Blood Brothers (25 page)

While Malcolm remained in New York, Cassius returned to Miami, where reporters pressed him for details about his trip. Promoter Bill MacDonald said that Clay “swore by all that's holy” that he was not a member of the Nation. “I'm not a Black Muslim any more than you are,” he told the
Miami Herald
's Pat Putnam. The Harlem dinner was not an exclusive NOI affair, either, he claimed. Members of the NAACP and Congress of Racial Equality had attended the event too.
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Yet his relationship with the Nation had just deepened significantly. The truth was that he had discarded his “slave name”—Clay—and received his “X” from Chicago. In the Nation, he was now officially “Cassius X.” Clearly, Malcolm was not the only Muslim betting on the heavyweight contender.

His denials fooled few reporters. They had seen him with Malcolm. While writers could not understand why he would associate with a man who had spoken so cruelly about the deceased president, Clay feigned ignorance. “If [Malcolm] said that about President Kennedy then he should be shot too,” he said. “I knew he said something about chickens coming home to roost, but that's all I heard.”
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That could not have been all he heard. Malcolm spent days in Miami and talked with Cassius for hours. He knew exactly why Malcolm had time for a vacation. While Malcolm may not have disclosed the details about his deteriorating relationship with Muhammad, Cassius had close ties with various NOI officials who talked with him regularly and would have spoken of the tensions between the suspended minister and Muhammad. Clay's ignorance about the Nation's politics was just another act. He knew that he was harboring a renegade Muslim.

Talking to reporters, Cassius tried to finesse his opinions, staking out territory between the civil rights movement and the Nation of Islam. “I don't believe in hate,” he said. “I don't believe in violence; I don't believe in forced integration. I believe the important thing is knowing where you belong and where you don't belong. Then the farmers won't come out with pitchforks. The cops won't come with the clubs. And the firemen won't come out with hoses.” Then he said something that sounded like it came directly from one of Malcolm's speeches. “All I know is that I'm
black
and my people are catching hell. I want some answers.”
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The questions surrounding Cassius's relationship with Malcolm troubled MacDonald, Dundee, and the Louisville Sponsoring Group. With disappointing ticket sales, they worried that too many fans would avoid the convention center in protest of his involvement with Malcolm and the Black Muslims. To counter the bad publicity, on Saturday night, January 25, he sparred for nine rounds at the Miami Beach Auditorium to raise money for a cerebral palsy organization. It was an attempt to repair his image and remind the public that he was “just a nice, sweet kid.”
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Yet if MacDonald and the LSG urged Clay to stop speaking his mind, he wasn't listening.

Still weeks away from the championship fight, reporters needed stories to fill their columns. And they knew that Clay's conversion to the Nation was a sensational scoop. Like bloodhounds on the trail, the best writers in the country followed the scent all the way to Miami. They
needed few detective skills. Cassius was tired of running from reporters, weary of hiding the truth. “Sure, I talked to the Muslims,” he admitted, “and I'm going back again. I like the Muslims.”
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Lying on a massage table with a masseuse kneading his shoulders, Cassius relaxed while reporters asked him questions. Contrary to news reports, he was not brainwashed. He could see and think for himself. “In Cleveland, the Negroes tried to integrate and you could see what happened,” he said. “The white people hit the Negroes and the Negroes hit the white people.” Rising from the table, throwing wild punches and covering his face with his arms, he exclaimed, “Bam-bam, bam-bam!” The racial violence only proved what he had already learned from Muslim ministers: integration wasn't just wrong, it was dangerous.
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The writers peppered him with questions. Are you actually a member of the Nation of Islam? one asked. “I was born a Muslim, I'm told. My race descended from the people in Egypt [and] Africa . . . whose religion had always made them Muslim.” For the first time writers heard him connect the struggles of black Americans and colonized Africans. It upset him that “the Africans are treated better in this country than the American Negro.” The “Negro” was not treated like an American, he said, echoing Malcolm.
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Cassius denied that the Muslims preached hatred. “I'm not mad at the white people. If they like me, I like them.” But a closer look at his childhood showed that he held deep suspicions toward whites. His father maintained that the Black Muslims had indoctrinated his boys ever since Cassius returned from Rome an Olympic champion, teaching them “to hate all white people; to hate women; and to hate their mother.”
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Clay Sr. was always stirring up trouble, and some of the Muslims in his son's camp thought that he interfered too much. Sometimes he argued with them, shouting that they were a bunch of crooks robbing his family. He could not abide hearing his boys talk about the Nation, either. When they did, he erupted, “Don't talk that Muslim stuff!” He complained that the Black Muslims kept him away from his boys because the Nation feared that he would drag them “right back to church.” But nothing irritated him more than when his youngest son called collect, identifying himself as “Rudolph X.” “I don't know no Rudolph X!” he yelled at the operator, slamming the phone.
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In Miami, an FBI informant called the
Herald
's Pat Putnam, telling him that some Muslims had threatened to kill Clay's parents. Putnam wondered if the combustible father might want to talk about it, so he arranged for an interview in a restaurant across the street from the 5th Street Gym. For nearly three hours, Clay Sr. ranted about how the Muslims had “ruined his boys,” stole money from his son, and threatened to take him out on a boat and drown him. He felt shoved aside by Malcolm, replaced by a man who “sneered at him.” He despised the way his sons worshipped Malcolm. “You should have seen them all,” he said. “They did everything but bow and kiss his feet.” Rudy's and Cassius's membership in the Nation angered him so much that he threatened to “whup” both of them and Malcolm. Cassius paid him no mind. “I don't care what my father said,” he insisted. “I'm not interested. I'm not talking.”
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Putnam learned quickly that he had better stop asking Clay Sr. about the Muslims. After the story was published, someone called his house, warning him that he and his wife were going to die. Putnam did not recognize the voice on the other end of the line, but he got the message. Late one night, he drove out to Clay's house and told him about the death threats. He had known Cassius since he first started training in Miami and had always gotten along with him. Clay reassured him, “Pat, don't worry about it; you'll never get another call.” Putnam never knew what Clay did, but he received no more death threats.
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B
Y THE THIRD
week in January, America's thoughts had started to tilt toward South Florida. Brutally cold winds ripped across the Midwest and Northeast. “Death and Misery Mounting,” proclaimed a headline. In the worst blizzard of the year, snow drifted twelve feet and more from the Mississippi to the Atlantic Seaboard, stranding drivers, challenging walkers, and generally making life uncomfortable. Miami beckoned.

