My View from the Corner Read online

  Back in 1960 when Cassius first came on the boxing scene, the sport was, at best, on the threshold of being called off on account of lack of interest. There were no Jack Dempseys or Joe Louises or Rocky Marcianos, no charismatic figures to interest press and fans alike. The fighters who ruled the eight traditional weight classes were more a "Who's He?" than a "Who's Who" of boxing—with the notable exceptions of two all-time greats, Sugar Ray Robinson and Archie Moore, both of whom were getting long in the tooth and looking forward to retirement. The others were hardly household names, even in their own households. And the name of heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson inspired even less interest, if that were possible.

  And so it was that Cassius stepped into a vacuum, one he filled very nicely, thank you. Not content to stand in the shadows like so many others, including Floyd Patterson and Joe Louis, he knew how to capture the spotlight. And single-handedly he brought the sport back to life with his predictions, poetry, and boasting. To the media he was a godsend. All they had to do was ask, "How ya doin', Cassius?" and he'd take over from there. To the public, this brash youngster was newsworthy, someone who was fresh, new, and filled with the liveliness of a new age. Put them all together and all of a sudden it was the Age of Cassius.

  In 1963, it was especially apparent, even with Sonny Liston as the heavyweight champ—an unpopular and surly one at that. Every time the phone rang, the voice at the other end wanted to know more about Cassius. You'd think, what with all the other fighters I handled—like Luis Rodriguez and Sugar Ramos, both now champions, or Willie Pastrano or Ralph Dupas—they'd want to talk about them. But no, all they wanted to talk about was Cassius Clay and his most recent antics.

  It was always thus, Cassius this and Cassius that. And Cassius, who never met a camera or notepad he didn't like, furthered his image with every quote. He was always performing with a presence like a Barrymore or an Elvis, front and center and upstaging everyone around him. One time, before the Jones fight when Cassius had gone to Harlem "to see my people," a boxing fan came over to me and gushed, "You're Angelo Dundee, the trainer, aren't you?" Cassius, overhearing this, couldn't believe someone else was getting attention in his company and demanded to know, "Did you put him up to saying that?"

  Everyone now thought Clay was ready for Liston. Despite the closeness of his win over Jones, he had shown an ability to go to the body, something he had never shown before. However, Liston was unavailable, having signed to fight Patterson in a rematch in what the public saw as little more than a watering of last year's crops.

  To keep Clay busy and in the public eye, the Louisville Group began fielding offers. There were many, Clay having established his bona fides, both as a fighter and as a self-promoter by packing the house at the Garden for the Jones fight despite the newspaper strike. Now everybody wanted in on the gravy train and hoped to book the greatest promoter in boxing, Cassius Clay. The Garden wanted Clay back to fight former heavyweight champion Ingemar Johansson. There were offers for a rematch with Jones. And I received an offer from an old friend of mine, Jack Solomons, the British promoter, for a "go" with British and Empire champion Henry Cooper, which I passed on to Bill Faversham.

  Cooper would be the perfect opponent for Clay, or at least so I thought. He had a record of 27–8–1 with eighteen knockouts and reputedly, as one of my British contacts told me, "the best left hook in the business" (called "'Enry's 'Ammer"). But he also had tissue-thin skin as brittle as a fifty-year-old coat of paint that gushed like a geyser under the impact of a punch. Moreover, while Liston was there—and would stay there, as it was almost unthinkable that he would lose to Patterson in their rematch—I thought another bout or two and a little more time was needed for Cassius to reach his physical maturity. Remember, he was only twenty-one years old and still growing, both in size and talent.

  And, a trip to London, my old hunting grounds from my time in the service, would be a treat. I had been there a couple of times with Willie Pastrano, and the Brits had loved him, a pure boxer who practiced what the Brits called the "Sweet Science" to perfection. Why not Clay? I asked myself.

  Boy, was I wrong! What I hadn't figured on was that the Brits didn't particularly care for boastful athletes. They wanted their heroes humble with stiff upper lips and all that, you know. And Clay was anything but that. In love with his own voice, he told one and all that Cooper, their beloved "Our 'Enry," was almost irrelevant to his potential fight with Liston and that "I'm only here to mark time before I annihilate that big ugly bear."

