I have been struggling with my emotions since Muhammad Ali
died Friday night. I was fortunate in my
life to spend time with The Greatest (and he truly was) during the few days
before and after the Sept. 15, 1978, fight during which he won for a third time
the heavyweight crown by “whuppin’’’ Leon Spinks. The night of the fight itself was a sleepless
one for me, literally. Read on, you’ll see why.
At 8 a.m. Sept. 16, 1978, I was sitting next to Ali on a loveseat in his
Hilton hotel room.
Most of the press
from the night before likely was sleeping it off. Me, I was still quivering with excitement and
the opportunity to spend a couple hours, virtually uninterrupted, with the
once-again-crowned heavyweight champion of the world.
After that dream answered, I took the historic St. Charles
streetcar back to my hotel near an above-ground graveyard. I had already sent my copy from the fight to
my assistant sports editor and pal, Larry Schmidt, back in the newsroom that
looked out over Commerce Street in Clarksville.
I was going to write the story of my time with Ali, finally grab a nap
and then go back to the Quarter, where a bartender two nights before had taught
me how to shuck an oyster.
On that day after the fight, I went back and forth between the French
Quarter and the press room set up in the Hilton. It was the first time I interviewed a totally
naked woman (she had shown all of her charms by climbing into the ring the night
before) and I found out that at close-range, she was beautiful, a bit chilly
and obviously “my type.” I was just a kid, remember. I wrote a little story about her as well after
she autographed a photo, carefully not covering her private zones with the
signature.
I had met Larry Holmes, George Foreman, Kenny Norton, Leon
Spinks, Michael Spinks, Howard Cosell and a flock of Hollywood superstars over
the previous few days.
Of course all of that paled in comparison to the several
times I had been with Ali during that week, with our last encounter being the
almost one-on-one joking and talking in the hotel suite.
I saw Ali a few more times after that. The last time I saw him, the horror of his
Parkinson’s was just beginning to slow him down. He no longer was “the Louisville Lip,” but a middle-aged
man (by boxing standards) who had taken too many punches to the head. That’s one of the risks of the Rope-a-Dope, I
suppose.
I don’t know much
else to say, other than that I’m proud I spent time with The Greatest
and that memory will live on.
Of course, most of the TV news remembrances have been
glorious, flashy and funny and don’t focus on the man trapped for decades inside
body’s shell by Parkinson’s.
While I have written about other encounters with the former Cassius Clay, most of my Ali stories come from the time I covered the
fight for The Leaf-Chronicle in Clarksville.
I traded my planned and budgeted trip to the
Master’s (golf's not my game) for enough money to fly me to New Orleans, feed me oysters and gumbo
and beignets, that were still hot when I retrieved them on the tray that was
planted, along with chickory-laced coffee, outside my room each morning. They also left the day’s newspaper. (You
remember newspapers don’t you? )
Just shy of 28 years old, I learned much on that trip, much
of which will go to my grave with me.
I fell in love with New Orleans and streetcars, above-ground graveyards
and voodoo queens. Because of my time
spent there with Muhammad Ali, that city has been special to me and I’ve
visited often. Even pondered moving
there, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as magical as the time I was there for
The Fight.
The time a tired boxer
extended his hand and shook my own very softly, explaining his hands were sore
from “whuppin’” Leon Spinks the night before.
Ali’s death has saddened me (that’s not hard). It also has
been invigorating to watch all of the news stories, to see him in his prime, to
realize that, really, he had lived his life and it was time to take the ring in
the great whatever after. My other hero,
by contrast, was John Lennon, whose life ended in healty life’s prime at 40 due to a crazed
fan confused by “Catcher in the Rye.” (Weren’t we all?)
But Ali was always there, a man I respected, loved even, who
had made plenty of mistakes in his life, but fessed up and bounced back until
he could bounce no more. He could hardly even walk.
I don’t feel eloquent today.
And it depresses me that most of my clips of the coverage from sparring
to weigh-in to the fight itself and the after-parties disappeared in the May
2010 flood that consumed my office and most of my written memories. But nothing
could steal those in my head.
Because I won many honors for one piece of my coverage, a
column I hope you’ll stick around to read (see it below), I still had a Xeroxed
(yep, a real Xeroxed) copy of it in my short stack of favorite “resume”
writings that remained dry, a few feet above the water six years ago.
I am too tired to write much more about him, and the clips
on TV tell the story better anyway. Skip the Will Smith movie and watch the
real thing, the clips of “The Thrilla in Manila” – featuring Ali and Joe
Frazier in the most brutally beautiful of all prize fights. Or perhaps watch
the guy from the George Foreman Grills commercials get “Rope-a-Doped” in Zaire
during “The Rumble in the Jungle.”
