Muhammad Ali: A Tribute to the Greatest Read online

  In short, Muhammad doesn’t feel sorry for himself because of his physical condition, and there’s no reason for anyone else to feel sorry for him. He loves being Muhammad Ali, and he’s as happy with each day as anybody I know.

  As for the process of researching Ali’s life, I proceeded on several levels. First, there were Muhammad’s personal papers, medical records, newspapers, magazines, tapes, and cartons of legal and financial documents. After that, I interviewed approximately two hundred people—members of Ali’s family, friends, former wives, ring opponents, business associates, doctors, world leaders, and others who have known him best. And of course, there were countless days spent with Muhammad. I traveled with him around the world, spent weeks in his home, and entertained him in mine.

  One of my memories is of waking up one morning in the Alis’ home in Berrien Springs and hearing Lonnie cry out, “Oh my God! Muhammad! What have you done?”

  Naturally, I was curious. So I put on my clothes, went downstairs, and found Lonnie standing in the living room amidst piles of clothes, boxes, and other belongings. Apparently, during the night, Muhammad had been unable to sleep. As he often does under those circumstances, he’d gone downstairs to read the Qur’an. Then, for reasons known only to him, he’d grown curious as to what was in the closets. The easiest way to satisfy that curiosity was to empty all of them out onto the living room floor. Suffice it to say that Lonnie assumed it was Muhammad (and not me) who had done the deed.

  Unlike Ali’s earlier biographers, I enjoyed total access to Muhammad and to virtually all of the key people in his life. My questions were answered with candor by almost everyone. And I enjoyed the advantage of perspective, since I was writing at a time when Ali’s ring career and the tumultuous era of American history that went with it had come to an end.

  Inevitably, writing the book involved revisiting my own youth. It led me to recall watching the 1960 Olympics on television and reading newspapers in high school for reports of Cassius Clay’s early fights. I reexperienced listening to the radio as a 17-year-old college freshman the night Clay beat Sonny Liston for the heavyweight championship. The war in Vietnam; assassinations; riots in Newark, Harlem, and Watts. In one way or another, so many of the key events in American history that I remembered were intertwined with Ali’s life. And I relived sitting in a New York theater on October 2, 1980, turning my face away from the screen to avoid watching the brutalization of an aging Ali at the hands of Larry Holmes.

  In some ways, Ali is a very simple man. In others, he’s quite complex. But first and foremost, Muhammad is deeply religious and spiritual. There was a time when he molded his religious beliefs to accommodate what he wanted to do. Now it’s the other way around. I don’t think I’ve met anybody ever who is more sincere about his religious principles than Muhammad. God is the main factor in his life. At the end of each day, Ali asks himself, “If God were to judge me based just on what I did today, would I go to heaven or hell?” And he lives his life accordingly. “I’m not afraid of dying,” Ali told me once. “I have faith; I do everything I can to live my life right; and I believe that dying will bring me closer to God.”

  Yet Muhammad has never sought to impose his religious beliefs on other people. Indeed, once when I accompanied him to services at a mosque to share that part of his life, he told me, “When we say our Islamic prayers, you can say your Jewish prayers. Only don’t say them out loud because it might offend someone.”

  I also recall another moment between us that turned on Muhammad’s religious beliefs. One day we were discussing Ali’s 1976 “autobiography.” The book contains numerous allegorical tales, including the claim that young Cassius Clay threw his Olympic gold medal into the Ohio River after being denied service at a segregated restaurant.

  “You didn’t really do that, did you?” I queried.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Swear to Allah.”

  There was no response.

  “Swear to Allah,” I pressed.

  “Someone stole it,” Ali admitted. “Or I lost it.”

  Ali is a kind man, who speaks often of his dreams and never of his troubles. Those who meet him are virtually never disappointed. He has an endurance and tolerance for others that’s extraordinary. He’s forgiving, perhaps to a fault. There are people who have stolen literally millions of dollars from him. He knows they’ve done it, yet he refuses to say one word against them. To some, that means he’s a soft touch. To others, he has a tender heart. Ali himself says only, “God is merciful and forgiving, so I should be too.” Also, once in a reflective moment, he told me, “Maybe I should say more about certain things. Sometimes I don’t say what I feel, because God gave me so much power that I’m afraid, if I yell at someone, it will hurt them too much.” That might be Ali’s way of avoiding personal confrontations, an avoidance he too often seeks. But it’s also a mark of character.

