Muhammad Ali: A Tribute to the Greatest

by Thomas Hauser

  JOHN CONDON: Joe never liked Ali. He doesn’t like him, didn’t like him, and never will like him. But except for that one incident before their second fight when he went at Muhammad in a TV studio, Joe kept his feelings inside. He bottled them up, stored his hatred, and let everything out in the ring.

  BUTCH LOUIS [BOXING PROMOTER AND FORMER “ROAD BUDDY” OF JOE FRAZIER]: Ali and Joe were like peanut butter and jelly. They needed each other to make things happen.

  JOHN CONDON: You’ve seen the press-guide photo for the first Ali-Frazier fight; the one with Ali and Joe standing nose-to-nose, forehead-to-forehead. That was taken at Joe’s gym in Philadelphia. I wanted something different, so I told both guys, “Put your foreheads together.” And they did. Then I said, “Get closer; touch noses.” But they wouldn’t do it. So I went over, put their heads closer together with one hand behind Ali’s head and the other behind Joe’s, jumped out of the way, and told the photographer, “Get it!” And he got it. It was a great photo. The problem was, it was so great that no one believed it was for real. Everyone thought it was superimposed. I had to show people the negative to prove it was real.

  DAVE ANDERSON [SPORTSWRITER, ON ALI-FRAZIER I]: I’ve never forgotten the noise that I heard, the thunderclap of Ali crashing on the canvas about three feet in front of me. But as powerful as Frazier’s punch had been, as flattened as Ali was, he was up at referee Arthur Mercante’s count of three; up as fast as any human could be.

  BERT WATSON [BUSINESS MANAGER FOR JOE FRAZIER IN THE 1980S AND ’90S]: The first trip that Joe and I took together, we were driving in Florida and stopped for gas. We’d been talking about Ali. Right before I got out of the car to go to the bathroom, I said, “One thing you’ve got to admit; the man was a great fighter.” Anyway, I go to the bathroom, come back, and Joe is gone. I had to hitchhike to the motel where we were staying. Finally, I got there. Joe was in his room. I went in and said, “What happened? Why’d you leave me like that?” And Joe told me, “When you work for me, you don’t say nothing good about Ali.”

  LEROY NEIMAN: One interesting thing about Ali’s appearance is that he spanned an era when people wore big bushy Afros and lots of facial hair, but he never gave in to that trend except for a few weeks when he had a mustache. I personally took it upon myself to tell him to get rid of it. Maybe, given my own mustache, I shouldn’t criticize someone else’s, but he looked ridiculous. When a prominent person has a certain look, he doesn’t change it. Dwight Eisenhower didn’t start wearing a hairpiece. George Bush isn’t going to grow a beard. Except for the Army, Elvis Presley never got a crewcut. In fact, most people, whether they’re famous or not, tend to keep their look. Maybe they make a few changes in deference to the style of the times, but Ali didn’t even do that. And he was so extraordinarily good-looking that I thought the mustache was a real detriment.

  PAT PATTERSON: Ali could walk up to a piano and entertain you, like you’d swear he could play the piano. He memorized how to play a few songs, and he’d sit there and play just enough to impress you. Little Richard was his favorite—“Bop-bop-a-lu-bop-a-wop-bam-boom!” He’d play and he’d sing; and by the time he got through, you’d say, “Wow; this guy is really talented.” But once he did that, he couldn’t play nothing else; not at gunpoint if his life depended on it.

  CATHAL O’SHANNON [IRISH TELEVISION HOST]: With Ali, there was no way you could go wrong from an interviewer’s point of view. He was such a bloody showman.

  JERRY IZENBERG: I’ve never gone through the formality of playing Russian roulette. About as close as I ever came to it was getting on a bus with Ali. You don’t want to be on a bus with Ali for more than an hour. Because after an hour, Ali wants to drive and then you’re in trouble. He loves to drive and he loves to drive fast. One time, we were in London. We were standing on line with everybody else to get on a bus. By everybody else, I mean the unsuspecting people of London, who were waiting to go home at the end of the day. Ali put his money in like everybody else and asked the bus driver, “Can I drive?” And the bus driver, of course, said, “Muhammad Ali; why, certainly you can drive.” And the people on the bus were yelling, “Great! Great! Great! Muhammad Ali is going to drive us.” And Angelo Dundee was saying, “No! No! No! Don’t let him drive. You don’t understand.” But the will of the people could not be ignored, so Ali got behind the wheel. There was a terrific grinding of gears. The bus took off at a terrific rate of speed. And Ali had it pretty much under control, except for the fact that this was London, so while he was driving on the righthand side of the road, the traffic was coming straight at him.

