The decision was anticlimactic. Leon Spinks, a twenty-four-year-old brawler from St. Louis with only seven professional fights on his record, was the new heavyweight boxing champion of the world. And the roar of the pro-Spinks crowd was the clearest message of all: that uppity nigger from Louisville had finally got what was coming to him. For fifteen long years he had mocked everything they all thought they stood for: changing his name, dodging the draft, beating the best they could hurl at him ... But now, thank God, they were seeing him finally go down.
Six presidents have lived in the White House in the time of Muhammad Ali. Dwight Eisenhower was still rapping golf balls around the Oval Office when Cassius Clay Jr. won a gold medal for the U.S. as a light-heavyweight in the 1960 Olympics and then turned pro and won his first fight for money against a journeyman heavyweight named Tunney Hunsaker in Louisville on October 29 of that same year.
Less than four years later and almost three months to the day after John Fitzgerald Kennedy was murdered in Dallas, Cassius Clay—the “Louisville Lip” by then—made a permanent enemy of every “boxing expert” in the Western world by beating World Heavyweight Champion Sonny Liston, the meanest of the mean, so badly that Liston refused to come out of his corner for the seventh round.
That was fourteen years ago. Jesus! And it seems like fourteen months.
The Near Room
When he got in trouble in the ring, [Ali] imagined a door swung open and inside he could see neon orange and green lights blinking, and bats blowing trumpets and alligators playing trombones, and he could hear snakes screaming. Weird masks and actors’ clothes hung on the wall, and if he stepped across the sill and reached for them, he knew that he was committing himself to destruction.
—George Plimpton, Shadow Box
It was almost midnight when Pat Patterson got off the elevator and headed down the corridor toward 905, his room right next door to The Champ’s. They had flown in from Chicago a few hours earlier, and Muhammad had said he was tired and felt like sleeping. No midnight strolls down the block to the Plaza fountain, he promised, no wandering around the hotel or causing a scene in the lobby.
Beautiful, thought Patterson. No worries tonight. With Muhammad in bed and Veronica there to watch over him, Pat felt things were under control, and he might even have time for a bit of refreshment downstairs and then get a decent night’s sleep for himself. The only conceivable problem was the volatile presence of Bundini and a friend, who had dropped by around ten for a chat with The Champ about his run for the Triple Crown. The Family had been in a state of collective shock for two weeks or so after Vegas, but now it was the first week in March, and they were eager to get the big engine cranked up for the return bout with Spinks in September. No contracts had been signed yet, and every sportswriter in New York seemed to be on the take from either Ken Norton or Don King or both ... But none of that mattered, said Ali, because he and Leon had already agreed on the rematch, and by the end of this year he would be the first man in history to win the heavyweight championship of the world three times.
Patterson had left them whooping and laughing at each other, but only after securing a promise from Hal Conrad that he and Bundini would leave early and let The Champ sleep. They were scheduled to tape a show with Dick Cavett the next day, then drive for three or four hours up into the mountains of eastern Pennsylvania to Ali’s custom-built training camp at Deer Lake. Kilroy was getting the place ready for what Patterson and all the rest of The Family understood was going to be some very serious use. Ali had announced almost immediately after losing to Spinks in Vegas any talk of his “retiring from the ring was nonsense,” and that soon he’d begin training for his rematch with Leon.
So the fat was in the fire: a second loss to Spinks would be even worse than the first—the end of the line for Ali, The Family, and, in fact, the whole Ali industry. No more paydays, no more limousines, no more suites and crab cocktails from room service in the world’s most expensive hotels. For Pat Patterson and a lot of other people, another defeat by Spinks would mean the end of a whole way of life ... And, worse yet, the first wave of public reaction to Ali’s “comeback” announcement had been anything but reassuring. An otherwise sympathetic story in the Los Angeles Times described the almost universal reaction of the sporting press:
“There were smiles and a shaking of hands all around when the thirty-six-year-old ex-champion said after the fight last Wednesday night: ‘I’ll be back. I’ll be the first man to win the heavyweight title three times.’ But no one laughed out loud.”
