Blood Brothers (29 page)

As Clay moved forward, half blind and confused, Bundini Brown offered a piece of tactical advice: “Yardstick 'im, champ! Yardstick 'im!”
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It was the perfect strategy. Often in previous fights, Clay had used his left, held straight out from his shoulder, as a yardstick for measuring distance and punches, and occasionally for taunting opponents. Now he could use his straight yardstick left as a seeing-eye device. As long as Liston remained an arm's length away from him, Cassius was in safe territory.

Liston eyed Clay at the start of the fifth round “like a kid looks at a new bike on Christmas.” Seeing Cassius's condition, he rushed forward with cruel intentions. Instead of maneuvering to cut off the ring and force Clay into a corner, he moved directly toward him like an aggressive street brawler stalking a frightened victim. Cassius moved backward, unable to completely avoid Sonny's bull rushes. But he could grab and hold, thereby denying Liston leverage for his most lethal punches. But in the clinches Clay absorbed frightful punishment. Liston pounded his sides and stomach with combinations. At one point, early in the fifth, Clay grabbed the back of Liston's neck and Sonny landed sixteen consecutives body blows before the referee broke the clinch.
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Clay had no plans for fighting blind. More than other fighters, he boxed in a head-high, wide-eyed style. At times he looked like a painter, stepping back to inspect his work before adding a final dab of color. But now he was robbed of his vision, glimpsing Liston imperfectly through “tear-fogged” eyes.

“Man, in that round, my plans were
gone
. I was just trying to keep alive, hoping the tears would wash out my eyes. I could open them just enough to get a good glimpse of Liston, and then it hurt so bad I blinked them closed again. . . . He was trying to hit me square . . . it could be over right there.”
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There is a widely accepted myth that during the fifth, Clay's speed kept him out of harm's way. In truth, during the first ninety seconds of the round, Liston landed scores of punches, to the head as well as the body. Rather than his speed, Clay's ability to take a punch kept him in the fight. Soon after the match, Clay reflected, “He shook me with a left to the head and a lot of shots to the body. Now, I ain't too sorry it happened, because it proved I could take Liston's punching.”
³⁹

Liston “was snorting like a horse” during his onslaught, Cassius remembered, but by the middle of the round he was breathing heavily through his mouth. Arm-weary and bone-tired, he began to slow, throwing fewer punches, and those were mostly slow, lazy, and purposeless. In the clinches, he rested rather than pulling his arms free and banging Clay's body. Now, Cassius began yardsticking him and, as his eyes cleared, stung him with sharp jabs. He began to talk. “You ain't nothing!” And to prove the point, he yardsticked Liston and then slapped him lightly five or six times in the face, almost like a teenage boy play-boxing with a five-year-old, or, wrote Tex Maule, “like a man knocking on a door.”
⁴⁰

Sonny had thrown more punches in the first half of the round than he normally threw in two or three, and now his lack of conditioning showed. For Sonny, the bell that ended the round came as a relief, even though it ended his best opportunity to win the fight. Nothing was working. Cassius Clay had weathered Liston's stare, intimidation tactics, bull rushes, juiced gloves, and best punches. The arm-weary, mouth-breathing champion had nothing left—no plan B, no second wind, no chance.

Cassius had everything the champion lacked. As the result of hard conditioning and the advantages of youth, he felt the rise of a second wind as his eyes cleared and his confidence grew. “Get mad, baby!” Dundee told him. He said to go for the knockout. “No,” Clay answered. “I ain't in a hurry. Maybe I'll carry him for the 15.”
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Taking his last deep breaths before round six, Cassius knew, “I was going to make Liston look terrible.”
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He did. Closing the distance to the champion, boxing at a slower, more deliberate pace, he started to punish Sonny. Steve Ellis described the action for the closed-circuit viewers: “We note that Sonny stands flat-footed most of the time. Easy target.
EASY
!” His voice rose on the second “easy” as Clay landed a punishing jab and a powerful right cross. Although Clay held his hands low, his boxing was classic. Every attack followed from his perfectly timed jab, always aimed at the cuts below Sonny's eyes. As Liston moved sluggishly forward, Clay jabbed, sometimes softly, as if he was just toying with Sonny, other times with jolting force. Depending on how Liston reacted to the jab, Clay might throw a right cross or a right-left-right combination of hooks. Then he backed away before Liston could set himself to counterpunch. “Sonny can't seem to slip or knock down that jab effectively,” Ellis said. “Cassius throws it from all angles. Very tricky left lead.”
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It was a textbook round. Clay knew that Liston had entered the pain zone, and there was nothing he could do about it. “He was gone,” Clay realized.

