The room was alive with the constant comings and goings of people bearing messages, luggage, warnings about getting to the Cavett show on time ... and also a very alert curiosity about me and what I was up to. The mask was nowhere in sight, but Pat Patterson was—along with three or four other very serious-looking black gentlemen who listened to every word we said. One of them actually kneeled on the floor right next to the bed, with his ear about thirteen inches away from the tape recorder, the whole time we talked.
Okay, we might as well get back to what we were talking about downstairs. You said you’re definitely going to fight Spinks again, right?
I can’t say I’m definitely going to fight Spinks again. I think we are.
I’m sure we are—but I might die, he might die.
But as far as you’re concerned, you want to, you’re counting on it.
Yeah, he plans to fight me. I gave him a chance, and he will give me a shot back at it. The people won’t believe he’s a true champion until he beats me twice. See, I had to beat Liston twice, [Ingemar] Johansson had to beat Patterson twice, but he didn’t. Randy Turpin had to beat Sugar Ray [Robinson] twice, but he didn’t. If he can beat me twice, then people will really believe that he might possibly be the greatest.
Okay, let me ask you . . . at what point, at what time—I was in Vegas for the fight—when did you realize that things were getting real serious?
Round twelve.
Up to then you still thought you had control.
I was told that I was probably losing, but maybe I was even. I had to win the last three, and I was too tired to win the last three, then I knew I was in trouble.
But you figured you could pull it off . . . up until round twelve.
Yeah, but I couldn’t, ’cause he is confident, ’cause he is winning, and I had to pull it off and he was 197 and I’m 228, and that’s too heavy.
Didn’t you tell me downstairs at breakfast that you’re going to come in at 205 next time?
I don’t know what I’m going to come in at; 205 is really impossible. If I get to 220 I’ll be happy. Just be eight pounds lighter ... I’ll be happy. I did pretty good at that weight, to be in condition around 220, even if it’s 225, 223, I could do better.
Well, on a scale of one hundred, what kind of condition were you in for Spinks?
Scale of one hundred? I was eighty.
Where should you have been?
Should have been . . . ninety-eight.
Why didn’t you know him better? You didn’t seem ready . . .
Why didn’t anybody know him? He slipped up on the press, a ten-to-one underdog, they called him. He hadn’t gone over ten rounds and only seven pro fights. What can you know about him?
Okay, let’s get to another point:
This may be an odd question, but I want to ask you anyway. At the press conference after the fight I remember Leon saying, “I just wanted to beat this nigger.” And it seems to me it was done with a smile, but when I heard that I felt the whole room get tense.
No, that’s okay. I say the same things. We black people talk about each other that way, in a humorous way. “Ah, niggah, be quiet.” “Ah—ahh. I can whop that niggah.” “Niggah, you crazy.” Those are our expressions. If you say it, I’ll slap you. The white man can’t call me nigger like they do.
So it was a joke? It struck me as a very raw note, but . . .
I can’t blame you. When I beat Sonny Liston, I didn’t say those words, but I was glad to win, so I can’t take nothing from Spinks—he’s good, he’s a lot better fighter than people thought he was.
Did I hear you say that you were going up to the camp today?
I start training in about two weeks.
And that’s going to be straight through for five or six months? You’ve never done that before, have you?
Never in my life, never more than two months. But this time I’m going to be in there five months, chopping trees, running up hills, I’ll be coming in dancing! Dancing! [Sudden grin] I’ll be winning my title for the third time . . . [Shouting] The greatest of all times! Of all times!! [Laughing and jabbing]
How good is Leon? I don’t really know myself.
Leon is unexplored, unknown—and after I beat him, he’ll come back and win the title and he’ll hold it four or five years and he’ll go down in history as one of the great heavyweights. Not the greatest, but one of the greatest.
So if you fought him one more time, you think that’d be it? Is that what you’re saying?
