Jonathan Eig - Ali: A Life

For Lola

Miami, 1964

ROUND 1. THE CHALLENGER: CASSIUS CLAY

and swinging a dandyish walking stick.

He checks to see if anyone has noticed him.

Not yet.

He shouts,

Clay is tall and stunningly handsome, with an irresistible smile. Hes a force of gravity, quickly pulling people into his orbit. Horns honk. Cars on Collins Avenue stop. Women lean out of hotel windows and shout his name. gather around to see the boastful boxer theyve been hearing so much about.

Sting like a bee! he yells. Rumble, young man, rumble! Ahhhh!

As the crowd grows, the chief of police arrives and tries to move Clay off the street and into a parking lot where he might cause less trouble. A newspaper photographer points his camera, but instead of smiling Clay opens his mouth wide in a pantomime scream. He throws a left jab that stops inches short of the camera.

he says in his sweet Kentucky accent. Im just twenty-two and Im gonna make a million dollars!

ROUND 2. THE CHAMPION: SONNY LISTON

Sonny Listons left hand is a battering ram, his right a sledgehammer. Bom! Boom! Bom! Boom! He pounds the heavy bag so hard the walls shake and sportswriters hands jump as they scribble ornate synonyms for scary.

Liston is the most punishing boxer in more than a generation, with fists each measuring fifteen inches around and a chest jutting forth like the front end of an M4 Sherman tank. He is fearless and vicious. How vicious? Once, he started a fight with a cop, beat the cop senseless, snatched his gun, picked him up and dumped him in an alley, and then walked away smiling, wearing the cops hat.

Liston does not merely defeat his opponents; he breaks them, shames them, haunts them, leaves them flinching from his punches in their dreams. Sonny Liston is Americas curse. He is the black menace sprung from white racist stereotypes. And he likes it that way.

, and theres got to be bad guys, he says, comparing the world to a cowboy movie. Bad guys are supposed to lose. I change that. I win.

When he learns that the young man he will soon fight for boxings world heavyweight championship is outside the community center where he trains, Liston steps into the sun to meet the troublemaker. of fans and marches until hes nearly within punching distance of Cassius Clay.

Liston stops and smiles.

Clay, he tells a reporter, is just a little kid who needs a spanking.

ROUND 3. THE MINISTER: MALCOLM X

near John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, thirty-eight-year-old Malcolm X talks into the night, telling his life story to a reporter. Malcolm is a tall, lean man with a strong jaw and horn-rimmed glasses. Even smiling, he bears a stern expression.

Malcolm paces as he dictates, sitting only to scribble notes on napkins. He cant wait until old age to produce his autobiography. Hes recently been suspended from the Nation of Islam for disobeying the radical groups leader, Malcolm had said, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; theyve always made me glad. There are other issues, other forces driving a wedge between Malcolm and his teacher. Malcolm has learned that Elijah Muhammad had fathered numerous children with young women employed by the Nation of Islam. Malcolm has been telling others in the organization about their leaders disappointing behavior. Now, Elijah Muhammad is furious, and rumors have made their way to New York that Muhammad wants Malcolm X dead.

All his life Malcolm has survived. Hes survived poverty, prison, and knife fights. He plans to survive this, too.

This is where his struggle for survival starts: in a hotel room by the airport, working on his autobiography, because words give power. And Malcolm isnt going to let Elijah Muhammad or J. Edgar Hoovers Federal Bureau of Investigation or the white news media or anyone else define him with their words. He will define himself with his own words, his own new credo, on his own terms. A great revolution is building in America. The prevailing racial order is under attack with a fury not seen since the Civil War. Black men and women are awakening and fighting for power. Change is coming, finally, and Malcolm is determined to push it force it, if need be regardless of what Elijah Muhammad or anyone else has to say.

when Malcolm leaves the hotel and drives to his home in Queens. An FBI agent monitors his every move. Later the same day, Malcolm, his wife, and three daughters board a plane for the familys first vacation ever. This, too, is part of Malcolms plan. He wants the world to see that hes not a bomb-throwing lunatic but a father, a husband, a minister of God who believes America can and must reform. He plans to take pictures and jot notes for a newspaper feature story hes calling Malcolm X, the Family Man.

When the plane touches down in Miami, a car waits to carry Malcolm and his family to their blacks-only motel on Miami Beach. , the driver is Cassius Clay.

ROUND 4. THE CHALLENGER: CASSIUS CLAY

Clay shouts like hes possessed by demons: , aint no way you gonna beat me and you know it!

Its the morning of the fight, time for the combatants to meet the press, show off their powerful bodies, and step on the scales to check their weights. The room reeks of cigarette smoke, body odor, and cheap cologne. The reporters have never seen a professional athlete behave so unprofessionally. Some say Clay has lost his mind, that fear of Sonny Liston has made him snap.

Everyone in the room is talking, but Clay is talking loudest of all.

No chance! No chance! he hollers, ignoring the boxing officials threatening to fine him if he doesnt shut up. Like Malcolm X, Clay wont be told what to do. Hell beat the odds and defy the expectations of any who would seek to control or exploit him.

Clay points at Liston, saying hes ready to fight the champ now, this very instant, without gloves, without a referee, without a paying audience, man against man. His face shows no trace of humor. He yanks off his white robe, revealing a long, lean, brown physique, his stomach and chest muscles rippled. He lunges at Liston as members of his entourage grab hold and restrain him.

Maybe Clays not crazy. Maybe he knows instinctively, or from the experience of growing up with a bullying, violent father, that the worst thing a threatened man can do is show fear.

Clay shouts. I am the CHAMP!

ROUND 5. THE CHAMPION: SONNY LISTON

Liston warns opponents about the power of his punch, both its short- and long-term effects. Explaining the dangers to a reporter, he slides the knuckles of one enormous hand into the grooves between the knuckles of the other enormous hand, and he lectures: even once if the shots hard enough, the brain dont settle back right in them cups, and thats when you start needin other people to help you get around.

Cassius Clay might run away for a round or two, but Liston promises he will catch his young opponent sooner or later, and, when he does, he will hit Clay so hard his brain will flop out of its cups.

ROUND 6. IN THE RING

Gray smoke hangs under brilliant white ring lights, obfuscating everything in sight. Reporters peck their portable typewriters and brush cigarette ash from their neckties. Theres little debate among the men in the press corps about who will win tonight. The question the only question, in most minds is whether Cassius Clay leaves the ring unconscious or dead.

This is more than a boxing match, and at least a small percentage of the people in the Miami Beach Convention Center understand that. They sense there are brutal, romantic forces building beneath the placid surface of American life, and that Cassius Clay is a messenger for the change to come, a radical in the guise of a traditional American athlete. Malcolm X says of Clay before the fight. One forgets that though a clown never imitates a wise man, the wise man can imitate the clown.