Read Online Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight by Max Wallace, Howard Bingham - Free Book Online
Authors: Max Wallace, Howard Bingham
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Louis.
It didn’t take long for the newly minted professional to prove Rome was no fluke. In quick order and with ease, he disposed of challenger after challenger as he worked his way up the heavyweight ladder. But it wasn’t his boxing skills that were attracting the most attention. It was his personality—a mixture of charm, chutzpah, and wit—that caused people to take notice. After his seventh straight knockout, he revived his old amateur trick of calling the round in which his opponent would go down.
They all must fall
In the round I call
When he felled the former heavyweight champion Archie Moore in round four and then proceeded to knock out pro football player Charlie Powell in round three—both as promised—the pundits stopped dismissing the brash fighter as a loudmouthed braggart.
But Clay wasn’t content to let his ring exploits alone build up his reputation. He helped his cause along whenever he could with his natural genius for self-promotion. Once, early in his pro career, a freelance photographer named Flip Schulke shot Cassius Clay for Sports Illustrated. While Schulke took photos, his subject asked him who else he worked for. The photographer responded that he did a lot of photos for Life magazine and that one of his specialties was underwater photography. “Man, how about shooting me for Life,” the boxer pleaded. Schulke explained he wasn’t famous enough to get into Life —at the time the most popular publication in America. Thinking fast, Clay concocted a story on the spot. He explained that one thing accounted for his blinding speed. Just as runners sometimes train in weighted shoes so they feel lighter and run faster when they put on normal sneakers, he said he regularly trained in a swimming pool up to his neck, punching in the water. Two months later, Life ran a five-page photo spread of Cassius Clay in the water up to his neck headlined H E’S ALL WET . It was the first time he had ever set foot in a swimming pool. He couldn’t even swim.
“Life was convinced he trained underwater,” recalled Sports Illustrated writer Neil Leifer, who witnessed the deception. “Now that’s a genius you don’t see in people very often. Genius and a bit of a con man, too.”
Even when Clay’s fight predictions didn’t come true, he found a way to put on a positive spin. Before his fight with Doug Jones in 1963, he prophesied:
This boy likes to mix
So he must fall in six
A few days later, he got cockier:
I’m changing the pick I made before
Instead of six, Doug goes in four
When the fight took place, Clay won—but it took a full ten rounds. When reporters queried him about his flawed prediction, he had a ready explanation. “First, I called it in six. Then I called it in four. Four and six, that’s ten, right?”
The Broadway Showman, Billy Rose, loved Clay’s brash style, advising the young fighter “keep it up. The more obnoxious you are, the more they’ll pay you to fight some white Hope. They’ll pay high to see you beat. Remember the bigots got most of the money in this country.”
The media and the public didn’t quite know what to make of him at first. What would have passed as distasteful arrogance in most people endeared him to many sportswriters. Even the fans who came out to root for his opponents and urged them to “button the Lip” did so in a good-natured way. Clay was seen as the lovable clown, spouting doggerel as he dismissed his opponents in summary fashion. He first endeared himself to the country when he went on the Tonight Show in 1962 and recited a poem for host Jack Paar:
This is the story about a man
With iron fists and a beautiful tan
He talks a lot and boasts indeed
Of a powerful punch and blinding speed
But as he edged closer to a title bout, a number of observers looked beneath the clownish exterior and discovered some substance. In March 1963—a full year before he first won the heavyweight championship— Time magazine published a laudatory
It didn’t take long for the newly minted professional to prove Rome was no fluke. In quick order and with ease, he disposed of challenger after challenger as he worked his way up the heavyweight ladder. But it wasn’t his boxing skills that were attracting the most attention. It was his personality—a mixture of charm, chutzpah, and wit—that caused people to take notice. After his seventh straight knockout, he revived his old amateur trick of calling the round in which his opponent would go down.
They all must fall
In the round I call
When he felled the former heavyweight champion Archie Moore in round four and then proceeded to knock out pro football player Charlie Powell in round three—both as promised—the pundits stopped dismissing the brash fighter as a loudmouthed braggart.
But Clay wasn’t content to let his ring exploits alone build up his reputation. He helped his cause along whenever he could with his natural genius for self-promotion. Once, early in his pro career, a freelance photographer named Flip Schulke shot Cassius Clay for Sports Illustrated. While Schulke took photos, his subject asked him who else he worked for. The photographer responded that he did a lot of photos for Life magazine and that one of his specialties was underwater photography. “Man, how about shooting me for Life,” the boxer pleaded. Schulke explained he wasn’t famous enough to get into Life —at the time the most popular publication in America. Thinking fast, Clay concocted a story on the spot. He explained that one thing accounted for his blinding speed. Just as runners sometimes train in weighted shoes so they feel lighter and run faster when they put on normal sneakers, he said he regularly trained in a swimming pool up to his neck, punching in the water. Two months later, Life ran a five-page photo spread of Cassius Clay in the water up to his neck headlined H E’S ALL WET . It was the first time he had ever set foot in a swimming pool. He couldn’t even swim.
“Life was convinced he trained underwater,” recalled Sports Illustrated writer Neil Leifer, who witnessed the deception. “Now that’s a genius you don’t see in people very often. Genius and a bit of a con man, too.”
Even when Clay’s fight predictions didn’t come true, he found a way to put on a positive spin. Before his fight with Doug Jones in 1963, he prophesied:
This boy likes to mix
So he must fall in six
A few days later, he got cockier:
I’m changing the pick I made before
Instead of six, Doug goes in four
When the fight took place, Clay won—but it took a full ten rounds. When reporters queried him about his flawed prediction, he had a ready explanation. “First, I called it in six. Then I called it in four. Four and six, that’s ten, right?”
The Broadway Showman, Billy Rose, loved Clay’s brash style, advising the young fighter “keep it up. The more obnoxious you are, the more they’ll pay you to fight some white Hope. They’ll pay high to see you beat. Remember the bigots got most of the money in this country.”
The media and the public didn’t quite know what to make of him at first. What would have passed as distasteful arrogance in most people endeared him to many sportswriters. Even the fans who came out to root for his opponents and urged them to “button the Lip” did so in a good-natured way. Clay was seen as the lovable clown, spouting doggerel as he dismissed his opponents in summary fashion. He first endeared himself to the country when he went on the Tonight Show in 1962 and recited a poem for host Jack Paar:
This is the story about a man
With iron fists and a beautiful tan
He talks a lot and boasts indeed
Of a powerful punch and blinding speed
But as he edged closer to a title bout, a number of observers looked beneath the clownish exterior and discovered some substance. In March 1963—a full year before he first won the heavyweight championship— Time magazine published a laudatory
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