I’m not sure that’ll be it for me ... I might take another fight—don’t know yet, according to how I feel when that time comes.
Did you see Kallie Knoetze, that South African fighter? The one who beat Bobick?
I heard about him.
Me and Conrad spent a lot of time talking to him before the fight. I was trying to work up a really serious spectacle between you and him down in South Africa.
He seemed like a nice fellow.
Oh yeah, he was really eager to have you come down there and fight. Does that interest you, to fight a white cop in South Africa?
On the basis that on that day there’d be equality in the arena where I’m fighting.
But would that interest you? With all the heavy political overtones? How do you feel about something like that? Along with a million-dollar gate?
Yeah, I like it. With the approval of all the other African nations and Muslim countries. I wouldn’t go against their wishes, regardless of how they made the arena that night; if the masses of the country and the world were against it, I wouldn’t go. I know that I have a lot of fans in South Africa, and they want to see me. But I’m not going to crawl over other nations to go. The world would have to say: “Well, this case is special, they’ve given the people justice. His going is helping the freedom.”
There’s a dramatic quality to that thing—I can’t think of any other fight that would have that kind of theater. Actually, it might even be too much politics . . .
What worries me is gettin’ whupped by a white man in South Africa.
Oh ho! Yeah! [Nervous chuckle]
[Room breaks into laughter]
[Laughing] That’s what the world needs ... me getting whupped by a white man in South Africa!
[Still laughing]
Oh yeah . . .
Getting whupped by a white man period, but in South Africa? If a white South African fighter beat me . . . ?
I guess there’d be no way you could go down to South Africa without beating Leon first, right?
No, I got to beat Leon first. I will defeat Leon first. I will go down as the triple greatest of all time.
Oh yeah, I think you might. If you train, if you get serious.
If I get serious? I’m as serious as cancer. Is cancer serious?
Well, yeah, I didn’t realize, uh . . . if you’re going to start training now, that is serious, that’s five months, six months.
I’m going to be ready!
Would it be more important next time to get faster?
No, next time it’s to be in better shape, to take him more serious, to know him.
Why the hell didn’t you this time?
Didn’t know him.
You got some of the smartest people in the business working with you.
Didn’t know him ... See, all of my worst fights was when I fought nobodies. Jürgen Blin, Zurich, Switzerland, seven rounds with him, didn’t look too good. Al Lewis, Dublin, Ireland, a nobody, went eleven rounds. Jean-Pierre Coopman, San Juan, Puerto Rico ... a nobody.
Yeah, but Leon, you saw him fight several times, didn’t you?
Amateurs, just seven ... what can this man do with seven pro fights, never been over ten rounds . . .
But you had about fifteen or eighteen pro fights when you fought Liston the first time.
I don’t know.
I think I counted them up the other day . . . nineteen maybe.
I caught him off guard too; I was supposed to have been annihilated like this boy
was. But my best fights were those fights where I was the underdog: George Foreman’s comeback, two Liston fights, Frazier fights, Norton . . .
Is that something in your head?
It makes you hungry, got something to work for. I’m doing good. Everything is going my way. I’m eating dinner. I’m living with my wife and my two children all up to the fight, which ain’t that good. Least six weeks before the fight I should get away from my children ’cause they make you soft. You hug ’em and you kiss them, you know, you ’round babies all day. Day before the fight, I’m babysitting ’cause my wife done some shopping. She didn’t mean no harm.
You can’t blame it on her, though.
No. I got to get away from the babies, I got to get evil. Got to chop trees, run up hills, get in my old log cabin.
You plan to go up there to stay, at the camp, live there until the fight?
Where . . . what fight . . . ?
You say you’re going to go up there and do a monk sort of trip?
No, my wife and babies would be with me, but my babies, they cry at night, and they’ll be in another cabin.
