Ali

by Jonathan Eig

  Boxing had two self-appointed sanctioning organizations: the World Boxing Association and the World Boxing Council, neither of which had any legal authority but both of which wielded power. It was a situation that led to confusion, corruption, and, sometimes, the exploitation of athletes. The World Boxing Council had stripped Spinks of the title and handed it to Norton, saying Norton should have been entitled to challenge Spinks before Ali got a rematch. But Spinks was still the WBA champ, and that was good enough for Ali.

  At one point, Bob Arum announced that the Spinks-Ali rematch might be held in South Africa and sponsored by the South African–owned Southern Sun Hotel chain, but those plans collapsed when American civil rights leaders complained that Ali and Spinks would be “selling their souls” by endorsing South Africa’s racist apartheid government. Instead, the fight was scheduled for September 15 at the Superdome in New Orleans.

  Ali waited until August to begin training hard. Even then, though, Gene Kilroy complained that the fighter was easily distracted. He answered his own phone and accepted invitations eagerly. He greeted guests and spent hours regaling them with stories and magic tricks. Ali had a folder full of business proposals in his cabin at Deer Lake, and he seemed to like every pitch he heard.

  “He just can’t say no,” Kilroy told a reporter.

  Ali did say no to one request.

  One day, Louis Farrakhan stopped by Ali’s house in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, across the street from the home formerly owned by Elijah Muhammad.

  The men stood in the kitchen. A football game flickered on TV.

  Farrakhan told Ali he planned to rebuild the Nation of Islam and restore the importance of the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, teachings that had been downplayed since Wallace Muhammad had taken over his father’s leadership position and moved with Ali toward orthodox Islam. Now, Farrakhan was asking for Ali’s support. He was asking the fighter to rededicate himself to the wisdom of their former mentor.

  “I asked Ali, ‘Would you help me rebuild the work of our teacher?’ ” Farrakhan recalled.

  Ali gestured to the TV.

  “ ‘Farrakhan,’ he said to me, ‘Every one of the people in that stadium knows me.’ He didn’t finish the statement, but it was ‘Hardly anybody in that stadium knows you.’ So, in words unspoken, it was, ‘Why would I follow you in rebuilding his work?’ . . . So he turned me down, and he went on with his life and I went on with mine, to rebuild the work of our teacher.”

  Even the singer and songwriter Billy Joel expressed concern that the distractions in Ali’s life were hurting his performance in the boxing ring, opening the song “Zanzibar” with the warning for Ali not to go downtown lest he give away “another round for free.” But Ali said he was confident he would get in shape and win his next bout. “I know what I’m doing,” he said. “I’m going to start turning it on today. This morning I weighed 226 pounds . . . I got six more weeks trying to come in at 217, 215. Six weeks is all I need . . . I’m already in better shape than I was for the last fight.”

  Once again, as he did in almost every interview, Ali vowed this would be his last fight. Joe Frazier had already announced his first retirement at age thirty-two. George Foreman, at age twenty-eight, had begun working as a minister at a church in Houston, his boxing career seemingly finished. Now, young fighters were coming up to take their places. Larry Holmes had recently won impressive decisions over Earnie Shavers and Ken Norton and said he was eager to fight Spinks for the title. Holmes must have assumed that Ali, his former boss, would soon be joining Frazier and Foreman in retirement. That’s what Ali kept saying, after all.

  “If I fought after this, I’d be pushing it,” Ali said. “I got just enough mentally to train for this fight.”

  But Ali had been pushing it a long time.

  “What can Ali do but further deteriorate his legend?” Ferdie Pacheco asked in a 1978 interview. “With each beating he takes, he gets less able to take a beating. I hope to hell I’m wrong, but if he could get lucky and beat Spinks it would be the unluckiest thing that ever happened to him. He would go on to so-called easy fights. But there are no easy fights for this guy. The body doesn’t know whether you win or lose, and his body is getting beaten up on the way to the fight.” Pacheco said Ali was making a big mistake by letting his sparring partners rough him up. “You don’t toughen up the brains and kidney by letting them get hit a lot. It’s not the same as putting calluses on hands. Cosmetically he looks the same, but his reflexes are not there. His legs used to get him out of trouble, nobody could hit him. Now everybody can hit him. And now he’s slurring his words. Which is the sine qua non of brain damage.”

