Sparring With Hemingway: And Other Legends of the Fight Game (21 page)

Finally, boxing was welcomed back to respectability again under the Walker Law (the famous Mayor Jimmy), allowing ten-round fights without awarding decisions, a sop to reformers who reasoned that without official decisions at the end of the contests, the gambling element would be eliminated, along with their fixes and underworld coups. So this became the era of “newspaper decisions,” with the gamblers as involved as ever and paying off on the round-by-round tallies of the boxing writers.

Unfortunately, this group had no more of a lock on public virtue than commission judges, who have made their share of strange and suspicious calls over the years. And so, finally, boxing was “normalized” in New York again, with the hope that a state athletic commission could keep it as clean and safe as this demanding contact sport will ever be.

But New York is only one state, faced with the problem that it has forfeited its championship franchise to Las Vegas, not to mention Latin and European rings on the TV satellite circuit. There was a time when a champion sanctioned in New York enjoyed credibility as a champion of the world. But the fact that New York rulings have no effect in Maine, Mississippi, Arizona … that some states have their own commissions, while some have none at all—and that boxing may be the one sport practiced in every part of the globe, North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa—makes an American ban on boxing an exercise in self-righteous futility. Not only would the ban lead to a mushroom spread of “speakeasy” boxing clubs from New York to San Diego, but American fighters would
become a commodity for export to Buenos Aires and Mexico City, Monte Carlo and Rome, Tokyo and Johannesburg. …

So the AMA “ban on boxing” can be written off either as a publicity ploy (why did they hold up until after the ’84 Olympics their vote to outlaw even amateur boxing?), or a futile cry in the wilderness of the fight game. To cry for abolishment is a cop-out, really, for everybody knows that boxing is no closer to its end in 1985 than it was in 1885, when John L. Sullivan was king. The plea from this corner, then, is not to join the AMA lobby in its grandstand move but to take its most cogent facts to heart and work from there. Decades overdue but now more urgently needed is a federal boxing commission, not a body of dodo politicos or anything-goes boxing apologists but people who care about boxing and know about boxing, who love boxing without being blind to its faults and who want to lead boxing out of its jungle chaos into the world of legitimate sport.

Challenged by the AMA, boxing needs a Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who was appointed to reform baseball after the Black Sox scandals of 1919. It needs a program of protection that is uniform from state to state, via a master computer with a data base of all boxers’ performances and medical histories—so that “opponents” who have no business in the ring could no longer stumble on from state to state, with nobody checking and nobody caring.

Such a commission, staffed by professionals, would insist on much more than the routine physical examination, which in many states is a perfunctory knee-jerk exercise. There should be CAT scans and EEGs and neurological tests before and after every bout. Cerebral atrophy may not be totally avoidable, but at least thorough before-and-after exams would identify potential victims. Boxers over thirty should be monitored with special care, for it seems axiomatic that the older a fighter is and the more blows he absorbs, the more susceptible he becomes to cerebral abnormalities.

A promotion that exploits an over-the-hill Ali, or the comeback of eye-injured Sugar Ray Leonard, or encourages a brave
but punched-out ex-champ like Vito Antuofermo to return to the ring is not going to welcome a federal commission with strict standards for all the states. Big-time promoters have been a law unto themselves and laugh off their critics as do-gooders and bleeding hearts. Too often the prevailing attitude is “boxing is a gutter sport—trying to reform it is like trying to reform hooking on Eighth Avenue.” But the history of the modern prizefight, all the way back to seventeenth century’s James Figg, is studded with reform—from bare knuckles to gloves to thumbless gloves; from fights to a finish to thirty rounds to twenty rounds and now a limit of twelve to fifteen; the use of mouthpiece and groin protector; the judgment of doctors and referees to stop unequal contests. … The trouble often lies in the enforcement. When what proved to be fatal injuries were being inflicted on Benny Paret, Jimmy Owen, Willie Classen, and Duk Koo Kim, officials more sensitive to their dilemma might have stepped in and saved their lives. The brutal shutout that Larry Holmes pitched against Tex Cobb could have been stopped after five or six rounds and simply called “no contest.” Two men parrying each other’s blows and trying to box, think, and will their way to victory make an exhilarating contest. One man beating on a defenseless opponent round after round makes it brutal and boring.