  Ali sometimes makes mistakes. There’s an irrational side to his personality. At times he’s manipulated and easily led. But his heart is pure; he loves people. And that love manifests itself every day; if not on a world stage, then in his private life. In November 1990, against the advice of some of his closest friends, Muhammad journeyed to Iraq to meet with Saddam Hussein in the hope that his presence would forestall war in the Persian Gulf. Afterward, I asked if he thought it was wise to have gone. Ali answered, “People risk their lives for war all the time. Why shouldn’t I risk mine for peace.” Meanwhile, three months later, away from the glare of publicity, Muhammad and Lonnie Ali quietly adopted a six-week-old boy.

  “That’s a very lucky little boy,” I told him. “You’ve changed the course of his entire life.”

  “We’re lucky too,” Muhammad answered. “It’s a good baby.”

  There are so many memories I have of Ali that conjure up a smile. Once, when Muhammad and I got in his car to do some errands, he told me, “You get in back; I’ll drive; and it will be like Driving Miss Daisy.”

  On another occasion, when Ali and his wife were coming to my apartment for dinner, I invited one of his favorite rock stars—Chubby Checker, who lives in Philadelphia—to join us. Chubby drove ninety miles to New York. When Ali saw him, he started jumping up and down, shouting, “It’s Chubby Checker! It’s Chubby Checker!” But what touched me most about that evening was an exchange that came after dinner. We were sitting in the living room. Muhammad looked at Chubby and asked, “Did you drive all the way from Philadelphia just to see me?” Chubby said yes. And Ali responded, shaking his head, “I can’t believe it. I’m honored.”

  I researched and wrote Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times for two years. Finally, in September 1990, I journeyed again to Berrien Springs to meet with Muhammad, Lonnie, and Howard Bingham. For ten days, we read every word of my manuscript aloud. By agreement, there was to be no censorship. The purpose of our reading was to ensure that the book would be factually accurate.

  There were portions of the manuscript that troubled Muhammad, because they reflected negatively on persons other than himself. Also, it was important to him that the book be accurate with regard to all facets of Islam. As for his first concern, ultimately he understood that it was important for the story of his life to be told honestly and completely. With respect to the latter, a careful reading of the manuscript by Dr. Ibrahim Oweiss, a leading Islamic scholar, put Ali’s worries to rest.

  One moment that I remember well from our sessions in Berrien Springs came when Lonnie was reading a quotation from television boxing analyst Alex Wallau. Wallau had expressed the view that, even if Ali had been given foreknowledge of how boxing would affect his physical condition, “If he had it to do all over, he’d live his life the same way; he’d still choose to be a fighter.”

  As soon as Lonnie read those words, Muhammad sat up straight in his chair and said, “You bet I would.”

  Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times was published in 1991. Muhammad helped promote the book and, among other things, attended book signings at Barnes & Noble and Waldenbo
oks stores in New York. Each signing was enormously successful. Both stores reported that Ali sold more books in a single session than any previous subject or author.

  The final promotional event in New York was Ali’s attendance at the annual Boxing Writers Association of America dinner. Muhammad spoke briefly, and told the audience about a slave named Omar. It was a parable that preached the message of humility and was met by sustained applause. Then Ali sat down. The program resumed. HBO’s Jim Lampley was speaking, when suddenly Muhammad returned to the podium and announced, “I forgot to tell you. I had two book signings this week, and I broke the all-time record at both stores.”

  That left Lampley to wonder aloud, “Muhammad; would Omar the slave brag about his book signings?”

  “He would if he sold a thousand books,” Muhammad countered.

  Eventually, Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times was published in Great Britain, and we journeyed to England for a book tour. One afternoon, I was sitting next to Ali at a book signing in London, when a woman in her forties passed through the line. She looked at Muhammad, then at me, and in a thick Irish accent asked, “Excuse me; are you Ali’s son?”

