Ali

by Jonathan Eig

  One of the most important new people in Clay’s life in 1963 was Drew Brown Jr., also known as Bundini Brown (or Bodini, as Clay and others pronounced it), a ghetto poet and shaman who was sent to Clay by Sugar Ray Robinson or by a member of Robinson’s entourage.

  Clay met Brown in New York before the Jones fight. The men seemed mismatched in many ways. Clay was still nervous around women, while Brown was a great philanderer. Clay never drank alcohol, while Brown drank heavily at times and used recreational drugs, too. Clay was a product of the black working class who seldom expressed opinions on matters concerning politics and race, while Brown had grown up in Harlem and spoke loudly and frequently about the black man’s struggles and strife. Brown — who referred to God as “Shorty” — wore a Jewish star around his neck in tribute to the white Jewish woman to whom he was married. He talked about a God who encompassed all religions, and he described race as a misguided human concept, not a heavenly or a natural one. “Blue eyes and brown eyes see grass green,” was Bundini Brown’s favorite expression.

  Brown challenged Clay like no one else, telling him Elijah Muhammad was wrong, that white people were not devils, that God didn’t care a thing about a person’s color. He sometimes berated the fighter, sometimes coddled him, but almost always made him smile. Like Don Quixote, Cassius Clay was a man of desire who often mistook passion for truth, and now, in Bundini Brown, Clay had found his Sancho Panza.

  “He was not an admirable character; he was a funny character,” Gordon Davidson of the Louisville Sponsoring Group said of Bundini. “And he pleased the king.”

  Brown served another, more specific role in the Clay camp: he helped boost and improve the boxer’s poetic output, which to that point had mostly been confined to short lyrics ending in the numbers one through ten. But Brown was a devoted reader and fancied himself a writer. He also had deeper roots than Clay in the ghetto, and gave the boxer’s rhymes a grittier, jazzier feel.

  In a 1962 New Yorker article, A. J. Liebling had written of the “butterfly Cassius” who boxed with “busy hands stinging like bees.” No one knows if Bundini Brown read Liebling’s descriptions or if he arrived independently at the idea that Clay’s style bore comparison to butterflies and bees, but one thing is clear: it was Bundini who invented and trademarked the refrain that would become the boxer’s best-known slogan, an eight-word motto that first appeared in American newspapers in February 1964, and one that Clay would go on to utter thousands of times until the contributions of Liebling and Brown were entirely forgotten and it belonged only to the fighter whose style it so deftly captured: “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee!”

  While Clay was building his following, he also became a follower. The man he had come to admire and to emulate was Malcolm X, or Malcolm Little as he had been known before joining the Nation of Islam. Elijah Muhammad was the Nation’s leader and its guiding spiritual force, but Malcolm X was the movement’s fiery young prince. Wiry, stern, and burning with passion, Malcolm was the man who truly made whites uncomfortable. Malcolm was the man who spoke and acted as if he really were free. “If he hated,” as the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates later said, “he hated because it was human for the enslaved to hate the enslaver, natural as Prometheus hating the birds.”

  Malcolm’s life story served as a minor-key variation on the American Dream. He was born in Omaha and grew up mostly in Michigan, near Lansing. His father was an itinerant Baptist preacher with a driving interest in Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association. Earl Little’s activism brought death threats from the Black Legion, a white supremacist organization, and twice forced the family to flee its home. In 1929, the Little family’s Lansing home burned to the ground, and two years later, Earl Little was found dead along a set of trolley tracks. Police ruled both incidents accidental. When Malcolm’s mother was institutionalized for mental illness, her children were split up. Malcolm drifted into a life of crime and drugs and spent about seven years in prison for burglary. By the time he was paroled in 1952, he had become a follower of the Nation of Islam, abandoned his so-called slave name, and replaced it with the letter X to represent the lost name of his African tribe. He proved to be a dynamic speaker, attracting a large following, helping to establish new mosques, and quickly becoming the second most powerful force in the organization.

