when I realized
that maybe boxing could
save us,
take me away
from all this.
The Next Few Years
I fought like a gladiator
ate like a champ
lit up contenders
in the ring like a lamp.
Sparred on the daily
kept my fists high
danced on my feet
like a black butterfly.
Me and Rudy Baker
battled two rounds
I sent him home crying
back to Smoketown.
Twice I laid
Donnie Hall out flat
walked all over him
like a doormat.
I boxed nonstop
and trained insane.
One thing on my mind:
NO PAIN, NO GAIN.
A Guy with a Camera
films me
dancing around
my corner,
waiting for the ref
to blow his whistle.
HEY, KID! another guy
in a baseball cap
with a pen
and pad yells
from the folded seats.
YOU THINK YOU CAN TAKE JIMMY ELLIS?
I look
right square in the camera lens
and yell back…
Introduction: Reprise
I’ll shake him, break him,
then take him out.
Who’ll win this fight,
there should be no doubt.
Cassius Clay is unstoppable
and don’t you forget
THE MAN TO BEAT ME
AIN’T BEEN BORN YET.
Cassius Clay vs. Jimmy Ellis
AUGUST 30, 1957
He came out smiling
and swinging,
strong and swift
like Duke Ellington
on the keys,
so I just danced
to the rhythm
in my head,
bobbing and weaving,
letting him tag me
a few times
so I could get a feel
for his might
for the fight
he was bringing,
and when I saw
he was getting tired
in the third
and final round
I whispered, No offense, Jimmy,
then smiled
for the cameras
and opened up
a can of Louisville blues
that he wasn’t expecting
to hear.
I threw a solid punch
with my left
to his side
and while he was distracted
with the pain
I landed a quick, clean uppercut
with my right
to his jaw
that turned that smile
into a frown
and shut all his music off.
Cassius Clay: Sixteen wins.
Two losses.
Rematch
I saw Jimmy Ellis
at Fred Stoner’s gym
and we got to talking
about the fight,
then some guys
started talking smack
about how
the judges did Jimmy wrong
and the fight was fixed
and whatnot,
so yeah, I told him
let’s fight
again.
Cassius Clay vs. Jimmy Ellis, Part 2
OCTOBER 12, 1957
More people in Louisville watched
our rematch than I Love Lucy
that week, which is good
’cause a million folks
saw my pretty face, but bad
’cause they saw it when
I took off my headgear
after losing in a split
decision: one judge
for me, and two for him.
Cassius Clay: Seventeen wins.
Three losses.
Conversation with Rudy
Sorry, Gee-Gee.
For what, Rudy?
I mean, ’cause of that last fight.
Can’t have delight if you don’t see the dark, Rudy.
Sound like something Granddaddy Herman would’ve said.
Rudy, I’m still the greatest. In fact, I may be the double greatest.
Can I ask you a question, Gee-Gee?
I don’t know, can ya?
Think we’ll ever get there?
Get where?
The Golden Gloves?
Not if you don’t quit interrupting my flow.
The kid who won this year was from Cleveland.
I know. He was a light middleweight. Strong, though.
Not as strong as the kid a few years ago from St. Louis. Never saw anybody hit that hard.
He was a heavyweight, Rudy. Name was Sonny Liston.
I swear he hit so hard, Gee-Gee, he could probably turn a human brain into grits.
Turn July into June.
That’s one joker you don’t wanna get in the ring with.
The fight is won before you get in the ring, Rudy.
What’s that supposed to mean?
Means I ain’t gonna always be there to protect you, so focus, Rudy.
I’m bigger than you, won almost as many fights as you. What I need protection for?
Keep yapping, little brother, and I’ll show you.
Gee-Gee, can I ask you something?
You just did.
What we gonna do after high school?
Same thing we doing now. Knock out whoever’s silly enough to get in the ring with us.
But that’s not a job.
It was a job for Sugar Ray. And Joe Louis.
I hear ya talking, Cassius, but maybe we ought to have a backup. Like the army.
I got two words for you and Uncle Sam.
What’s that?
HECK and NO! Until this country treats boys like me and you as human beings, I ain’t fightin’ for no flag.
True.
Now, stop bothering me, and let me hit these bags. I gotta be ready.