  HUGH MCILVANNEY [SPORTSWRITER, IN RESPONSE TO ANGELO DUNDEE’S CLAIM PRIOR TO THE “RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE” THAT MUHAMMAD ALI KNEW HOW TO BEAT GEORGE FOREMAN]: I, too, know a way to beat George Foreman. But it involves shelling him for three days and then sending in the infantry.

  HAROLD CONRAD: You know, it used to be the Belgian Congo. Then they had a revolution, kicked the Belgians out, and renamed everything. The name of the country was changed to Zaire. The Congo River became the Zaire River. Congo became a dirty name. But it was still a police state and Mobuto had censors who read everything that went out on the wire. Anyway, the night before the fight, they had a big jazz concert in the same stadium where the fight was going to be. One of the writers reviewed it and wrote about how great this guy was on the conga drums. And a censor changed it to the Zaire drums. I’ll never forget that; the Zaire drums.

  MUHAMMAD ALI [TO STOKELY CARMICHAEL (CONSIDERED BY MANY TO BE THE ORIGINATOR OF THE SLOGAN, “BURN, BABY, BURN”) AS CARMICHAEL ENTERED ALI’S COMPOUND IN ZAIRE]: “Stokely Carmichael; don’t you burn nothing over here, or Mobuto’s people will put you in a pot and cook you.”

  FERDIE PACHECO: Norman Mailer decided one night in Zaire that he was going to do roadwork with Ali. Ali told him, “If you want to run with me, you can. But I run five miles in the jungle; and if you get tired, there are no cabs to take you back. If you get tired, you’ll have to run down the trail by yourself. I’m not going to stop for you and I’m not going to send anybody back with you.” Well, Norman was pretty potted by then; and he’s afflicted by the need to always be part of the scene and assert his macho image. So about four o’clock in the morning, he went out to run with Ali. He ran for maybe a quarter of a mile and then he fell behind, totally out of gas. In a jet black jungle. There wasn’t even a firefly. Just total darkness. And then Norman heard this colossal roar. And if there’s one distinctive sound in this world, it’s the sound of a lion roaring in the jungle. That sound is distinct. You cannot mistake it for anything else. It’s big and it’s hungry and it rattles your bones. So Norman thought that his end had come. He didn’t know whether to try to outrun it—he certainly couldn’t outrun a lion—or ease on down the road, or just stand still and hope the lion went by. So he stood still for a while. And then he decided that, since he hadn’t been eaten yet, he might as well try to get back to the compound, which he did. Ali had come back by this time. The sun was rising. Norman told him that the literary world had come close to losing one of its great geniuses, because he’d almost been eaten by a lion. He’s telling Ali, “There’s a lion out there; you shouldn’t be running.” And Ali says, “Yeah, I know. There’s a whole family of lions out there. They won’t bother you.” So Norman asks if Ali is crazy. And Ali takes him by the arm and walks him down the road about a quarter of a mile to where the lions were caged in President Mobuto’s zoo.

  MUHAMMAD ALI [ACKNOWLEDGING A DASHIKI-CLAD VISITOR IN ZAIRE]: Welcome, brother. Do you speak English?

  VISITOR: Yeah; I’m Tom Johnson from the New York Times.

  GIL CLANCY [BOXING COMMENTATOR AND TRAINER]: George Foreman might have appeared strong to the rest of the world, but he had almost no confidence in himself. That was his nature. He wouldn’t play you at anything, not even throwing coins against the wall, unless there was a stacked deck on his side. And that fight against Ali destroyed what little confidence George had. Without that fight, George would h
ave annihilated Jimmy Young. He’d have walked right through him; but instead, Young beat him on points. Psychologically, that fight with Ali took away everything George had.

