Ali

by Jonathan Eig

  When the civil rights activist Jesse Jackson spent time with Ali in the early 1970s, he was struck by the casual nature of Ali’s relationship to the Nation of Islam. Jackson remembered one day when he and Ali visited Jackson’s mother. She had baked cracklin’ bread, named for the fried pork skin that gives the bread its crunch, and Ali dove into it with vigor. Between bites, Ali asked what was in the bread, but Jackson wasn’t fooled. “He knew what was in it!” And did he continue eating it after he was told that the bread contained an ingredient forbidden to Muslims? “He ate a pan full,” Jackson said, laughing.

  In hours of conversation during his years of exile, Jackson never heard Ali express misgivings about the Nation of Islam. At the same time, he never saw Ali with a prayer rug. Why did the boxer remain loyal to the Elijah Muhammad, even as the Messenger’s power waned?

  Jackson had a theory: “I think there was always anxiety about what happened to Malcolm.”

  Ali was not an active member of the Nation of Islam. He was not a boxer. He was a convicted draft dodger, but even that remained unresolved, as his lawyers continued working on his appeal. It was difficult if not impossible to say when anything would be decided. Yet, even in private discussions with friends, he never expressed doubt about his decision to refuse the draft.

  Joe Frazier was heavyweight champion now. Although smaller than Ali, at five-foot-eleven, Frazier was a skull-shattering puncher. After beating Ali’s former sparring partner Jimmy Ellis, Frazier possessed a record of twenty-five wins and no losses. To prove he was still the best, Ali would eventually have to beat Frazier. There was talk of an Ali-Frazier fight in Mexico, then Canada, but Ali couldn’t get a passport. “I have officially retired from boxing,” Ali said after the Canadian fight with Frazier was rejected. “I am busy with my autobiography and they want to make it into a movie. I don’t have a title yet, but I am thinking of — ‘If I Had a Passport I’d Be a Billionaire.’ ”

  He continued, “I am a freedom fighter now.”

  29

  Stand by Me

  One day in August 1970, Joe Frazier picked up Muhammad Ali in Frazier’s gold-colored Cadillac. Frazier sat askew in the driver’s seat, as if he were riding a horse sidesaddle, spinning the steering wheel with his left hand and gesturing to Ali with his right. Frazier wore a yellow shirt, yellow striped pants, brown boots, and a tan cowboy hat. They drove from Philadelphia to New York, Ali in the passenger seat and Ali’s ghostwriter, Richard Durham, in back, his tape recorder rolling.

  The trip had been Ali’s idea, to get material for his book, which would be titled The Greatest: My Own Story.

  After ten minutes of silence, Ali spoke first:

  ALI: How long this take?

  FRAZIER: We’ll be there by five.

  ALI: Hope so. I got an appointment at five.

  FRAZIER: What you complaining about? I was supposed to be there at three. Fooled around waiting for you.

  ALI (long pause): How’s your leg? The one you broke in Vegas?

  FRAZIER: I’ll be all right. ’Nother two, three weeks from now, be able to get back in the ring. Got my weight down good, man. Look.

  ALI: Yeah, you look good.

  FRAZIER: Believe me, I ain’t fat.

  ALI: But you like me; you gain weight easy, don’t you?

  FRAZIER: Too easy. Well, that come from eating all that good food the wives cook.

  ALI: All that good cooking.

  FRAZIER: You sit home when you laid up . . . in the house most of the time . . .

  ALI: Yeah, getting that late trim, then going to sleep. That’s what gets you.

  FRAZIER: Yeah. Gets you fat right away.

  ALI: So eat unsweetened grapefruits, man.

  They spotted a police car and wondered why the officers were staring at them. They talked about Frazier’s upcoming fights.

  ALI: But tell the truth, now, man. If you fought me, wouldn’t you be scared?

  FRAZIER: No, man. Honest to God.

  ALI: You really wouldn’t be scared?

  FRAZIER: No kinda way!

  ALI: I mean my fast left jab, the way I dance?

  FRAZIER: Noooooo! I’d get close to you. They talk about how fast you is, moving away. But you gonna find out how fast I am moving in.

