by Jonathan Eig
The Nilons and the Louisville Sponsoring Group scheduled a press conference for November 5 to announce their deal. Clay traveled to Denver for the announcement in a recently purchased secondhand bus. Little Red, he called the bus, for its red-and-white exterior. Cassius Clay Sr. painted signs that hung from the outside of the bus reading “THE GREATEST,” “WORLD’S MOST COLORFUL FIGHTER,” and “SONNY LISTON WILL GO IN EIGHT.”
As the bus neared Denver, Clay stopped to phone reporters, telling them to get over to Sonny Liston’s house if they wanted a good story. The reporters were already assembled at one in the morning when Clay’s bus reached Liston’s home, which was located in a mostly white neighborhood where thirty-two “FOR-SALE” signs had supposedly gone up when Liston moved in earlier that year. Clay honked the horn and flashed the headlights. Then he sent his friend Howard Bingham, who spoke with a persistent stutter, to knock on Liston’s door.
Liston answered in a gold smoking jacket and brandishing a gold-crowned cane.
“What you want, you black motherfucker?” he asked.
“Come on out of there!” Clay shouted from the curb. “I’m going to whip you right now! Come on out of there and protect your home!”
Liston walked toward Clay as the men exchanged threats, but soon there were seven police cars surrounding Clay’s bus and a police dog on a leash inches away from Clay’s knees. When a police officer told Clay to “move on right away or be taken in,” Clay climbed back on his bus and drove off.
The next afternoon at a luncheon for the press, Clay employed his usual material to charm reporters and irk Liston. He recited one of the poems that Gary Belkin had written for him that summer, the one that referred to Liston as a “human satellite.”
Liston just laughed.
“I’m the champ of fightin’,” he said, “but you the champ of talkin’.”
The champ of fighting displayed a pair of fur boxing gloves, saying that he liked to use them against weaker opponents such as Clay.
As Liston’s jokes scored and Clay’s fell flat, Clay went silent and turned to eat the plate of chicken on his table.
“You eat like you headed to the electric chair!” Liston cracked. “The fight ain’t tonight!”
With the bout set for February, after Clay’s twenty-second birthday, he would not have the chance to become the youngest heavyweight champion in history. But that wasn’t his biggest concern as 1963 neared its end; his biggest concern was an order to appear before the U.S. Army draft board in Louisville for a pre-induction physical exam.
There was no great international crisis at the time. The United States had fifteen thousand members of the military in South Vietnam, but the government was calling them advisors, not combatants, and there was no reason to expect an escalation of the confrontation in Asia. Clay was at a motel on the South Side of Chicago, driving back to New York from Denver, when a reporter caught up to ask him how he felt about serving in the military.
“I ain’t worried about nothing ’till I get the official greetings from the draft board,” he said, noting that the letter had been sent to Louisville and a copy had not yet reached him in his travels. Then he added a wisecrack: “Looks like Uncle Sam wants to miss out on the tax money from 15 million dollars, don’t it?” The implication being that he would soon be earning enormous sums of money, great chunks of which would go to the federal government through income tax.
Two weeks later, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated as he rode in a motorcade through downtown Dallas. Bob Nilon, who was Jack Nilon’s brother and a top executive with Inter-Continental, said plans for the fight would continue despite the national tragedy and despite concerns that Clay could face the draft. Clay would request a four-month deferment from the draft board, Nilon said, “so he can make the most of the greatest opportunity of his life — to fight for the world heavyweight crown and the wealth that goes with it.”
Sonny Liston wasn’t worried about Clay’s military induction, either. The army, he said, would have no use for Clay “after I’m done with him.”
13
“So What’s Wrong with the Muslims?”
Clay was something new: a feisty black man who seemed to think he could say and do whatever he pleased, without fear of punishment. To some, he was an “uppity nigger” who needed to be put in his place. To others, he was an inspiration. For almost everyone, he was a curiosity and all but impossible to ignore.
“That audacity! That youth!” recalled Jesse Jackson, who was pursuing a college degree in sociology at the time and would soon become active in the civil rights movement. “Float like a butterfly! Sting like a bee! He talked that trash, too!”
