able. The Brash Basher from Belleville had won the tournament the previous year and was No. 1 in the world. In 1974 he had gone 99–4, and there was talk in the locker room about how he would “go on winning every - thing for years.” But there was one person in that room at Wimbledon who had to believe he could beat Connors. After winning his semifinal in five sets, Ashe walked into the player lounge and watched Connors shred their countryman Roscoe Tanner. Tanner was the game’s hard - est server, but every ball he hit came back even harder from Connors. Now Ashe knew that his usual hammer-and-tongs aggres- siveness wasn’t going to work. Could he do something different, just once? A year before, Ali’s friends had been frightened to see him walk into a ring with Foreman; now Ashe’s friends felt the same way. Bud Collins said he was “scared to death that Arthur was going to be terribly embar - rassed” by Connors. Ashe would answer their fears the same way that Ali had. Before the final, Ashe huddled with his agent, Donald Dell, and fellow player Den - nis Ralston, and came up with a plan based on the rope-a-dope. Instead of feeding Con- nors, a born counterpuncher, the pace he craved, Ashe would slice and dice. Instead of cracking the flat serve he loved, and which Connors loved to crack back, Ashe would bend it away from him. But not all of Ashe’s tactics were ripped from the Ali playbook. Where he cast Fore - man as the American in their fight, Ashe claimed that status for himself at Wimble - don. He walked onto Centre Court wearing his red-and-blue Davis Cup team jacket, with “USA” emblazoned across the back. It was a not-so-subtle message to Connors, a self-styled maverick who had refused to play for his country that year. Ashe’s strategy worked perfectly. He rolled the ball gently, swung Connors from side to side, and gave him no punches to counter. Ashe won the first two sets 6–1, 6–1. In the end, like Ali, he let rip two knockout
of colonialism and U.S. hegemony to the Zaireans, and cast himself as the native Afri - can. “He doesn’t belong in my country!” Ali bellowed when asked about Foreman. It worked; the Zaireans rallied around Ali. The global respect he had earned by refusing to fight in Vietnam preceded him even here. Ali had no trouble whipping 100,000 people into a deafening chant of “Ali, boyame!”— “Ali, kill him!” In truth, while Ali and Ashe had been suc - cessful as activists, by 1974 it had been some time since either had won anything signifi- cant as athletes. Ali had been stripped of his belt eight years earlier, and had yet to win it back. Ashe hadn’t won a major title since the U.S. Open in 1968. A new generation of pros, led by Jimmy Connors and Bjorn Borg, had leaped in while he wasn’t looking. But in 1974 and ’75 Ali and Ashe were re- warded for their good works with three ca - reer-capping triumphs. Each man would, in the words of Ali, rope a dope. Ali invented the tactic in the second round of his fight with Foreman. After spending two months telling the world that he was going to dance Foreman to death, Ali retreated to the ropes and made him - self an easy target for his opponent’s round - house blows. By the sixth round, Foreman had done what Ali thought he would do: punched himself out. Ali asked, “That’s the best you got, George?” and then, when the eighth round started, told him, “Now it’s my turn.” In the closing seconds of that round, Ali climbed off the ropes, popped Foreman with a right hand to the face, and sent the giant tumbling. Ali was champion again. In the 1975 Wimbledon final, Ashe would use his own version of the rope-a-dope to beat tennis’ version of George Foreman, Jim - my Connors. As with Foreman, it was widely believed that the 22-year-old Connors was unbeat-
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