When they do, I do my best to cover up and roll with the pain. I go onto the ropes. I try to relax. To let the pain take me up in its cruel embrace and hold me tight.

I let the AS do that to me.

I absorb it.

I soak it up.

But I do my best not to lose sight of the fact that in the end I’m going to win. And I, like Ali before me, will rumble again.

I don’t always get it right. Sometimes, when I am feeling angry and irritated, I challenge the AS. I square up to it. I offer it outside, just like I sometimes saw the angry men from my childhood do after they had consumed too many beers. I say,

"Come on then, let’s do it, you and me. Right now."

But in my experience, tight muscles and tense limbs are the enemies of a good fighter. My AS loves tense limbs and tight muscles equally. So, I try to stay fluid and loose, just like my boyhood hero did all those years ago. And I let the AS punch itself out.

Back in that front room, all those years ago, I didn’t know what was to come. But that morning after Ali had shaken up the world once again, I learned a powerful, lifelong lesson. There are some monsters in life you just can’t out-maneuver. You can’t outrun them anymore. You just have to turn and face them. Bide your time. And rumble when you can. Just like Muhammad did with "Big" George Foreman. Just like I do with my AS.