Thomas Hauser - Muhammad Ali - A Tribute to the Greatest

GENERAL NON-FICTION

Missing

The Trial of Patrolman Thomas Shea

For Our Children (with Frank Macchiarola)

The Family Legal Companion

Final Warning: The Legacy of Chernobyl (with Dr Robert Gale)

Arnold Palmer: A Personal Journey

Confronting America’s Moral Crisis (with Frank Macchiarola)

Healing: A Journal of Tolerance and Understanding

With This Ring (with Frank Macchiarola)

A God to Hope For

Thomas Hauser on Sports

Reflections

BOXING NON-FICTION

The Black Lights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing

Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times

Muhammad Ali: Memories

Muhammad Ali: In Perspective

Muhammad Ali & Company

A Beautiful Sickness

A Year at the Fights

Brutal Artistry

The View from Ringside

Chaos, Corruption, Courage, and Glory

I Don’t Believe It, But It’s True

Knockout (with Vikki LaMotta)

The Greatest Sport of All

The Boxing Scene

An Unforgiving Sport

Boxing Is …

Box: The Face of Boxing

The Legend of Muhammad Ali (with Bart Barry)

Winks and Daggers

And the New …

Straight Writes and Jabs

Thomas Hauser on Boxing

A Hurting Sport

Muhammad Ali: A Tribute to the Greatest

FICTION

Ashworth & Palmer

Agatha’s Friends

The Beethoven Conspiracy

Hanneman’s War

The Fantasy

Dear Hannah

The Hawthorne Group

Mark Twain Remembers

Finding the Princess

Waiting for Carver Boyd

The Final Recollections of Charles Dickens

The Baker’s Tale

FOR CHILDREN

Martin Bear & Friends

HarperSport

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Portions of this book were previously published as The Lost Legacy of Muhammad Ali (Sport Classic Books) and Muhammad Ali: The Lost Legacy (Robson Books)

First published by HarperSport 2016

FIRST EDITION

© Thomas Hauser 2016

Jacket layout design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2016

Front jacket shows Untitled, Miami, Florida, 1970.

Photograph by Gordon Parks. Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation.

A catalogue record of this book is

available from the British Library

Thomas Hauser asserts the moral right to

be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780008152444

Ebook edition: June 2016 ISBN: 9780008152468

Version: 2016-06-04

Muhammad Ali belongs to the world.

This book is dedicated to Muhammad

and to everyone who is part of his story.

Cover

Title Page

Books by Thomas Hauser

Copyright

Epigraph

Author’s Note

PART I: ESSAYS

The Importance of Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali and Boxing

Muhammad Ali and Congress Remembered

The Athlete of the Century

Why Muhammad Ali Went to Iraq

The Olympic Flame

Ali as Diplomat: ‘No! No! No! Don’t!’

Ghosts of Manila

Rediscovering Joe Frazier through Dave Wolf’s Eyes

A Holiday Season Fantasy

Muhammad Ali: A Classic Hero

Elvis and Ali

PART II: PERSONAL MEMORIES

The Day I Met Muhammad Ali

I Was at Ali–Frazier I

Reflections on Time Spent with Muhammad Ali

‘I’m Coming Back to Whup Mike Tyson’s Butt’

Muhammad Ali at Notre Dame: A Night to Remember

Muhammad Ali: Thanksgiving 1996 – ‘I’ve Got a Lot to Be Thankful For’

Pensacola, Florida: 27 February 1997

A Day of Remembrance

Remembering Joe Frazier

‘Did Barbra Streisand Whup Sonny Liston?’

PART III: A LIFE IN QUOTES

PART IV: LEGACY

The Lost Legacy of Muhammad Ali

The Long Sad Goodbye

Muhammad Ali’s Ring Record

About the Publisher

Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times , which was published in 1991, is often referred to as the definitive account of the first fifty years of Ali’s life. This is the companion volume to that book. An earlier version was published in the United Kingdom in 2005 under the title Muhammad Ali: The Lost Legacy . At that time, it contained all of the essays and articles I’d written about Ali. Muhammad Ali: A Tribute to the Greatest contains recently authored pieces, including the previously unpublished essay, ‘The Long Sad Goodbye’.

Thomas Hauser

PART I

(1996)

Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr, as Muhammad Ali was once known, was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on 17 January 1942. Louisville was a city with segregated public facilities; noted for the Kentucky Derby, mint juleps, and other reminders of southern aristocracy. Blacks were the servant class in Louisville. They raked manure in the backstretch at Churchill Downs and cleaned other people’s homes. Growing up in Louisville, the best on the socio-economic ladder that most black people could realistically hope for was to become a clergyman or a teacher at an all-black school. In a society where it was often felt that might makes right, ‘white’ was synonymous with both.

Ali’s father, Cassius Marcellus Clay Sr, supported a wife and two sons by painting billboards and signs. Ali’s mother, Odessa Grady Clay, worked on occasion as a household domestic. ‘I remember one time when Cassius was small,’ Mrs Clay later recalled. ‘We were downtown at a five-and-ten-cents store. He wanted a drink of water, and they wouldn’t give him one because of his colour. And that really affected him. He didn’t like that at all, being a child and thirsty. He started crying, and I said, “Come on; I’ll take you someplace and get you some water.” But it really hurt him.’

When Cassius Clay was 12 years old, his bike was stolen. That led him to take up boxing under the tutelage of a Louisville policeman named Joe Martin. Clay advanced through the amateur ranks, won a gold medal at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, and turned pro under the guidance of The Louisville Sponsoring Group, a syndicate comprised of 11 wealthy white men.

‘Cassius was something in those days,’ his long-time physician, Ferdie Pacheco, remembers. ‘He began training in Miami with Angelo Dundee, and Angelo put him in a den of iniquity called the Mary Elizabeth Hotel, because Angelo is one of the most innocent men in the world and it was a cheap hotel. This place was full of pimps, thieves and drug dealers. And here’s Cassius, who comes from a good home, and all of a sudden he’s involved with this circus of street people. At first, the hustlers thought he was just another guy to take to the cleaners; another guy to steal from; another guy to sell dope to; another guy to fix up with a girl. He had this incredible innocence about him, and usually that kind of person gets eaten alive in the ghetto. But then the hustlers all fell in love with him, like everybody does, and they started to feel protective of him. If someone tried to sell him a girl, the others would say, “Leave him alone; he’s not into that.” If a guy came around, saying, “Have a drink,” it was, “Shut up; he’s in training.” But that’s the story of Ali’s life. He’s always been like a little kid, climbing out onto tree limbs, sawing them off behind him and coming out okay.’