  Clay met Malcolm X for the first time in June 1962 before a Nation of Islam rally in Detroit. Malcolm was eating at the Student’s Luncheonette next to the Detroit Mosque when Cassius and Rudy entered. Like most people, Malcolm was struck first by the Clay brothers’ size and good looks. He described the moment years later in his autobiography: “Cassius came up and pumped my hand. . . . He acted as if I was supposed to know who he was. So I acted as though I did. Up to that moment, though, I had never heard of him. Ours were two entirely different worlds. In fact, Elijah Muhammad instructed us Muslims against all forms of sports.”

  Later that day, Cassius and Rudy Clay attended Elijah Muhammad’s sermon and “practically led the applause,” as Malcolm put it. In his travels across the country, Malcolm would occasionally hear that the Clay brothers had visited mosques and Muslim restaurants, and if Malcolm found himself in the same place at the same time, he would call on the Clays. Rudy was the more passionate disciple of Elijah Muhammad in those days, according to several people who knew the brothers at the time, but it was Cassius who intrigued Malcolm. “I liked him,” Malcolm wrote. “Some contagious quality about him made him one of the very few people I ever invited to my home.” Cassius also charmed Malcolm’s wife and children. He became part of the family, like a playful uncle to the kids and a younger brother to Malcolm.

  Malcolm must have recognized that Clay’s friendliness and naiveté might make him vulnerable to con men and crooks, because he made it his responsibility to teach Clay that “a public figure’s success depends upon on how alert and knowledgeable he is to the true natures and to the true motives of all the people who flock around him.”

  That included women.

  “I warned him about the ‘foxes,’ ” Malcolm wrote. “I told Cassius that instead of ‘foxes,’ they really were wolves.” Clay ignored that advice.

  Malcolm, of course, had his own reasons to be concerned with the “true motives” of people around him. He also had reason to cling to this blossoming friendship with Cassius Clay, a man whose sunny personality melted away worries. In 1963, Malcolm’s life was in turmoil. He had discovered that his great mentor, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, was an adulterer who had been having sex, perhaps for more than a decade, with some of the young secretaries who worked with him in the offices of the Nation of Islam in Chicago. Muhammad had been telling the young women that his wife was dead to him and that he had a duty to spread his holy seed among virgins. Eventually, seven women who had been his personal secretaries would claim to have given birth to a total of thirteen children fathered by the Nation of Islam leader. As stipulated by Nation of Islam code, the women were punished for having children out of wedlock; they were forced into isolation and banned from participating in activities at local mosques. Elijah Muhammad, however, faced no such punishment, and by 1963 his affairs were well known within the hierarchy of his organization and the offices of the FBI.

  The behavior did not damage Muhammad’s reputation among his disciples, at least not right away. Women had always been treated as an inferior class in the sect (even more so than in society as a whole), subject to the control of men, barred from using birth control, and, of course, discouraged from fraternizing with white men.

  Those closest to Elijah Muhammad had known for years about his sexual affairs, but no one had dared complain. The culture within the Chicago headquarters of the Nation of Islam had always been one that gave unchecked power to the organization’s leader. High-paying jobs were awarded to Muhammad’s relatives, and Nation of Islam funds supported the Messenger’s comfortable lifestyle. These conditions help explain why Muhammad, like so many other men in positions of power, felt c
omfortable indulging in behavior discouraged among his followers. There was little risk of harm, unless the stories of his sexual behavior became so widely known that they damaged the image of the Nation of Islam and, in turn, the organization’s recruiting and fundraising.

  When Malcolm X first heard the rumors, he dismissed them as lies. But by 1962, as the stories persisted and as members of the Chicago mosque defected, Malcolm had concluded the allegations were true. “I felt like something in nature had failed,” he wrote, “like the sun, or the stars.”