  Everywhere Clay went he created waves. But unfortunately, even as he stirred the promotional pot, making promoter Jack Solomons happy, he was also stirring up the British fans, making them unhappy. Cassius had not only insulted their favorite fighter by calling him "a tramp, a bum, and a cripple, not worth training for," but he had also shown his disrespect for England's most sacred icon, their royalty, by calling Buckingham Palace "a swell pad."

  Public opinion turned against him. The press called him "The Clown Prince of Boxing," "ostentatious," and "boisterous" as headlines blared "We Are Not Amused." British TV did impersonations of him, and the British fight fans, oh, they wanted to kill him. They treated him as a royal pain in the butt, booing him at every turn and sighting. It was Gorgeous George done to a "fare-thee-well," as they say over there. Cooper himself best summed up the general feeling for Clay when he said, "Surely by now, Clay knows that everybody in Britain, including me, hates his guts."

  Clay continued to add fuel to the fire, telling newsmen he hadn't bothered to train for "this bum." But when newsmen, knowing my reputation for candor, came over to see me I had to tell them the truth—that Cassius had done miles of roadwork in Hyde Park in preparation for the bout and had sparred more than ninety rounds with Jimmy Ellis and his brother Rudy. Reporter Peter Wilson asked me if I thought Clay would ever become champion. Kibitzing, I told him that he'd better, otherwise he would have driven me crazy for nothing.

  But Cassius paid no attention to the adverse criticism. He continued being, well, Cassius Clay. The tomfoolery continued, with everyone in the Clay camp joining in. I remember going to the cinema a couple of nights before the fight to see The Naked Prey with Cornel Wilde. The story was about a white hunter who was captured by a tribe of African warriors. They kill all the others on the safari but let him live. They free him in the jungle, naked, and then send their best warriors to hunt him down. Well, he knocks off all the warriors. As the action continued with him doing away with the warriors, one by one, I named each of the warriors one of Clay's sparring partners and began hollering, "Oh! Oh! ... there goes Willie Johnson.... Oh Oh! ... there goes Alonzo Johnson." Cassius loved it. He was always the kid laughing in the back row at commencement. To him, everything was fun.

  Always looking for fun, Cassius decided to take a page out of the Gorgeous George handbook and, in his best imitation of the Gorgeous One, told the press, "If Cooper whups me, I'll get down on my hands and knees, crawl across the ring, and kiss his feet. And then I'll take the next jet out of that country, whichever country it happens to be." Now he had another Gorgeous George inspiration. He would play dress-up and have a specially made robe, complete with ermine trim and "Cassius the Greatest" embroidered on the back. He would wear it, along with a crown, into the ring as befitting "The Greatest, The King." It was, he said, a wonderful idea, something only Gorgeous George would do.

  But if Cassius thought the idea of wearing a royal-esque robe was wonderful, the British fans thought it was anything but. Now this man they considered overbearing and a "cheeky wanker" (their words, not mine) to begin with was swaggering around the ring in a robe and a crown mocking their queen. They let out a chorus of boos that would have made Gorgeous George proud as Cassius strutted around the ring bathing in the sound just as he remembered Gorgeous George doing. It was pure theater, and for Cassius it was another chance to stand center ring and be the center of attention.

  The crowd noise got even louder in Round One as Cooper, normally a s
low starter, charged out of his corner and began winging punches. Their hero's every move, every punch, whether it missed or landed, was met with a roar. By round's end Clay returned to his corner with a bloodied nose and Cooper returned to his to be met by a standing ovation. Cassius got his jab going in the second and opened a small cut over Cooper's left eye. By the third, the cut had widened as Cassius began landing his combinations, and by the fourth it had become a full-fledged gash, with blood flowing down Cooper's face. It was obvious Cassius could have stopped Cooper any time he wanted. But there was a problem: he had predicted he would "take him in five," and five it would be, even if it meant playing around with him for another round. It didn't matter that I was hollering from the corner, "Take the sucker out...."

  Cassius was alternately taunting Cooper and toying with him, and I figured it was only a matter of time until referee Tommy Little mercifully put an end to this bloodbath.