Between rounds Cassius twisted around and called to the reporters, “I'm gonna upset the world!” “I never will forget how their faces was looking up at me like they couldn't believe it,” he said later. But sitting close to the reporters was Malcolm X, and he believed it. He had prophesied it. Throughout the fight he never lost faith, not even when Cassius fought blind in the fifth. Although inwardly Malcolm rejoiced, outwardly he was the picture of tranquility. “I folded my arms and tried to appear the coolest man in the place,” he wrote, “because a television camera can show you looking like a fool yelling at a prizefight.”
⁴⁴

While Clay's confidence swelled, Liston's deflated like a pinpricked balloon. Willie Reddish had to convince him to sit down at the end of the sixth, and while Joe Polino labored to mend the fighter's cuts, the normally silent and undemonstrative Sonny jabbered about something. He stayed on his stool after the warning buzzer, and at the bell Reddish turned to referee Barney Felix and made a slight, low gesture with his hands, the signal that his fighter was through, the match was over. Liston remained immobile on his stool, tears mingling with the blood below his eyes.

On his feet at the buzzer, Cassius saw what was happening before Reddish's capitulation. “I happened to be looking right at Liston when the warning buzzer sounded, and I didn't believe it when he spat out his mouthpiece. . . . And then someone just told me he wasn't coming out! . . . It's a funny thing, but I wasn't even thinking about Liston—I was thinking about nothing but that hypocrite press. All of them down there had written so much about me bound to get killed by the big fists.”

As Clay looked toward Liston's corner, he raised both arms high and broke into a jig, floating effortlessly in the center of the ring, before Bundini embraced him in a bear hug. Then, his mouth wide open, he wriggled loose from Bundini's arms and made a mad dash toward the reporters.

For the record, everyone in Liston's corner—and later a team of eight doctors from St. Francis Hospital in Miami—insisted Sonny had torn a tendon in his left arm early in the fight. The blood had drained into his bicep and deadened his arm, they said. Sonny had wanted to continue, his manager, Jack Nilon, claimed. “I made the decision. Before Sonny could protest, Willie and I stepped in front of him and waved the referee off. Sonny spit out his mouthpiece and cursed me and cursed Clay.” “I can beat the bastard one-handed,” Liston supposedly said. And perhaps, as unlikely as it seems, he did not play any role in the decision to end the fight while slumped on his stool. Still, the fact that Clay was willing to fight blind and Liston refused to continue because of a sore shoulder tells much about both boxers.
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But the moment Reddish signaled Felix that his fighter was done, Sonny Liston became just another bruised, bloodied, beaten exchampion, looking older than his age, whatever that was, and sadder than any ex-mob goon ever had. Surveying Liston's face, which looked “like a melon that had fallen off the back of a truck,” Murray thought “it was possible to feel sorry for this mastodon.”
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Clay's gate-crashing sprint for the reporters, however, grabbed all the attention away from Liston's suffering. He pulled away from his handlers, dodged well-wishers, and “climbed like a squirrel onto the red velvet ropes.” Perched above the multitude, he pointed with a still-gloved hand at the working press and commenced a long-repressed harangue. “I am the greatest!” he shouted. “I shook up the world! . . . You
hypocrites! You ought to hang your heads. Eat your words! Eat! Eat your words!”

At ringside, Red Smith of the
New York Herald Tribune
took a large bite. He had confidently, even humorously and arrogantly, predicted Clay's defeat, and now he heard Cassius's response. “Nobody ever had a better right” to tell reporters to eat their words, he wrote. “In a mouth still dry from the excitement of the most astonishing upset in many roaring years, the words don't taste good, but they taste better than they read. The words, written here and practically everywhere else until the impossible became the unbelievable truth, said Sonny Liston would squash Cassius Clay like a bug when the boy braggart challenged for the heavyweight championship of the world.”
⁴⁷

Then, bounding off the ropes, Cassius veered toward the center of the ring, where he continued to shout his praises. “I am the greatest! I shook up the world!”

