Ali

by Jonathan Eig

  “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if people could be this friendly all the time?” he asked a reporter from his hometown.

  For newspapermen, the Olympic games offered a special opportunity, and not just to pad their expense accounts. The Olympics gave pencil pushers who seldom strayed from the nuts and bolts of competitive sport the opportunity to write about something grander. The Olympics provided the best place in the world to witness the interaction of nations, races, religions, and ideologies. In 1960, with Cold War tensions running high, it was impossible to watch men and women compete in Rome without considering the global, potentially apocalyptic struggle between communism and capitalism raging across the globe.

  American women took a newly prominent role in the 1960 Olympics — in part because women were fighting for equal rights but also because the U.S. team thought women might give America the edge over the Soviets when it came to the final medal count. The Rome Olympics foretold other cultural shifts. There was the first doping scandal, the first commercial television broadcast, and the first runner paid to wear a brand of track shoes.

  When the American decathlete Rafer Johnson led the U.S. delegation at the Parade of Nations at Stadio Olimpico, it marked the first time a black athlete carried the American flag in an Olympic competition. With the selection of Johnson, the Americans meant to send a message that America was a land of freedom and opportunity, although it also afforded America’s critics the opportunity to point out that Johnson and other black Americans still faced discrimination at home. European reporters were surprised to see so many black athletes on the American squad. Twelve percent of the men and twenty-five percent of the women on the American team were black. In the Olympic village, American mess halls and dormitories were fully integrated, although white athletes who requested white roommates were usually accommodated.

  Twenty-four years earlier, Hitler’s propaganda machine had accused the United States of using subhuman “black auxiliaries” like Jesse Owens to compete with Hitler’s so-called master race. Now, the comingling of white and black athletes on the U.S. team was something Americans bragged about.

  The press glommed on to Clay not only because he entertained them but also because he seemed to represent much of what was new in the 1960 games. He was cocky and opinionated, which was unusual for a young, black athlete. He spoke openly about his eagerness to turn pro and get rich, which was also fairly novel and refreshing. And he wasn’t afraid to talk about politics, even if he scarcely knew what he was talking about.

  “Is there a crisis for Negroes in the United States?” a foreign reporter asked Clay before the start of the competition.

  “Oh, I guess there are some troubles,” he said. “But nothing you can’t fix. And the United States is still the greatest country in the world.”

  When a Russian reporter pushed him, asking if it was true that Negroes couldn’t eat in the same restaurants as whites back in the States, Clay was honest. He said, yes, there were times when it was difficult for a black person to get a meal in an American restaurant, but that wasn’t the only indicator of a nation’s greatness. Life in America was still wonderful. After all, he said, “I ain’t fighting off alligators and living in a mud hut.”

  Clay had tried all his life to be noticed, to find the tallest pedestal and to stand on it and shout as loudly as he could, to tell the world he was different and special and they had better pay attention. Had he found himself at age eighteen in the military or enrolled in college or working in a factory, no one would have cared about his views of the racial crisis in America; his cockiness might have earned him a reprimand — or worse — from a drill sergeant, a teacher, a factory foreman, or an angry white law enforcement officer. Had he not been a celebrated athlete, he might have been forced to civilize the unruliness within.

  It was the right place at the right time for a young man in a hurry to become a star. Of course, to complete the journey to stardom, he still had to fight and win, and the boxers lined up to face Clay were not likely to be as submissive as the reporters.

  Before the competition began, writers were naming Clay the best boxer on a mediocre American team. Dan Daniel, the legendary sports columnist for the New York World-Telegram, predicted that in all likelihood none of the nine Americans would make it as a professional fighter. “If there is a Rome winner and potential money-making star among our boxers,” Daniel wrote, “he is the 175-pounder Cassius Clay, from Louisville . . . Some say Clay is a better boxer than [Floyd] Patterson was when he won the middleweight medal in the 1952 Olympics at Helsinki . . . However, Clay finds himself in the toughest of the 10 classes to be contested in Italy.”