I don’t want to bring up any sore subject, but did you see Pacheco on the Tom Snyder show when he was talking about all athletes getting old . . . ? He seemed to come down pretty hard. He said physically it would just be impossible for you to get back in shape to beat Leon.
I was fighting years before I knew Pacheco. He got famous hanging around me. They all got known ... popular. They’d never admit it ... and also Pacheco don’t know me, he works in my corner, he’s not my real physical doctor.
So you think you can get back in ninety-eight on a scale of a hundred?
Yeah. What I like, this is what I love ... to do the impossible, be the underdog. Pressure makes me go. I couldn’t ... I didn’t beat Frazier the first time, I didn’t beat Norton the first time. I gotta beat the animal. I almost got to lose to keep going. It would be hard for me to keep getting the spirit up, what have I got to accomplish, who have I got to prove wrong?
Speaking of that, how did you ever get yourself in the situation where you had so much to lose and so little to gain by fighting Leon down there? . . .
How did I get in what?
You got yourself in an almost no-win situation there where you had very little to win and a hell of a lot to lose. It struck me as strategically bad . . .
That’s the way it is, that’s the way it’s been ever since I held the crown. I didn’t have nothing to gain by fighting [Joe] Bugner. I didn’t have nothing to gain by fighting Jean-Pierre Coopman. I didn’t have nothing to gain by fighting a lot of people.
You sure as hell will next time by fighting Leon. That will be real pressure.
Oh yeah, I like the pressure, need the pressure ... the world likes ... people like to see miracles ... people like to see ... people like to see underdogs that do it ... people like to be there when history is made.
Muhammad Ali has interested a lot of different people for a lot of very different reasons since he became a media superstar and a high-energy national presence almost two decades ago ... And he has interested me, too, for reasons that ranged from a sort of amused camaraderie in the beginning, to wary admiration, then sympathy & a new level of personal respect, followed by a dip into a different kind of wariness that was more exasperation than admiration ... and finally into a mix of all these things that never really surfaced and came together until I heard that he’d signed to fight Leon Spinks as a “warmup” for his $16 million swan song against Ken Norton.
This was the point where my interest in Muhammad Ali moved almost subconsciously to a new and higher gear. I had seen all of Leon’s fights in the 1976 Montreal Olympics, and I recall being impressed to the point of awe at the way he attacked and destroyed whatever they put in front of him. I had never seen a young fighter who could get away with planting both feet and leaning forward when he hooked with either hand.
Archie Moore was probably the last big fighter with that rare combination of power, reflexes, and high tactical instinct that a boxer must have to get away with risking moments of total commitment even occasionally . . . But Leon did it constantly, and in most of his fights that was all he did.
It was a pure kamikaze style: the Roving Tripod, as it were—with Leon’s legs forming two poles of the tripod, and the body of his opponent forming the third. Which is interesting for at least two reasons: (1) There is no tripod until a punch off that stance connects with the opponent’s head or body, so the effect of a miss can range from fatal to unnerving, or at the very least it will cause raised eyebrows and even a faint smile or two among the ringside judges who are scoring the fight ... and, (2) If the punch connects solidly, then the tripod is formed and an almost preternatural blast of energy is delivered at the point of impact, especially if the hapless target is leaning as far back on the ropes as he can get with his head ducked in and forward in a coverup stance—like Ali’s rope-a-dope.
A boxer who plants both feet and then leans forward to lash out with a hook has his whole weight and also his whole balance behind it; he cannot pull back at that point, and if he fails to connect he will not only lose points for dumb awkwardness, but he’ll plunge his head out front, low and wide open for one of those close-in jackhammer combinations that usually end with a knockdown.
That was Leon’s style in the Olympics, and it was a terrifying thing to see. All he had to do was catch his opponent with no place to run, then land one or two of those brain-rattling tripod shots in the first round—and once you get stunned and intimidated like that in the first round of a three-round (Olympic) bout, there is not enough time to recover . . .
