by Jonathan Eig
To see Cassius hit the ground.
Some get mad, some lose their money,
But Cassius is still as sweet as honey.
A big part of boxing’s attraction had always been primal. In this case, there was no question which boxer the crowd wanted to see suffer. They were coming to see Cassius Clay, a cocky young black man, get his mouth shut and pretty face disfigured.
On the morning of the fight, Clay couldn’t sleep. At 6:30 a.m., he slipped out of his hotel to gape at his name on the billboards outside Madison Square Garden, then went back to his room and slept until 10. He showed up for the weigh-in with masking tape covering his mouth, a gag that made even Jones smile.
When it was 9:47 p.m., time to fight, Clay climbed into the ring and whirled his arms like windmills. The crowd booed loudly. Jones, a Harlem native, entered to cheers. In attendance were former boxing champs Gene Tunney, Jack Dempsey, Sugar Ray Robinson, Rocky Graziano, Barney Ross, and Dick Tiger. Also on hand were Jackie Robinson, Althea Gibson, Ralph Bunche, Malcolm X, Toots Shor, and Lauren Bacall.
The bell rang, the men measured each other and jabbed lightly for a minute or so, and then Jones bashed Clay’s head with a right hook that sent Cassius toppling into the ropes. The crowd screamed in chorus, eager to see if he would fall. But, somehow, Clay bounced off the ropes, regained his balance, and continued fighting. He jabbed to keep the smaller, lighter man away.
By the second round, Clay was Clay again, seemingly undamaged, mixing jabs and hooks, inflicting more damage than he received. Clay’s body language was by now familiar to boxing fans. He stayed on the balls of his feet, bouncing like a big ball, bouncing, bouncing, shifting side to side, moving his wide, chiseled shoulders left and right, always moving, making it all but impossible to predict when he would pop a quick jab. His eyes went wide as he moved away from an opponent’s punch and his cheeks puffed and blew air when he launched one of his own. In the fourth, the round in which Clay had promised to end the fight, Jones had other ideas, letting loose big left hooks that spun Clay around. From ringside Clay heard jeering: “Get that loudmouth!”
It looked as if Jones had a chance. For the first time, Clay’s bad boxing habits made him vulnerable. With his hands down by his sides, Clay couldn’t stop Jones from throwing hooks to the head. And Clay’s attempts to lean away from punches rather than ducking left him off balance and vulnerable to Jones’s surging body blows. Still, Jones couldn’t finish the job. Every time he was struck, Clay hit back, sometimes two punches for one, and by the sixth round both men looked ragged.
By the end of the seventh, Angelo Dundee was convinced that his fighter was behind on points, although the trainer may have been influenced by the crowd, which screamed more lustily for Jones’s punches than for Clay’s.
“You can kiss that tomato-red Cadillac goodbye!” Dundee yelled at Clay.
Maybe that’s what did it. In the eighth round, Clay kept his hands high and attacked, landing 21 punches, which was more than he’d landed in any other round. In the ninth round, he did even better, landing 22 punches, and in the final round he exploded, throwing an overwhelming 101 punches and landing 42 of them. Jones threw only 51 punches and landed 19 in the same round. Once threatened, Clay had committed to full-scale war, using his size, strength, and speed in an onslaught that should have left the crowd in awe. But it didn’t.
When the final bell rang, the audience exploded with approval, happy to have seen such intense combat and convinced that their man Jones had won. TV announcers said they thought the fight might have been a draw.
Clay went to his corner, ignoring Jones, and awaited the judges’ decision. But to the judges and referees, the fight wasn’t close. They awarded Clay the victory in a unanimous decision.
“Fix!” the crowd chanted “Fix! Fix! Fix!”
The crowd’s passion, however, had clouded its judgment. Clay threw more punches than Jones, landed more punches than Jones, and landed more power punches than Jones. He also dominated the last two rounds. It was a tough fight, a good fight, and Clay had won it impressively in spite of the audience’s hostility.
As angry fans hurled beer cups, programs, and peanuts, Clay raised his arms, opened his mouth, and walked to all four sides of the ring, roaring back at the crowd.
Then he picked up a peanut and ate it.
A TV announcer reached Clay, pointed him toward the camera, and asked if he would consider giving Jones a rematch.
Clay said no.
“I am gunning for Sonny Liston. I want that big bear bad.”