ROUND EIGHT
A boxer needs a ton of confidence—way more than normal people. How else could you step into a ring wearing nothing but shorts, shoes, and gloves, knowing the guy in the other corner would try like the devil to knock you out? Without confidence, you’d probably just turn around and run. I know I would!
Confidence is hard to understand. Hard to find. Hard to master.
There was one thing Cassius was totally confident about: He knew that boxing was the fastest way for a kid like him to become famous. So he made boxing his whole focus. Cassius was getting bigger and stronger, enough to play football or baseball or basketball. He probably could have won varsity letters in all three. But he focused on one thing and one thing only. Boxing was his way up and his way out. He just knew it.
Month after month, I sat against the wall at the Columbia Gym and did my homework while Cassius worked out. He was learning how to use his long arms and his quick feet—and I could see his confidence growing. Punch and move away. Pull back instead of duck. Stay out of the opponent’s reach. Move fast. Hit hard. Stay pretty.
Even with all his skills and practice and focus, sometimes Cassius got knocked down. When it happened, he got madder at himself than at his opponent. But he knew that getting knocked down wasn’t the worst thing.
“It’s staying down that’s wrong,” he told me.
Cassius knew that to be the best, he had to learn from the best, no matter what it took. When we were in high school, the boxer Willie Pastrano came to town with his trainer, Angelo Dundee. Willie was a pro from New Orleans, and he had one of the most powerful left hands anybody had ever seen. I’ll never know how, but Cassius found out which hotel Willie was staying in. He dragged me and Rudy downtown and led us right through the hotel lobby. Then he picked up a hotel
phone and called Willie’s room. I couldn’t hear the other end of the conversation, only what Cassius said. After all these years, I can still recite it from memory:
“My name’s Cassius Marcellus Clay. I’m the Golden Gloves champion of Louisville, Kentucky. I’m gonna win the National Golden Gloves, then the Olympics one day, and I want to talk to you.”
It must have sounded like a prank call. I figured whoever was on the other end of the phone would just hang up. Instead, Cassius listened, put down the phone, walked across the lobby, and pressed the elevator button. As the elevator doors closed, he just smiled at us and said, “Wait here.”
We waited for three hours.
When Cassius came back downstairs, it was like he had been pumped full of boxing juice. All the way home, he wouldn’t stop talking about what Pastrano and Dundee had told him—about how a boxer should train, what to eat, how far to run, how much to hit the bag. It was a crash course in success, and Cassius soaked it up. Every word.
“Mr. Dundee said I was a student of boxing,” said Cassius. On that day, I saw his confidence glowing.
Some people say the opposite of confidence is fear. Not me. I say it’s humility. And for most people, that’s the last word that comes to mind when they think of Cassius Clay. He was loud. He was proud. He called himself the Greatest. Even when he wasn’t. Yet. But deep down, where it mattered, he could be very humble. It was another part of him that he didn’t let most people see.
I could tell that it bothered him that his mother got only four dollars a day for working dawn to dusk. Cassius made that much from just one bout on local TV. He told me that one morning, when his momma was waiting for the bus on her way to her cleaning job, he walked up and stood next to her.
“Where you think you’re going?” she asked.
“I’m going to work,” said Cassius, “with you.”
She tried to shoo Cassius home, but he just stood there. When the bus came, they got on together, moved to the back like always, and rode to a white neighborhood across town—a place where the only black people were the ones carrying mops, buckets, and brooms.
For that whole day, Cassius was on his hands and knees with his mother—polishing floors, cleaning toilets, wiping down furniture. When Mrs. Clay paused at the door before they left, she had to admit the house never looked better. Cassius put his big hand on her shoulder as they walked back to the bus. Not many people could make Cassius Clay feel humble. But his mother did. Every day.
Birthday
For my birthday
Rudy gave me
the silver dollar
Granddaddy Herman had given him
for Christmas
when we were little.
Papa Cash and Momma Bird gave me
Elite Everlast boxing gloves
with cushions
soft as a cloud
and my name
painted on them.
And Lucky gave me
a magazine
that had a boxing story
called “Fifty Grand”
by a writer
named Ernest Hemingway,
who I’d heard about
in Mrs. Lauderdale’s class.
We read some of it,
but I decided
I didn’t like it
’cause any white fella
who calls a black person
by that name
don’t deserve
to be read.