  Ali pressed him. Surely Frazier would admit he was scared. “It’s impossible for you to get away from my jab,” he said. “Impossible!”

  FRAZIER: See, them other cats out there let you have your way. They let you jump around the ring and dance and all that —

  ALI: You couldn’t stop me from jumping around the ring and dancing. What you gonna do?

  FRAZIER: I’d get right dead on you! Every time you breathe, you be breathing right down on my head.

  ALI: You be tired after five, six rounds of scuffling.

  FRAZIER: You be tired trying to get away, too. Running and jabbing and ducking and dodging . . . you be tired, too.

  The car stopped at a red light and Ali leaned out the window: “Hey, you two foxes out there on the corner! Better watch it!” The girls recognized Ali but not Frazier. Score that round for Ali.

  The car moved and Frazier said he was eager to fight. “ ’Cause you ain’t afraid of me, and I ain’t afraid of you.”

  Ali paused. “But I really believe you afraid of me,” he said.

  Now Frazier paused: “No, I sure ain’t.”

  The argument went on, pleasantly, until Ali said Frazier had no jab. When he heard that, Frazier hit the brakes.

  FRAZIER: I don’t have a jab?

  ALI: Keep driving! Watch it! No, you don’t have no jab.

  FRAZIER: Man, I’d tear your head off with a jab. I’d hit you with a jab like a machine gun.

  ALI: Naw, man. You don’t have no footwork. You don’t dance.

  FRAZIER: Listen! Some guys get the wrong impression about what’s happening out there. When I’m stepping into a man’s jab, I’m not gonna step in with my head. I’m gonna step in with these hands. In front of me, see? And if your jab extend out to hit me, I got my hand here to catch it. Then mine can hit you. It’s easy as that.

  ALI (disdainfully): I throw ’em a little too quick for you to block.

  FRAZIER (shaking his head): I’d like to get this thing together.

  ALI: I sure would like to get it on, too. ’Cause I got something for you, Joe. And why you always talk about you gonna come out smokin’?

  FRAZIER: That’s what I do! Ain’t nobody that could put that smoke out. They slow down the fire a bit, but when that fire’s gone, that smoke still right there.

  ALI: Naw, man. I wrote a poem on you. Went like this:

  Joe’s gonna come out smokin’

  And I ain’t gonna be jokin’

  I’ll be peckin’ and pokin’

  Pourin’ water on his smokin’

  This might shock and amaze ya,

  But I’ll retire Joe Frazier!

  FRAZIER (after pause): Yeah? Smoke still smokin’ It’s still smokin’.

  They laughed. They reminisced. They talked about the one man they both admired: Muhammad Ali. Frazier admitted that he pushed himself harder when he ran and sparred because he knew one day he would fight Ali. They went on for miles, as the New Jersey Turnpike passed from rolling farmland to the putrid oil tanks of Elizabeth, talking trash, comparing past performances, each man making a case for his superiority. Ali interrupted Frazier constantly, but Frazier accepted it in good humor.

  FRAZIER: All the fellows I destroy, I don’t have no hard feelings. After I whip your ass, I’ll buy you some ice cream. (Ali tries to interrupt.) Let me talk! You finished now? Let me talk. I got no hard feelings with you here or no other place. But when we get in the ring, you on your own.

  ALI: You be on your own, too.

  FRAZIER: That’s the only way I know how to be.

  There followed a long Ali monologue, a round-by-round description, with sound effects, of how Ali v. Frazier would unfold, with Ali dancing through the first round without punching, then u
sing nothing but left jabs in round two, then adding right crosses and left hooks in the third . . .

  Frazier cursed and tried to interrupt but Ali wouldn’t let him. Finally, Frazier got a turn to speak and predicted he would knock out Ali in the sixth round. That upset Ali. Predictions were his game.

  After a bit more banter, Ali, seemingly serious, told Frazier he needed a job and asked if Frazier would consider hiring him as a sparring partner.

  ALI: Suppose I’m never allowed to fight. But still I want to keep my body fit and sharp. Now, you needs a good fast man to keep you sharp because you go through so many sparring partners. Wouldn’t you like to have the type sparring partner that could rumble with you four and five good rounds a day until you got enough? I mean, where you don’t have to keep changing ’em because they can’t stand up to you?