  JIM BROWN: After the fight, I went to Ali’s dressing room to congratulate him, and then I went to Foreman’s. Archie Moore was the only other person there. There was Foreman, Archie, me, and Foreman’s dog. George kept looking in the mirror at the lumps on his face, as though he couldn’t believe what he saw. Then we went back to the hotel and George got a telephone call from Jim Marshall, who had been in three or four Super Bowls with the Vikings and never won one. Marshall did his best to console him. Foreman said, “Don’t worry; I’ll be all right.” But you could see, he was totally bewildered by it all.

  JERRY IZENBERG: If you wanted to make an allegory about good and evil and patience and virtue, after that fight in Zaire you really could. It was like God waited until it was over. Then there was a tremendous clap of thunder, and we were caught in the worst kind of African cloudburst. It was the most intense rainstorm I’ve ever seen. If it had happened two hours earlier, the fight would have been wiped out. There were terrible winds, flash-flooding. And then, as suddenly as it had come, the storm was over. Dawn arrived; the sun came up. And it was like the whole history of “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong” and the hatred and the ugliness had been washed away. I remember that morning, standing with Ali by the Zaire River. There were just a couple of us. The air was sticky sweet with that aroma of African flowers and the ground was damp from that tremendous storm. Ali was looking out over the river and he said to us, “You’ll never know how long I waited for this. You’ll never know what this means to me.”

  JOHN CONDON: The “rope-a-dope” didn’t get its name until 1975. Ali, [publicist] Patti Dreifus, and I were in an ice-cream shop at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas right before Ali fought Ron Lyle. We’re talking about a point in time six months after he won the title from George Foreman. I kept telling Ali, “You know, this stuff you’re doing on the ropes; you’ve got to give it a name. You’ve done it against Foreman; you’ve done it against Wepner; you’re gonna keep doing it. Give it a name. So we’re sitting there, and we come up with “on the ropes . . . if someone tries to hit you when you’re on the ropes, he’s a dope.” And then we came up with “rope-a-dope.” Ali’s eyes lit up, and he said, “That’s good.”

  IRVING RUDD [BOXING PUBLICIST]: You can talk about George Washington; you can talk about the Kennedys. But as far as I’m concerned, the closest thing to a king that this country has ever had is Muhammad Ali. And it’s worldwide; not just here. If Ali went into a hut in Africa, a village in Asia, the outback in Australia, or a marketplace in South America, the people would look at him, smile, and say, “Muhammad Ali.”

  MUHAMMAD ALI: I have no power. I’ve got a cold right now that I can’t get rid of. The biggest man in the world, struck down by a germ. I’m nothing, same as everyone else.

  MUHAMMAD ALI: Oxford University, that’s a big university, wants me to be a professor of poetry and some kind of social something. They say I won’t have to go there but once or twice a year for a lecture. The salary they pay won’t pay my telephone bills, but I said I’d come over for the prestige. Very few boxers can be professors at Oxford University.

  BUTCH LEWIS: Ali could convince you that his ice cube was colder. I mean, if he had an ice cube and you had one, his ice cube was colder than your ice cube.

  MUHAMMAD ALI: It’s not the same anymore. Used to be, all I thought about was fight, fight, fight. Be the greatest. Be the champion. Now it’s like I go to work, put in eight hours a day, do my job. I got other things on my mind.

  MUHAMMAD ALI: My intention is never to hurt an opponent. I didn’t actually carry fights in a way that’s crooked. But I will admit that I’ve seen opponents in physical unconsciousness on their feet and saw chances to really hurt them to the extent where it was possible to have a brain concussion, and I knew I was winning and the fight was just about over, so I backed off. I lost all my fighting instinct and hoped the referee would stop it. I don’t like really hurting someone for the pleasure of a bloodthirsty audience. I’m a classy boxer. I don’t want to kill nobody. I’m out there to box.

  FRED GRAHAM [HOST OF THE CBS INTERVIEW SHOW FACE THE NATION]: You have a reputation as a man who has a sharp eye for the ladies. What about this image as a womanizer? How is that going to be consistent with your role as a religious leader in the years ahead?

  MUHAMMAD ALI: As far as my personal problems with family are concerned, these are things I don’t discuss in public; especially on high class shows like I was told yours would be.

  LANA SHABAZZ [ALI’S COOK IN TRAINING CAMP]: When Ali’s children were growing up, he never wanted them in the newspapers or on TV. Partly, that’s because he was afraid that, if someone crazy knew who they were, they might be kidnapped. But more so, it was because he didn’t want any of them going around with a swelled head, saying, “Look at me; I’m important.” That’s what happens to children when they’re in the papers or on TV. And Ali wanted very much for his children just to be normal kids.