  The three best amateur fighters in the world, according to many reporters, were all in Clay’s light-heavyweight division. They were Tony Madigan, the Australian whom Clay had faced a year and a half earlier in New York; Russia’s Gennadiy Shatkov, winner of a gold medal as a middleweight in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics; and a left-handed Polish fighter named Zbiegniew Pietrzykowski (“Some guy with fifteen letters in his name,” Clay called Pietrzykowski), who had fought more than 230 bouts, winning three European championships, and was considered a heavy favorite to take the gold medal.

  In his first fight, Clay, wearing a white tank top with the number 272 on his back, came out of his corner jabbing and dancing, zipping in and out so quickly that his twenty-four-year-old Belgian opponent, Yvon Becot, looked like a man trying to hit smoke rings. He punched, missed, looked up to see where Clay had gone, and punched and missed again. When Becot poked his head up, Clay popped him with a left jab. At the end of round one, a stiff jab from Clay rattled the Belgian. In the second round, Clay came out slugging and knocked Becot down with a left hook that traveled so quickly few in the audience could have seen it. Before the second round was over, Becot was too damaged to go on. The referee stopped the bout.

  In his next fight, Clay blackened both eyes of the Russian gold medalist Shatkov and scored an easy win. That set up a rematch with Tony Madigan. After their fight in New York, Madigan had complained that Clay was the sort of fighter he dreaded. “He’s very tall and has a very fast left hand and he continually moves away,” Madigan said, “and I haven’t got the flexibility to fight those fighters the way they should be fought. Unfortunately, I can’t vary my style — as I should be able — to meet that contingency.”

  Now, in Rome, Madigan didn’t try to vary his style. He lowered his shoulders and prowled, letting Clay hit him with those long, quick jabs, and throwing heavy hooks to Clay’s body and head. The fight was close, but the judges gave the unanimous decision to Clay, sending him on to meet Pietrzykowski for the gold medal.

  Clay must have been thinking of the left-handed Amos Johnson when he learned he’d be facing Pietrzykowski in the finals. A year earlier in Wisconsin, at the Pan American trials, Johnson had given Clay the worst beating of his life. Since then, Clay had won forty-two consecutive fights. Now he not only faced another lefty; he faced one of the best in the world in Pietrzykowski.

  “Do southpaws bother other fellows?” Clay asked sports columnist Red Smith. Smith assured him that all fighters believed that southpaws should be drowned at birth.

  If he was worried, though, Clay didn’t show it. His coaches begged him to spend more time in the gym, but Clay was too busy signing autographs and taking pictures. He ran a mile or two most mornings, but otherwise he saw little need for training. Either he was ready or he wasn’t.

  The bell rang and Clay went to work. To enter a boxing ring is to willingly lose control. You train, you study, you commit yourself fully, perhaps you make up your mind on a strategy, a plan of attack, perhaps you pray, and then you step through the ropes and face an opponent who has also trained, studied, committed himself fully, possibly prayed, and who has adopted a strategy meant to render yours null and void. The fight starts and all is irresolution. Anything can happen — victory, defeat, even death. The great fighters lose themselves in the void. They don’t think about it. They ride
the rush.

  Clay stepped in and met Pietrzykowski with his usual speed and high energy, but he didn’t look like the same fighter spectators in Italy had been watching all week. Whether he had made up his mind before the bout to change his style or whether he arrived at the decision spontaneously upon seeing his opponent’s style, Clay didn’t say, but it was clear that he was treating this opponent differently. He wasn’t dancing much, for one thing. And instead of using his left jab to wear down his foe, he mixed left jabs with right leads.

  At the end of the first round, Pietrzykowski landed two hard lefts, but they didn’t faze Clay. Clay had thrown more punches than his opponent, but most of Clay’s punches had missed. When the bell rang to end the round, Clay could not have been sure if he had won it.

  In the second round, Pietrzykowski lowered his head and fought more aggressively. He landed two big left hands, but neither seemed to bother Clay. Again in round two, Clay used his right hand more than usual. When Pietrzykowski went into a crouch to defend himself, Clay pounded the Pole’s ribcage with left hooks.