He moved from radio announcers to television commentators, saying the same thing. Trapped for a minute by Steve Ellis and Joe Louis, Cassius announced, “I'm the greatest fighter who ever lived! I'm so great I don't have a mark on my face. And I upset Sonny Liston and I'm just twenty-two years old. I must be the greatest! I told the world! I talk to God every day! With God with me can't nobody be against me!”

Ellis worked to ask a question and got a brief response, but Cassius was lost in his own world. “I'm a baaad man! I shook up the world! I shook up the world! I shook up the world!”

Standing in row seven, seat seven, Malcolm X fixed his eyes on the man who shook up the world and talked with God. His God. The black man's God. Allah. It was part of His plan and Malcolm's. No longer could the Honorable Elijah Muhammad doubt the greatness of Cassius Clay. Now, in the ebullience of Miami, Cassius had won the most important and symbolic crown in all of sports, and Malcolm's was the voice in his ear. It must have seemed, at that moment, that Malcolm's deepest dreams were on the cusp of coming true.

Chapter Twelve

FREE TO BE ME

            
The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions.

—
JAMES BALDWIN

N
ow everyone wanted him, not Sonny Liston. Before the match, experts and casual fans alike thought Cassius would go directly from the fight to the hospital, and that Sonny would head to his own victory celebration. But Sonny got the ride to St. Francis and Cassius, resplendent in a black tuxedo, disappeared.

Outside his dressing room, Dee Dee Sharp waited patiently with her mother. After recording “Slow Twistin'” with Chubby Checker and releasing such hit singles as “Mash Potato Time” and “Do the Bird,” the attractive and coquettish Sharp was at the top of her recording career. During the previous few months she had seen Cassius off and on as their schedules permitted, but their relationship had not yet bloomed into a full-scale romance. She was just one of the “foxes” that seemed to form the wallpaper of his life. George Plimpton suspected Cassius's use of the word
foxes
was “half affectionate and half suspicious: he feels that girls can be ‘sly' and ‘sneaky' and are to be watched warily.”
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Dee Dee saw herself as more than just another fox, and she had plans to spend the evening with the new heavyweight champion of the world. So she waited, crammed among the other well-wishers who claimed they knew all along that Cassius would win, and every once in a while she would call out to someone squeezing in or out of the dressing room, “Tell Cassius that Dee. . . .” She called him Cassius around the men, but in private she used his middle name, Marcellus. “A beautiful name. I can say it over and over,” she told Plimpton.
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“I shook up the world!” Cassius Clay shouted after defeating Sonny Liston to win the heavyweight title. “I'm a baaad man!” Sitting near ringside, Malcolm X smiled inwardly. He believed that Cassius's victory was destiny.
Associated Press

Perhaps Dee Dee thought she would go to the Fountainebleau Hotel with Cassius. Sam Cooke, friends with both Cassius and Dee Dee, was staying there, although it took a virtual sit-in by his manager for the front desk to find him a suite. Several of the members of the Louisville Sponsoring Group had even talked about a victory celebration for Cassius at the most luxurious hotel in Miami Beach. Champagne, showgirls, cakes—the celebration would be first class.
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The scenario, Dee Dee Sharp on his arm and champagne at a luxury hotel, conjures images of heavyweight championship style—Jack
Dempsey and Estelle Taylor, Joe Louis and Marva Trotter, and, from baseball, Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe. That was the way it was supposed to be. By fighting blind in the fifth round and battering Sonny Liston in the sixth, Cassius Clay had earned the title of champion and his share of the good life.