  Hunter S. Thompson, in a piece published that year for Rolling Stone, also suggested that Ali was taking a great risk by extending his career. “Muhammad Ali decided one day a long time ago not long after his twenty-first birthday that he was not only going to be King of the World on his own turf,” Thompson wrote, “but Crown Prince on everybody else’s . . . Which is very, very High Thinking — even if you can’t pull it off. Most people can’t handle the action . . . and the few who can, usually have better sense than to push their luck any further.

  “That was always the difference between Muhammad Ali and the rest of us. He came, he saw, and if he didn’t entirely conquer — he came as close as anybody we are likely to see in the lifetime of this doomed generation.”

  Although he trained for only six weeks, Ali worked hard, confident he could beat Spinks if he got in shape. Spinks did not approach the fight with the same determination. Fame punished the new heavyweight champion, who had grown up in poverty in St. Louis, dropped out of school after tenth grade, and enlisted in the Marine Corps before launching his career in boxing. Now, old friends, distant relatives, newspapermen, television producers, and would-be agents surfaced, eager to ask favors of the newly wealthy young man. He ate and drank and spent too much. His training consisted at times of running a mile, smoking a joint, running another mile, and smoking another joint. He was arrested twice in his hometown of St. Louis, once for a traffic charge, once for possession of marijuana and cocaine, and had run-ins with police in other cities, as well. “Come on, man, I’m Leon,” he said, greeting the arresting officer for his second St. Louis incarceration. In New Orleans, in the days leading up to the fight, Spinks got drunk every night in neighborhood bars where he knew his managers wouldn’t find him.

  Expectations were low for both fighters. Red Smith called it “a match between a novice who hasn’t learned to fight and an overripe stager who has forgotten how.” The FBI investigated a tip that officials at Top Rank — the boxing promotion company formed by Bob Arum and Herbert Muhammad — tried to bribe Spinks to throw the fight. Documents in the FBI’s archives don’t reveal the outcome of the investigation.

  In his final press conference before the fight, Ali said goodbye the same way he had said hello fourteen and a half years ago before his fight with Sonny Liston. He rhapsodized and beat his breast and proclaimed himself the prettiest, the wittiest, the bravest, and most beautiful man ever to bloody another’s nose. Instead of giving his farewell in his dressing room, he did it in the gym where he had been working out, so that 1,200 spectators could hear his words on what he called “my last day in a training gym.”

  He admitted that he hadn’t looked very good in in recent weeks, admitted that he probably couldn’t go on fighting much longer even if he wanted to. His weight still hovered around 220 pounds, higher than he would have liked it. But he wasn’t worried. Ever since his victory over Foreman, he had become convinced that he was smarter than everyone else when it came to training and that he, uniquely, could prevail in fights by inuring himself to pain. “I wasn’t training to beat my sparring partners,” he admitted. “Some days I took punches just to toughen myself. I’m the best heavyweight in history to take a punch. I condition myself to take punishment.”

  Then he recited what he said would be the last pugilistic poem of his career,
which was really just a rehash of one of his poems from the 1960s, with Leon Spinks’s name replacing Sonny Liston’s:

  Ali comes out to meet Spinks

  But Spinks starts to retreat

  As Spinks goes back an inch farther

  He winds up in a ringside seat.

  And on it went. The audience ate it up, even if some of the reporters rolled their eyes at the familiar refrains.

  The Superdome overflowed with more than 63,000 people. This was the biggest fight the city of New Orleans had witnessed since 1892, when John L. Sullivan and Jim Corbett squared off, and it was the largest crowd ever to see a fight indoors. Sylvester Stallone, Liza Minnelli, and John Travolta were there.

  “The stars were for Ali,” Ishmael Reed wrote, “but the busboys were for Spinks.” The busboys, most of them black, could identify with a man who grew up in public housing and was put in handcuffs for a traffic offense. The busboys could identify with a man who drank too much and burned through his dough and got hassled by the cops.