  Going into the third round, the fight remained close. Clay probably had the edge, but neither fighter wanted to take the chance of letting the judges determine the winner. Clay came out hitting faster and harder. He used body punches to set up head shots. He shuffled his feet with lightning speed before unleashing a flurry of hooks. In the final minute, Clay punched and punched. For every punch Pietrzykowski landed, Clay landed three. Blood gushed from the Pole’s mouth and nose, staining his white shirt. Clay kept coming, like a beast who tastes blood, eyes locked on his opponent’s head, arms flying without pause, the look on his face saying this is mine. He surged forward and slugged until the bell’s clang called him off.

  Moments later, a three-tiered podium was lifted into the ring and Clay climbed to the center and highest step. An Olympic official stood before him, offering the gold medal, the greatest honor available to an amateur boxer. Clay waved modestly to the crowd as his name was announced, said something to the Olympic official, and bent over as the medal was draped around his neck.

  Then, in a rare moment of silence, he stood to full height and gently smiled.

  8

  Dreamer

  Oh, he was something now. The wittiest, the prettiest, the brashest, the rashest. A picture of life’s promises. The embodiment of confidence. Sunshine with a snappy left jab.

  “Man,” he said, “it’s gonna be great to be great.”

  Clay flew from Rome, stopping in New York before returning to Louisville, and he could hardly pass a stranger without looking to see if they recognized him or walk by a storefront window without pausing to admire his reflection. He was tall and slender, with skin the color of chocolate milk and eyes slightly darker. The terrain of his face was gentle, with no hard lines or unexpected angles, everything in lovely proportion — too lovely, if anything, for a boxer. His youthful grin shone brighter than the glittering medal that hung around his neck.

  “Look at me! I’m beautiful,” he said, aloud, not to himself, because seldom did a thought pass from his mind unexpressed. “And I’m gonna stay pretty ’cause there ain’t a fighter on earth fast enough to hit me!”

  He wore his medal everywhere, even to bed. He slept on his back so it wouldn’t cut his chest.

  His trainer, Joe Martin, met him at Idlewild Airport in New York, along with William Reynolds, who, as vice president of the Reynolds Metal Co., was one of Louisville’s wealthiest and best-known citizens. The men drove Clay to the Waldorf Towers Hotel and ensconced him in a suite next to one occupied at the time by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Reynolds gave Clay a pile of cash and told him to buy presents for his mother and father. The boxer selected a $250 watch for his mother and a pair of $100 watches for his father and brother. He dined at the Waldorf, Olympic medal still draped from his neck, and ordered two steaks at $7.95 each.

  Everywhere he went in New York, Clay was asked if he intended to turn pro. The answer was a certain yes. “I want money, plenty of it,” he said. He noted that he might eventually become a pop singer, “like Elvis Presley,” but boxing would come first. He vowed that within three years he would be the world heavyweight champion. In a sign of impatience, he stepped into a Times Square arcade and bought a mock newspaper with a banner headline of his own construction: “Cassius Signs for Patterson Fight.”

  “Back home they’ll think it’s real,” he said.

  Once again, Dick Schaap served as Clay’s tour guide. The sidewalks of New York in the fall of 1960 were filled with men in fedoras and women in mink. Jazz fans squeezed in to the Village Vanguard to hear Miles Davis. Billboards advertised Rheingold beer and Kent cigarettes. The boxer marveled at many things, including the steep $2.50 check for a roast beef sandwich and a slice of cheesecake from Jack Dempsey’s restaurant.

  Clay told Schaap he dreamed of having a hundred-thousand-dollar home, a beautiful wife, two Cadillacs — plus a Ford, “for just getting around in.” There was another dream, he said: “I dream I’m running down Broadway — that’s the main street in Louisville — and all of a sudden there’s a truck coming at me. I run at the truck and then I take off and I’m flying. I go right up over the truck, and all the people are standing around and cheering and waving at me. And I wave back and I keep on flying. I dream that all the time.”

