Protect Yourself at All Times

by Hauser, Thomas

  Randy Roberts: “When he burst on the world stage, it was all about, ‘Ain’t I pretty? Ain’t I the prettiest?’ He never said, ‘Ain’t I handsome?’ But he was able to get away with it. Take a look at those early images of him. Very few athletes, if any, look that good. And there have been none that looked that good and were that good.”

  Robert Lipsyte: “Let’s remember that Muhammad Ali came out of an unstable, abusive home. His father was violent. His mother was ineffectual. He lived in a segregated city. When he came back from Rome with the Olympic gold medal in 1960, he still could not go to every restaurant he wanted to go to. But here was a group, the Nation of Islam, that said, ‘You’re beautiful. Black is beautiful. We are the real people. White people were carved out of us by an evil scientist.’ Elijah Muhammad became his surrogate father. He had all these brothers and uncles within the Nation of Islam. He had an enormous support system of people who believed in him in ways that gave him real inner strength.”

  Randy Roberts [to Lipsyte]: “The reality is that you didn’t meet Ali in the 5th Street Gym [in 1964]. He was still Cassius Clay at that time. Then you started to cover Muhammad Ali. In many ways they are two different figures.”

  Robert Lipsyte: “I don’t think that there were many reporters sitting at ringside [for the first Liston fight] who thought Cassius had any chance. But something kind of clicked in the back of my mind when the bell rang and they came out. I suddenly realized, Cassius Clay is bigger than Sonny Liston. We’d all been writing David versus Goliath. But David was taller, and he was big, and we had to now start re-evaluating a little bit. Then, within the first couple of rounds, it was very clear that Cassius Clay had a script. He was following his script. He was moving faster, and he was taking control of the fight. Except for that moment when he was blinded in the fifth round, he was in total control of the fight.”

  Teddy Atlas: “He was the first guy that did things wrong in a ring and made it right. It’s pretty special that he could write his own textbook.”

  Robert Lipsyte [on the day after Liston–Clay I]: “This kid who’d been so garrulous and loud and brassy was very subdued and very quiet. I remember the press conference the next morning. He said, ‘The fight is over. Now I can just be polite.’ All the older reporters were kind of, ‘Yeah, I knew it was just an act.’ They were all very satisfied because it somehow reaffirmed their conservatism, their idea that we’re not really up against something new or different here. It’s just some flashy guy who tried to pull the wool over our eyes. But now that he’s won the championship, he’s going to be like everybody else and show us respect and be calm. They went off to write their stories and left a group of younger reporters. We were dissatisfied. Somehow, we felt betrayed because we had a different idea of who Cassius Clay was. He was the future. He was a revolution. He was different from every athlete who’d ever lived. People kept pressing him. Young reporters kept pressing him. ‘So, this was all an act? What about the Muslims? Is there any connection between you and the Muslims?’ He kept deflecting and moving. Suddenly, somebody asked, ‘Are you a card-carrying Muslim?’ That was a very evocative Cold War line because of, ‘Are you a card-carrying communist?’ Great implications. ‘Are you a card-carrying Muslim?’ He kind of jumped back and said, ‘Red birds stay with red birds, and blue birds with blue birds, and lions with lions, and tigers with tigers, and I’m not going to go any place where I’m not wanted.’ Somebody said, ‘What about integration? What about the civil rights movement?’ That’s when he made his declaration of independence. He said, ‘I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be who I want.’ That was the story. He said a lot of other things later that have been chipped into the wall of history. But that declaration of independence was very powerful and has resonated up to this day.”

  Bernard Hopkins: “Muhammad Ali was our face. He gave us a voice to be able to speak boldly and proudly about what we believe we can do. At that time when it was so easy to compromise, so easy to say okay, he stood up.”

  Paulie Malignaggi: “He was a person that made lot of people believe in themselves when maybe they had a reason not to believe in themselves. He was a person that showed just how mentally strong you can be. He stood for something and he wasn’t going to give up what he stood for no matter what the price would be.”