  The noise of the crowd was almost frightening. Ali came out dancing. He stayed in the center of the ring. When he needed to rest, instead of loafing on the ropes, he hooked his left hand around Spinks’s neck and pulled his opponent into a hug. The referee let it go. In the first round, Ali landed only four punches. In the second round, he only landed nine. But Spinks wasn’t doing better. Round after round, the pattern repeated. Ali jabbed and hugged, jabbed and hugged. Neither man was knocked down or badly hurt. But in staying on his toes for fifteen rounds, in fighting so much more energetically than he had in his recent bouts, by seeming to turn back the clock by at least a year or two, Ali impressed the crowd, the judges, and even the announcer, Howard Cosell. Cosell was moved enough by the fourteenth to break into song — or something like song, reciting lyrics to one of Bob Dylan’s most sentimental numbers, “Forever Young.”

  When the judges named Ali the winner by unanimous decision, Rahaman tried to lift his brother in the air. Ali, once again champion, raised one arm and blew kisses to the crowd.

  Cosell asked the champion if he would announce his retirement.

  “I don’t know yet,” Ali said softly. “I’m going to think about it.”

  50

  Old

  He was champion, the King of the World once again. To commemorate the occasion, he ordered gold rings for the men in his entourage. On the face of each ring sat a gold crown surrounded by the words “M. ALI WORLD CHAMPION THREE TIMES.” He told reporters he was in no hurry to formalize his retirement. He preferred to hold on to the championship for six or seven months, relishing it, he said, basking in his own glory a little longer before letting go.

  In November, the champ attended a black-tie fundraiser for Joe Louis, age sixty-four, who had to be rolled onto the dais in his wheelchair.

  “I’m tired of people telling me it’s a shame about Joe Louis,” Ali said, perhaps referring to Joe’s financial condition more than his physical condition, which was largely the result of a stroke. “I’m tired of people telling me, don’t be like Joe Louis. Why is it a shame? Joe Louis is a true friend of everyone.”

  In December, Ali appeared on This Is Your Life, a British television show that reviewed his biography and surprised him by flying some of the most important people from his life to London, bringing them on the set one by one. Ali, wearing a black suit with a silver and gray tie, sat next to Veronica and watched his life roll before his eyes. Here they were: his parents; his brother; one of his schoolteachers; his first trainers, Joe Martin and Fred Stoner; friend and former sparring partner Jimmy Ellis; Howard Bingham; Angelo Dundee; Henry Cooper; Joe Frazier.

  Through the years, even when he was joking with Howard Cosell or Johnny Carson, even when he was clowning for cameras with the Beatles or mugging with Bundini Brown, Ali seemed to be acting, always conscious of the image he wished to convey to television viewers. This was different. Ali seemed surprised and sincerely overcome with emotion — the main emotion being joy. He didn’t preen. He didn’t boast. It was one of the most genuine moments in Ali’s television career (not including his fights, of course). He screamed and covered his face and laughed so hard he almost fell out of his chair. “He was still tickled to death when people made a big deal out of him,” Veronica recalled years later. “He was like a little kid with surprises.”

  When the show ended and Hana and Laila came on the set, Ali smiled and laughed and bent over to pick up both girls at the same time. The cameras captured the image of one of life’s great winners, a man who had accomplished everything he had set out to accomplish and had earned the right to celebrate.

  But the image of satisfaction didn’t last. Six months later, in July 1979, Ali sat for another interview with Cosell. The broadcaster was in New York, Ali in Los Angeles. Their faces appeared side by side on a split screen. There was no gleam in Ali’s eye this time, no laughter in his voice. His face was rounder. His voice was a mere murmur, low in volume and full of air, as if he hadn’t slept in days. He told Cosell he was making his retirement official now.

  “Everybody gets old,” he said.

  Cosell asked if the reports were true that Bob Arum had paid Ali $300,000 to formally declare his retirement, so that Arum could schedule a fight to determine the new champ. “If that’s true,” Ali said, “I know nothing about it.”

  “Are you glad it’s over?” Cosell asked.

  “Yes, sir, Howard,” Ali said. “So glad that it’s all over. I’m glad that I’m still intelligent enough to speak. I’m glad that I’m three-time champion. I’m glad I got to know you.”

  “You are the greatest, aren’t you?” Cosell asked.

  Ali managed a small smile.

  “I try to be,” he said.

  Ali had done no planning for retirement. Although he had spoken vaguely about a new, global charitable project, he had taken no steps to launch it. Nor had he saved enough to live comfortably without income. While Herbert Muhammad remained his close confidant and business manager, Ali complained at times to friends that Herbert had lined his pockets at Ali’s expense, and that if his manager had done his job, Ali would have been set for life. One day, while complaining about the state of his finances to his friend Tim Shanahan, Ali said he was thinking about bringing in a new manager to straighten things out. “Get me a Jewish lawyer!” he said, half joking.

