Dope on the Ropes
Brand audits, the Rumble in the Jungle, and the dubious divide between winners and losers.
In 2014, I decided to take a break from blogging.
I was a semester into grad school and on the verge of becoming a “serious” journalist. My writing was no longer exclusively self-published. For the first time, my name appeared in newspapers, magazines, and legitimate sports websites.
But when I Googled myself on the advice of a PR professor, I discovered many embarrassing things I thought had been deleted. These included YouTube videos of me playing sappy love songs on a ukulele and an array of online blogs in which I ranted about everything, from not having a girlfriend to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
My brand audit revealed images of myself that did not jibe with the man I sought to be in public. So, I erased the digital boot prints with a feeling of relief.
My hiatus from writing online, however, was short-lived.
In 2016, I logged back into WordPress and launched a blog called Dope on the Ropes.
For my entire life, I’ve felt kinship among losers. In my teenage years, I declared no interest in being part of the popular crowd. But, in the confines of my bedroom or over Chinese takeout with my best friends Mickey and Jeremy, I lamented never being the first pick for the soccer team. The boy who, instead of kissing the girl, was the one she spent all night on the phone with after her boyfriend cheated for the dozenth time.
I empathized with the dope because I was him.
By my mid-20s, I had grown tired of always being the man with his back against the ropes, waiting for the inevitable blow that would put his lights out. My blog was named in honor of what I’ve dubbed the Great Inversion, a thing that happened long before I was born, in Zaire, on October 30, 1974.
The Rumble in the Jungle was a heavyweight boxing match contested between aging legend Muhammad Ali and reigning champ George Foreman, the invincible destroyer who was seven years his junior.
It's hard to imagine it today, with Ali immortalized and Foreman more famous for selling a cooking appliance, but the former was listed as a 4-to-1 underdog heading into the title fight in Kinshasa. At 25 years old, with an undefeated record and 37 of his 40 wins achieved by way of concussive knockout, Foreman was a wrecking ball of bone and flesh. He’d won the title by not just beating but demolishing the real-life Rocky, Joe Frazier, the man who handed Ali his first loss, in just two rounds.
After going a full 12 with Frazier earlier that year, Ali showed signs of wear and tear. His dance moves were gone. And the odds seemed justified when, from the opening bell, Foreman trapped the challenger against the ropes and pulverized him with big blows to the body and head. Ali couldn’t, or wouldn’t, fight his way back to the center of the ring. He was between the rock and the hard place.
Only after a while did anyone realize what was really going on.
“That all you got, George,” Ali jawed at Foreman as he turtled up to bear the onslaught.
“Come on now, that doesn’t even hurt.”
“Hit me harder, George, don’t be a pansy.”
Before long, Foreman was trudging through quicksand. His punches were slow and easily deflected by Ali’s arms and shoulders. When Foreman didn’t cover up, Ali stung him with jabs and straights, then laid his weight on his back and pushed his head down to zap the younger man of energy.
“You’re ‘bout to quit, ain’t ya, George?” Ali said in the eighth round, with his opponent sucking air. With 30 seconds left, he turned Foreman and unleashed a raging five-punch combination that put him on his back.
Against all odds, Ali was once again the champ.
The introduction of the rope-a-dope tactic in boxing upended the notion of winners and losers.
When applied correctly, the dope is really the duped—not the one who takes their licking in the corner but the one who believes so much in their invincibility that they’re easy to outwit because, with blinders on, hubris masks weakness.
When I returned to blogging in 2016, I felt very much like a dope. I’d been a year on from an embarrassing divorce. My hairline was receding. And I hadn’t achieved a speck of what I’d expected to when I showed up at the University of Tennessee believing I’d be the next big feature writer at Sports Illustrated or ESPN the Magazine (publications which, today, are hollowed out and dead).
But on social media and in public, I built a brand that showed I was really kicking tail: new clothes, new bod, a job that flew me to new cities and countries to meet extraordinary people. In a year, I would have an attractive and athletic girlfriend. I now get to see her undressed every night because we’re married and have made three children together.
I was out to prove to the world and myself that I wasn’t a loser. In many ways, I did.
Life is not so cut and dry, though.
I’ve spent hours reading about the aftermath of Ali and Foreman’s fight. The new champ fought well past his expiration date, suffering irreversible damage that trapped his brilliant mind inside an ever-decaying body. In between, he became renowned globally as a philanthropist and humanitarian, talking suicidal men down from ledges and single-handedly rescuing American hostages in Iraq against the U.S. president’s wishes.