A touch of this doomsday thinking had even showed up in The Family. Dr. Ferdie Pacheco, who had been in The Champ’s corner for every fight since he first won the title from Liston—except the last one—had gone on the Tom Snyder show and said that Muhammad was finished as a fighter, that he was a shadow of his former self, and that he (Pacheco) had done everything but beg Ali to retire even before the Spinks fight.
Pacheco had already been expelled from The Family for this heresy, but it had planted a seed of doubt that was hard to ignore. “The Doc” was no quack, and he was also a personal friend: did he know something the others didn’t? Was it even possible that The Champ was “washed up”? There was no way to think that by looking at him, or listening to him either. He looked sharp, talked sharp, and there was a calmness, a kind of muted intensity, in his confidence that made it sound almost understated.
Pat Patterson believed—or if he didn’t, there was no way that even The Champ could guess it. The loyalty of those close to Muhammad Ali is so profound that it sometimes clouds their own vision ... But Leon Spinks had swept those clouds away, and now it was time to get serious. No more show business, no more clowning. Now they had come to the crunch.
Pat Patterson had tried not to brood on these things, but every newspaper rack he’d come close to in Chicago, New York, or anywhere else seemed to echo the baying of hounds on a blood scent. Every media voice in the country was poised for ultimate revenge on this Uppity Nigger who had laughed in their faces for so long that a whole generation of sportswriters had grown up in the shadow of a mocking, dancing presence that most of them had never half understood until now, when it seemed almost gone.
Even the rematch with Spinks was bogged down in the arcane politics of big-money boxing—and Pat Patterson, like all the others who had geared their lives to the fortunes of Muhammad Ali, understood that the rematch would have to be soon. Very soon. And The Champ would have to be ready this time—as he had not been ready in Vegas. There was no avoiding the memory of Sonny Liston’s grim fate, after losing again to Ali in a fight that convinced even the “experts.”
These things were among the dark shadows that Pat Patterson would rather not have been thinking about on that night in Manhattan as he walked down the corridor to his room in the Park Lane Hotel. The Champ had already convinced him that he would indeed be the first man to win the first Triple Crown in the history of heavyweight boxing—and Pat Patterson was far from alone in his conviction that Leon Spinks would be easy prey, next time, for a Muhammad Ali in top condition both mentally and physically. Spinks was vulnerable: the same crazy/mean style that made him dangerous also made him easy to hit. His hands were surprisingly fast, but his feet were as slow as Joe Frazier’s, and it was only the crafty coaching of his trainer, the ancient Sam Solomon, that had given him the early five-round edge in Las Vegas that Ali had refused to understand until he was so far behind that his only hope was a blazing last-minute assault and a knockout or at least a few knockdowns that he was too tired, in the end, to deliver.
Leon was dead on his feet in that savage fifteenth round—but so was Muhammad Ali, and that’s why Spinks won the fight . . .
Yes ... but that is no special secret, and there will be plenty of time to deal with those questions of ego and strategy later on in this saga, if in fact we ever get there. The sun is up, the peacocks are screaming with lust, and this story is so far off the game plan that no hope of salvage exists at this time�
�or at least nothing less than a sweeping, all-points injunction by Judge Crater, who maintains an unlisted number so private that not even Bob Arum can reach him on short notice.
So we are left with the unhurried vision of Pat Patterson finally reaching the door of his room, number 905 in the Park Lane Hotel in Manhattan—and just as he pulls the room key out of his pocket on the way to a good night’s sleep, his body goes suddenly stiff as he picks up the sound of raucous laughter and strange voices in room number 904.
