Muhammad Ali: A Tribute to the Greatest (13 page)

Q:
There seems to be an opinion circulating that Zora Folley is just here for a pay-day for himself and for you and to keep you in shape. Do you think that Folley represents a genuine threat?

ALI:
These are just the hypocrites and the phonies, the newspaper writers that are shook up because everything that I said would come true did come true. I said that I was the greatest. They thought I was just acting the fool. Now instead of admitting that I’m the greatest and admitting that I’m the best heavyweight in all history, they’d rather belittle the contenders and say it’s just a pushover. They were complaining because Patterson didn’t fight but once a year. They were complaining because Liston didn’t fight but once a year. They were complaining because Johansson didn’t fight but once a year. The game was dead. Now I revive it, fighting every two months. And what more can I do but fight the number-one contender. Zora Folley is the number-one man on earth next to me. So they can call him a bum. They can call him an old man. All I say is, “If he’s a bum, if he’s an old man; then why do the boxing authorities in this country rank him number one?” So they’re just looking for fault, and they don’t know what to do. They’re all shook up. They said Terrell would be tough; they built him up to be tough. He was nothing. They said Patterson would be tough. He was nothing. They said Cleveland Williams would be a big test. He was nothing. They said Chuvalo would be nothing. He was tough. So don’t pay attention to the critics in the press. They don’t know nothing about boxing. They never trained a day in their life. They can’t throw a left jab. All they can do is talk. They’ve been wrong, and I’ve been right. I look for Zora Folley to be tougher than Ernie Terrell.

Q:
Who among the young fighters such as Joe Frazier, Buster Mathis, and Jerry Quarry do you look for to give you the most trouble in the years ahead?

ALI:
I’d say Joe Frazier.

Q:
What does he have that would make him tougher than the others?

ALI:
He’s strong; he hits hard. I’ve never really seen none of them fight. But from what I hear, he’d be the toughest

Q:
Have you given any thought to retirement?

ALI:
Not really. I believe I’ll just stay here and keep whupping them until they find somebody who can whup me.

Q:
What sort of long-range plans do you have for when you finish up in the ring?

ALI:
I want to be a minister for the Islamic faith as taught by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. That’s all I want to be is a minister.

I WAS AT ALI-FRAZIER I

2004

I
was an ardent sports fan when I was young. I played a lot of baseball, football, and basketball. Those were also my favorite sports to watch. I followed boxing but without the intense interest in the sweet science that I have today.

Like many Americans, I became aware of Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. at the 1960 Rome Olympics. I found him charming and followed his career as he rose to conquer Sonny Liston. Then, like a lot of people, I was turned off by his adherence to Nation of Islam ideology. The lure of Muhammad Ali’s personality was strong, and I had no problem with his message of empowerment for black Americans. But I took issue with the notion that white people were devils who had been created 6,600 years ago by an evil scientist named Mr. Yakub and that apartheid was a preferred way of life. Regardless, in 1967, Ali won me over again when he refused induction into the United States Army during the height of the war in Vietnam.

In 1970, I graduated from Columbia Law School and began clerking for a federal judge prior to a five-year stint as a litigator on Wall Street. The United States Supreme Court had yet to rule on Ali’s appeal of his conviction for refusing induction and he was facing five years in prison.

Then, in early 1971, I read that Ali and Joe Frazier had signed to fight at Madison Square Garden. Obviously, it would be a memorable athletic competition. Two great fighters, each one undefeated with a legitimate claim to the heavyweight championship of the world. But just as clearly, it was going to be an event that transcended sports.

The tumultuous decade just passed had been marked by assassinations, men landing on the moon, and the rise of a new drug culture. But its most important markers were Black America rising to assert itself and opposition to the war in Vietnam. Ali symbolized both of those markers.

Joe Frazier, by contrast, was perceived as a symbol of the ruling order. Fairly or unfairly, as Bryant Gumbel later wrote, “Frazier became an instrument of the oppressors. The blackest man in the ring was cast as the villain to blacks across the land and was called hero and savior by the most bigoted of white men.”

Tickets for Ali-Frazier I were priced from $20 to $150. The day they went on sale, I bought two mezzanine seats at $20 apiece. On fight night, scalpers were getting ten times those numbers.

