IT WAS early 1963. Cassius Marcellus Clay was in Greenwich Village, New York, hyping up his bout with Doug Jones.
This boy likes to mix
So he must fall in six.Clay was everywhere. In radio studios and television studios, in universities and concert halls, in bowling alleys and coffee shops. Always hollering. Always telling the good people of New Yo
rk to come out and see what he's going to do to this bum Jones.
He was a one-man promotional whirlwind. All the newspapers in the city were on strike so he got no help, no columns to help shift ticket sales, no pictures, no nothing but the power of his own voice echoing around New York.
I'm changing the pick I made before
Instead of six, Doug goes in fourMadison Square Garden was a sell-out. The cops were chasing people out of the lobby. Nobody had seen a frenzy like it since Joe Louis took on Rocky Marciano in '51. But that was one leviathan against another. This shouldn't have been box office but it was. Jones didn't lift a finger to promote it. Clay did it. Only Clay.
Doug didn't go in four, he went the distance and was only beaten on points. And it was oh-so dull. The crowd booed. Some threw beer cups and peanuts. "I ain't Superman," said Clay. "If the fans think I can do everything I say I can do, then they're crazier than I am."
Clay needed redemption. He went to London. Late May '63. His first visit to the UK – to fight Henry Cooper. Soon he'll be making his last. Sad news came out of the Ali camp last week. He's travelling over in August for the last time. Doctors say he won't be up to making these transatlantic treks much longer and so he's taking his chance to "say goodbye". Ali only speaks in whispers these days, his once luminous face now just a mask. He's not up to talking or signing autographs but his presence alone still draws huge crowds.
To see him, as I did a couple of times last year, is to be shocked at his physical deterioration. Nothing quite prepares you for it. For 25 years he's been fighting Parkinson's Disease and fighting hard. People cry when they see him now. A quarter of a century of living with this horror but his spirit is still strong, his desire to get out and meet people as evident as it was when he was in his pomp. He's not hiding away. He's not wallowing. His inner strength is something to behold.
Yeah, you get a jolt. You feel pity. But then you feel awe. He's not lying down. He's keeping on. He trembles and walks slowly and with helpers at both sides, but the man has a spirit that will not be quashed.
There will be a few Ali nights down south, three charity evenings and then he'll be gone. We won't see The Greatest in these parts again.
Everywhere he's been in life he left behind a world of stories. London '63 was no different. He was still Clay but soon he would be Ali, soon he would start talking of his beliefs and his devotion to the Nation of Islam, how 1,500 planes would one day leave the Mother Plane, piloted by righteous black men, and bomb the Earth like there was no tomorrow, how America would burn in a lake of fire for 390 years and then cool for 610 years and how the black man would then build a new and better civilisation.
He believed this, the young firebrand. But nobody knew it yet. In London all anybody wanted to know was if he was the real deal or not. The reason he loves the UK now is because people embraced him warmly at a time in his career when he was getting doubt at home.
The Jones fight didn't diminish him one bit. Oh no. Clay was in electric form.
When they queried me about the Cooper bout
I answered with Shakespearian thrift
When they asked me which round I'd knock Henry out
I answered Henry the FifthClay was at it even before he got through customs at the airport. Asked by an official if he had anything to declare, he pointed to £275-worth of excess baggage but didn't leave it at that.
The Cooper-Clay fight's set for 18th June
For Cooper any date's too soon
London Bridge is falling down
So will Cooper in London Town
Clay was given a tour of the city. Buckingham Palace: "It looks swell. I think I'd like a place like that."
The Mall: "Broadway's wider than this."
Piccadilly at night: "When do they turn the power on, man?"
He ran in Hyde Park, sparred in White City. He did a television interview with the BBC and stormed out, in mock indignation, when his interviewer, David Coleman, said he was a Cooper fan. "Ah'm so fast I can the turn out the light and be in bed before it's dark. There are two Greats: Britain and Clay!"
At the weigh-in at the London Palladium Clay found a cardboard crown left over from a pantomime and put it on his head and emerged to meet the cameras. "You gotta Queen, you need a King! Ah am King!"
Fifty five thousand people turned up for the fight at Wembley Stadium. Six trumpeters from the Coldstream Guards announced his arrival – and he was still wearing the crown. On the back of his red robe: Cassius Clay, The Greatest. In the far corner, Our 'Enry, his 'Ammer cocked and ready to go.
In the fourth round, Cooper lands the most famous punch in British boxing history, a vicious shot that dumps Clay on his backside against the ropes. He's up on the count of three but he's dazed. The bell goes. Saves him.
Clay says he wasn't paying attention when the 'Ammer fell. He was looking at Elizabeth Taylor at ringside. Angelo Dundee spots a slight tear in one of Clay's gloves and jabs his thumb in there and works it open some more. He calls over the referee Tommy Little and buys some time for his fighter. In those valuable extra seconds he gets the smelling salts out, he gets the wet sponges, he douses his man and sends him back out with his senses restored. In round five Clay demolishes Cooper with a brutal force. There's blood coming out of three and four different wounds on 'Enry's face. His left eye is cut to pieces. There's claret cascading on to his chest. A white towel comes floating through the air from Cooper's corner. Tommy Little goes to 'Enry, takes him by the gloves and says, "The fight's over, chum."
That was Clay in Britain for the first time. A year later he beat Sonny Liston and became champ, just like he said he would. He came back to this part of the world many times in the years since. He came to Scotland to fight an exhibition at the Paisley Ice Rink, posing with bagpipes at Prestwick Airport.
They said there was none braver than Ali in the ring. But Ali out of the ring is braver still. He refuses to let his Parkinson's ruin his life, refuses to let it curtail his travel around America and, up to now, his visits abroad. The Greatest is 67 years old and his world tours will soon be at an end. One last chance to say farewell in person, to salute the genius he once was and the man of unbreakable courage he is now.