Beat
By the time I finally made it
to Chicago
for the 1958 National Golden Gloves championships,
I’d been fighting
for almost five years,
showed my talents
on Tomorrow’s Champions
seven times,
and won
more than thirty fights,
ten by knockout.
But none of that mattered,
since Cash
wasn’t screamin’
my name ringside
for the first time ever,
because he’d gotten
into a dustup
before I left
that ended
with the cops
on our doorsteps.
I won the first two
and lost the finals
Because you didn’t keep your fists up,
and you didn’t get out of the way.
You let him hit you too much, Joe Martin
told me after the fight,
and he was probably right,
but also because
the few times
I had a little rally going
I couldn’t get
into a rhythm
’cause it seemed like
there was nobody
in the whole arena
singing my name.
Cassius Clay vs. Kent Green
FEBRUARY 26, 1958
The newspaper article said:
The sixteen-year-old pugilist
from Louisville
with quick feet
and a loud mouth
showed promise
in his first two fights
but got outboxed
in the semifinals
by the older, more seasoned,
hard-punching
Kent Green,
who targeted
the younger Clay
like a lion
stalking
a gazelle,
then unloaded
enough head shots
for the ref
to stop the fight
in round two
of the National Golden Gloves semifinals.
Cassius Clay: Eighteen wins.
Five losses.
Lucky Read
the article
to himself
on my front porch
while I shadowboxed
with Riney
and skipped rope
on the lawn.
Me and Riney
hadn’t really hung out much
got serious, but she was
visiting relatives
in Nashville,
so we were yapping
and catching up
when my momma
told us to go pick up
her order
from Leonard’s grocery store.
We were walking home
with beaucoup bags
of food and stuff,
which I didn’t mind
’cause I was working out
the muscles
in my arms,
but they hated
’cause Momma Bird bought
the whole store,
which was twelve blocks away.
I’d rather starve, Gee-Gee, Riney said,
than carry all these heavy bags,
when someone started
screaming
my name
from behind us.
Face-Off
The three of us
turn around
and see
some suspicious-looking Smoketown fellas
approaching us
like they got something bad
on their minds.
Leading their gang,
smack-dab in the front
is a meaner
and taller-looking Tall Bubba,
whose face is still not back
to normal,
and right beside him
is his new best friend,
Corky Butler.
Conversation with Corky Butler
You been dodging me, Cassius?
…
Fellas, Cassius Clay been avoiding the undisputed champion of the streets, but time done caught up with him.
What you want, Chalk—Corky? Riney says, wishing he hadn’t.
What I want is y’all off my block, but you here, and you know what that means. Pay the toll!
This not your blo
ck, Lucky answers, like he got fists to back it up.
If I’m on it, it’s my block.
…
A quarter a head. It’s three of you, so that’s one dollar.
Three of us, Lucky says, is seventy-five cents.
Interest and tax is a quarter, fool. Pay me my four quarters.
We don’t have four quarters, I say.
Then you gotta part with one of them bags.
I’m not giving you my momma’s groceries.
Then I’m gonna lay you out like you got laid out at them Golden Gloves, he says, laughing.
…
Hey, fellas, who got thumped real bad by big Kent Green?
They all start chanting, CASSIUS! CASSIUS! CASSIUS!
Oh, I’m just messin’. Can’t fight ya today, we meeting some girls at the movies. I’ll catcha another time. Gimme five on that, he adds, laughing, then holding out his palm for me to slap it.
I can’t give you five, ’cause you full of jive…
Sometimes My Mouth Moves Faster Than My Mind
I’d give you eight,
but ya teeth ain’t straight.
This makes some of his gang giggle,
but it’s the next thing I say
that has them all laughing
out loud like hyenas
and brings me face-to-face
with the wrath of Chalky.
I would give you thirty
but your face too dirty.
Can’t give you forty, ’cause—
You got a big lip, Clay, Corky says,
taking a swing
that I dodge,
just as a police car creeps by,
eyeing us all.
How about I make it a big FAT one!
How about you try? I say back.
I should knock you out
right here, but I want
the whole world to see
these fists upside your head.
Name the day and the time, Corky.
Me and you in the ring.
Then let’s do that.
Then let’s do that.