  What I hadn't figured on, however, was what happened next. With but a few seconds left in the fourth, Cooper, frustrated in his attempt to land his left and furious at Cassius for toying with him and humiliating him in front of his countrymen, backed Cassius into the ropes. There he led with a soft left jab, and Cassius instinctively moved away from the right cross that was sure to follow. Instead, Cooper uncorked "'Enry's 'Ammer," his big left, catching Cassius flush on the jaw with a punch Cassius later said "made me feel as if I had gone back and visited all my ancestors in Africa."

  Cassius fell heavily on the seat of his trunks, his arm entangled in the second rope, his eyes glazed. Referee Little started tolling the count over him, "One ... two ... three ... four ...." As the count reached four the bell rang ending the round. Somehow Cassius managed to get to his feet and began staggering around the ring. I rushed into the ring at the bell, grabbed his arm, and led him back to the corner.

  As to what happened next—well, it's sort of like that old tale of the three blind men who tried to describe the anatomy of an elephant. I've heard what happened described several times, no two times alike and none accurate. But, hey, I was there, so let me tell you what really happened.

  As Freddie Brown used to say, "You see what you see." Before the fight, as I was loosening up and stretching out Clay's arms to get the blood flowing through his tightened muscles, I had seen a small split along the seam of one of Cassius's gloves, the leather sticking up. Now who knows when some little thing like that will come in handy? So between Rounds One and Two I told Cassius to keep his glove down so that the ref wouldn't notice. Come the rest period between the fourth and fifth rounds, as Cassius slumped on his stool like a sack of potatoes, looking as if he was out of it, I decided it was time to use that small split to our advantage. Call it gamesmanship, if you will, but whatever you call it, call it timely and time-consuming, for now I stuck my finger in the split, helping it along until it was a bigger split. I then yelled at the ref, the secretary of the British Boxing Board of Control, the president of the group, anybody I could find to yell at, to come over and examine the glove. I wanted a new pair. Meanwhile, as I was trying to buy time, Chickie Ferrara, who was working the corner with me, was dropping ice cubes down Cassius's trunks, breaking vials of smelling salts under his nose, massaging his legs, doing everything he could to bring the dazed Cassius back to life.

  The authorities quickly told me that there was no second pair of gloves to be found anywhere—an oversight that would soon be remedied by a new rule at all boxing bouts, something I like to call "Angie's Second Pair of Gloves Rule." Write-ups later had the officials running back to the dressing room to get another pair, an event that most said took anywhere between half a minute to six minutes. The time, in actuality, was but a few seconds. But even those few seconds were vital, as, given the benefit of time, Chickie's handiwork had brought Cassius back to life while I fiddled with the glove and stalled. And when the referee came over to me and said, "Mr. Dundee, there are no other gloves," I told him, "Don't worry, we'll use these." Never took them off. But the ruse worked.

  You try to help your fighter any way you can—even by unconventional means, if necessary. There was the time I was in Puerto Rico working the corner of Wilfredo Gomez in his bid to win the junior lightweight championship from Rocky Lockridge. By the tenth round Gomez was completely gassed, his condition described as "deplorable" by my old friend Mario Rivera. It was so bad that I even thought about stopping the fight. But the stamina-challenged Gomez pleaded with me to let him continue, and with Lockridge now dancing around the ring, I thought maybe, just maybe, we had a chance. Especially if I could somehow buy him more time to gain his second—or third or fourth—wind. There had to be something I could do in this crisis. So, to gain time, I untied his shoelaces between rounds, every round, and each time I would call it to the ref's attention and he would give me a couple of extra seconds each time to retie the laces I had untied only a few seconds before. Naturally, being fumble-fingered, I took as much time as possible to retie them, even double-knotting them, to give Wilfredo a couple of seconds of extra rest every time. And wouldn't you know it, double-knotted or not, those shoelaces would come undone at the end of every round. And, out of necessity, I would have to retie them again. With those few seconds of precious rest between rounds, Gomez was able to suck it up and pull out a close fifteen-round decision—without a tie.