More than a hundred reporters crowded Clay’s dressing room, along with old friends from Louisville, Sugar Ray Robinson, the Olympian Don Bragg, and football star Jim Brown. The skin under Clay’s left eye was swollen, and he was uncharacteristically surly. “I ain’t Superman,” he said. “If the fans think I can do everything I say I can do, then they’re crazier than I am.”
Charles “Sonny” Liston may have been the most unpopular man in all of America. Now, however, as a match between Liston and Clay drew nearer, many sports fans were reconsidering the champion, wondering if maybe they’d been too hard on him, asking themselves if they might be better off with Liston than Clay. Black fans, in particular, seemed wary of Clay, who came across as an oddball and not the kind of proud, strong, black man who would represent them well.
Writing in the Chicago Defender, the nation’s most influential black newspaper, columnist Al Monroe tried to rally support for Liston, saying that the prejudice of white reporters contributed to the champ’s reputation as a menace to society. Monroe offered examples of Liston’s sharp wit and intelligent answers to questions. In another column, Monroe wrote that Liston should be credited for improving himself and leaving his criminal past behind.
“What fans want is a champion they can look up to,” wrote Monroe. “Will Cassius Clay prove to be such a man outside the ring?” Clay’s taunting of Liston was “most unbecoming of a champion,” Monroe continued. “Would Clay hold the title with dignity or would he be merely a king’s jester and not a crowned head with the sovereignty that the position calls for?”
The lofty language suggested that the heavyweight title still mattered to Americans. And to black Americans, who saw few of their own in positions of power in 1963, it mattered perhaps more than it did to whites. All over America, black activists were organizing voter-registration drives, marches, and sit-ins to improve living conditions and promote equality. The unemployment rate for black men was double the rate for whites, these activists reminded people. School integration was still being impeded in many southern states. In the fall of 1962, James Meredith needed a force of 320 federal marshals to reach his dormitory as he enrolled as the first black student at the University of Mississippi. President Kennedy called for calm but didn’t get much as armed mobs attacked the federal troops in what historian C. Vann Woodward called “an insurrectionary assault on officers and soldiers of the United States government and the most serious challenge to the Union since the Civil War.” Riots broke out in Birmingham, Alabama, where police used attack dogs and fire hoses to turn back protesters. Martin Luther King Jr. and his allies made plans for a massive rally in Washington called “The March for Jobs and Freedom.” Other black leaders, including ministers within the Nation of Islam, were calling for more than marches. They said white America would never give up power unless black America made them do it.
Young activists spoke of Black Pride. It wasn’t enough for them to find a place within the confines of white America; they wanted people to take pride in their skin, the darker the better. Cassius Clay disappointed some of these radical young leaders. Liston had been a disappointment too, but civil rights activists hadn’t expected much from Liston. Clay, on the other hand, was young, clever, and outspoken. Leaders in the movement would have been thrilled if he had taken a stand, but they were puzzled as to why he seemed uninterested in civil rights, and they were angry at his habit of speaking condescendingly toward other black boxe
rs. In a letter to the Defender, Cecil Brathwaite, president of the African Jazz-Art Society in New York, complained that Clay was turning his back on the movement and feeding racial stereotypes by calling Liston a big, ugly bear. Brathwaite addressed Clay with a poem that read, in part:
Sonny Liston is the standard,
And that you should respect,
We are the racial vanguard,
Our image, we shall protect.
Why try to rate his comeliness
Before the whole wide world,
You proclaim him in homeliness
And you “pretty as a girl.”
And did you really tell the press,
“Jones is an ugly little man?”
But when he put you to the test,
You turned around and ran.
Jones also bears the standard,
An African for sure.
No one yet, has said the bard,
Is anything but pure.
And of Mother Africa — mine an’ yours
Were you in the same old rut?
“I ain’t fighting off no alligators
and living in a mud hut!”
Why you would gladly turn your back,
Is to us, a mystery . . .
For a Tomato Red Cadillac,
With its white upholstery?
From now on, think before you speak,
You’ve got a lot to learn,
’Cause you may never reach your peak,
Then, to whom shall you turn?
After the Jones fight, Clay attended a victory party in the basement of Small’s Paradise, a nightclub in Harlem. The guest of honor was presented with a victory cake dotted in strawberries that sagged in the heat and humidity of the crowded room. Clay sagged too, exhausted from his fight and shortage of sleep. He slumped down at the table and struggled to keep his eyes open.
