Is it really fifty
years since Cassius Clay stopped Sonny Liston, shocking the boxing
world and inaugurating a new era in sports? The fight's anniversary
has attracted lots of attention, and you could argue that it probably
has not attracted enough.
As a boxing phenomenon,
Clay-Liston ranks as one of the great upsets in history. The
challenger was a 7-1 underdog, coming off a string of less than
impressive wins over less than impressive opponents—remember he'd
barely survived Henry Cooper; indeed many still argue that Angelo
Dundee did indeed slice Clay's glove open, buying him extra time to
recover.I worked with Angelo a few times, and never got a straight answer to that one.
Remember too that
Sonny Liston was regarded as the baddest man alive, and merely
finding someone willing to get in the ring and endure the punishment
his fists provided was close to impossible. He'd beaten the former
champ, Floyd Patterson, twice, in the first round both times. Since
1961, he'd spent barely six rounds in the ring. Yet Clay would taunt
him, insult him, and brashly proclaim victory—even having a poem
read on the TV show I've Got A Secret in which he promised 'a total
eclipse of Sonny'. It was the beginning of a new era in sports in the same way the Kennedy triumph over Nixon in the televised debates began a new era in politics.
Even during the fight
itself, there was a moment after the fourth when Ali, blinded, didn't
want to continue, and Dundee had to push him back into the ring. Some
say he'd got liniment from Liston's shoulder in his eyes, others that
Liston's corner had put whatever coagulant they were putting on
Sonny's cuts onto his gloves.
Ali exploded out after
his eyes cleared in the fifth, and after taking punishment in the
sixth Liston simply sat in his corner, refusing to come out. He
seemed at the time like a confused wounded animal,
resigned to his ultimate fate. Now we wonder if the fix was in. Seven
to one is pretty long odds for a heavyweight championship (Jim
Braddock won his title at 10-1) and that's hard for the wise guys to
resist. There is a problem, though, and if we jump forward to the
rematch in Lewiston, Maine, and the so-called 'phantom punch' it
becomes clear. If that were indeed a dive, as so many have claimed, it
was done the way dives are supposed to be done, literally by diving.
You don't sit on your stool in your corner saying 'No Mas'. Doctors
after the fight confirmed Liston had a torn tendon, and Sports
Illustrated's Tex Maule said Liston had been unable to lift his arm.
But Clay
had done the unthinkable. He'd humbled the baddest man in the world.
More importantly, he'd said before the match that he would. He
ran to the edge of the ring, pointed at the reporters, and yelled
'eat your words!'
This was something
unprecedented in the ethos of sport. Sportsmen didn't
brag, they didn't call untoward attention to themselves, and they
never challenged authority, at least not with impunity. Like soccer
players well into the late part of the past century, American
sportsmen were supposed to be loyal, quiet servants (note that NFL
players and coaches still call the owners 'Mr.' and the league gives
the Super Bowl trophy to the guy who signs the checks). Clay changed
all that. Joe Namath would soon follow in his footsteps, unafraid to
state brag as fact, as would Fred 'The Hammer' Williamson, promoting
himself relentlessly (only to be knocked cold by Donnie Anderson in
the first Super Bowl).
It went beyond the
undeniable flair Ali brought, the heavyweight who moved quick as a
middleweight, the handsome fighter whose face stayed unmarked. Looking at footage of Joe Louis being interviewed after the first
Liston fight, you think they're not just from different generations,
they're from different planets. So too when Clay went crazy at the weigh-in, taunting the scariest man in the world. All those stare-downs you see before fights nowadays are a direct response to the first Clay-Liston fight.
You'll often read about
Ali modelling his public persona after Gorgeous George; the young Ali
was a big wrestling fan, and the adoption of wrestling promotion was a conscious choice by Clay. But if you watch his style, if you consider
where he grew up and when, and who he was most likely to see, you
would find it easy to conclude that much of his bombast and
braggadoccio actually came not from George but from 'Classy' Freddie Blassie, the self-proclaimed
'King of Men'. I never thought it was coincidence that when Ali
'fought' the Japanese wrestler Antonio Inoki, it was Blassie whom he
chose to be his 'manager', and Blassie did much of the talking in
what people assumed was an imitation of Ali's style.