Weird sounds from The Champ’s suite ... Impossible, but Pat Patterson knows he’s stone sober and nowhere near deaf, so he drops his key back in his pocket and moves one step down the hallway, listening carefully now to these sounds he hopes are not really there ... Hallucinations, bad nerves, almost anything but the sound of a totally unknown voice—and the voice of a “white devil,” no doubt about that—from the room where Ali and Veronica are supposed to be sleeping peacefully. Bundini and Conrad had both promised to be gone at least an hour ago ... But, no! Not this: not Bundini and Conrad and the voice of some stranger, too; along with the unmistakable sound of laughter from both The Champ and his wife . . . Not now, just when things were getting close to intolerably serious.
What was the meaning?
Pat Patterson knew what he had to do: he planted both feet in the rug in front of 904 and knocked. Whatever was going on would have to be cut short at once, and it was his job to do the cutting—even if he had to get rude with Bundini and Conrad.
Well ... this next scene is so strange that not even the people who were part of it can recount exactly what happened ... but it went more or less like this: Bundini and I had just emerged from a strategy conference in the bathroom when we heard the sudden sound of knocking on the door. Bundini waved us all into silence as Conrad slouched nervously against the wall below the big window that looked out on the snow-covered wasteland of Central Park; Veronica was sitting fully clothed on the king-size bed right next to Ali, who was stretched out and relaxed with the covers pulled up to his waist, wearing nothing at all except ... Well, let’s take it again from Pat Patterson’s view from the doorway, when Bundini answered his knock:
The first thing he saw when the door opened was a white stranger with a can of beer in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other, sitting cross-legged on the bureau that faced The Champ’s bed—a bad omen for sure and a thing to be dealt with at once at this ominous point in time; but the next thing Pat Patterson saw turned his face into spastic wax and caused his body to leap straight back toward the doorway like he’d just been struck by lightning.
His professional bodyguard’s eyes had fixed on me just long enough to be sure I was passive and with both hands harmlessly occupied for at least the few seconds it would take him to sweep the rest of the room and see what was wrong with his $5-million-an-hour responsibility ... and I could tell by the way he moved into the room and the look on his face that I was suddenly back at that point where any movement at all or even the blink of an eye could change my life forever. But I also knew what was coming, and I recall a split second of real fear as Pat Patterson’s drop-forged glance swept past me and over to the bed to Veronica and the inert lump that lay under the sheets right beside her.
For an instant that frightened us all, the room was electric with absolute silence—and then the bed seemed to literally explode as the sheets flew away and a huge body with the hairy red face of the Devil himself leaped up like some jack-in-the-box out of hell and uttered a wild cry that jolted us all and sent such an obvious shock through Pat Patterson that he leaped backward and shot out both elbows like Kareem coming down with a rebound . . .
I waited until I was sure the Muhammad Ali party was well off the plane and up the ramp before I finally stood and moved up the aisle, fixing the stewardess at the door with a blind stare from behind two mirror lenses so dark that I could barely see to walk—but not so dark that I failed to notice a touch of mockery in her smile as I nodded and stepped past her. “Good-bye, sir,” she chirped. “I hope you got an interesting story.”
You nasty little bitch! I hope your next flight crashes in a cannibal country ... But I kept this thought to myself as I laughed bitterly and stomped up the empty tunnel to a bank of pay phones in the concourse. It was New York’s La Guardia Airport, around eight thirty on a warm Sunday night in the first week of March, and I had just flown in from Chicago—supposedly “with the Muhammad Ali party.” But things had not worked out that way, and my temper was hovering dangerously on the far edge of control as I listened to the sound of nobody answering the phone in Hal Conrad’s West Side apartment ... That swine! That treacherous lying bastard!
We were almost to the ten-ring limit, that point where I knew I’d start pounding on things unless I hung up very quickly before we got to eleven ... when suddenly a voice sounding almost as angry as I felt came booming over the line. “Yeah, yeah, what is it?” Conrad snapped. “I’m in a hell of a hurry. Jesus! I was just about into the elevator when I had to come back and answer this goddamn—”
“You crazy bastard!” I screamed, cutting into his gravelly mumbling as I slammed my hand down on the tin counter and saw a woman using the phone next to me jump like a rat had just run up her leg.
