Frustrated Ali begins to find life too confined I Boxing From Neil Allenr Boxing CorresDondent Kinshasa, Sept 18 Two thirds of the way through a 50-nMinute monologue today Muhammad All, embracing box- ing, negritude, home cooking and Black Muslim teachings en route, had a brief aside with his trainer, Angelo Dundee, which reminded us what the postponement of his world heavyweight chamiionship challenge to George Foreman really means. " You wanna. come and see one of the big. men in town ? " asked Dundee as we sat clustered round Ah in his suite at the N'Sele com- pound of President Mobutu, some 30 miles from Kinsbasa. " Mebbe ", replied the peoples' choice. "Hey, you tell TsbimpumnPu (chief press officer of the match) I need another 20,000 dollars a month for all the guys here." Dundee paused and nodded and then said: " You tell him, too." Ali replied firmly: " I will, too. There's supposed to be 100,000 dollars Involved so I reckon my guys are entitled to at least 20,000 dollars of that for the month." The reference to 100,000 dollars was the initial sum whicb the pro- moters agreed they would pay to- wards training expenses when this bout in Africa's heartland, adver- tised as " From the slave ship to the championship " was originaUy scheduled for September 25. Now that it will not take place until October 22 at the earliest the bills will be piling up. All, whose demonstration left jabs had been missing me by inches earlier, llow explained: " I've got my sparring partners here and now we're staying on here as long as Foreman does they got to think about their wives back home who need money. There's my masseur here and my brother and others in my group and they all need to be paid. Yeah, my wife's here over in town and she'll stay. Couldn't stand it without her. Yeah, and my parents. The Zaire Government is picking up the tab for them." The total expenses are going to mount up in many other wvays now that it is confirmed that New York's Madison Square Garden, for example, will be free for a close circuit showving of the con- test on October 22 or 29. But there is two much at stake, wvhen one remembers the tidy sum of S9.6m put up by them through the Swiss financial company, Risnelia, for Zaire to back down on the greatest international exposure their country has ever experienced since it was built from blood, tears and ashes in 1966. They are determined the two gladiators will stay on. Whether either Foreman or Ali will be able to wvithstand the longeurs is another matter. Today Ali demonstrated his sub- conscious ambivalent attitude to- wards Africa. One moment lie wvas rejoicing in the black self- dependence he finds here (" if my television breaks down it's a black man who comes to fix it, if the plane is flying then a black man is the pilot "), the next he wvas talking, admittedly fondly, about " the dirty little babies in town " and "the girls who don't seem so pretty to me as the ones back home ". He has two cooks here, he pointed out, because lhe needed his own food and then digressed: "When Foreman and I come to the centre of the ring for the referee's instructions I'il whisper to him you denied your race. You have a white Jesus on your wail. You eat pork chops and ham and your mind's too slow. I'm going to kick your ass." All that psychological warfare, which both Ali and Joe Frazier call " ghetto talk ", is less import- ant right now than how Ali is going to survive for at least an- other month within the confines of what he admits is virtually prison. His doctor, Ferdie Pacheco. whis- pers "IHe may give you all that stuff about Africa but he may go out of his mind if he has to stay here even another week ". The world champion, Foreman, waiting for the cut by his right eyebrow to heal, has equal frustra- tions. When he wanted to go shop- ping casually in Kinshasa the Zair- eans explained politely to hIim that he was too valuable an import for the risk of cheerful bruising con- tact with the friendly populace. Even Foreman's Alsatian dog has ended up with a wired-in area which makes the champion seem even inore of a hostage to the nation. At a press conference this after- noon Foreman came nut of a couple of days of seclusion to say, " The fight will take place. Rigilt now lPm more concerned about my eye than any dollars. Money is nothing compared with my physi- cal condition. The fight will go on because so many people have prayed and so many dollars hav, been paid. There's no chance I will go into the ring injured." Foreman had a message for Ali. I still realize the devil is in him and the exorcist is still waiting. Ali won't be able to get off the floor." I asked wvhat he would do here in the next few weeks to combat the tedium and whether he found thc security rather claustro- phobic. " The thing is the people are so swveet, so charming, they want to be close to vou. 'So in one way I like it. though in another I don't. What will I do ? I'll just be happy sitting around. I'm the most boring per- son in the world, you know." John Daly, the British co- promoter because of the interest of the Hemdale Corporation in the promotion, told me that he thought the delay in the match would in- crease costs by about another S00,000 dollars. Personally he felt that October 29 might be tile most likely date and he wvould prefer it if one of the boxers was ablT to return to the United States briefly " To whip up interest in the fight again ". Mr Daly was then briefly over- whelmed by a flood of complaints from journalists here about delays in communications. Such prob- lems usually are of no interest to the layman, but a discontented American and, to a lesser extent. British press could harm potential close circuit cinema receipts next month. Frustrated Ali begins to find life too confined