Foreman hated Ali for years. Then, at 45, the dope became the oldest-ever heavyweight champ when he knocked out 26-year-old Michael Moorer. In the two decades between losing and reclaiming the title, he was married five times, lost all his money, became a Christian minister, and earned $8 million a month from his grill endorsement. The American Legion honored him with its Good Guy Award in 2013.
In 1989, Ali and Foreman appeared on the BBC together, looking like old friends.
Nowadays, I’m off most social media. I care much less about how I look to the world. I openly confess my failures on Substack. I wrote a book about my most embarrassing physical feature and am writing another about the worst defeat I ever suffered that wasn’t being broken up with by a girl.
Am I still the dope? Or am I biding my time, waiting to reverse the narrative?
Will I be a self-published writer to an audience of a few hundred forever, rejected by any legit magazine I pitch with my essays?
Or will I, like my literary hero Hernán Casciari—with whom I’m currently taking a four-week storytelling workshop online—raise my middle finger to the gatekeepers and build a platform for thousands of other weirdos and wonder junkies to play and laugh together?
Honestly, I’m not sure. All I know is that I’m still on my feet and the rounds not over yet.
Useful Trivia
If there’s one animal master of Ali’s rope-a-dope tactic, it’s the mimic octopus, which has color-changing cells that allow it to impersonate lionfish, flatfish, and other species of underwater creatures when threatened. In one case, an octopus that was being harassed by damselfish sent them scurrying by transforming into the predator’s worst enemy: a poisonous sea snake. These fascinating creatures live mostly in the murky water outside Indonesia.
More reading:
Words from the Wise
Sebastian: Why do you say "romantic" like it's a dirty word?
Laura: Unpaid bills are not romantic. Call her.
Sebastian: I'm not gonna call her. And the thing is you're acting like life's got me on the ropes. I want to be on the ropes, okay? I'm just...I'm letting life hit me 'til it gets tired.
Laura: Oh?
Sebastian: Then I'm gonna hit back. It's a classic rope-a-dope.
Laura: Okay, Ali. I love you. Unpack the boxes.
Sebastian: I'm gonna change the locks.
Laura: You can't afford it.
Sebastian: I'm a phoenix rising from the ashes.
What I’m Reading
I recently started listening to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, narrated by Stephen Fry. It’s goofy and excessive, which is perfect as I’m working on my own absurdist book about Ping-Pong.
This semester, I’m back to teaching my featuring writing course at the University of Tennessee. Every week, I assign students a new feature to illuminate whatever topic we’re discussing. This week’s is “Do You Believe in Life After Death? These Scientists Study It” by Saskia Solomon for The New York Times. The story explores the work of psychologists at the University of Virginia who study reincarnation.
The saddest dope story I’ve read is “In Search of Strange Brew,” which combat sports writer Chuck Mindenhall wrote in 2015 after tracking down Jason Thacker, a cast member of The Ultimate Fighter Season 1 at an abandoned gas station in rural Canada. The second, which I shared in an earlier column, is Gay Talese’s “The Loser,” a profile of boxer Floyd Patterson after suffering consecutive knockout losses to Sonny Liston.
What I’m Listening To
The most beautiful acoustic music in the world is performed live on YouTube’s Mahogany channel. This week, I’ve been listening to Icelandic songwriter Árný Margrét’s “Day Old Thoughts.” My favorite is Toby Johnson’s “One Mississippi.” (The second-best YouTube channel for live acoustic songs is Blogothèque.)
Because of my depressive nature, I curate a Spotify playlist called “Positive Vibes Only” that I listen to when I’m feeling dopey. A band I’ve been enjoying, which recently made it onto that playlist, is Trousdale, a female pop-rock trio from LA that got famous on TikTok.
What I’m Watching
After finishing Silo with Haley, I’m back to watching Severance. The three-year gap between seasons has made it so I can barely remember the first season. Two episodes in, though, and I’m sucked right back into the mystery.
No movies this week, but a heckuva lot of fighting videos. This week, the PFL hosted an epic lightweight title clash between Usman Nurmagomedov and Paul Hughes, billed as “Dagestan vs. Ireland 2” (a call-back to the fight between Usman’s cousin and head coach, Khabib, and Conor McGregor, in 2018). If you like combat, rewatch the fight on HBO Max, find a free link online, or look out for Anatomy of a Fighter’s post-mortem this week.
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