  FRAZIER: That’s good . . .

  ALI: I mean, wouldn’t you like to have a good sparring partner that could tag you? And you can tag him, and he ain’t gonna quit on you? I need a job.

  FRAZIER: You don’t need no goddamn job.

  ALI: Don’t tell nobody; it’s between us, but I do. How much you pay?

  FRAZIER: How much you want?

  ALI: Couple hundred a week. That means eight hundred by the end of the month.

  FRAZIER: Shit! You want a whole lot.

  Ali said he was serious. He would go to work as a sparring partner for Frazier. While Frazier didn’t say yes or no, he offered Ali a key to the gym he owned so Ali could work out there anytime he wanted. Frazier said he wanted Ali to be sharp if and when they did fight.

  As they neared New York, they sounded like two good friends killing time and enjoying each other’s company. Ali offered Frazier financial advice, saying he had learned from his mistakes. Buy a house, he said. Resist the urge to buy a lot of cars. One good Cadillac was enough. He urged Frazier to give up his motorcycle, saying it was dangerous. They talked about which fighters were Uncle Toms, agreeing on Jimmy Ellis, George Foreman, Floyd Patterson, and Buster Mathis. They talked about their pregnant wives. They compared singing voices, with Ali performing his Mighty Whitey song, and the two of them singing “Stand by Me” in unison.

  When Frazier boasted that he had earned thirty thousand dollars singing in Las Vegas, Ali finally admitted he was impressed.

  ALI: Awww, you ain’t got that kind of money, man. Wow, you carry that much dough in your wallet?

  FRAZIER: Four, five hundred. Need some?

  ALI: How about a hundred? I may stay overnight.

  FRAZIER: Yeah, okay.

  Frazier handed Ali a hundred-dollar bill. Ali promised to pay him back the following week. More singing followed, and as they arrived in New York, Ali asked Frazier to open the Cadillac’s sunroof.

  ALI: Wow, damn! Look at that fox out there. HEY! I’M MUHAMMAD ALI. JOE FRAZIER AND MUHAMMAD ALI . . . COME ON OVER HERE! I’ve always loved New York. This is our city, Joe; the world is right here.

  Frazier pulled over on West 52nd Street to let Ali out.

  ALI: We don’t wanna be seen too much together, you know.

  FRAZIER: Yeah. They’ll think we’re buddies. That’ll be bad for the gate.

  ALI: Yeah. Ain’t nobody gonna pay nothing to see two buddies.

  With that, they went their separate ways.

  30

  Comeback

  When Ali moved to Philadelphia in 1970, he purchased the home of a hustler named Major Benjamin Coxson. Major was his Christian name, but Coxson wore it like a royal title. “The Maje,” as people called him, owned carwashes and car dealerships, but the biggest chunk of his income came from flagrantly illegal activities. Coxson, a flamboyant dresser, bribed city officials, financed drug deals, and served as an intermediary between Italian and black gangsters in the so-called City of Brotherly Love. He also allegedly served as an informant to the FBI.

  Ali met Coxson in 1968 when the boxer attended a fundraiser in Philadelphia for a neighborhood organization called the Black Coalition, which counted Coxson and Jeremiah Shabazz among its board members. In 1969, one newspaper identified Coxson as Ali’s agent. When Ali decided to leave Chicago for the East Coast, he said, perhaps jokingly, “The Major made me move to Philadelphia.” At that point, Coxson offered to sell his own home to the boxer. It was a split-level in the posh, mostly white Overbrook neighborhood, and it was already decorated, with a round bed in the master bedroom, color TVs in every room (including the bathrooms), twenty-two phones, and wall-to-wall carpeting in the garage. Ali agreed to pay $92,000 — more than double the home’s assessed value.

  When newspapers reported that Ali had moved to fancy digs in a white section of Philadelphia, college students at one of his lectures challenged him, asking why a black man who opposed integration didn’t select a house in a black neighborhood. Ali answered with a question of his own: “Do you want me to buy a home in the ghetto? Why do I want to live in a rat bin and have a rat bite my child?”

