Something like this had happened in the first Rocky Marciano–Jersey Joe Walcott fight back in 1952. Marciano had come back to his corner after the fifth round half blind. He told his cotrainer Freddie Brown, "I can't see," probably because some of the solution used to close Walcott's head cut had leaked into his eyes. So Freddie grabbed the water bucket and washed out Marciano's eyes. Two rounds later he was alright, and eight rounds later he knocked out Walcott to win the heavyweight title.
I didn't know what the problem was nor what the solution was. I put my pinkie in his eyes and then mine. It burned like hell. Like Freddie Brown had done with Marciano, I tried to clean his eyes out, first with a sponge and then a towel. I threw both away, not wanting whatever that stuff was to get back in his eyes. But that didn't help, he just kept blinking. For the first time there was a hint of something resembling fear in Cassius. For no man, however brave, would be willing to take on a wounded beast like Liston without full sight. And now he had none. As the blinking continued, he stood up and, thrusting out his gloves, screamed, "Cut them off ... I can't see ... I want the world to know there's dirty work afoot." I told him, "You can't fight without gloves. Sit down!" and sent Bundini over to tell the referee that there was something on Liston's gloves—he never made it, getting halfway across the ring before getting flustered and coming back to the corner without having told the ref anything. But referee Felix, sensing something resembling confusion in our corner, began to make his way over. Catching sight of Felix coming halfway across the ring, I shouted to Cassius to get up and half-lifted him off the stool to show that he was all right.
Seeing my guy get up, Felix stopped and went back to position in a neutral corner. At the sound of the bell for Round Five, I put my hand in Cassius's back, propelled him out into the ring, and shouted, "This is for the big one, son, the world championship. Now get the hell out there ... AND RUN!!!" Who knows? Maybe the what-if history of boxing was written right then and there.
Nobody knew what it was that had caused Cassius's temporary blindness. A group of brothers sitting in the first row began cursing me, saying something or other about it being a "conspiracy" and that I was "trying to blind" Cassius. So, as I came down the steps after shoving Cassius out into the ring for the fifth round, I wiped my own eyes with the discarded sponge to show them there was nothing in it.
Later, much later, I was to hear that two of Liston's previous opponents, Zora Folley and Eddie Machen, had both complained of a burning sensation in their eyes during their fights with Liston. And Liston's behind-the-scenes manager, Blinky Palermo, was later to confide to my brother Chris that indeed Liston had "put something on his gloves." But I didn't know, or even suspect, it at the time. All I knew was that my kid was blind in there.
The between-rounds activity in our corner had not gone unnoticed in the other. In fact, during the rest period, which was anything but, one of Liston's handlers had been hollering, trying to get referee Felix to go over to ours, hoping against hope that the activity was a prelude to our stopping the fight. Maybe he knew something, maybe not.
Liston came out of his corner for the fifth round, as Ferdie Pacheco put it, "like a little kid looks at a new bike on Christmas." As Cassius tottered out with unsteady legs and unseeing eyes, Liston, swinging those huge meat cleaver–like fists of his, scored several times with agonizing wallops to the midsection and a few left hooks to the head. Cassius began moving blindly along the ring on radar-like instinct alone, sometimes keeping Liston off by holding his left hand out like a blind man his cane. I guided him from the corner hollering, "Keep off the ropes," as Liston continued to try mightily to tear his head off. About halfway through the round, Cassius's eyes finally cleared and he took control again. As the round drew to a close, Cassius was lashing out again with needle-sharp jabs, raising red welts under both of Liston's eyes.
Referee Felix had the ring doctor come over to the corner and take a precautionary look at Clay's eyes between Rounds Five and Six. On the other side of the ring, Liston's corner was a somber one. The champion was clearly tired, having gone just one round less than he had in the preceding three years, and now sat slumped on his stool, looking almost one hundred in boxing years. Slowly he got off his stool for the sixth round.
