Six months after losing the heavyweight championship to Muhammad Ali in Zaire, George Foreman was angry, adrift and lost. In contrast to the cheerful, affable man widely eulogized upon his passing in March, he was surly and unapproachable.

“Losing had knocked me off my axis,” he would later write. “The heavyweight title meant much more to me after I had lost it than when I held it. Without it, I was nothing. As a champ, I imagined that everyone considered me the ultimate man. Now I imagined that I could hear them laughing at the loser.”

He became consumed with the idea of regaining the championship. 

“I resolved that if I ever got into a title fight again, I’d die before losing. The only way to count me out now would be on a stretcher.”

Foreman knew that securing a rematch with Ali would not, however, be easy. The champion, he wrote, “didn’t want to risk fate again.”

He knew he had to build a drumbeat of public demand for him to face Ali again. It was, of all people, the singer Marvin Gaye who came up with the idea of Foreman facing five men on one night.

“Just fighting an ordinary fight wouldn’t prove what I wanted to prove: that something had to have happened to me in Africa,” Foreman wrote. “Beating one guy wouldn’t do it; beating five guys would.”

When his team struggled to secure a location or a TV network, Don King stepped in and found a site – Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto – and secured TV coverage from ABC. Commentating from ringside would be  Howard Cosell and Ali, and it was their presence that would help turn what already threatened to be a circus into something of a PR nightmare for Foreman.

As soon as Foreman entered the ring on April 26, 1975, for the first of what were scheduled as five three-round exhibitions, Ali sprang into action, playing to the cameras, jawing at his rival and pretending to be on the verge of lunging at him. The champion was clearly having fun with it all; Foreman, who glowered at him in return, was not.

Cosell began dumping on the whole venture almost as soon as he started talking.

“What has he got to gain, really?” he asked rhetorically. “If he knocks these five guys out, they’ll say, ‘Well, he should have – they’re all stiffs.’ But if he fails to knock any of them out, they’ll say he’s not the fighter he was.”

Foreman’s first opponent was Alonzo Johnson, 40 years old and with a record of 24-18 with 6 KOs, and without a professional outing in three years. His last would be Boone Kirkman, who, with a record of 32-5 (23 KOs), was on paper the toughest opponent of the five.

Ali was critical of the idea of saving the strongest opponent until last, although the order had been settled by a blind draw by media members.

“I’d think if he had the chance, he’d pick the best man first while he’s still fresh,” Ali opined. “If I was coaching these guys, I’d tell the first three to lay on the ropes like I did and block punches, and the last two should open up on him.”

Johnson did nothing of the sort, attempting to take the fight to Foreman in the first round as the former champion danced and hopped around the ring contemptuously. Foreman had predicted a second-round knockout, and as soon as the second frame began, Foreman stepped into a short left hook and put Johnson down. A second left-hook knockdown swiftly followed and then a right hand dropped Johnson for the third time. 

One fight down, and as Johnson’s handlers stepped in to save their man, Foreman was already leaning over the ropes and jawing once more with Ali. 

Opponent No. 2 was Jerry Judge, 15-4-1 (12 KOs), who, at 195 pounds, would not even be considered a heavyweight today. Before the bell even rang, however, came the first signs that the night would not present Foreman with the public support and endorsement he wanted. Responding to Ali’s taunts had been a mistake, as now the crowd started chanting the champion’s name, to Foreman’s clear irritation.

Judge was determined not to just lay down, and he landed a clean left hand on Foreman’s jaw about halfway through the round. That woke up Foreman, who was continuing to pay more attention to Ali than his opponents, and he marched forward, launching uppercuts and overhand rights and dropping Judge to his knees with one powerful uppercut near round’s end. Judge hauled himself up just before the count ended and even landed a right hand as Foreman moved in for the kill. The bell rang to end the round, and the two fighters glared at each other. Foreman paced around the ring during the break as the fans began to boo him. It was all starting to unravel for Foreman, prompting Cosell to urge his commentary partner to “sit down and leave him alone.”