This meant Clay had a
huge appeal to kids around my age, who'd probably just gone through
their own 'golden age' of wrestling, and recognised and enjoyed Ali's
public bombast. I still have my 45rpm record Cassius Clay recorded,
'this is the story of Cassius Clay, the most beautiful fighter in the
world today. He talks a great deal and brags indeedy, of a powerful
punch that's incredibly speedy....This kid has power, speed and
endurance; if you sign to fight him, INCREASE YOUR INSURANCE!...If
Cassius says a cow can lay an egg, don't ask how...GREASE THAT
SKILLET!' I was mesmerised.
The adult (white) world
was torn. Sonny Liston had destroyed Floyd Patterson, a 'credit to
his race', and was a scowling ex-con you would run across the street
to avoid if you saw him coming. But Clay was 'uppity'; an odd way to describe someone so clever,
articulate, handsome, energetic, and so much fun. Who could they root for?
For me, and many of my peers, the choice was easy. We may not have
been convinced that the cow could lay eggs, or that the big ugly bear
would indeed be beaten, but it was an idea that spoke to us.
It's no coincidence
that the Beatles visited Clay's training camp in Miami. Or that Clay
and Liston were both in the audience in Miami when the Beatles played
there on the Ed Sullivan Show. You could look at them the same way
you looked at Clay. It wasn't just that they were different; the
Beatles were quite as scrubbed clean as the Bobby Rydells and Paul
Ankas of the white pop world, but like Clay they were livelier, a breath
of fresh air in a stale business. And like Clay, they didn't seem in
thrall to the business itself. I still remember a Time magazine
profile of the Beatles, marveling that they weren't slaves to the
profits of the music industry—that they spent their money on simple
things, like beer and fags, or something like that. I remember how it
struck me as just as odd as Time intended it to sound, as if there
were something wrong with not chasing the lifestyle of showbiz. Of
course all that would change pretty quickly, but I think you can also
argue that both the Beatles and Clay saw the sudden celebrity they
received as something less important than they were supposed to.
And you can argue that
Clay used that celebrity in a way that made the most of it, something
unmatched even by the most famous pop group in the world (George's
Bangladesh and Lennon's sleep ins for peace notwithstanding).
After the fight, Ali
was with Malcolm X, Jim Brown, Sam Cooke. You can watch him pull
Cooke over to an interviewer at ringside, and say, 'talk to him he's
a famous pop star'. This was a veritable black Mount Rushmore
gathered just at the time Clay would make probably the most momentous off-field
decision made by any sportsman of the century.
The next day Clay
announced he was a Moslem, a member of the Nation of Islam (aka the Black
Muslims) and that he was renouncing his 'slave name' and had taken
the name Cassius X. A week later, Elijah Muhammad would rename him
Muhammad Ali.
Asked about his
conversion, sometimes with respect but more often with at best an
assumption he had been somehow led astray, and at worst outright
hostility, Ali's personality changed from pro wrestler to someone
thoughtful and sincere. He argued with authority the positive tenants of his new religion, echoing Malcom X's refusal to accept debate on
someone else's terms. He demonstrated some of Jim Brown's massive inner
strength and drive to self-determination. What this said to the black community has been explained
by people better qualified than me to do that, but it had a wider
resonance too. It came at just the right time, after Kennedy's
assassination, when many verities seemed to be challenged. Lyndon
Johnson was pushing the Civil Rights Act through Congress, and it
cleared its first hurdle at the same time as the fight.
I'd been lured in by
Ali's showmanship, now I was convinced by his seriousness and his
sincerity. The same attitudes my own minister had instilled in me by
riding freedom buses in the south, the same consistency of religious
belief with moral action, was being demonstrated in front of me by a
trash-talking (the phrase hadn't been invented yet) 22 year old. Within
a few years Ali would refuse induction into the Army, be stripped of
his heavyweight title, spend years in exile speaking to college
audiences of kids just like me, and eventually win in the courts, and
embark on his second career, with all its epic moments, the true
stuff of classic heroism and tragedy.
When I applied for my
conscientious objector status, I don't think I used Muhammad Ali as
an example, or a reference, though Lord knows I used about every
other public thinker I could find. I wasn't anywhere near as glib
then as I am now, and there was more at stake too. But I'm sure I
wished I could find the articulateness of Ali as I wrote my
statement, the articulateness that belied the persona who could trump
Joe Frazier or Howard Cosell with equal ease and precision.
1 comment :
Wow! Thanks for this!
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