  “No, ma’am,” I replied.

  “Oh,” she said with obvious disappointment. “You look just like him.”

  My initial reaction was to dismiss her as daft. After all, I’m white and only four years younger than Muhammad. But then it occurred to me that this was one more example of how, when it comes to Ali, people are colorblind. And of course, it’s a compliment of the highest order to be told that you look just like Muhammad Ali.

  As our tour of England continued, there were also poignant moments. Late one afternoon, we found ourselves in Nottingham. It had been a long day. That morning, we’d been in Leeds, where Muhammad had signed nine hundred books, posed for photographs, kissed babies, and shaken hands with literally thousands of admirers. Now that scene was being repeated with five hundred more people who had waited on line for hours for their hero to arrive.

  Ali was tired. He’d been awake since 5:00 A.M., when he’d risen to pray and read from the Qur’an. His voice, already weak from the ravages of Parkinson’s Syndrome, was flagging. The facial “mask” which accompanies his medical condition was more pronounced than usual.

  Most of the people on line were joyful. But one of them, a middle-aged woman with a kind face, wasn’t. Muhammad’s condition grieved her and, as she approached him, she burst into tears.

  Ali leaned over, kissed her on the cheek, and told her, “Don’t feel bad. God has blessed me. I’ve had a good life, and it’s still good. I’m having fun now.”

  The woman walked away smiling. For the rest of her life, she would remember meeting Ali. Moments later, she turned to look back at him, but Muhammad’s attention was already focused on the next person in line, a tall handsome black man. “You’re uglier than Joe Frazier,” Ali told him.

  That brings us again to Joe. Of all Muhammad’s ring opponents, the only one who still holds a grudge against him is Frazier. Joe makes no secret of his dislike for Muhammad, and sometimes his antipathy extends to Muhammad’s friends. In recent years, Joe and I have gotten along well. He’s been a guest in my home and he’s cordial when we meet. But it wasn’t always that way.

  In 1991, I was in Atlantic City for a WBO heavyweight championship bout between Ray Mercer and Tommy Morrison. Frazier was in attendance, and I introduced him to a friend of mine named Neil Ragin.

  Joe’s response was a resounding, “Grhummpf!”

  “It’s nothing against you,” I explained to Neil. “Joe doesn’t talk to me a whole lot.”

  Which gave Neil a chance to ingratiate himself to Joe and keep the conversation going. “Of course, Joe doesn’t talk with you. You’re Ali’s man. Everybody knows you’re Ali’s man. Right, Joe?”

  Whereupon Joe said simply, “Right! And I ain’t talking to you either, ’cause you the friend of Ali’s man.”

  Muhammad told me once, “If Joe Frazier wants to forgive and forget, I’ll be friends. And if he wants to fight, I’m still whuppin’ him.” Then, on a more serious note, he added, “Joe Frazier is a good man. I couldn’t have done what I did without him, and he couldn’t have done what he did without me. If God ever calls me to a holy war, I want Joe Frazier fighting beside me.”

  Still, I have to say, even today, if Ali and Frazier were together and Joe had a balloon, Muhammad would want to pop it. And when it comes to Joe, Muhammad still gives as good as he gets. Once, I was with them at a ceremony at the United Nations. Ali’s son, Asaad, who was a year old at the time, was also there. Joe was looking for trouble. Smiling at Asaad, he told onlookers, “Hmmm; that boy looks just like me.”

  Ali didn’t miss a beat. “Don’t call my boy ugly,” he said.

  During the time I spent with Ali, he was constantly creating new memories and generating “new material.” For example, we were in Seattle to attend a dinner where Muhammad was honored as “The Fighter of the Century.” The festivities included a fight card at the Kingdome. And meeting Ali, the undercard fighters were in awe. One of them, a lightweight with a losing record in a handful of professional bouts, went so far as to confess, “Mr. Ali, I just want you to know; when I’m going to the ring for a fight, I get real nervous; so I say to myself, ‘I’m Muhammad Ali; I’m the greatest fighter of all time, and no one can beat me.’”