“George is getting a little tired,” Ali said on the mic as action of sorts resumed in the second. “He’s sweating now, losing a lot of perspiration, and by the time he meets the fifth man, who is the best, we can see that this is going to be really rough now. If George was in with the same man, he’d be tiring the man out. But you must remember that each man George meets is fresh and George is constantly getting tired.”

As Ali spoke, Judge continued to frustrate Foreman until the former champ once more stepped in to him and let go a series of right hands that put Judge down again. This time he didn't beat the count.

Two down, but now things began to really get out of control.

Foreman went over to Judge, the two men talked, then they shoved each other, then they punched each other, and finally they wrestled each other to the canvas as their corners rushed in.

“This is an absurd scene,” Cosell observed accurately. “Foreman is beside himself, and Ali’s presence at ringside has to have something to do with it.”

By now, it was difficult to see what Foreman could do to prevent the whole enterprise being derided as a circus act. “This thing is a carnival and it is not pleasant to see,” Cosell editorialized as the boos rang out.

Ali was now whipping the crowd into a frenzy as Cosell lamented that “the whole thing has turned into a charade.” 

Almost unnoticed, Terry Daniels now entered the ring for the third bout of the evening. In 1972, Daniels had challenged Joe Frazier for the heavyweight crown Foreman would subsequently win and lose, but he was presently in the midst of what would become a 2-18 slump with which he concluded his career.

Daniels went down from a short, fast left in the first but made it into the second, whereupon Foreman stalked him and landed a steady succession of right hands. When Daniels, clearly wobbled, refused to go down, Foreman waved in the referee to stop it – which he did, hesitatingly. Foreman walked back toward his corner and Ali, Daniels following and apparently protesting that he wanted to keep fighting. So Foreman obliged him, and when the referee – again haltingly – stepped between them, Foreman stabbed a jab into the chest of Daniels’ cornerman. One of Foreman’s team entered the ring and threw a hook at the same man, Foreman shoved him out of the way, Daniels raised his arms aloft, and the crowd cheered. Foreman raised his and the crowd jeered.

Opponent No. 4 was Charley Polite, a former sparring partner for Frazier, who kissed Foreman on the chin during the pre-fight staredown.

“One had nothing to do with the other,” Foreman wrote later, “but he was the only boxer of the five I didn’t knock down at least once.”

Polite, largely adopting Ali’s rope-a-dope tactics, lasted all three rounds; so, too did, Kirkman. However, despite Foreman being clearly exhausted by this stage, he roused himself to pursue Kirkman aggressively, dropping him and cutting him over the eyes even as Kirkman continued to fire back.

Foreman was defiant afterward, insisting he was ready to go more rounds and criticizing Polite for laying against the ropes. “How can you call yourself a champion when all you do is lay against the ropes,” he asked, clearly not directing his ire at Polite but at the now-departed Ali.

“Despite Cosell and Ali, I felt proud at having gone 12 rounds,” Foreman wrote later. “A cracked rib showed I’d taken some wicked punches.” 

Still, he ultimately acknowledged that he had made an error by engaging in a back-and-forth with Ali.

“That put the fans in his corner against me, and gave the exhibition the smelly aura of professional wrestling,” he wrote. “This was strictly Ali’s domain. I couldn’t avoid looking like my usual sour self.”

The following year, Foreman returned to the ring for his first sanctioned bout since the Ali loss, visiting the canvas twice in the fourth round before stopping Ron Lyle in the fifth. A second win over Frazier was followed by three straight knockout wins before a loss to Jimmy Young led to a religious awakening, a 10-year retirement and finally the greatest comeback in boxing history. On November 5, 1994, Foreman finally became champion again, at the age of 42, and his bizarre night in Toronto became nothing more than an aberrant footnote to an all-time-great career.

Kieran Mulvaney has written, broadcast and podcast about boxing for HBO, Showtime, ESPN and Reuters, among other outlets. He presently co-hosts the “Fighter Health Podcast” with Dr. Margaret Goodman. He also writes regularly for National Geographic, has written several books on the Arctic and Antarctic, and is at his happiest hanging out with wild polar bears. His website is www.kieranmulvaney.com.