  Major Coxson wasn’t the only new member of Ali’s entourage in 1970. Without his usual retinue surrounding him and with no daily routine, Ali was more receptive — and vulnerable — to strangers than ever. “Ali would go in the bathroom and meet a guy, and the next thing you know it’s his new best friend,” said Gene Kilroy, a white man who became Ali’s business manager — and one of the few who did not appear to be working an angle toward self-enrichment. Kilroy met Ali for the first time in Rome, at the Olympics. Later, he worked in New York for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. When Ali was out of boxing, Kilroy helped organize his speaking engagements, made sure Ali sent money home to his parents when he got paid, and enlisted an accounting firm to ensure the fighter’s taxes were paid. It was part of Ali’s charm that he remained so unguarded, that he saw everyone he met as someone worth knowing, even after ten years of intense celebrity, and even as many of those newcomers took advantage of him.

  One day in 1970, a white Philadelphia schoolteacher named Marc Satalof asked his wife if she wanted to go for a drive and see if they could find Ali’s new home. After all, they didn’t have a lot of celebrities in the neighborhood. Finding Ali proved easy. Everyone in Overbrook knew which house belonged to Ali. When Satalof knocked on Ali’s door, Belinda answered and invited him in. Ali was in the living room watching TV with friends. Satalof introduced himself and asked Ali if he would visit his school, Strawberry Mansion Junior High, in an all-black, gang-infested section of North Philly. Ali agreed without hesitation. He showed up on the day he said he would and spoke to several groups of students. When Ali complained that he was getting tired, Satalof thought the boxer was politely suggesting he was ready to leave. But Ali said no, he didn’t want to quit; he hoped instead to take a short nap and then come back to the school and address the rest of the students. Ali proposed a trip to Satalof’s house, which was near the school. While Ali was napping, one of Satalof’s neighbors knocked on the door, checking to see if he was okay, because it was unusual to see Satalof’s car in the driveway in the middle of a school day. Satalof asked the neighbor to be quiet because Muhammad Ali was sleeping in the next room. The neighbor laughed. If you’re cheating on your wife, the neighbor said, don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. No, really, Satalof said, it’s Muhammad Ali. At that moment, Ali, having heard the conversation, stormed out of the bedroom, throwing air punches and pretending to be mad. After signing an autograph for Satalof’s friend, Ali went back to school and stayed three hours, until every student had a chance to hear him speak and every request for an autograph had been fulfilled.

  At about the same time, a fan named Reggie Barrett invited Ali to box in a fundraiser for an amateur boxing team in Charleston, South Carolina. Joe Frazier had been Barrett’s first choice, but Frazier had turned down the request, so Barrett called Bob Arum, who said to get in touch with Chauncey Eskridge, who said that Ali might be willing to appear if the state of South Carolina permitted the event. Barrett’s next step was to contact ABC to see if the television network would broadcast an Ali exhibition from
South Carolina. When ABC executives said yes, Barrett signed a contract to rent the four-thousand-seat County Hall in Charleston.

  Ali arrived two days before the scheduled exhibition, which had already sold out. “You’re a bad brother to do all this in Charleston, South Carolina,” the boxer said, putting an arm around Barrett’s shoulder. “You out of your mind?”

  Ali’s draft-dodging case was still on appeal. He hadn’t been seen in a boxing ring in two and a half years. He remained deeply unpopular among white Americans, and particularly so in the South. As news of his appearance in South Carolina spread, political pressure mounted to cancel the event. On the day Ali arrived in Charleston, county officials withdrew Barrett’s permit for the hall. Barrett searched for another venue, without success. As Ali prepared to depart, Barrett offered to pay Ali for his time, but Ali refused the money. He gave Barrett his phone number and said to call if he could ever be of help. Ali extended such offers all the time. Call me. Come visit me. Come work for me. I’m lecturing at a college next week; meet me there. Come see my next fight. Not surprisingly, a good many people accepted his invitations, because Ali was great fun to be with, because he was famous, and because he seemed sincere when he extended the invitations and happy to see these virtual strangers when they reappeared seemingly by magic.