  Robert Lipsyte: “The use by the media of his name, Muhammad Ali, became a kind of political litmus test. There were some people who just could not say ‘Muhammad Ali.’ They couldn’t give it to him. But by 1965–1966, if you went up to him and said, ‘Hey, Cassius,’ he wouldn’t talk to you. The reporters who couldn’t get ‘Muhammad Ali’ out of their mouth would say, ‘Hey, champ.’ And he would give them that lizard eye because he knew what that was all about. It took a long time before people were able to call him Muhammad Ali. I know, I had a really hard time getting ‘Muhammad Ali’ into the New York Times. In the beginning, they wouldn’t do it. They said, ‘Well, unless he changes his name in a court of law.’ I said, ‘Come on. This is about him choosing his own name. We don’t bother Cary Grant and Rock Hudson or John Wayne with what’s your real name?’ But the Times wouldn’t do it. After I made enough of a fuss, it was ‘Cassius Clay, who prefers to be called Muhammad Ali.’ And then, after a while, ‘Muhammad Ali, also known as Cassius Clay.’ I remember really being embarrassed, writing these stories in which he would refer to himself as Muhammad Ali and the desk would change it to Cassius Clay, which wasn’t what he said. Once, I apologized to him. I said, it was out of my control. He patted me on the top of my head and said, ‘Don’t worry. I realize you’re just a little brother of the white establishment.’”

  Paulie Malignaggi: “Muhammad Ali versus Cleveland Williams, I don’t know of any heavyweight in history who beats that Ali. When I watch that fight, it’s the most amazing thing. He’s just blitzing him with speed, timing, angles. You don’t know where it’s coming from and it looks effortless. They took that away from him. They robbed him of what would have been his greatest years in the ring. They robbed us of seeing something so brilliant.”

  Roy Jones: “He stood up for right. He’s the best example of that you’ll ever see.”

  Robert Lipsyte: “There was something almost innocent about Muhammad Ali. Dick Gregory called him the baby of the universe. Even at his vicious worst, there was an innocence about him and kind of an absorption of the ills of the world in his willingness to embrace everyone. There was something glowing about him. He was one of those people to whom we can attach our needs. We need a hero to be brave. We need a hero to have principle. We need a hero to understand us. He seemed to have all those things.”

  Randy Roberts: “He gave everybody around him the same amount of him. He didn’t reserve himself for the rich, the famous, the influential.”

  Paulie Malignaggi: “When he came back, you now had to respect how mentally strong and how much of a competitor he was. Before, he made it look easy. Now you got to see how badly this guy wanted to win. And when you show how badly you want to win no matter what price you have to pay, that shows character. So we started to learn about the character of the man inside the ring, not just the character of the man outside the ring. This man stood for something and he was willing to fight for it no matter what outside the ring. And then he was willing to fight for what he wanted inside the ring. In both situations, he was willing to accept the consequences no matter what to achieve what he wanted and needed to achieve. That’s a rare kind of man.”

  Teddy Atlas: “It’s a paradox. It’s a struggle. It’s alternating currents as far as what Ali means to me. He means that, if you believe in something, you stick to it no matter what the consequences are. So that’s one thing. But then the paradox of it is that sometimes I look at him and he wasn’t quite as sparkling as I wanted to believe. He was mean-spirited to Frazier. He did a lot of mean things there, and that went in contrast to what brought me to Ali’s side. A guy that loved all people, a guy that believed in remaking the world in the righ
t way. To have the beautiful image that I want to have of him, I have to forget about how he took apart Joe Frazier and how it affected and impacted Joe Frazier with him being so mean towards him.”

  Randy Roberts: “The language he used [to demean Joe Frazier] was unforgivable, but somehow it was forgiven. If your politics allied with his, you tended to say, ‘Well, it’s a show.’ You know, one of the most mystifying aspects of Ali is, some of the things that he did and some of the things he said were absolutely repugnant. But the love for him seemed unconditional.”

  Roy Jones: “You got to have courage, but you also got to have faith. If you don’t have faith, then you won’t have courage, Ali wasn’t sure he could beat George Foreman. But he had an idea. He challenged him. He felt he would figure out a way or God would give him a way. That’s courage and faith combined, and that’s where Ali was best.”

  Bill Caplan [George Foreman’s publicist in Zaire]: “George loves Ali. But at that time, he didn’t like him. Ali had this plan of walking around with the crowds, saying ‘Ali, Bomaye,’ which meant ‘Ali, kill him.’ You can’t really like a guy who was asking the people of Kinshasa to kill you.”

