When We Were Kings When We Were Kings When We Were Kings is a 1996 Academy Award winning documentary film directed by Leon Gast about the famous "Rumble in the Jungle" heavyweight championship match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. The fight was held in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) on October 30, 1974. The film features a number of celebrities, including James Brown, Jim Brown, B.B. King, Norman Mailer, George Plimpton, Spike Lee and Thomas Hauser. "When We Were Kings" was released in 1996 to strong reviews, and won the 1996 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It took Gast
George Foreman Rican Heavyweight Champion José Roman. Roman was not regarded as a top contender, and it took Foreman only 2 minutes to end the fight, one of the fastest knockouts in a Heavyweight Championship bout. Foreman's next defense was against a much tougher opponent. In 1974, in Caracas, Venezuela, he faced the highly regarded future hall-of-famer Ken Norton (who was 30–2), a boxer noted for his awkward crossed-arm boxing style, crab-like defense, and heavy punch (a style Foreman emulated in his comeback), who had broken the jaw of Muhammad Ali in a points victory a year earlier. Norton had a good