. . . or even want to, for that matter, once you begin to think that this brute they pushed you into the ring with has no reverse gear and would just as soon attack a telephone pole as a human being.
Not many fighters can handle that style of all-out assault without having to back off and devise a new game plan. But there is no time for devising new plans in a three-round fight—and perhaps not in ten, twelve, or fifteen rounds either, because Leon doesn’t give you much time to think. He keeps coming, swarming, pounding; and he can land three or four shots from both directions once he gets braced and leans out to meet that third leg of the tripod.
On the other hand, those poor geeks that Leon beat silly in the Olympics were amateurs ... and we are all a bit poorer for the fact that he was a light-heavyweight when he won that gold medal; because if he’d been a few pounds heavier he would have had to go against the elegant Cuban heavyweight champion, Teófilo Stevenson, who would have beaten him like a gong for all three rounds.
But Stevenson, the Olympic heavyweight champ in both 1972 and ’76, and the only modern heavyweight with the physical and mental equipment to compete with Muhammad Ali, has insisted for reasons of his own and Fidel Castro’s on remaining the “amateur heavyweight champion of the world,” instead of taking that one final leap for the great ring that a fight against Muhammad Ali could have been for him.
Whatever reasons might have led Castro to decide that an Ali-Stevenson match—sometime in 1973 or ’74, after Muhammad had won the hearts and minds of the whole world with his win over George Foreman in Zaire—was not in the interest of either Cuba, Castro, or perhaps even Stevenson himself, will always be clouded in the dark fog of politics and the conviction of people like me that the same low-rent political priorities that heaped a legacy of failure and shame on every other main issue of this generation was also the real reason why the two great heavyweight artists of our time were never allowed in the ring with each other.
This is one of those private opinions of my own that even my friends in the “boxing industry” still dismiss as the flakey gibberish of a halfsmart writer who was doing okay with things like drugs, violence, and presidential politics, but who couldn’t quite cut the mustard in their world.
Boxing.
These were the same people who chuckled indulgently when I said, in Las Vegas, that I’d take
every bet I could get on Leon Spinks against Muhammad Ali at ten to one, and with anybody who was seriously into numbers I was ready to haggle all the way down to five to one, or maybe even four ... but even at eight to one, it was somewhere between hard and impossible to get a bet down on Spinks with anybody in Vegas who was even a fifty-fifty bet to pay off in real money.
One of the few consistent traits shared by “experts” in any field is that they will almost never bet money or anything else that might turn up in public on whatever they call their convictions. That is why they are “experts.” They have waltzed through that minefield of high-risk commitments that separates politicians from gamblers, and once you’ve reached that plateau where you can pass for an expert, the best way to stay there is to hedge all your bets, private and public, so artistically that nothing short of a thing so bizarre that it can pass for an “act of God” can damage your high-priced reputation . . .
I remember vividly, for instance, my frustration at Norman Mailer’s refusal to bet money on his almost certain conviction that George Foreman was too powerful for Muhammad Ali to cope with in Zaire ... And I also recall being slapped on the chest by an Associated Press boxing writer in Las Vegas while we were talking about the fight one afternoon at the casino bar in the Hilton. “Leon Spinks is a dumb midget,” he snarled in the teeth of all the other experts who’d gathered on that afternoon to get each other’s fix on the fight. “He has about as much chance of winning the heavyweight championship as this guy.”
“This guy” was me, and the AP writer emphasized his total conviction by giving me a swift backhand to the sternum ... and I thought: Well, you dumb loudmouth cocksucker, you’re going to remember that stupid mistake as long as you live.
And he will. I have talked to him since on this subject, and when I said I planned to quote him absolutely verbatim with regard to his prefight wisdom in Vegas, he seemed like a different man and said that if I was going to quote him on his outburst of public stupidity that I should at least be fair enough to explain that he had “been with Muhammad Ali for so long and through so many wild scenes that he simply couldn’t go against him on this one.”