Along with computerized medical records based on CAT scans, EEGs, and the recently developed MRIs (magnetic resonance imaging), a federal boxing commission should also appraise the fitness of referees and cornermen in whose hands lies the safety of thousands of young competitors, most of them hoping to fight their way out of the oppressive social conditions into which they were born. Without exception, they are willing to take their chances, brain damage and all. “It’s my one shot at moving up, man—only way outa the ghetto,” says a hungry, quick-fisted black kid at the Bed-Stuy gym who admits that if he weren’t here, cleaning up his act and accepting the discipline, he’d be out there with his jobless, street-hustle brothers dealing drugs, squeezing Saturday-night specials. “Like, my
fights are in the streets, and my roadwork is outrunning the cops.”

A featherweight novice from Spanish Harlem agrees: “Talk about brain damage, man. You get it
out there
a helluva lot faster ’n you get it in here!” As long as those conditions motivate kids like these off the streets and into gyms from Bed-Stuy to downtown L.A., no AMA is going to stop them.

So let’s step up to realism and give them what they need. Not the rhetoric of abolishment but the reality of reform. Including a long-needed and studiously avoided pension plan, plus a retirement home/hospital along the lines of the Motion Picture Relief Home. Two percent off the top of every multimillion-dollar promotion could underwrite this plan. This fight fan/reformer trial-ballooned these ideas thirty years ago, and all he has to show for it is a plaque from Notre Dame for having done the most for boxing that year. My predecessor was Bishop Shiel, my successor Rocky Marciano, with whom I held a press conference to push our reform. It’s a handsome plaque, but I’m still waiting for the improvements it symbolized.

Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez of Texas has already opened the next round in the battle to ban boxing by swinging into Congress with a bill calling for the sport’s abolishment. There are a lot of poor white Texas kids and brown-skinned Chicanos in his constituency. So we’d advise the honorable Henry B. to move for our federal boxing commission. Let him help set it up soundly and promptly, so that these boys—his constituents—would be protected against both an unsupervised, multimillion-dollar fight industry and the bootleg “club” operators ready to step in should the legal rug be pulled from under some four thousand pro boxers—plus countless amateurs—by the good doctors of the AMA.

[April 1985]

I
N THE CONGO (NOW
called Zaire: rhymes with My Ear) the old African hands like to quote a native proverb:

“Only when you have crossed the river can you say the crocodile has a lump on his snout.”

And now that I have flown across the equator by way of Iceland, Luxembourg, and Trier, Germany (thanks to the topsy-turvy logistics of Video Techniques, which masterminded our press charter flight), to see a Festival of Music that failed to fest, and the Fight of the Century that failed to be fought, I have an amendment to that ancient African saying:

“Even
after
you have crossed the river, you still may not know if the crocodile has a lump on his snout.”

From Joe Louis’s days I’ve flown to the scene of championship fights. But today I’m recalling the flight from California to Miami to see young Cassius Clay challenge the sinister Sonny Liston, the 10-to-l favorite, and the hysterical scene at the weigh-in when Cassius and his resident guru, Bundini Brown, first introduced the slogan, “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,” carrying on like banshees, with Clay’s eyes bulging, his mouth screaming and blood pressure doubling. Officials were being urged to call off the fight because Clay was so emotionally disturbed that he should not be allowed in the ring with a killer like Liston. That night he climbed into the ring cool and self-contained, darting in, out, and around the
lumbering Liston who, as veteran fighters are wont to do, went from middle age to senility between rounds.

Next morning at his press conference, the multifaceted Clay, by far the most complex and provocative of all the champions I’ve known over the years, had undergone another personality change. Now the new champion declared his faith in Black Muslims and, taking the lead from his mentor Malcolm X, announced that henceforth he would no longer use his “slave name” Cassius Marcellus Clay but would be known as Cassius X.

When I asked what kind of champion he intended to be, his answer was unexpected, touched with pomposity, and yet, with hindsight, a reliable projection of the man. “I want to use my championship as a calling card on all the great leaders of the world,” he said. “I want to travel to all the great capitals. Boxin’ has brought me to where I am but I know there’s a lot o’ things more important than boxin’, even than being the Greatest, the champion of the entire world.”