After a few minutes, he told the party guests he was feeling sick and excused himself.
The next day, he was still dragging. “I got a little headache,” he said, as he prepared to leave New York. The knuckles on his right hand were swollen and his ribs were bruised, too. “I’ll be glad to get back to Louisville . . . I don’t like that big city. Louisville, my home . . . Can relax in Louisville.”
Outside the Plymouth Hotel, beautiful young women asked for his autograph. He obliged, and then climbed into a black chauffeured limousine with two members of the Louisville Sponsoring Group, Sol Cutchins, the president of Brown & Williamson tobacco, and attorney Gordon Davidson. A reporter from Time magazine joined them. As the limousine went through the Lincoln Tunnel en route to Newark Airport, Davidson showed Clay an inch-thick contract from the William Morris Agency, which wanted to represent Clay as an entertainer, helping him make deals in TV and film.
Clay seemed skeptical. “You mean it’s a 50–50 split with us?” he asked.
“No,” Davidson said. “It’s just ten percent. You pay five, we pay five.”
Cutchins piped in: “Cassius, this is a good organization.”
Clay was not satisfied with 90 percent, or else he didn’t understand. He said his father taught him that promises were worthless — up-front pay was the only kind of pay a man could count on. And then he was back on the subject of Sonny Liston. “I want some money,” he said. “We should go for the big money now. We should go for the big one. We don’t need that buildup anymore. We’re big now. We go for Liston and the money . . . Let’s go for the big monkey, that big, ugly Liston.”
He paused, as if the conversation about TV and movie appearances had begun to sink in — along with his recollection of the pounding he had taken the night prior — and he began to speak again, softly.
“Maybe if we make enough personal appearances, we don’t have to fight so much and get banged around. We should make it while we’re hot.”
Here was Clay, in the privacy of his own limousine, at the age of twenty-one, in the rarest of moments, speaking about the risks of boxing, about the damage his sport did to body and mind, about quitting while he was still healthy enough to enjoy life after boxing. He could sing! He could tell jokes! He could act on TV and in movies! But soon his focus shifted to the more immediate concern of airplane travel, and in particular that afternoon’s flight to Louisville.
“When was the last crash?” he asked as they sat in the airport lobby, waiting to board. “When was the last crash?” He said it so loudly that one of his traveling companions had to hush him, afraid that he would frighten other passengers and get his whole party barred from the flight.
After an uneventful trip, Clay landed in Louisville, rented a car, and drove to the new house he had recently purchased for his parents, at 7307 Verona Way, about eighteen miles from the family’s former home on Grand Avenue, in a predominantly black suburban neighborhood known as Montclair Villa. He paid $10,956, agreeing to monthly installments of $93.75. Cash and Odessa Clay were in Florida on vacation, so Rudy and Cassius stayed by themselves in the new house. They hired a cook — paid for by the Louisville Sponsoring Group — to keep them fed until their mother returned.
The next day, his energy and good spirits restored, Clay visited Cutchins at his office to further discuss the William Morris contract. Clay agreed to sign. “With all this here,” Clay said, waving around at Cutchins’ lavishly decorated office, “you can’t be a crook. I know you fair with me.”
Then Cutchins said he had a surprise for Clay: the tomato-red Cadillac would be a gift to the boxer from members of the Sponsoring Group (or from Cutchins personally, if the group didn’t approve the expense), and Clay would only have to pay the sales tax on the purchase. Cutchins asked Clay if he wanted his name inscribed on the side of the car in gold lettering. Clay said no, expressing concern that one of his enemies or jealous rivals might see his name and scratch up the car. Clay’s driver’s license was suspended, but such small details were no bother. Soon, he was on his way to the Cadillac dealership in downtown Louisville.
“Tomato-red Cadillac convertible, I am here!” he shouted, throwing his arms in the air as he pushed open the glass door.
But when he saw the car Cutchins had ordered, Clay was crestfallen.
“It ain’t no Eldorado,” he said. “It ain’t no Eldorado at all. I don’t want it. I was supposed to get Eldorado. Call up Cutchins and tell him I don’t want it.”