I went to the fight with a friend. Entering the Garden, I bought an “official program.” It was a generic publication with a LeRoy Neiman painting of Ali and Frazier on the cover and a 16-page insert on “The Fight.”

I’d been to Madison Square Garden for boxing once before, but this night was different from its predecessor. Early in Ali’s career, Budd Schulberg wrote, “Cassius Marcellus Clay is doing for fistic glamour what Marilyn Monroe did for sex.” Now the Garden was glamour personified.

The arena was jammed. There was electricity in the air. Major superstars who were used to sitting on camera in the first row were fifteen rows from ringside and happy to be in the Garden at all. Frank Sinatra wangled a press credential by agreeing to photograph the fight for
Life Magazine
. Thousands of fans stood outside the arena just to be there and watch the celebrities come in.

None of the preliminary fights was slated for more than six rounds. The most notable undercard bout featured Ali’s brother, Rahaman, against Danny McAlinden.

Rahaman had fought on the undercard of both Ali-Liston fights and Ali versus Oscar Bonavena. His record stood at 7 wins and 0 losses with 2 knockouts. McAlinden was a heavyweight from Ireland via England. His record was 14-1-2 with 13 KOs, and he had never fought off the sceptered isle before.

Fights in New York were scored at that time on a round-by-round basis; not on points. McAlinden won a majority decision: 4-2, 3-2-1, 3-3.

As the night wore on, the tension grew.

Then, finally, it was time.

“I’ve covered sports for a half-century,” Jerry Izenberg later reminisced. “I’ve been to every kind of championship and seen every great athlete of the past fifty years. No moment I’ve ever seen had the electricity of Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier coming down the aisle and entering the ring that night.”

People forget how young Ali and Frazier were at the time. Muhammad was 29 and Joe only 27. But even though some of Ali’s greatest ring triumphs lay in the future, as a fighter he was already growing old.

The fight was even in the early rounds. The crowd was evenly divided. But as the night wore on, Frazier partisans had more reason to cheer.

I remember Ali going to the ropes, beckoning Frazier in. I remember round eleven, when Joe wobbled Muhammad with a big left hook. And most painfully, I remember the fifteenth round, when Joe hit Muhammad as hard as a man can be hit and Ali went down. At that point, the fight was lost and my hope was that Muhammad would be able to finish on his feet. He did, although the judges ruled against him: 11-4, 9-6, and 8-6-1.

Ali had been defeated in his first “superfight.” Against Sonny Liston in 1964, Cassius Clay had been widely perceived as nothing more than a kid coming to get beaten up. Ali-Liston II drew only two thousand paying fans. Now, when it mattered most and the world truly cared, “The Greatest” had failed.

I left Madison Square Garden that night feeling depressed but knowing that I had witnessed something historic.

REFLECTIONS ON TIME SPENT WITH MUHAMMAD ALI

COMBINED PIECES WRITTEN FROM 1991 THROUGH 1997

M
y personal relationship with Muhammad Ali began in 1988, when we met in New York to explore the possibility of my writing the book that ultimately became
Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times.

The idea originated with Muhammad’s wife, Lonnie, who wanted a book which would place Muhammad in context, not just as a fighter but also as a social, political, and religious figure. I was approached because I had previously written a book about professional boxing entitled
The Black Lights
, as well as books about race relations, public education, United States foreign policy, and a number of other subjects of concern to Muhammad.

On paper, the fit between us seemed good. I was 42 years old, only four years younger than Ali, so I’d experienced his era, from the civil rights movement to the rock music he loves. I’d spent five years as a lawyer on Wall Street, and thus was able to work my way through the financial entanglements of Muhammad’s life and the complex litigation that followed his refusal to accept induction into the United States Army. And while I was determined to maintain my objectivity in writing, I was a lifelong Ali fan.

Writing a biography about a living subject is an extremely personal endeavor, and I wanted to make sure that, if the project went ahead, Muhammad and I would get along. I also wanted to make sure that I could capture Muhammad’s voice. At the time, Mike Tyson was the undefeated undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. Some experts were going so far as to proclaim that Tyson was better than Ali in his prime. Thus, before I met with Muhammad and Lonnie, I spent an afternoon writing a piece entitled
I’m Coming Back To Whup Mike Tyson’s Butt
. Then, when we got together, I read the piece aloud and presented it to Muhammad. His response was to take a pen from his pocket and write across the front page, “To Tom Hauser from Muhammad Ali—This is what I can still do to Tyson right now.”