Sure, I’m a man of peace who stood proudly against war. Sure, as my pal Kristofferson would say “Tim,
you’re a walking contradiction.” But I relished in the ring exploits of
Muhammad Ali. And I’ll never forget his
personal kindness to me.
Here’s a farewell to the fight and my time in New Orleans
that I composed on a steamy Sunday, at a table in the French Quarter over chickory coffee before my
mid-afternoon flight back to Nashville’s ancient Berry Field.
Thanks for making it this far and read on if you wish:
Ali and me ….
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana,
September 1978 --
“Ali … Ali … Ali… Ali
…”
There is something unbelievably exciting about being
surrounded by 70,000 people exploding in unison with one magic word over and
over again.
Of course that is just what happened Friday night when the
main act in a four-day circus in New Orleans took place in the center ring
beneath the biggest big-top of them all – the Louisiana Superdome.
Everybody was in town for the final performance of “Muhammad
Ali’s Traveling Circus and Magic Show.” No matter who you talked to –
bartenders, jazz musicians, cab drivers – they were all going to the Ali-Leon
Spinks rematch.
The airports had been busy for days prior to the fight. Cabs
were almost impossible to come by.
The jazz throbbed long and loud on Bourbon Street. The beer
flowed freely.
People wandered the streets all night long. Folks from
Tunisia, India, South Africa and Hollywood and, of course, the mob, had made the pilgrimage.
All of the excitement could have easily turned to violence
and tragedy.
“It’s insanity,” said one of the nation’s top boxing writers
of the crowd which had paid $200 per seat to witness the fights from the main
floor of the Superdome Friday.
The reporter had left his cherished ringside seat to join
the bulk of the working press up in the press box.
“It’s uncontrollable down there,” he said, shaking his head.
“People are drinking and shoving and yelling at one another. There’s not usher
one down there. No one can see!”
The first true indication that there was a little “insanity”
in the air came during Thursday’s heavyweight weigh-in in the Grand Ballroom of
the New Orleans Hilton. The ballroom has a seating capacity of 400. An
estimated 3,500 pushed into the session which was to have been for members of
the press only.
The crowd pushed its way onto the stage where the weighing
was taking place.The stage nearly collapsed.
The weigh-in incident cause a rift between co-promoters Top
Rank and Louisiana Sports Inc. The charges and counter-charges floating around
did little alleviate the tension in the air.
While the nation was watching some pretty fine boxing on
television, the press and the crowd in the Superdome were treated to many, many
other fights in the crowd.
Though there was quite a bit of security, it was pretty
slack. Many of us in the press were wondering just what would happen if the
obvious crowd favorite, Ali, lost. It could have been incredibly tragic.
After the evening’s fight card was concluded, thousands
flocked to the Hilton, where a “Championship Extravaganza” featuring Isaac
Hayes as the entertainment and the fighters as scheduled special guests was to
be held.
A little thing like the loss of the heavyweight championship
of the world did not keep Leon “Disco” Spinks off the dance floor. However, he was the only boxer to spend much time at
the extravaganza. Ali did not attend at all.
But most of the people who flocked in the Hilton did not
have tickets ($75 per person) for the extravaganza – which was in the same
Grand Ballroom as the weigh-in.
People who attended the bash came out and tried to peddle
their torn ticket stubs to members of the flashily-dressed throng outside the
entrance to the ballroom.
Others tried to rush the gate.
Police officers wielding nightsticks came in on at least one
occasion to try to help control the crowd.
“I wouldn’t go in there,” said one woman, who was working
the ticket gate.
The extravaganza went on well into the night. In fact, the
first member of Ali’s “family” to arrive –noted comedian and civil rights
activist Dick Gregory – finally came to the Hilton at 3:30 a.m.
But the way the people filled the streets outside it seemed
like it should be just the middle of the afternoon. The situation in the French Quarter a few blocks away was
similar.
It was Mardi Gras in September. Both Friday and Saturday
nights the celebrating on Bourbon Street and surrounding area was in full gear. The crowd nearly filled the entire street.
Jazz blared out of some clubs, while barkers tried to coax
the celebrants into other clubs offering such specialties as “topless and
bottomless tabletop dancing.”
Fans – drinks in hand – each made it from oyster bar to beer
joint to Dixieland hall. Many folks danced in the streets.
Bourbon Street finally calmed down Sunday. By the time the
early afternoon sun began baking the city, most of the fans and the press were
finally packing up and leaving.
A little jazz played at one or two of the bars, while sleepy
Ali fans did some last-minute souvenir hunting.
(Ali himself left New Orleans Sunday for his home in
Chicago.)
The only thing left of the previous few nights of revelry was
the overwhelming stench caused by the hot sun baking the stale beer and rotting
food in the streets.
The circus was over. It was time to go home.