  Ali leaned toward the fighter and whispered, “When I was boxing and got nervous before a fight, I said the same thing.”

  “If you do roadwork in the snow, it makes you tough,” another young fighter told Muhammad.

  “If you do roadwork in the snow, it makes you sick,” Ali countered.

  Once, Muhammad reflected on a $100,000 fee he received for attending two promotional screenings of a made-for-television documentary and told me, “Ain’t life amazing. Twenty-five years ago, they wouldn’t let me fight to earn a living. And now they’re paying me $100,000 to go to the movies.”

  Another time, Ali stopped to shake hands with an elderly white man who had a deep Southern accent.

  “How old are you?” Muhammad queried.

  “Eighty-one.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Mississippi.”

  “Did you ever call anyone a nigger?”

  “Oh, no. Not me.”

  After the man left, Muhammad turned to me, laughing. “Do you believe that? An eighty-one-year-old white man from Mississippi; never called anyone a nigger.”

  Shortly thereafter, we attended a tribute to Muhammad at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. I made some opening remarks and referred to an incident that had occurred years earlier when Ali took a shuttle flight from Washington to New York. As the flight crew readied for take-off, an attendant instructed, “Mr. Ali; please buckle your seatbelt.”

  “Superman don’t need no seatbelt,” Ali informed her.

  “Mr. Ali,” the flight attendant said sweetly. “Superman don’t need no plane.”

  When I retold that story, Muhammad’s face lit up and he laughed as hard as anyone in the audience. Ali’s ability to laugh at himself also surfaced when we authorized Easton Press to publish 3,500 copies of a leather-bound edition of Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times. Pursuant to contract, we each agreed to sign 3,500 signature pages for insertion in the book. I was to receive three dollars per signature; Ali considerably more.

  “This is fantastic,” I told myself. “If I do ten signatures a minute, that’s 600 signatures an hour . . . Divide 3,500 by 600 . . . Wow! I’ll get $10,500 for six hours work.”

  Except when I started signing, I found that I couldn’t sign more than a few hundred pages at a time. “Any more than that,” I confided in Muhammad, “and I can’t connect the letters properly. Something starts misfiring in my brain.”

  “Now you know,” Ali told me, referring to his own physical condition. “It wasn’t boxing. It was the autographs.”

  Spending time together also rekindled memories for Muhammad. In
1996, we were on a media bus in Atlanta. Several video monitors were showing a tape of Cassius Clay’s antics prior to his first fight against Sonny Liston.

  “It’s sad Sonny Liston is dead,” Muhammad told me. “I’d like to be able to sit down with him. Two old men, just sitting around, talking about old times.”

  “What would you say to him?”

  Ali’s eyes grew wide. “I’d tell him, ‘Man, you scared me.’”

  Then “The Rumble in the Jungle” came on the screen, and Ali’s eyes grew wistful.

  “So many people come up to me and tell me they remember where they were when I whupped George Foreman. I remember where I was too.”

  “What were you thinking when you looked down at Foreman on the canvas?”

  “It felt good.”

  “But what was going through your mind?” I pressed.

  “I didn’t think. Things just happened.”

  The perfect metaphor for Ali’s life, if ever there was one.

  That same year, Muhammad and I traveled around the United States to speak with students about the need for tolerance and understanding. One person who was particularly supportive of our efforts was Roy Jones, who attended several gatherings with us including one at Locke High School in Los Angeles.

  When Muhammad was introduced in Los Angeles, he received his usual roar of acclamation. But Roy got something extra. When his name was mentioned, a substantial number of the girls screamed the kind of scream reserved over the decades for Elvis Presley, the Beatles, and other heartthrobs. Muhammad didn’t miss a beat. Feigning jealousy, he stood up from his chair, smacked his fist into the palm of his hand, and challenged Roy to fight. Roy responded. And for thirty seconds, two great fighters sparred for an adoring crowd.

  Muhammad and Roy were having fun. But as fighters, they were also measuring each other.

  “He’s good,” Muhammad said afterward. “He has good moves, and he’s fast.”

  “I was surprised at how well Ali moved,” Roy acknowledged. “He’s got a lot more left than most people realize.”