Now clear-sighted, Cassius quickly went on the attack, missing with a left hook but scoring with a wicked right-left combination to the head. When Liston failed to return the fire, Cassius machine-gunned him with six consecutive unanswered punches—three lefts, followed by three rights. Liston jabbed back, almost out of habit, and Cassius ripped home a pair of lefts into the soon-to-be ex-champion's now welty puss. Cassius then moved out to long range where he circled and continued to pump his snake-like left jab into Liston's face—a jab Bundini said "could hit you before God gets the news." The punches made a loud, almost painful thud as they whacked home. There was a purple lump under Liston's right eye and a four-inch gash under his left. Now Cassius threw a big right hand that drew a roar from the crowd and followed up with his left, driving it into Liston's unprotected face four times in succession. Liston responded with a short right, but Cassius made him pay for it with two more razor-sharp lefts at the bell.
As Cassius came back to the corner, he shouted at the press section, only three of whom had picked him to win, "I'm gonna upset the world!"
The opposite corner was hardly as upbeat as Liston's handlers worked feverishly, massaging his shoulder and tending to his cuts and bruises. Meanwhile, over in our corner we were going through our usual sixty-second routine beginning with holding Cassius's trunks open so he could take a deep breath, then taking out his mouthpiece and washing it right away, and wiping his face preparatory to putting his mouthpiece back in at the buzzer for the next round, Round Seven. However, just as we were about to put his mouthpiece in, Cassius suddenly was on his feet, hands held high over his head in a victory celebration. Me being so short and Cassius so big, sort of the small and tall of it all, it was easy for Cassius to look over my shoulder. Now he was staring over my shoulder to see what he could see in Liston's corner. And what he saw was Liston slumped on his stool, spitting out his mouthpiece. The fight was over!
Cassius, jumping around like his feet were on fire, leapt around the ring, doing everything but cartwheels, shouting, "I am King ... I am the Greatest ... I am the King" over and over again, only interrupting his victory dance to lean over the ropes and holler at the press, "I shook up the world."
And then picking out those in the press who had doubted him, he shouted, "I told you ... and you ... and you.... I'm king of the world.... All of you must bow down to me."
Afterward, announcer Steve Ellis began his postfight interview with, "You told me in Los Angeles that you could do it in eight ..." but never finished his question as Cassius interrupted him with, "I had him going in eight. I was getting ready to take him in eight, as you can see. But the man stopped it just to keep me from looking so great." "All right," said Ellis, finally able to get in a word. "Give us the poetry for number seven." And with that Cassius unveiled a whole new poem: "He wanted to go to heaven so I took him in seven." And then added a loud, "I AM THE KING OF THE WORLD!"
Back in the dressing room Cassius was holding court—after all, they didn't call him "The Louisville Lip" and "The Mouth That Roared" for nothing. Red Smith, the noted New York sportswriter, cornered me. "Congratulations, Angie," he said. "I didn't think Clay could do it. I was beginning to think that Liston was unbeatable."
"Come on, Red," I responded to my old friend, "I told about forty newspaper guys six days ago how this fight would go. Who did Liston ever knock out? Albert Westphal and Cleveland Williams, that's all. Willie Besmanoff was stopped on cuts. Forget about Patterson ... he was psyched out. Liston was the toughest guy in the world, so he couldn't believe what happened to him. This kid's slapping him around. He thought he was going to have a picnic with this kid, but what he didn't realize was that the kid had become a man. And it demoralized him. Boxing beat Liston. Boxing a
nd Cassius Clay!"
Out in the parking lot a strange scene was taking place. Lou Duva, who had brought both Rocky Marciano and Joe Louis to the fight, was standing next to his car watching Marciano sprint across the lot. "What the hell ya doin', Rocky?" shouted Duva, puzzled at the sudden activity of the ex-champion. "Didn't ya hear that?" shouted back Marciano as he continued to run. "Clay's going to get one million for his next fight. I'm comin' back." And with that, Louis said, "Stand back, Lou, I'm gonna run, too."
SEVEN
Boxing Becomes Cassius Clay Who Becomes Muhammad Ali
Copyright © 2008 by Angelo Dundee and Bert Randolph Sugar Click here for terms of use.
