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Two weeks ago was the 50th anniversary of The Rumble in the Jungle, and all of the bouquets being laid at the feet of that classic heavyweight championship boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman got me thinking about — of all things — this weekend’s heavyweight championship fight at UFC 309.
What’s the connection? It has to do with how diminished expectations don’t always foreshadow reality.
Ali’s upset of Foreman is remembered today as one of the fight game’s greatest moments. Still, going into the 1974 bout, it was almost universally expected to be a massacre by “Big George,” the brawny, destructive, undefeated 25-year-old champion. Ali was 3½ years removed from his championship run and was 32. If he was still floating like a butterfly, it was a sluggish, less elusive float that seemed destined to be swatted down by one of Foreman’s sledgehammer fists.
The Hall of Fame boxing public relations man Bill Caplan, who worked the event, famously said, “People were praying before the fight that Ali doesn’t get killed.”
And then Ali went out and shocked every one of those people.
Now, no one is suggesting that Saturday’s UFC 309 main event between champion Jon Jones and former champ Stipe Miocic (ESPN+ PPV, 10 p.m. ET) is comparable in magnitude to one of the most iconic sporting events of the past half-century. Where the two fights do align, though, is that the one this weekend at Madison Square Garden in New York also has its doubters, lots of them.
Miocic is 42 years old and has not fought since March 2021, when Francis Ngannou knocked him out to take away the UFC title. And in the years since then, the heavyweight division has been in flux. Ngannou left in 2022 to pursue his dream of pro boxing, and when he returned to MMA this year, it was in the PFL. To fill the void in the UFC, Jones moved up from light heavyweight, where he had dominated for a decade, and in March 2023, he won the vacant title in his…
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