Strange as it is, but several years ago I found the home of a witch doctor family in South Carolina. Straight up vodun and creepy ritual rooms. Multi-generational group of them too. I salvaged hundreds of photographs that 140 degree heat beating through the ceiling was about to destroy. Among them? Candid 1974 Polaroids of Ali and his mistress Veronica Porsche in Zaire for “Rumble In The Jungle.” How uncanny to end up nearly destroyed on the floor of a witch doctor’s house in South Carolina who’d seen him rumbling in Africa…life is amazing. He was everyman’s hero really and his mojo had no rival. The photo below is just one of a few and has never been published. And yes, snapped by a root doctor.

“He was a sorcerer of the ring, witch doctor of the mat, and when he conjuh’d demons with his fists, his opponents went flat!” — S. Scott