The Bite Magazine - issue 16

I t was just weeks away from the day that Muhammad Ali would attempt to regain the world heavyweight boxing championship that was stripped from him when he refused to fight in the Vietnam War seven years earlier. The former champion was set to face the brutal, undefeated George Foreman in Zaire, Africa on 30 th October 1974 in a fight that he dubbed ‘The Rumble in The Jungle’. Only a couple of months earlier, Ali had invited photographer Peter Angelo Simon to capture him on camera as he prepared both mentally and physically for the biggest fight of his life.“Forty-two years ago I photographed Muhammad Ali in the rural Pennsylvania sanctuary he called ‘Fighter’s Heaven’ as he prepared for the greatest contest of his career. Here was the most famous and contentious personality on the planet in his private retreat – the calm eye of the public hurricane – which was most of his life.While a global audience was fixated on his fate, I was able to record aspects of Ali virtually unknown,” Peter Angelo Simon recalled earlier this year. These precious rare black and white photographs would go on to be shown at the Serena Morton II Gallery in Lon- don’s Ladbroke Grove in collaboration with Reel Art Press from 8 th April to 28 th May 2016, with the majority of the previously unpublished images pre- sented in a 176-page hardback book. A selection of the images from Muham- mad Ali: Fighter’s Heaven 1974 can also be seen at the Muhammad Ali ‘I Am The Greatest’ exhibition showing at the 02 in North Greenwich from 4 th March to 31 st August 2016. “I was astonished by what I discovered at Deer Lake,” Simon commented. “The camp had an air of playfulness and creativity – power boul- ders bearing the names of boxing greats of the past, magic tricks, tea and poetry, Ali relaxing in a rocking chair receiving visitors in a log cabin.While Ali prepared his body with rigorous physical training, the camp’s congenial atmosphere was clearly essential to the nourishment of his soul. Everything I saw at the camp, I felt, was part of Ali’s imaginative formula for success.” Simon went on to say, “In the next two days, I went everywhere with Ali – an old people’s home, an exhibition match, Jada Brookes visited the Muhammed Ali: Fighter’s Heaven exhibition at Serena Morton II in Ladbroke Grove and discovered more about the private boxer. Muhammad Ali Fighter’s Heaven 1974 Exhibition and Book bite book review