Ten years ago I could not have foreseen that this spirit of defiance, intellectual curiosity, and the search for roots would lead all of us on the strangest journey of my forty years of fight-going, the journey to Kinshasa.

On Ali’s last weekend before his departure for Zaire, I drove to his self-designed complex of log cabins on a mountain top in the Amish country. No frills at the camp, just good solid cabins, solid benches to sit on, solid food. The only decorations are enormous rocks, the size of three Bubba Smiths put together. Each bears the name of a former champion, Sonny Liston, Rocky Marciano, Archie Moore. There is a smaller rock for Angelo Dundee, the veteran trainer-manager to whom Cassius first turned for help when Dundee was managing champions and Clay was the teenage amateur pride of Louisville.

Ali was in high spirits. He looked fit and was proud that he had been in camp all summer, training harder for this fight than for any bout since he was allowed to fight again four years ago.

“You wanna watch me run in the mornin’, you’ll have to get up
real
early.”

The call I had left for 5:30 a.m. seemed to come two minutes after my head touched the pillow. A quick cold shower told me I was awake, and after a hot coffee and Danish in the kitchen with Bundini Brown, who somehow was philosophizing before the sun was up, we drove down the long curving hill with Ali and turned into a green rolling valley where Ali said to his sidekick Gene Kilroy, “Okay, stop here.” He got out of the car and started running along a deserted road between dairy farms. He ran in heavy field boots, not jogging sneakers, and a thick elastic belt drew the excess liquid and fat from a body now pared down from over 230 to 218. On he ran, mile after mile, while we chugged along behind him, with the September sun beginning to light the day. Occasionally a curious cow or a horse would come to the fence along the country road to watch him pass. For almost half an hour he ran, occasionally backward, sometimes pausing to whistle punches into the sweet morning air. When he finally came to the end of his self-appointed marathon, he did a little more shadow boxing to taper off, attracting a small audience of early rising farmers and their children.

“I’m ready,” he assured these rural neighbors who had never seen a prizefight but to whom the peregrinating Ali had become a welcome sight.

“Just ran half an hour and I’m not even breathin’ hard. Tomorrow I’m leaving for Africa! The rumble in the jungle! George Foreman is in big trouble. I’m goin’ over there as the champion of the people and I’m comin’ back as the official champion of the whole world.”

“If you think Evel Knievel made that jump, wait ’til I beat Foreman’s rump!”

I wasn’t sure these simple country folk knew exactly what he was talking about, but they seemed as hypnotized as his most ardent fans in the ghetto.

That afternoon, after going eight spirited rounds with four
sparring partners, Ali showered and dressed in the meager quarters off the gym where he also slept, and then perched himself atop a pile of logs. A sense of well-being and the excitement of going to Africa, “back to the homeland,” had raised his usually ebullient spirits even higher.

“If you think the world was amazed when Nixon resigned, wait ’til I beat George Foreman’s behind.”

Then he grew serious. “It’s much more than a sports event. It’s a symbol of the Black Awakening, with black American stars like me going back to our African roots. Stars like Stevie Wonder and Diana Ross and James Brown and Aretha Franklin, all those beautiful black people goin’ home to share their experiences with the black musicians who never left. And all the black people of Africa and the leaders of a young black country bigger’n all of Europe ’n India put together! That’s the real story. It’ll make history. The first comin’ together of Afro-Americans and their African brothers.”

His eyes widened in amazement at the enormity of this impending phenomenon. “Let’s get it on!”

After two days of zigzagging over oceans and across continents, we were finally deposited in downtown Kinshasa, at the Hotel Memling, where the heat impresses you like an affectionate ghost, while invisible bugs cuddle up for comfort.

Meanwhile, a journeyman heavyweight named Bill McMurray had sliced the invincible George Foreman over the right eye. The fight had been postponed! For a week, a month? Nobody knew. Foreman & Co. were barricaded behind locked gates and armed guards, as inaccessible to the press as Nixon at San Clemente.