  Teddy Atlas: “Ali reminds me that there’s a price for greatness. And he also reminds me that what makes you great, that great drive, that great ego, that great belief that you can do anything, that nothing is going to stop you; that can wound you if it’s not controlled.”

  Robert Lipsyte: “I talked to George Foreman in the late 1990s. By this time, he was totally lovable. It was a TV interview and I had everything I needed. So I asked, ‘How do you feel as Muhammad Ali deteriorates further and further, knowing that you did a lot of the damage to him?’ And George said, ‘You know, I think about the old veterans of American wars who protected us. They take off their hands or their legs or their eyes that they lost in this war, and all you can do is thank them for what they did for us. And that’s the way I think about Ali.’ Now George didn’t actually answer the question. But I thought that was a beautiful way to think about Ali and to think about his damage now as part of his sacrifice for us.”

  Randy Roberts: “His whole life is a product of choices. Good choices, bad choices, I don’t think he made a whole lot of conscious choices where he went home and agonized, ‘What am I going to do?’ I don’t think there was that cerebral quality of trying to think through choices. I think he made most of his choices ad hoc, and he usually made the right choice. If you go back and look at the big choices—maybe not some of the personal ones—he tended to make the right choice. His position on Vietnam turned out to be the right position on Vietnam. His declaration of independence turned out to be the right declaration. The really big choices that he made, he tended to be on the right side of history.”

  Robert Lipsyte: “You think of Ali with all the hopes, dreams, aspirations, sentiments that we put on him. He became for us the model, the symbol, the trailblazer of courage, the great hero athlete, the man who sacrifices, gives up for principle. Whatever it is you want him to be in your mind, he can be that. He’s such a great love absorber that he can represent all of us in so many different ways. But I think it’s what the watcher saw rather than the watched. Do you think that there’s less there than we want to believe was there?”

  Randy Roberts: “We can criticize Ali in a thousand different ways. But he cared about people. He truly cared about people.”

  Robert Lipsyte: “His legacy was sanitized, partially by time and partially, I think, by his current wife, Lonnie, who is the curator of his legend and business activities. It’s not to anybody’s advantage who has a financial stake in him now to remember that, once upon a time, he was threatening and that a great deal of America, black and white, was frightened of him.”

  Gareth Davies: “Muhammad Ali spoke like a poet. He fought like a warrior. He made black beautiful. He made boxing beautiful. He oozed charisma and was probably the most beautiful man on the planet. He always had time for people. He was a people person, and people loved him. He never ever stopped being a man of the people. He’ll be remembered as the greatest character we’ve had in boxing and, probably, the greatest character in sport.”

  Miguel Cotto’s Last Fight: A Star Says Goodbye

  Farewell fights in celebration of a great career often go poorly. Anyone who doubts this reality should consult with Bernard Hopkins, who was unceremoniously knocked out of the ring by Joe Smith in December 2016. One year later, the honoree was Miguel Cotto.

  On December 2, 2017, at 7:15 PM, Miguel Cotto walked into a dressing room at Madison Square Garden, preparing to fight for the last time.

  Cotto had a lot on his mind. Nine weeks earlier, his Puerto Rican homeland had been devastated by a historic hurricane that shattered the island’s infrastructure and killed as many as a thousand people. And more relevant to the hours ahead, the thirty-seven-year-old fighter had pledged that this would be his final fight.

  The dressing room was a large, oval enclosure that houses the New York Rangers on game nights. Locker stalls with a plaque bearing the name and uniform number of each player ringed the room. Rolls of tape lay scattered about, a reminder of the team’s 5-to-1 victory over the Carolina Hurricanes the night before. Two large sliding doors on a credenza at the far end of the room also functioned as blackboards with a red-and-blue diagram of a hockey rink emblazoned against a white backdrop on each one. Several erasable marker pens lay on a shelf behind the doors.

  Cotto was wearing black pants, a burgundy jacket over a white T-shirt, and blue track shoes. His mother, wife, two sons, one of his two daughters, trainer Freddie Roach, assistant trainer Marvin Somodio, cutman David Martinez, strength and conditioning coach Gavin MacMillan, and Bryan Perez (his closest friend) were with him.