  Did Malcolm talk to Clay about his growing concerns about Elijah Muhammad? He doesn’t say in his autobiography. If Clay had misgivings about Muhammad or the Nation of Islam, he didn’t show it. In August 1962, he and his brother attended a Nation of Islam rally in St. Louis. A year later, a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times spotted Clay’s red Cadillac in an alley behind the University of Islam at 5335 South Greenwood Avenue in Chicago. When Clay walked out of the school, which was founded to provide education to young members of the Nation, he got into the back seat of the car while his brother drove. Two other cars full of Muslims joined Clay’s caravan, with the Sun-Times reporter following close behind. At 54th Street and Lake Park Avenue, the reporter’s car pulled up alongside Clay’s Caddy, with the vehicles moving “at a speed that might have been disapproved by Police Supt. Orlando W. Wilson,” an interview commenced, questions and answers shouted from open windows.

  “What are you doing in Chicago?”

  “I just happened to be here. I’m sure glad I was. That session I attended tonight was the greatest I’ve ever attended in my whole life.”

  “Are you a Black Muslim?”

  Clay thought about it for half a block.

  “No,” he said, and then added. “I don’t know.” He paused again before continuing: “I’m for the Black Muslims.”

  “Do you believe in everything they advocate?”

  “Listen,” Clay said. “I’ve looked real hard at every organization that’s for the black man. This is the greatest one that I’ve found. The Black Muslims are the sweetest thing next to God.” He raised his voice to overcome a swell of traffic noise and offer a poem. “The sweetest thing that would keep you clean — the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  The reporter asked if Clay planned to attend one of the upcoming civil rights demonstrations in the South.

  “I’m for integration,” he said, smiling. “Sure I’m for integration. I’ve got ten white managers.”

  “Are you planning to go down there like Dick Gregory did?”

  Clay stopped smiling.

  “I’m for everything good that can happen to the black man. But I’m not going down there. I don’t want anybody to sic dogs on me.”

  When Clay’s car veered onto the Chicago Skyway, headed for Indiana, the interview ended.

  Two days later, in a report published by the Louisville Times, Clay denied having declared allegiance with the Nation of Islam. He said he had been reading a lot about the group and had indeed attended a banquet but insisted that “I don’t really know much about them.” He continued, “I was surprised to see that there are hundreds of thousands of Negroes who don’t want to integrate. And the whites seem more worried about them than they are about those who do want to integrate.” Finally, he said he had refrained from joining the Nation of Islam or any other civil rights group because he hadn’t found a group that offered “an eternal solution” and because he didn’t want to be “made into a politician.”

  As he liked to do in the ring, Clay dodged.

  As Clay’s chance to fight Liston drew nearer, members of the Louisville group began discussing ways in which their fighter might make money outside the ring — not only to supplement his income but also to prepare him in case he should lose or find his boxing career shortened by injury. The businessmen believed that Clay might thrive as an entertainer. Already, the Jack Benny variety show had offered Clay $7,500 for an appearance. Producers of the TV show Mr. Ed, a comedy about a talking horse, wanted Clay to film an episode. And Frank Sinatra inquired as to whether the boxer might be available to act in a movie with a cast expected to include Sinatra, Dean Martin, Bette Davis, and Jack Palance.

  But Clay’s management team didn’t know what to make of the boxer’s rumored connections to Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X, and they were worried. Malcolm was “a charming sumbitch,” said Gordon B. Davidson, lawyer for the Louisville Sponsoring Group, but Malcolm’s link to the young boxer posed a danger. If Clay really had fallen in with the Black Muslims, it was hard to imagine that those offers from Jack Benny and Mr. Ed would stand. Clay was still young, still becoming a man, but now, for the first time, two of his strongest impulses conflicted: his lust for fame and his itch to rebel. He was not a deliberate person, but he surely knew his association with the Nation of Islam would complicate his relationships with his white backers, his white trainer, and the white news reporters whose attention he so craved. Clay probably understood that his public image would be forever altered if he allied himself publicly with Elijah Muhammad, bringing a degree of animosity that might make even Gorgeous George shrink away. It was one thing for a man to wear rollers in his hair and feign homosexuality, and quite another to advocate the destruction of all white people.