The next day, Wednesday, February 26, 1964, all hell broke loose. For that was the day of the day-after-winning-the-championship press conference, when the new champion usually tells the newspapermen how happy he is to be the champion, how it feels, when he thinks he had the fight won, who his next opponent will be, and so on and so on.
Only this time it was different. Instead of answering questions from the press, Cassius took the microphone and launched into: "Everything with common sense wants to be with his own. Bluebirds with bluebirds, redbirds with redbirds, pigeons with pigeons, eagles with eagles, tigers with tigers, monkeys with monkeys. As small as an ant's brain is, red ants want to be with red ants, black ants with black ants.
"I believe in the religion of Islam, which means I believe there is no God but Allah, and Elijah Muhammad is His Apostle. This is the same religion that is believed in by over seven hundred million dark-skinned peoples throughout Africa and Asia.
"I don't have to be what you want me to be. I am free to be who I want." Then he added that he had renounced his "slave name" Cassius Marcellus Clay and would henceforth be known as "Cassius X"—four weeks later he would change his name again, this time to Muhammad Ali, Muhammad meaning "worthy of all praise" and Ali meaning "most high."
The reaction to the conversion from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali was swift, and I thought unfair. Headlines like "Black Muslims Take Over" were in all the papers, with many of the writers, like Jimmy Cannon, overreacting. Cannon, in his overheated style, wrote that "Black Muslimism" was "a more pernicious hate symbol than Schmeling and Nazism."
Sportswriters who never had any trouble calling other fighters by their chosen names—like Henry Jackson as Henry Armstrong, or Joseph Louis Barrow as Joe Louis, or Arnold Cream as Jersey Joe Walcott, or Walker Smith as Sugar Ray Robinson—found they couldn't and wouldn't call him Muhammad Ali, instead continuing to call him Cassius Clay.
But the most troubling stories were those that referred to the fact that I was the only white guy in Ali's entourage as if there were a black-white thing between Ali and me. We had this special thing, a unique blend, a chemistry. I never heard anything resembling a racist comment leave his mouth. He accepted me for what I was, his trainer and friend. Between the two of us, we never had anything but a wonderful time. There was never a black-white divide. And, hey, I was working for Muhammad Ali, not the Muslims, and he was "fine" with me.
So when writers asked me if I had any problems with Cassius changing his name to Muhammad Ali, I didn't have to think twice about it. No, I'd tell them. Hey, my original name wasn't Angelo Dundee, so why should I care about him changing his name?
I did, however, have one very small problem. You see, I had become fairly adept at rhyming Cassius Clay for Cassius's poems. How in the name of the poetry muse (I think her name's Erato) was I going to find a rhyme for Muhammad Ali? I mean, what rhymes with Ali? Other than that I had no trouble with Muhammad's religion or name change. As I said, my name was originally Mirena, so why not Muhammad Ali if he wanted? I had always stayed out of my fighters' private lives, and there was nothing more private than a fighter's choice of religion. I refused to be a micro-manager. My fighters' private lives were their own business. Period, end of paragraph. And that was how Muhammad and I got along from that day forth.
I had more important things to do than worry about his name change or his religion. We had another fight coming up with Sonny Liston, a return bout as called for in the contract.
In the meantime, in between the time of the two Liston fights the acting head of the Louisville syndicate, Bill Faversham, had had a heart attack and a syndicate lawyer had taken over. Now he, too, was ill. The syndicate decided that I would take over as manager. That meant I would be doing virtually the same things I already had been doing, but that I would get an increase in salary.
Here I must tell you that I like money as much as the next guy, but money wasn't the main reason I enjoyed working with "Cassius-hyphen-Muhammad." I liked Muhammad, I enjoyed working with him, and I was proud of the job I had done. And it was for these reasons I had taken over the job of training him, without a contract and with only a handshake, which I guess they knew was as good as the most binding contract in the world. To show their appreciation, the syndicate decided to rectify the mistake I had made in taking a straight salary (as my brother Chris had suggested) instead of a percentage by giving me, with Muhammad's approval, a $20,000 bonus for my work. It was good to know such nice people.