But there was another threshold issue to confront. Like millions of admirers, I’d seen Muhammad on television. Sometimes he’d looked well. Other times, though, the light seemed all but gone from his eyes. I didn’t want to involve myself with the project unless Muhammad was capable of making a significant contribution to it. Also, I didn’t want to spend several years working on a book that would be a source of depression instead of joy.

To resolve those issues, after meeting initially with Muhammad and his wife, I accepted their invitation to spend five days at their home in Berrien Springs, Michigan. My first two days there, I was intimidated by Ali’s presence. I found it hard to make eye contact with him. Other than John F. Kennedy, who was my boyhood hero, I don’t think there’s a person on the planet who would have affected me in that manner and certainly not to that extent. Then, on the third morning, I went downstairs to the kitchen. Muhammad was sitting at the breakfast table, finishing his cereal and toast. He looked up and asked if I wanted cornflakes or granola. In that moment, I realized that any distance between us was my own fault. Muhammad didn’t want to be put on a pedestal. He wanted me to relate to him the same way I’d relate to anyone else.

I also realized over time that, despite Ali’s speech difficulties, his health is better than most people think it is. Muhammad suffers from Parkinson’s syndrome, which refers to a series of symptoms, the most noticeable of which are slurred speech, stiffness in walking, and an occasional facial “mask.” The most common cause of Parkinson’s syndrome is Parkinson’s disease. In Ali’s case, the symptoms were brought on by repeated blows to the head; blows that destroyed cells in his brain stem which produce a substance called dopamine. But the condition is not life-threatening. And more important, it’s a motor-skills problem. There are no intellectual deficits. Muhammad’s wit is sharp and his thought processes are clear. Indeed, when we signed our contract for me to write the book, I couldn’t resist saying, “Muhammad, stick with me and I’ll make you famous.” Ali countered, “More famous than Elvis Presley?”

In short, Muhammad doesn’t feel sorry for himself because of his physical condition, and there’s no reason for anyone else to feel sorry for him. He loves being Muhammad Ali, and he’s as happy with each day as anybody I know.

As for the process of researching Ali’s life, I proceeded on several levels. First, there were Muhammad’s personal papers, medical records, newspapers, magazines, tapes, and cartons of legal and financial documents. After that, I interviewed approximately two hundred people—members of Ali’s family, friends, former wives, ring opponents, business associates, doctors, world leaders, and others who have known him best. And of course, there were countless days spent with Muhammad. I traveled with him around the world, spent weeks in his home, and entertained him in mine.

One of my memories is of waking up one morning in the Alis’ home in Berrien Springs and hearing Lonnie cry out, “Oh my God! Muhammad! What have you done?”

Naturally, I was curious. So I put on my clothes, went downstairs, and found Lonnie standing in the living room amidst piles of clothes, boxes, and other belongings. Apparently, during the night, Muhammad had been unable to sleep. As he often does under those circumstances, he’d gone downstairs to read the Qur’an. Then, for reasons known only to him, he’d grown curious as to what was in the closets. The easiest way to satisfy that curiosity was to empty all of them out onto the living room floor. Suffice it to say that Lonnie assumed it was Muhammad (and not me) who had done the deed.

Unlike Ali’s earlier biographers, I enjoyed total access to Muhammad and to virtually all of the key people in his life. My questions were answered with candor by almost everyone. And I enjoyed the advantage of perspective, since I was writing at a time when Ali’s ring career and the tumultuous era of American history that went with it had come to an end.

Inevitably, writing the book involved revisiting my own youth. It led me to recall watching the 1960 Olympics on television and reading newspapers in high school for reports of Cassius Clay’s early fights. I reexperienced listening to the radio as a 17-year-old college freshman the night Clay beat Sonny Liston for the heavyweight championship. The war in Vietnam; assassinations; riots in Newark, Harlem, and Watts. In one way or another, so many of the key events in American history that I remembered were intertwined with Ali’s life. And I relived sitting in a New York theater on October 2, 1980, turning my face away from the screen to avoid watching the brutalization of an aging Ali at the hands of Larry Holmes.