It is nearly 45 years since the Rumble in the Jungle – and still the myth of that wild night lingers, dangerously ignored.

There is much to learn from deconstructing the most famous sporting event of the 20th century. When a fierce storm swept through Kinshasa shortly after Muhammad Ali had landed his perfect finisher on George Foreman in the eighth round, coming off the ropes to level the most feared champion since Sonny Liston, it was not enough to cleanse Zaire of the stench of collusion and bad dealings.

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A morally anaesthetised audience of 60,000 people had earlier gathered that 30 October 1974, in the Stade Tata Raphaël – once a place where dissidents were executed – as well as millions watching and listening elsewhere, all witnesses to the Great Deception.

Chief among the myths the world was asked to believe was that this was a dignified return by Ali and Foreman to their African roots, when the ogre was slain by the voodoo skills of a 32-year‑old opponent cloaked in magic. It was sold as a celebration, a wholesome metaphor for change in the wake of the moral vacuum created by the Vietnam war. It was only superficially so. And even the clichés stank.

There were African bands and their descendant heirs from America, jazzing it up for a film that would gather dust until 1996; smart writers from magazines expressed their views on the art and blood of fisticuffs. Hunter S Thompson got stoned back at the hotel and missed it all. It was of its time, an exercise in freewheeling cynicism. As the late Hugh McIlvanney wrote in these pages, it was a night when “ethnic pride and financial avarice became ardent bedmates”.

It was undeniably a great fight – probably the Greatest’s greatest. And there was no shortage of mystical brilliance. As Ali told McIlvanney: “I even cancelled the rain. It stayed dry for the fight, then an hour after it there was a storm that nearly flooded the place.” But it was overridingly a business deal hiding under the halo of good intentions and mired in the muck of dictatorship. Don King told each fighter the other had agreed to a purse of $5m. And they had. How could they say no? There are ways ...

When and if Anthony Joshua and Andy Ruiz Jr sign contracts for a heavyweight rematch that looks almost certain to take them to Saudi Arabia on 7 December, maybe they should recall the much bigger occasion that was the perfect template for looking the other way.

For Mobutu Sese Seke, the despot who ruled Zaire, read Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, still in the dock of global condemnation for the assassination of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as well as the daily atrocities being committed in Yemen. The Saudi regime have for at least two years used sport to draw a curtain of legitimacy over their doings. They even tried unsuccessfully to co-opt the spotless tennis stars Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.

As Amnesty International UK’s head of campaigns, Felix Jakens, said on Friday: “If Anthony Joshua fights Andy Ruiz Jr in Saudi Arabia, it’s likely to be yet another opportunity for the Saudi authorities to try to ‘sportswash’ their severely tarnished image.”

If Joshua, a decent man, doubts that judgment, he should look to the Rumble in the Jungle. There is still time for him and Ruiz to change their minds, but not a lot of it.

The rope-a-dope strategy attributed to Ali’s unlikely victory spoke to a more significant trick, that dealt to the world by King and by Mobutu, who bankrolled the circus with his poor country’s money. They convinced everyone that a mere boxing match mattered more than the subjugation of a nation and its people.

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And the blame needs spreading. John Daly, the Londoner who found the money for King and Mobutu through Barclays bank in Switzerland, offered Ali $10m to fight Joe Frazier for a third time, in Beirut. They went to Manila instead, for the Thrilla. And it nearly killed both of them.

Matchroom will announce details of the Clash on the Dunes at a press conference in London on Monday, Eddie Hearn sitting alongside Omar Khalil, representing Skill Challenge Entertainment, the kingdom’s official “event partner”. Ruiz, who wants the fight in the United States, will not be there.

There is only one bottom line in boxing and it resides underneath the words composed by lawyers and promoters and television moguls. There the antagonists write their names and take their money. Some say they should not be accountable for the residual filth that surrounds their participation. Maybe. But at least they should hold their noses to the prevailing wind.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Muhammad Ali, right, fought George Foreman, left, in Zaire. Photograph: ABC Photo Archives/ABC via Getty Images

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