  Miguel checked his email, put on some music, and sat down on one of two brown leather sofas that had been placed on opposite sides of the room. Over the next 45 minutes, he texted, talked intermittently with Perez, and ate half of a large container of fruit salad. That left Roach with time to reflect on his six-fight tenure with Cotto.

  “I’m glad Miguel is retiring on his terms,” Freddie said. “That it’s not some commission saying, ‘You’re all washed up, you’re done.’ I wish more fighters made decisions like that. I know I couldn’t do it. I fought five times after I should have quit and lost four of them. The last fight I had was in Lowell, Massachusetts, which was my favorite place to fight. I embarrassed myself. I didn’t even try to win. After that, I knew it was time.”

  In 2009, Roach trained Manny Pacquiao for his brutal demolition of Cotto. Did he feel badly about that, given his fondness for Miguel today?

  “No,” Freddie answered. “That was my job then. But I’m on Miguel’s side now.”

  Roach paused.

  “You know, Miguel and Manny are the two most talented fighters I’ve had. A trainer is lucky if one fighter like that comes his way in a lifetime. I’ve had two of them. But this is a must-win fight for Miguel. After everything he’s accomplished, he doesn’t want to go out on a loss.”

  At eight o’clock, Cotto left the dressing room and accompanied his family to their seats inside the main arena. After returning, he chatted with Golden Boy matchmaker Robert Diaz and Cotto Promotions vice president Hector Soto before leaving again, this time with New York State Athletic Commission inspector Joe Schaffer for his pre-fight physical examination and to give a urine sample. He returned at 8:40, took off his pants, put on his boxing shoes, and handed his watch and necklace to Bryan Perez for safekeeping. Then he opened a sealed bottle of Fiji water he’d brought with him and began eating the rest of his fruit salad.

  NYSAC inspector Ernie Morales informed him that was a problem. If Miguel ate anything more now, he’d have to provide another urine sample. And under NYSAC rules, he could only drink water provided by the promotion which, in this case, consisted of twenty-four bottles of Dasani on a table at the far end of the room.

  “But I like Fiji,” Miguel protested. “Water is water.”
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  Morales held firm.

  Robert Diaz dispatched someone from Golden Boy to buy ten bottles of Fiji water for Cotto and ten more for Sadam Ali (Miguel’s opponent) so each camp would be treated equally.

  Roach went down the hall to watch Ali’s hands being wrapped.

  Miguel turned his attention to a large television monitor and stretched while watching an early preliminary fight.

  The ten bottles of Fiji water arrived.

  Andre Rozier (Ali’s trainer) came into the room and watched as Somodio taped Miguel’s hands. When the wrapping was done, Cotto lay down on the blue-carpeted floor and Marvin stretched him out. Then Miguel put on his protective cup and trunks, shadow-boxed for a while, and circled the room offering a kind word and physical gesture to everyone there.

  Oscar De La Hoya, Golden Boy president Eric Gomez, and director of publicity Ramiro Gonzalez came in to wish Miguel well. They were followed by referee Charlie Fitch, who gave Cotto his pre-fight instructions.

  There was more shadow-boxing.

  Shortly after ten o’clock, Miguel went into an adjacent room with Perez and Soto for a brief prayer.

  Somodio gloved him up.

  More shadow-boxing.

  Cotto hit the pads with Roach for five minutes, took a minute off, and did it for five minutes more.

  Another break . . . More padwork.

  Rey Vargas vs. Oscar Negrete (the co-featured fight of the evening) ended.

  Miguel put on his robe, left the room, and walked to a boxing ring as an active professional fighter for the forty-seventh and final time.

  Miguel Cotto was touted as boxing royalty from early in his pro career. After turning pro in 2001, he moved quickly through the 140-pound ranks with victories over Cesar Bazan, Carlos Maussa, Victoriana Sosa, and Lovemore N’Dou before capturing the WBO crown with a 2004 knockout of Kelson Pinto. A run of successful title defenses and a move up to 147 pounds followed. There were WBA title-fight victories over Carlos Quintana, Zab Judah, Shane Mosley, and others. All that changed on July 26, 2008, when Cotto fought Antonio Margarito and suffered a brutal eleventh-round knockout defeat in a bout in which Margarito’s handwraps are now widely believed to have been loaded.