A SLICE OF BOXING THE MUHAMMAD ALI WHO MADE US LAUGH By Thomas Hauser
T here’s an often-told story that dates to Muhammad Ali’s glory years. Ali was on a shuttle flight from Washington, D.C., to New York and the flight crew was readying for takeoff. “Mr. Ali, please buckle your seat belt,” a flight attendant instructed. “Superman don’t need no seat belt,” Ali informed her. “Mr. Ali,” the flight attendant responded sweetly. “Superman don’t need no plane.” Ali loved it. He could laugh at himself. And he made other people laugh too. Ali’s charm started with his looks. He was extraordinarily handsome, better looking than most movie stars. He had charisma. And he said things with a twinkle in his eye. “I’m young. I’m handsome. I’m fast. I can’t possibly be beat.” It was good fun. On occasion, Ali’s one-liners backfired. “You ain’t as dumb as you look” is a comment he made to personages as diverse as Wilt Chamberlain and former Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev. In 1964, shortly before Cassius Clay (who had not yet changed his name) fought Sonny Liston in Miami Beach, he was introduced to The Beatles, who were in town for an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. The Beatles were talking about how much money they made. “You guys ain’t as dumb as you look,” Cassius told them. “No,” John Lennon responded. “But you are.” During the years that I spent with Muhammad, he was constantly generating “new material.” Once, 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. Meeting Ali, the undercard fighters were in awe. One of them, a lightweight with a losing record in a handful of professional bouts, confessed, “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. Muhammad’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 (a biography I’d written with his cooperation). Pursuant to contract, we agreed to sign 3,500 signature pages for insertion in the book. I was paid three dollars per signature ($6.88 per page in today’s dollars). Ali received considerably more. “This is fantastic,” I told myself. “If I do 10 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. If that many. “Any more than that,” I confided to 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 Parkinson’s disease symptoms. “It wasn’t boxing. It was the autographs.” I also remember going with Muhammad to the first big college football game of the 1990 season. Notre Dame versus Michigan, two of college football’s most fabled institutions. Notre Dame was the top-ranked team in the country. Michigan was rated as high as number two, depending on which poll you followed. The game had been sold out for months and was the hottest ticket in sports. The Notre Dame Athletic
Department gave us seats on the 50- yard line. Ali’s presence would impress high school players that Notre Dame was recruiting. Muhammad was sitting to my right. During the game, I spent some time talking with an elderly woman to my left. Ellen Stonebreaker was the grandmother of Notre Dame co- captain and middle linebacker Mike Stonebreaker. I’d guess she was about 80. She was charming. And when Notre Dame was on defense, her eyes never left the field. Ali noticed the intensity with which she was watching. “Look at that old lady,” he told me. “She’s like a hawk.” Notre Dame won. Down 10 points going into the fourth quarter, they rallied for two late touchdowns capped by an 18-yard scoring pass with 1:40 left to play. But an off-the- field moment from that night stands out most in my mind. Ellen Stonebreaker had been sneaking glances at Muhammad for some time. Finally, during the second half, she said to me, “You know something, that boxer is a good- looking fellow.” Muhammad overheard the remark and whispered to me, “Tell her I don’t fool around with white women.” But let’s end this remembrance where it began – in an airport. Muhammad, Lonnie Ali, Howard Bingham and I were waiting to board a flight in Atlanta when a young boy approached Muhammad, paper and pen in hand, to ask for an autograph. “How old are you?“ Ali asked. “Four.” “What’s your name?“ “Mommy says I shouldn’t tell my name to strangers.” Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – The Most Honest Sport: Two More Years Inside Boxing – is available at Amazon.com. In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
The Greatest hams it up alongside legendary entertainer Sammy Davis Jr.
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