By 1964, Ali had three Cadillacs, a tour bus, a new house in Louisville for his parents, and a rented home in Miami. He was also considering buying a house in Long Island, New York, so he could spend more time with Malcolm X. Win or lose, he had a massive payday coming after his fight with Liston, and he sounded at times as if he were more excited about the money than the championship.
“I’ve been boxing since I was twelve years old,” Clay said, “and I’m getting mighty tired of training and always having somebody try to pop me in the mouth. But I probably won’t ever get tired of money. I love money . . . The fame and pride of doing something real well — like being the world champion — is a pretty nice thing to think about sometimes, but the money I’m making is nice to think about all the time. I suppose it’s the one thing that keeps me going.”
If he came across as callow and self-absorbed, he was. Clay was preparing for the biggest fight of his life against a man so dangerous that Sport magazine called Clay’s doom “almost inevitable,” the writer noting that he included the word almost in case the fight was unexpectedly canceled. Yet the young fighter betrayed no signs of stress, no obvious worries beyond how to spend the great fortune he would soon accumulate.
“I have to go into the Army pretty soon, and after that I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe I’ll buy a big housing project and get married and settle down and think about being rich.”
Boxing’s wise men believed that Clay would soon have plenty of time for military service, real-estate speculation, romance, and the consideration of a new career. Clay wasn’t prepared for Liston, they said. He needed more experience in the ring. He needed more time. That was the nearly unanimous view among the press corps and former fighters.
“I don’t see the kid going more than one, two rounds,” said Mike DeJohn, a boxer who had lost to Liston in 1959 and had sparred with Clay. “Maybe in a year, two years . . . Liston is too strong.”
Clay’s mere existence offended some men who covered boxing, including columnist Arthur Daley of the New York Times, who wrote, “The loudmouth from Louisville is likely to have a lot of vainglorious boasts jammed down his throat by a hamlike fist belonging to Sonny Liston.” Jimmy Cannon of the New York Journal-American was considered the most powerful sports columnist of the day, which made him the most powerful figure in all of sports journalism at a time when newspapers dominated, and he, too, believed that Clay had no business in the ring with Liston. “Look at that!” Cannon said one day to the young magazine writer George Plimpton as the men watched Clay spar at the Fifth Street Gym in Miami. Clay was skittering around the ring, flicking jabs and sliding around the ring on his toes, as if uninformed that heavyweights were not supposed to dance and throw pitty-pat punches. “I mean, that’s terrible. He can’t get away with that. Not possibly.”
“Perhaps his speed will make up for it,” Plimpton said.
“He’s the fifth Beatle,” Cannon said. “Except that’s not right. The Beatles have no hokum to them.”
“It’s a good name,” Plimpton said. “The fifth Beatle.”
“Not accurate,” Cannon said. “He’s all pretense and gas, that fellow . . . No honesty.”
To writers like Cannon, Clay was a child, naturally playful, incapable of understanding his own inferiority and making up for it with grandiose delusions, a
child with the capacity to despise his elders in one moment and love them the next. It was a kind of intellectual constipation common among older white men. After grumbling to Plimpton, Cannon refined his statement in a column: “Clay is part of the Beatle movement. He fits in with the famous singers no one can hear . . . and the boys with their long dirty hair and the girls with the unwashed look and the college kids dancing naked at secret proms held in apartments and the revolt of students who get a check from Dad every first of the month and the painters who copy the labels off soup cans and the surf bums who refuse to work and the whole pampered style-making cult of the bored young.”
The actual Beatles were in Miami to do The Ed Sullivan Show for a second time. A week earlier, they’d appeared on the show in New York, singing five songs before a screaming live audience and 73 million television viewers. For their second appearance on the show, Sonny Liston attended, along with Joe Louis and the dapper publicist Harold Conrad, who had been hired to promote the Clay-Liston fight. Conrad claimed it was his idea to bring the boys with the long dirty hair over to the Fifth Street Gym to see what would happen when they mixed with the pitty-pat puncher Clay. Conrad was a legend in the PR business, a veteran of dozens of prizefights, countless Broadway shows, and, according to legend, Bugsy Siegel’s first choice to sell Americans on the neon splendor of Las Vegas. He was the jazz-talking, action-loving kind of guy Damon Runyon wrote stories about, a remnant of an age when people thought there was no end to how much faster, taller, louder, and brighter the world would get, and no limit to how much money a clever man could make along the way. Conrad figured that Clay and the Beatles had enough in common — they were young, they were new, they were smart-alecks — to justify getting them in the same room.