  Ali did not find a Jewish lawyer, but he did get help after his second fight with Spinks. Robert Abboud, chairman of First National Bank of Chicago, read a story in the New York Times about the shaky state of Ali’s finances and requested a meeting with the boxer. In the meeting, Abboud offered to put together an all-star squad of accountants, lawyers, and talent agents to manage Ali’s post-boxing career — all at virtually no charge to Ali. Everyone would work for the privilege of helping the great Ali — and, of course, for the chance to hang framed photos on their walls and brag to friends and clients that they knew the champ. “I just thought he was a national treasure,” Abboud recalled, sounding a lot like the members of the Louisville Sponsoring Group, who had set out in 1960 with the intention of boosting the career of a promising young athlete and perhaps making a little money along the way. It became clear to Abboud that Ali had paid attention to his money primarily when it had come time to spend it.

  Abboud assigned a young bank officer named Robert Richley to audit Ali’s finances and develop a plan. Richley summarized the state of Ali’s problems: Herbert Muhammad was getting far too much of Ali’s income, the boxer’s expenses were too high, and he had been and remained the victim of far too many foolish business deals. The good news: he was still young and famous, which meant he still had time to “monetize his position and securitize his future,” Richley said.

  Abboud and Richley tried to “build a fence” around Ali, as Abboud put it. They told Ali he was no longer permitted to sign any contract or agree to any deal without the cosignature of one of his new financial advisors. The bank executives established a team to handle every a
spect of Ali’s business life. Marge Thomas would take care of bookkeeping and day-to-day financial needs. Barry Frank of International Management Group would develop endorsement and licensing deals. Michael Phenner of Hopkins & Sutter would serve as Ali’s lawyer. Until then, Ali had been relying on Charles Lomax for most of his legal work. Given that Lomax also represented Herbert Muhammad and Don King, there were obvious conflicts of interest. When Phenner got involved, he arranged a meeting with Herbert and Lomax, reviewing all the contracts Ali had signed, making sure Ali got paid what he was promised, and insisting that he be informed of all future deals before they were completed. Phenner also insisted that Herbert reduce his cut of Ali’s earnings. “Herbert was taking 30 to 40 percent,” Phenner said, “and that was just a part of what they were able to take from him, because he was so generous.” Years later, Phenner said he didn’t recall the precise numbers, but after long and difficult negotiations, he said, Herbert agreed to accept a big pay cut.

  “Michael Phenner saved us,” Veronica Porche said. “I was so happy to have someone who wasn’t a crook handling things.”

  Trust funds were established. Health insurance was purchased. Until then, Ali had been paying medical bills out of pocket for himself, his wife, his children, and his employees.

  Barry Frank put together good deals for Ali. Idaho potato farmers agreed to pay the boxer $250,000 for his endorsement. Ali got $1 million to play the lead role in the television movie Freedom Road, which costarred Kris Kristofferson. Frank also arranged a televised Farewell to Muhammad Ali TV show that paid the boxer $800,000, as well as a ten-city European farewell tour that promised to pay additional millions. Meanwhile, Ali and Veronica moved to Los Angeles, purchasing a home on Fremont Place in the Hancock Park neighborhood, near Ali’s friend Lou Rawls. Ali piled up a lot of new expenses in furnishing the house.

  Robert Abboud said he watched with disappointment as his fence broke down — largely because Ali let friends and acquaintances trample it. One example: rather than selling his Chicago mansion, where he’d spent a fortune in remodeling costs, Ali was persuaded by Herbert Muhammad to donate the home. Phenner said the donation was arranged in such a way that Ali was unable to deduct the gift on his taxes. The boxer simply couldn’t say no to people. A friend would call and say he knew a guy who would pay Ali three thousand dollars cash to show up for an hour at his car dealership or appliance store. Would Ali do it? Yes, he would — and he would stay for three hours, not one, because the line for autographs was invariably longer than organizers had expected. At one point, Barry Frank negotiated a lucrative deal for Ali to endorse Orangina, the carbonated soft drink. But the deal fell apart when a lawyer discovered that Ali had already taken ten thousand dollars cash to endorse Champ Cola and had signed a contract saying he would never endorse another soft drink.