This Cadillac was one notch below an Eldorado, with a bit less chrome and absent some of the Eldorado’s trim. The manager of the showroom said he could get the Eldorado, but it would take a month. Clay, cooling off, said he would wait.
In his rented Chevy, driven by Nick Thimmesch, the reporter from Time, Clay spent the rest of the day touring Louisville, soaking up adulation, and complaining to Thimmesch that the adulation wasn’t quite as strong as it ought to have been. “I won so many amateur fights, and now I win all these professional fights, that people around here used to me winning,” he said. “It don’t make much difference to them anymore.”
That night, exhausted, he changed into a set of thermal underwear that he used for pajamas, stretched out on the living room floor in front of the big TV he’d bought for his parents, and turned the dial until he found the Andy Williams Show. He proceeded to give a speech that may have been a thoughtful reflection but was more likely a performance for the sake of Thimmesch, his amanuensis: “My parents fed me good,” he said. “My daddy always told me I’d be world champ. Reading the rules of athletes made me learn clean living. My mother was always humble and helpless and she was always for me. She taught me good. She is a good woman. I try to treat everybody right and try to live right, and when I die, I go to the best place.” Cassius continued to describe his life story, leading up to the heroics of his Olympic journey and quoting his best lines to those Russian reporters about the glories of America. “It’s economical jealousy that causes wars,” he said. “If the world was all sports, there would be no guns and no wars.”
Then he described what he saw in his own future.
“
There ain’t no such thing as love for me,” he said. “Not while I’m goin’ on to that championship. But when I get that championship, then I’m goin’ to put on my old jeans and get an old hat and grow a beard. And I’m goin’ walk down the road until I find a little fox who just loves me for who I am. And then I’ll take her back to my $250,000 house overlooking my $1 million housing development, and I’ll show her the Cadillac and the patio and the indoor pool in case it rains. And I’ll tell her, ‘This is all yours, honey, ’cause you love me for what I am.’ ”
Then he slept.
The next morning, Clay summoned his brother with a clucking of his tongue. It was a private signal they used, and Rudy responded as if a servant’s bell had been rung. Ordered to make breakfast, Rudy dutifully went to the store to buy eggs, milk, and whole-wheat bread. While his brother was gone, Cassius, restless, took off his shirt and checked his reflection in every mirror in the house, feinting, snapping jabs, pausing only to admire his profile.
“Mmmh, mmmh,” he said, the sound of pure satisfaction. “Mmmh, mmmh . . . Oh, if we were only in a tomato-red convertible today! Would they be lookin’!”
11
Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee
Sooner or later, just about every great fighter attracts an entourage. At first, the athlete is flattered by the attention of people who want to be near him. He thinks the sycophants might be fun and perhaps even useful to keep around. Before he knows it, he’s traveling in a crowd with a bunch of men in possession of vague titles and even vaguer job descriptions, men who expect first-class hotels, fine food, beautiful women, and payment in cash.
In the prime of his career, Sugar Ray Robinson’s entourage included a barber, a golf instructor, a masseuse, a voice coach, a drama coach, a secretary, and a dwarf who served as a mascot. Frank Sinatra tagged along too, sometimes.
Cassius Clay had always had his brother, Rudy, his one-man cheering section, best friend, sparring partner, time teller, and errand boy. But now, as Clay’s fame spread, he attracted more followers, and he seldom turned anyone away. His life was a traveling circus, the more the merrier as far as he was concerned. Captain Sam Saxon, the Muslim street-corner preacher from Miami, became one of the first to join the Clay show. Saxon brought on a cook to make food according to the dietary laws of the Nation of Islam. In Los Angeles in 1962, before the George Logan fight, Clay befriended a Los Angeles Sentinel photographer named Howard Bingham. Soon after, Clay invited Bingham to join his crew, because the only thing the boxer loved more than a mirror was a camera. Archie Robinson, a portly man in a chauffeur’s uniform, became Clay’s personal secretary. Then there was Ferdie Pacheco, a doctor who worked in a medical clinic in Miami’s poverty-stricken Overtown neighborhood and hung around the Fifth Street Gym until he became the unofficial physician for Chris and Angelo Dundee’s fighters; “the clap doctor,” the boxing men called Pacheco, because much of his work was devoted to clearing up the boxers’ sexually transmitted diseases. What was in it for the doctor? “I got to go to the fights for nothing,” Pacheco said.