  In his public pronouncements, Clay focused on Liston. He talked about no other boxer but Liston. Only by beating the unbeatable Liston, Clay believed, would he prove his talent and fulfill his destiny.

  But Liston had signed to fight Patterson again, and Clay needed money and needed to stay sharp. He would have to face at least one more opponent before getting a shot at the title. By the middle of 1963, Clay was ranked third among heavyweights, after Liston and Patterson. Doug Jones was fourth, but Clay was determined to avoid a rematch with the dangerous Jones. And so he settled for a bout against the fifth-ranked fighter in the world, an Englishman named Henry Cooper, twenty-nine years old, winner of twenty-seven, loser of eight, with one draw. Cooper had a reputation as a quick bleeder, with skin around his eyes said to be as brittle as an antique porcelain doll’s. Jimmy Cannon wrote that it took a hiccup to reopen the scars on Cooper’s face. But Cooper also possessed one of the best left hooks in the business —’Enry’s ’Ammer, the punch was called — which meant his challenge would be landing a few of those good ’ammers before Clay hiccupped.

  The fight was set for June 18, 1963, at London’s Wembley Stadium. If Clay felt disappointed by having to wait for Liston, he consoled himself with the knowledge that a fight in England would expose a whole new country to his wondrous charm.

  He still didn’t like flying, but he had little choice, and upon arrival in London, Clay wasted no time offending.

  “There has never been anything quite like it,” wrote Peter Wilson in the Daily Mirror. “He came, he saw . . . and he talked.”

  Clay began by referring to Buckingham Palace as a “swell pad” and followed by insulting the country’s greatest boxer. “Henry Cooper is nothing to me,” he announced. “If this bum goes over five rounds I won’t return to the United States for thirty days, and that’s final! I’m not even worried about this big bum. Cooper will only be a warm-up until I get that big, ugly bear, Sonny Liston.” At the weigh-in for the fight, Clay pointed out that England had a queen, but it ought to have a king. He then produced a cardboard crown, placed it on his head, and declared the solution: “I am the king!”

  The king weighed in at 207 pounds, the heaviest of his career so far, and 211/2 pounds heavier than Cooper.

  As he entered the ring, ready to fight, Clay once more wore the crown, as well as a red and white satin robe he’d had specially made for the occasion at a cost of twenty pounds. The audience of 35,000 cursed and hollered insults. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton sat ringside, she in a long coat, turquoise dress, and white gloves; he in a conservative suit and tie.

  Cooper had a reputation as a slow starter with a “stand-up old-lithograph style,” as Sports Illustrated put it. But he def
ied expectations and came out aggressively, throwing his best punch — the left hook — over and over. Within thirty seconds he succeeded in bloodying Clay’s nose. Clay blinked back tears and wiped his nose with the back of his glove.

  “First blood to Cooper,” said the British television announcer Harry Carpenter.

  Cooper launched more lefts and then wrapped an arm around Clay’s head. When Clay turned to the referee to complain, Cooper clobbered him again. Round one went to the Brit.

  Cooper was more cautious in the second round, throwing jabs instead of hooks. Clay jabbed too and opened a small cut under Cooper’s left eye. Still, Cooper was winning, landing far more big blows than Clay, and the crowd was growing more excited by the second at the prospect of an upset.

  In the third round, Clay opened another cut, this time above Cooper’s left eye. Cuts change everything in a fight. Cuts serve as overt reminders that punches are more than points scored in this sporting competition. Cuts are signs of damage and danger, and cuts above the eye are especially perilous because dripping blood blinds a fighter and forces him to do desperate things, to plunge headlong and headfirst, throwing wild punches to end the fight fast.