As the return bout with Liston neared, I had my work cut out to get Muhammad in shape. You see, after the first fight Ali had taken a victory lap. He went to Africa, where he had been given a tremendous reception as the first Muslim to win a world championship with crowds chanting "Ali ... Ali ... Ali" everywhere he went. The problem was he returned from his African tour bloated, looking like a latter-day Fatty Arbuckle. Ali was a sweet freak, loving anything sweet, including chocolate and pies—especially pumpkin and banana pies. And now, Marone! he looked like he had eaten half of Africa. To lose weight he adopted an idea from Archie Moore, putting on a plastic suit to sweat it off even though I told him he shouldn't. And wouldn't you know it? He became so weak that in one sparring session a sparring partner, named Johnson, I think, knocked him down and then stood over him saying, "I didn't knock you down ... I didn't knock you down."
There was, however, one small change. Muhammad had chosen Herbert Muhammad, the son of Elijah Muhammad, the spiritual leader of the Islamic movement, as his new manager. I could understand Ali's desire to have the guidance of his religious leader. And even though I was no longer the "manager," I had no problems with the change. In fact, Herbert told me he knew what kind of job I was doing and that I would be Ali's trainer forever. The transition was smooth. I could live with the fact that there had been a change just as I could live with the change in Cassius Clay's name. After all, the world is in constant change, why shouldn't I be? Besides, you can't eat ego.
Oh sure, maybe every now and then one or two of the guys in the ever-increasing circle of "helpers" who surrounded Ali didn't feel too happy about having a "honky" close to the champion. But I never heard anything said. Heck, I was working for Muhammad, not them, and Muhammad stood up for me, stood by me, and stood with me.
Some fans thought that Liston had thrown the first fight in order to get a big payday in the return bout—that he would now show his power and stop Ali. There were more speculations and more half-baked theories than there were after President John F. Kennedy's assassination the previous year. But any fan who thought that didn't understand what it meant to be a champion. No champion would ever willingly throw away his title—especially the heavyweight title; that's where the money is. Now it would be harder for Liston to win it back because Ali was not about to give it away. In fact, I thought the return bout would be a lot easier for Ali, having already destroyed Liston's confidence and torn away his cloak of invincibility.
The fight was originally scheduled to be in Boston on November 16, 1964. Two nights before the scheduled bout I had left Muhammad in his hotel room watching the movie Prince Valiant on TV and gone with John Crittenden, a writer for the Miami News, to watch a closed-circuit telecast of my adopted football team, the University of Miami, playing Boston College. Sometime during halftime, the commentator announced that Muhammad Ali had
been taken to a hospital. I shot up in my seat, saying something to the effect of "What the hell!" I had left him only an hour or so before and he had been perfectly OK, just lying in bed watching television. What could have happened to him in that short period of time? I was later to find out that he suddenly suffered some pain and had called the hotel doctor who had immediately checked him into a hospital. By the time I reached the hospital he was in the operating room, being operated on for a strained hernia.
When word reached Liston's camp, Sonny could only say, "Shit ... I worked hard for this fight." Then, thinking about it, he added, "But it could have been worse. It could have been me."
The fight, of course, was postponed. Now the promoters were having trouble rescheduling the fight in Boston because veterans' groups and superpatriots of all stripes were jumping out of the woodwork to protest Muhammad's draft deferment. In addition, the Massachusetts Athletic Commission found that Liston had what they called "mob connections" and that Liston and his advisor, Jack Nilon, were the promoters of the fight. Citing a rule about conflict of interest, they withdrew their approval. The fight was now a fight without a site. With Muhammad convalescing, his Louisville syndicate continued its search for possible alternatives to Boston. At this point an offer came in from the little town of Lewiston, Maine, to host the fight. The syndicate wasted no time in accepting the offer. The Liston rematch was on again, rescheduled for May 25, 1965, in Lewiston, Maine—the smallest town to host a heavyweight championship since Shelby, Montana, hosted the Jack Dempsey–Tommy Gibbons fight back in 1923.
My View from the Corner Page 14