When the musicians arrived, walking up the worn wooden steps to the gym, the boxer wasn’t there. The Beatles were not accustomed to being stood up.
“Where the fuck’s Clay?” Ringo Starr asked.
Finally, as the young men from England prepared to leave, Clay appeared.
“Hello there, Beatles,” he said, playing to the press gathered in the gym. “We oughta do some road shows together. We’ll get rich.”
The Beatles liked money too, so they had that in common.
“You’re not as stupid as you look,” Clay teased Lennon.
“No, but you are,” Lennon teased back.
Life magazine photographer Harry Benson urged the Beatles into the ring, where they pretended to fight four against one. After that, Benson arranged the Beatles in a line so Clay could fake a punch that knocked them down like dominos.
The Beatles, unaccustomed to having someone else play the wise guy, weren’t happy about it. “You made us look like monkeys,” Lennon complained later to the photographer.
For some of the men in the press, this stunt offered further proof that Clay was a phony, all style and no substance. But those men were wrong, and Harold Conrad was right. He, along with a few of the younger reporters in the room, could see that a shift was taking place in American culture. Clay and the Beatles not only possessed real talent; they also represented something new. They were rebel-clowns, a compelling hybrid with the potential for danger and profit.
On the evening of January 14, 1964, Malcolm X, his wife, Betty, and their three daughters flew to Miami for a family vacation. Cassius Clay was paying for their trip, and he waited in his car to greet them at the airport.
Both men had cause for anxiety. Clay had the biggest fight of his life coming up in less than six weeks, and Malcolm had even more pressing concerns. He had recently given credence to the rumors swirling around Elijah Muhammad, and he had accused Muhammad of impregnating his secretaries. Muhammad in turn had suspended Malcolm indefinitely from the organization, supposedly because Malcolm had defied an order not to comment on the assassination of John Kennedy.
Despite the enormous strains of his life, the trip still qualified as a vacation for Malcolm. He sat by the pool at his motel. He strapped a camera around his neck and went for long walks.
Clay knew about Malcolm’s suspension, but it wasn’t in the boxer’s nature to take sides in a squabble. He enjoyed Malcolm’s company. The men had more in common than it might first appear. Both loved attention. Both enjoyed sparring with their enemies, manipulating the media, and stoking fears with outrageous language. Both rejected authority. Clay also may have felt that time spent with Malcolm X strengthened his connection to the Nation of Islam. To spend time and learn from Malcolm was only one small step removed from spending time and learning from the Messenger.
Malcolm had something to gain from time spent with Clay, too. If Clay somehow beat Liston, the young boxer might become a valuable asset to the Nation of Islam, and Malcolm might be more valuable to Elijah Muhammad as a result of his alliance with the boxer. Together, Clay and Malcolm would bring an image of youth and power to the movement, assuming that Elijah Muhammad did not find such a prospect threatening to his authority. There were rumors among reporters that if Clay beat Liston, Clay and Malcolm would travel the day after the fight to Chicago in time for a Nation of Islam convention. There, Clay would be welcomed by Elijah Muhammad, and Malcolm X would have his suspension lifted.
To Clay, Malcolm was like an older brother; “The Big M,” he called his new mentor. To Malcolm, Clay was a promising protégé.
Malcolm told George Plimpton he had no interest in sport. In all of sporting history, Malcolm said, the Negro had never once come out ahead. Plimpton pointed out that Clay might be the exception. But Malcolm insisted he wasn’t interested in Clay as a boxer. “I’m interested in him as a human being.” Malcolm tapped his head as he spoke. “Not many people know the quality of the mind he’s got in there. He fools them . . . He is sensitive, very humble, yet shrewd — with as much untapped mental energy as he has physical power. He should be a diplomat. He has that instinct of seeing a tricky situation shaping up — my own presence in Miami, for example — and resolving how to sidestep it . . . He gains strength from being around people. He can’t stand being alone. The more people around, the better.”