“It’s me, Harold!” I shouted. “I’m out here at La Guardia and my whole story’s fucked and just as soon as I find all my baggage I’m going to get a cab and track you down and slit your goddamn throat!”
“Wait a minute!” he said. “What the hell is wrong? Where’s Ali? Not with you?”
“Are you kidding?” I snarled. “That crazy bastard didn’t even know who I was when I met him in Chicago. I made a goddamn fool of myself, Harold! He looked at me like I was some kind of autograph hound!”
“No!” said Conrad. “I told him all about you—that you were a good friend of mine and you’d be on the flight with him from Chicago. He was expecting you.”
“Bullshit!” I yelled. “You told me he’d be traveling alone, too ... So I stayed up all night and busted my ass to get a first-class seat on that Continental flight that I knew he’d be catching at O’Hare; then I got everything arranged with the flight crew between Denver and Chicago, making sure they blocked off the first two seats so we could sit together ... Jesus, Harold,” I muttered, suddenly feeling very tired, “what kind of sick instinct would cause you to do a thing like this to me?”
“Where the hell is Ali?” Conrad shouted, ignoring my question. “I sent a car out to pick you up, both of you!”
“You mean all of us,” I said. “His wife was with him, along with Pat Patterson and maybe a few others—I couldn’t tell, but it wouldn’t have made any difference; they all looked at me like I was weird; some kind of psycho trying to muscle into the act, babbling about sitting in Veronica’s seat . . .”
“That’s impossible,” Conrad snapped. “He knew—”
“Well, I guess he forgot!” I shouted, feeling my temper roving out on the edge again. “Are we talking about brain damage, Harold? Are you saying he has no memory?”
He hesitated just long enough to let me smile for the first time all day. “This could be an ugly story, Harold,” I said. “Ali is so punch-drunk that his memory’s all scrambled? Maybe they should lift his license, eh? ‘Yeah, let’s croak all this talk about comebacks, Dumbo. Your memory’s fucked, you’re on queer street—and by the way, Champ, what are your job prospects?’”
“You son of a bitch,” Conrad muttered. “Okay. To hell with all this bullshit. Just get a cab and meet us at the Plaza. I should have been there a half hour ago.”
“I thought you had us all booked into the Park Lane,” I said.
“Get moving and don’t worry about it,” he croaked. “I’ll meet you at the Plaza. Don’t waste any time.”
“WHAT?” I screamed. “What am I doing right now? I have a Friday deadline, Harold, and this is Sunday! You call me in the middle of the goddamn night in Colorado and tell me to get on the first plane to Chicago because Muha
mmad Ali has all of a sudden decided he wants to talk to me—after all that lame bullshit in Vegas—so I take the insane risk of dumping my whole story in a parachute bag and flying off on a two-thousand-mile freakout right in the middle of a deadline crunch to meet a man in Chicago who treats me like a wino when I finally get there ... And now you’re talking to me, you pigfucker, about wasting time?”
I was raving at the top of my lungs now, drawing stares from every direction—so I tried to calm down; no need to get busted for public madness in the airport, I thought; but I was also in New York with no story and no place to work and only five days away from a clearly impossible deadline, and now Conrad was telling me that my long-overdue talk with Ali had once again “gone wrong.”
“Just get in a cab and meet me at the Plaza,” he was saying. “I’ll pull this mess together, don’t worry . . .”
I shrugged and hung up the phone. Why not? I thought. It was too late to catch a turnaround flight back to Colorado, so I might as well check into the Plaza and get rid of another credit card, along with another friend. Conrad was trying; I knew that—but I also knew that this time he was grasping at straws, because we both understood the deep and deceptively narrow-looking moat that eighteen years of celebrity forced Ali to dig between his “public” and his “private” personas.
It is more like a ring of moats than just one, and Ali has learned the subtle art of making each one seem like the last great leap between the intruder and himself ... But there is always one more moat to get across, and not many curious strangers have ever made it that far.
Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone: The Essential Hunter S. Thompson Page 47