  MARYUM ALI [THE OLDEST OF ALI’S CHILDREN]: When I was a little girl, the training camp was packed every day with all sorts of people. Sparring partners, newspaper men, celebrities, television reporters. People would come by the busload from New York. And I wasn’t allowed in the gym. I had to stay in the house with a babysitter because my parents were afraid that, if I went outside, someone would snatch me. I hated that. I wanted to be where the action was, and I couldn’t be.

  LEON GAST [PRDUCER OF THE ACADEMY-AWARD-WINNING FILM WHEN WE WERE KINGS]: One time, we went down to Deer Lake to record Ali. This was between Zaire and Manila. Belinda was there; Ali’s four kids were there. Ali’s son was maybe three years old, and Ali was shouting at him, “Your daddy is the baddest nigger.” The kid was trying to emulate Ali, but for whatever reason, he couldn’t say “nigger.” He’d say, “My daddy is the baddest nigo.” Ali would say, “No! Nigger! Nigger!” And the kid would say “nigo, nigo.” It drove Ali crazy. No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t get his son to say “nigger.” Then, later on, he was playing with the twins. He had identical twin daughters; Rasheda and Jamillah. One of them was on his lap. He was kissing her, saying, “Rasheda, you know I love you. You’re the sweetest girl in the world.” Belinda came out and said, “Ali, which daughter do you have there?” Ali told her, “Well, this is, ah, um, Rasheda.” Belinda asked, “Are you sure?” And Ali answered, “I think so.” He was right, but he wasn’t sure. And to tell you the truth, those girls looked an awful lot alike. I couldn’t tell them apart.

  JERRY IZENBERG: Ali’s grasp of geopolitics is limited. One time, he was in London to cut the ribbon at the opening of a supermarket. And of course, everyone there loved him. There were hugs and kisses and cheers, the usual adulation. Muhammad was quite moved by it all and said to me, “These people in England are so nice. I’ll bet, in their whole history, they never had a war.”

  DICK SCHAAP: I learned a lot from him. I learned about laughing and enjoying and having fun with your work. I learned that life doesn’t have to be solemn to be serious. He never believed all the myths and legends. He understood that a lot of it was show, and he would wink and let you know. He taught me that you can do so much with a wink. The athletes, the politicians, the people who don’t wink; they’re the ones who should frighten you.

  JOHN SCHULIAN [SPORTSWRITER]: Ali never gave anyone the same ride two days in a row.

  MUHAMMAD ALI: I was the Elvis Presley of boxing.

  GEORGE FOREMAN: Muhammad Ali was the greatest showman in the history of sports.

  DAVE WOLF: It was fascinating how tight the security in Manila was [prior to Ali-Frazier III]. There was a curfew. And when Joe and Ali went out to do their roadwork in the early morning, it took place before the curfew was lifted. Somebody had a list of everybody who was authorized to run or follow in the cars. If your name wasn’t on that list, forget it. Ther
e were military people lining the roads where they ran. The troops could literally shoot anybody who turned up without proper authorization on the street. And it was typical of both camps that no one was curious about the politics of this. It was just taken for granted that there was some trouble going on. Whether or not the “troublemakers” were deserving of sympathy was irrelevant.

  BUTCH LEWIS: Joe was very self-conscious about his speech and his education. He came from the south; he grew up on a plantation. At one time, Joe was very hesitant to speak, because he took a lot of abuse about how he sounded and people maybe didn’t understand him. And verbally, Ali would eat Joe alive. Joe was very upset about it. He longed to win some of those verbal sparring matches, but he knew he couldn’t. The only way he could get even was in the ring.

  MUHAMMAD ALI: Joe Frazier is so ugly. His mother told me that, when Joe was a little boy, every time he cried the tears would stop, turn around, and go down the back of his head.

  JOE FRAZIER: I don’t want to knock him out. I want to hurt him. If I knock him down, I’ll stand back, give him a chance to breathe. It’s his heart I want.

  MUHAMMAD ALI: I got something new for Joe Frazier. I got a balloon punch and a needle punch. The balloon punch is a left jab, which swells him up, blows him up, puffs him up. And the needle’s gonna bust him. That’s the right hand. Whop!