As one of my last assignments as a sports writer, I was in Cleveland to cover a bout by Muhammad Ali as part of what boxing critics derided as part of his “Bum of the Month Club.” There was plenty of colorful material about which to write. His opponent would be Chuck Wepner, a New Jersey liquor store salesman referred to as “the Bayonne Bleeder.” Members of the ringside press would be given bright red slickers to protect us against the blood spatters. A character called Whammy Bufano had promised to put a hex on the proceedings.
After finishing a piece about Wepner’s handlers, who had conducted a press conference with strings of obscenities that never would make it into a reputable newspaper today, I headed back to my hotel room. On the far side of the Marriott lobby, I passed the open door of a small conference room. In the middle of the room, surrounded by his entourage, was Ali.
Summoning a courage I never knew I had, I walked into the room, approached him and asked if I could have an interview. He was a little tired right now, he said, but I could meet with him tomorrow morning in his room.
The next morning I knocked on his door. Timidly. I was nervous. I’d interviewed plenty of big name athletes — Joe Namath and O.J. Simpson, Arnie Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, Johnny Bench and Pete Rose. But this was different. This was Muhammad Ali, arguably the most famous man on the planet. And my nerves weren’t soothed any when a huge man opened the door and growled, “Whatchu want?”
I told him I was there to interview Mr. Ali.
“Ali,” the man shouted over his mountainous shoulder, “some guy here to interview you. You want me to let him in?”
The answer from the bedroom in the modest suite must have been yes, because the huge guy let me in and then left. A few seconds later, Ali emerged from the bedroom and we sat together on a couch with my tape recorder between us.
Throughout the interview he was nothing like the Ali I had expected. Nothing like the bombastic Louisville Lip who had “shocked the world” by knocking out Sonny Liston, amused a lot of it with his pre-fight poetry and angered much of America by renouncing the “slave name” of Cassius Clay and declaring he refused to be drafted into the military because “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong.”
This was an entirely different Muhammad Ali. An Ali who spoke so softly that when I played the tape later I had to crank the volume to the max to make out some of his answers. Not a brash and boastful Ali, but a quiet and reflective one.
For nearly an hour we talked a little about boxing, but mostly about other things. He dismissed a question about Howard Cosell with the implication that they didn’t have nearly the kind of close relationship the broadcaster wanted the public to believe they did. He spoke hopefully about what impact he may have had on young people. He wondered, almost wistfully, about what his legacy would be, about how he would be remembered.
When my questions, and the tape, had run out, I thanked him for his time, then asked, somewhat self-consciously, for his autograph. He produced a black and white photo of himself posing in white boxing trunks and shoes, and signed it:
“To D.L. Muhammad Ali. 3/17/75. peace. Enjoy life it’s later than you think.”
As I started to leave the room, Ali said he was going to go downstairs for breakfast and asked me to join him. In the elevator I mentioned that some people thought he had lost some of his quickness since his prime. Faster than I could flinch, he fired six left-handed jabs, each one stopping less than half an inch from my chin.
“What do YOU think?” he asked, grinning. What I thought was that I was grateful my chin wasn’t half an inch more prominent.
When we got off the elevator, a white man in the lobby spotted us.
“Hey,” the man bellowed, “it’s Cassius Clay. Hey, Cassius.” I braced for an ugly scene, but Ali ignored him and kept walking to the coffee shop. “I can’t worry about guys like that,” he said after we sat down. “He’s just ignorant.”
While we waited for our breakfast, I asked him about the huge guy who had answered the door, in case I might want to mention him in my story.
“It’s just one of those people who hang around me,” Ali said. “When I’m not famous anymore, they’ll all be gone.”
He was only partly right about that. Like the photo in my desk drawer, his sycophants may have faded away. But the name and legend of Muhammad Ali always will be famous.
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