Malcolm understood that his presence in Miami made for a tricky situation, as he called it. Tricky because white reporters now saw plainly that Clay was connected to the Nation of Islam. Tricky because someone — possibly the FBI — was leaking information to the press about the widening rift between Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X. Tricky because Malcolm’s presence put Clay between the two men. Clay did his best during Malcolm’s Miami vacation to avoid commenting on his connections to the Muslims. He was afraid that if the newspapermen labeled him a member of the Nation of Islam it would hurt ticket sales. Soon, though, he found the subject impossible to avoid.
On January 19, Malcolm’s wife and children flew home to New York. Two days later, Malcolm and Clay also flew to New York, Clay telling Angelo Dundee that he was taking a few days off from training and not explaining why. The fight was less than five weeks away.
In New York, Clay ate dinner with Malcolm before attending a Nation of Islam rally at the Rockland Palace Ballroom. At the rally, Clay made a short speech, saying he was inspired every time he attended a Muslim meeting.
When the FBI got word from an informant that Clay had attended the rally, agents leaked the news to the white press. Two days later, the Herald-Tribune published a front-page story noting Clay’s presence at the assembly. Although Clay had no comment for the Herald-Tribune, he began to speak openly to the white press of his support for the Black Muslims. “Sure I talked to the Muslims and I’m going back again,” he said. “I like the Muslims. I’m not going to get killed trying to force myself on people who don’t want me. I like my life. Integration is wrong. The white people don’t want integration. I don’t believe in forcing it, and the Muslims don’t believe in it. So what’s wrong with the Muslims?”
Meanwhile, Elijah Muhammad watched and waited. The Nation of Islam’s newspaper, Muhammad Speaks, would not send a reporter to cover Clay’s fight against Liston and
made no mention of Clay’s friendship with Malcolm X. The Messenger, like most Americans, probably thought Clay had little chance of winning. If Clay lost, it wouldn’t matter if the boxer and Malcolm X were friends, and it wouldn’t matter if Clay were a member of the Nation of Islam. He’d be quickly forgotten, tossed aside like yesterday’s newspaper.
Clay and Malcolm returned to Miami. One morning over breakfast, Malcolm showed Clay pictures of Floyd Patterson and Sonny Liston accompanied by white Catholic priests who served as spiritual advisors to the boxers. Clay was already familiar with the Nation of Islam’s view that Christianity had been forced on black Americans during slavery. Now Malcolm encouraged Clay to make the next logical leap: his fight against Liston was a fight pitting Islam against Christianity.
“This fight is the truth,” Malcolm said. In private conservation his voice was gentle yet strong, and calmly reassuring. “It’s the Cross and the Crescent fighting in a prize ring — for the first time. It’s a modern Crusades — a Christian and a Muslim facing each other with television to beam it off Telstar for the whole world to see what happens! Do you think Allah has brought about all this intending for you to leave the ring as anything but the champion?”
Clay never lacked for confidence, but now Malcolm offered him even more reason to believe in himself.
“Maybe I can be beat,” he said. “I doubt it. But the man is going to have to knock me down and then I’ll get up and he’ll have to knock me down again and I’ll get up and he’ll have to knock me down and I’ll still get up. I’ve worked too hard and too long to get this chance. I’m gonna have to be killed before I lose, and I ain’t going to die easy.”
As the fight drew closer, every reporter in Miami knew about Clay’s association with the Nation of Islam.
Federal agents interviewed Angelo and Chris Dundee. The Dundees offered the agents a list of Muslims with whom Clay had been spending time. In an interview years later, Angelo Dundee said he knew nothing about the Nation of Islam at that time and thought the word Muslim meant “a piece of cloth.” He would also say that he thought a man was entitled to follow whatever religion he liked. Even so, the Dundees were not happy about their fighter’s new associates, and when FBI agents came around asking questions, the brothers agreed to help. They told the FBI they were worried that white fans would boycott the Liston fight if word spread about Clay’s beliefs. According to an FBI memo dated February 13, 1964, twelve days before the fight: “The DUNDEES stated that they would keep the Miami Office fully informed of any further developments along this line.”