  The echo of the bell signaling the start of the fifth had barely died down before a rejuvenated Cassius was out in the center of the ring jabbing the bloodied Cooper, determined to end it then and there rather than tempt the fates again by playing around. Besides, this was the predicted round. Cooper's cut, which had spouted blood for the last two rounds, were now a ghastly red smear over his entire face. And the fans, who had implored referee Little to stop the fight earlier, were now on their feet shouting "Stop it! Stop it!" They further emphasized their shouts by throwing missiles into the ring. Finally, a minute or so into the fifth, Little did the only thing he could: he stopped the bloodbath. Cooper didn't complain, only turning to Little and saying, "We didn't do too bad for a 'bum and cripple,' did we?"

  Almost immediately after the bout was stopped, Cassius's brother Rudy jumped into the ring carrying Cassius's crown, wanting to put it on his head. Looking at some of the trash already in the ring and dodging more flying by, I pushed him away, hollering, "Get out of here. You're going to get me killed."

  In the dressing room Cassius would take back his "bum" reference to Cooper, saying, "Cooper is a real fighter. He hit me harder than I've ever been hit." Then, seeing Jack Nilon, Sonny Liston's advisor, in the dressing room crowd, he launched into his favorite topic. "I'll demolish Sonny in eight rounds ... and he'll be in a worse fix if I predict six." Then he added, "I'll fight Liston—if the price is right." Nilon answered back, "You can have the fight, kid, the price will be right!"

  Challenges go back as far as the sport of boxing itself. In the very old bareknuckle days it was not uncommon for the claimant of the championship to stand in the middle of the ring and demand of those in attendance, "Who fights?" Hence the name "challengers" for those who took him up on his dare.

  After defeating Jake Kilrain in the last major bareknuckle fight in boxing history, John L. Sullivan would hurl his challenge by making the haughty pronouncement: "I hereby challenge any and all bluffers to fight me for a purse of $25,000 and a bet of $10,000. The winner of the fight to take the entire purse. I am ready to put up the first $10,000 now. First come, first served." Unfortunately for Sullivan, his challenge was accepted by one of the three "bluffers" he specifically mentioned, James J. Corbett, who took his title in twenty-one rounds back in 1892.

  Sometime during the next twenty years the equation changed with the challengers issuing the challenge, as Jack Johnson did when he invited heavyweight champion Tommy Burns to step into the ring with him. For two years Johnson dogged Burns, backing up his challenge by taking on every potential contender between himself and Burns, mowing his way toward the champion. He made offer after offer, including
every type of inducement, but Burns continued to cup a deaf ear. Finally, after following Burns around the world, Johnson tracked him down in Australia and, after making every conceivable concession, got him into the ring where he soundly trounced him and won the heavyweight crown. (Ironically, Sam Langford would follow the same game plan and tour map to track down and challenge Johnson. But all Langford got for his efforts was a turndown with Johnson telling him, "Sam, nobody wants to see two black men fight for the heavyweight championship.")

  Through the years others have issued challenges to champions to put their titles on the line, offering money, inducements, and just plain old blandishments. Among those have been light-heavyweight champion Archie Moore, who challenged heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano through the press, authoring a piece for The Ring magazine in which he called on Marciano to meet him as the "only legitimate challenger."

  Another who invoked the power of the press was 1960s middleweight Joey Archer. Archer, an excellent boxer who held wins over the likes of Denny Moyer, Holley Mims, Sugar Ray Robinson, and even Dick Tiger, now wanted a return bout with Tiger, who was then the middleweight champ. But Tiger showed less than no interest in facing Archer, preferring instead to fight welterweight champ Emile Griffith in defense of his championship. Feeling left out in the cold, Archer turned to one of Madison Avenue's most creative admen, George Lois, who wrote a small space ad for Archer that read: "Dear Dick Tiger: The Middleweight Champion should meet the best middleweight (not a welterweight). I'm a middleweight, and I licked every man I ever fought, including you. Respectfully, Joey Archer. P.S. How about a fight, Dick? I'm going broke on these ads." The ads created what in adspeak could be called a "furor," and Archer began turning up on talk shows and even on the front page of the New York Daily News, challenging a snarling tiger at the Bronx Zoo. As things turned out, Archer did get his bid for the middleweight title, but against Griffith, not Tiger, inasmuch as Griffith had beaten Tiger for the title. Archer would lose to Griffith in his title shot, not exactly the happy ending he had hoped for.