While Dee Dee waited, Cassius was in his dressing room holding court. He had told the reporters that he was going to win—told them loudly and often. Now that he had their full attention, he gave them another chance. After castigating them for their lack of faith, he demanded “Who's the greatest?” A few browbeaten scribes surrendered and said, “You are.” Only then did the new champion smile.
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It was after midnight when he came out of his dressing room. Accompanied by his brother and a few friends from the Nation, he pushed through the mob of photographers and newspapermen. Standing on her toes, Dee Dee waved, calling out “Marcellus! Marcellus!” She didn't even receive a glance as he swept past her.
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From the arena he headed north toward the Hampton House and a small, private celebration with Malcolm X and a few other friends, including Rudy, Howard Bingham, Sam Cooke, and Archie Robinson. A joyous crowd had packed the Hampton House's luncheonette by the time Clay's party arrived. Cassius and Rudy, the two victorious boxers, sat in places of honor on the center stools at the lunch counter, surrounded by loud, talking, joking black men who had attended the fight or turned up to shake hands with the new heavyweight champion. Cassius's victory dinner was a large bowl of ice cream, which he wolfed down in a matter of seconds. While Cassius ate, Malcolm and Howard Bingham snapped photographs—Malcolm whispering in Cassius's ear, his hand resting on the champ's shoulder; Malcolm bursting with laughter while Cassius teased him; Malcolm and Cassius exchanging knowing glances. It was the happiest moment they had ever shared together.
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The two appeared inseparable. Malcolm seemed to take as much satisfaction from Clay's triumph and Hampton House victory party as the fighter himself. In his mind, after all, Cassius's victory was his as well. Associates had remarked that they seemed as close as brothers. During the raucous stage of the evening he called writer Alex Haley, with whom he had become close during their collaboration on Malcolm's autobiography. Clay was like Malcolm's “little brother,” Haley recalled. “[Malcolm] was very, very proud of him.” During the phone call, over the loud voices in the background, “Malcolm was boasting how his little brother had done marvelously well.” Showing more excitement than he had displayed at the match, he called to Cassius to holler something to Haley, which he did. It was as if the big brother called the shots and the little brother amiably went along.
⁷

Immediately after defeating Sonny Liston, Cassius celebrated at the Hampton House with Malcolm X, playfully sparring with and entertaining his supporters. But behind closed doors, Cassius weighed choices that would change both of their lives.
Getty Images

After a short public celebration, the inner group moved to Malcolm's bedroom for more serious conversation. The bubbly, playful banter was left behind at the lunch counter, replaced by a more somber mood. Now that Cassius was champion, Malcolm had urgent matters to discuss. He thought it was time for his friend to play a more active role in his plans. Cassius, Malcolm, and Jim Brown, the National Football League's premier running back, began talking about the future of the black man. Sympathetic to many of the Nation of Islam's goals, Brown was as respected by “race men” as he was by professional football players.
He did not believe in heroes, but he admired Malcolm's confrontational mentality. Like the combative minister, the outspoken football star insisted that blacks must demand their rights, fight for them, and defend them at all costs. Distrustful of white men, Brown questioned passive resistance and nonviolence. “I am skeptical of white men,” he would later write in his autobiography, “because even the best of them want me to be patient, to follow Martin Luther King's advice and turn the other cheek until God knows when.”
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Listening to Brown, Malcolm could tell that he was sincere in his beliefs. Malcolm clearly shared his view that famous black athletes had a responsibility to join the freedom movement. For Cassius, then, the heavyweight title was a prelude to more important accomplishments, ones that transcended sports and crossed over to politics. “Well, Brown,” Malcolm asked the football player, “don't you think it's time for this young man to stop spouting off and get serious?”
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Brown agreed. The title was not an end in itself; it was a platform from which to advance far more urgent matters. The plan called for Cassius to use the title for his purposes, not to be used and consumed by it.

Cassius also understood that his victory over Liston marked the beginning of a new stage in his life. There was nothing left to conquer in the world of boxing. His athletic achievements now matched his worldwide fame. His actions had vindicated his boasts, certifying his incessant claims that he was the greatest. Listening to Malcolm's plans, Cassius didn't brag or rhyme. He paid attention and, as far as Malcolm could tell, agreed.

Malcolm said that they talked for several hours, which is doubtful given the time line of the evening. But they did converse long enough to hit the points that were important to both of them. Finally, exhausted from a day that had included a wild weigh-in, action-filled title fight, post-fight ring antics, and several press conferences, Cassius said he needed a nap. Stretching out on Malcolm's bed, he went to sleep.
¹⁰

But he didn't sleep long. While Malcolm was somewhere else, Cassius awoke and had a meaningful tête-à-tête with Jim Brown. They talked about race in America, the politics of the Nation of Islam, and the feud between Malcolm and Elijah. As he listened, it was clear to Brown that there was a serious disconnect between Malcolm's plans and
Cassius's. He recalled that Clay had already made up his mind: he could no longer follow Malcolm. The Messenger would not allow it. “Elijah was a little man,” Clay told Brown, “but extremely powerful, and had always supported him.” Cassius “loved Malcolm, but from that day on, he would never again be his friend.”
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