  In New York, he thrilled with delight whenever he was recognized, never mind that he was doing everything he could to call attention to himself, wearing both his Olympic jacket and his gold medal.

  “Really? You really know who I am?” he asked. “That’s wonderful!”

  The city rolled before the young champion like an overladen dessert cart. It was the new and exciting 1960s; young John F. Kennedy was the Democratic nominee for president; girls were letting their skirts inch up to their kneecaps with the promise of more to come; the birth-control pill had hit the market, and everything and everyone offered the promise of a sexy new order. Cassius Clay acted as if he intended to conquer it all, as if the city lights shined just for him.

  At two in the morning, when Schaap was ready to end their adventure and go home, Clay would not yet dismiss his audience; he invited the reporter back to his suite at the Waldorf to look at his scrapbook from Rome. Schaap accepted the invitation, but he told Clay the boxer would have to explain to Mrs. Schaap why her husband was out so late.

  “You mean your wife know who I am, too?” Clay asked, excitedly.

  And then the young hero stretched out on the bed and went to sleep, perhaps to dream of flying.

  Billy Reynolds had made the trip to welcome Clay home and to make the young boxer an offer. The men already knew each other. That summer, Reynolds had offered Clay a job doing yard work at his estate. Clay had shown up every day and splashed in the pool with Reynolds’ children, not doing a lick of work but still getting paid. Reynolds didn’t mind. He was more interested in helping a promising athlete and securing the trust of a boxer with potential to earn a great deal of money; he had other people to trim his hedges.

  Now, Reynolds wanted to put together a deal to launch Clay’s professional career. Joe Martin would be hired as Clay’s trainer, and a group of white Louisville executives would manage the fighter’s business interests. The white Louisville businessmen, along with Martin, would select the boxer’s opponents, guiding him toward a shot at the championship. They would pay Clay a straight salary plus a percentage of his earnings, and they would cover all of the expenses associated with his training and his work. They would set aside money for taxes to make sure he never got in trouble with the Internal Revenue Service. And they would create a trust fund so that some of the boxer’s income would be saved for his retirement.

  Reynolds didn’t come to New York to pressure Clay to sign right away, but he did want to show the young fighter he was eager to help. As Clay already knew, most professional fighters were managed by gym rats and mobsters, which left young and often uneducated athletes vulnerable to all sorts of dirty deali
ngs and helped explain why so many fighters ended their careers broke, broken down, and badgered by the tax collector.

  Reynolds and his friends were all so wealthy they would never dream of cheating Clay. That was a big part of their pitch. They didn’t need his money. Rather, they said, they saw their role as civic boosters. They came from Kentucky, a peculiar and abundant place where fortunes were made on stallions that ran in the mud and whiskeys that came from corn mash. With Clay, these men saw the opportunity to take a Negro from the West End and give him a shot at fame and fortune while possibly turning a profit at the same time. Of course, they may also have been interested in staking Clay for the same reason certain underworld figures and frustrated former jocks got behind boxers — because watching a professional fight is more fun when you’ve got a front-row seat and a piece of the action.

  Reynolds intended to wait until he and Clay were back in Louisville, and then he would make his pitch to the boxer and his parents. For now, the businessman wanted merely to congratulate the Olympic champion, to make his return to the United States more memorable, and, of course, to impress Clay with his wealth.

  For his arrival in Louisville, Clay recited a poem.

  To make America the greatest is my goal,

  So I beat the Russian, and I beat the Pole

  And for the USA won the Medal of Gold.

  Italians said, “You’re greater than the Cassius of old.”

  The refrain was not good enough to make former teachers reconsider Clay’s poor grades, but that hardly mattered to the three hundred fans cheering his arrival on the tarmac at Standiford Field Airport in Louisville. Clay’s parents and his brother were there to greet him, of course, along with Mayor Bruce Hoblitzell, six cheerleaders, and a city-furnished twenty-five-car motorcade, which carried the gold medalist to Central High for a pep rally.