The
Miami Herald
reported that the top syndicate bosses were among the recent arrivals. Paul “the Waiter” Ricco, Sam “Mooney” Giancana, and Felix “Milwaukee Phil” Aldersino escaped the slush of Chicago for the sand of Miami. There they waited out the worst of the winter, looking forward to watching Sonny button the Louisville Lip.
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Liston's National Airlines flight from Las Vegas arrived in Miami shortly before noon on January 26. He stepped off the plane relaxed
and wearing a champion's smile, but neither lasted long. Waiting for Sonny, Clay shouted insults and challenges. “I'm the champ! You're the chump!” he screamed, whipping his tuxedo jacket about like a war flag. “Let's fight now. I want my title!”
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Liston fixed Clay with “that evil look” and told him, “Look, this clowning isn't cute, and I'm not joking.”

Liston refused to give Cassius the satisfaction of another glance, but his ceremonial arrival and press conference were in tatters. To bypass the commotion, Sonny boarded a VIP golf cart and raced toward the interview room. Clay sprinted behind, screaming insults and waving an African walking stick. In a tunnel Liston told the driver to stop. “Listen, you little punk, I'll punch you in the mouth—this has gone too far!” Then, as Clay continued his taunts, Liston swung at him, missing with a wild right.

In the melee that followed, Sonny's wife, Geraldine, got whacked on the head, his manager, Jack Nilon, threatened to fight the entire mob, and the champion lost his cool.

The door to the interview room was shut and locked. Inside, Liston steamed, glaring at the door that separated him from Clay. Outside the room Cassius shouted, “It's a free country . . . you can't stop me from coming in.” Brandishing his cane, he banged the locked door and continued, “Free! You think I'm jiving, chump? I'll fight you free, right here!”

Red-faced, MacDonald apologized. He told Sonny that he hoped the champion would knock out Clay in three rounds. Regaining his customary sangfroid, Liston claimed that Clay's act “didn't upset me. But it got kind of . . . you know, even iron wears out.” Then, with the interview concluded, policemen escorted Liston out a back door and whisked him away in a car.

Liston said that it didn't bother him. But it did. He had traveled a long way from a sharecropper shack in Arkansas and the whippings of a cruel father. He had survived the streets, prison, and the police of Missouri and Pennsylvania. Unable to read or write, he preferred violence as his medium of expression. But as journalist Jerry Izenberg noted, “Sonny was illiterate, but he wasn't ignorant or stupid or unfeeling.” There was a sort of dignity to his sullen, brutal life. He accepted who he was and the fact that people regarded him as a thug. As the heavyweight
champion of the world, he did not ask for love or popularity. Still, he thought he deserved some semblance of respect. That, of course, was precisely what Cassius Clay denied him. Socially and culturally, Cassius transformed the title fight into a contest about many things—beauty, age, law and order, and race—but dignity was not on the list.
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There was hardly a quiet corner of Liston's life that Cassius did not invade. For instance, Sonny designed a training program with the production qualities of a Las Vegas show. Setting up shop at the Surfside Civic Arena, overlooking the sea in North Miami Beach, he charged fifty cents to watch him train. The sessions struck George Plimpton as well worth the modest cost. They began with a twenty-minute “official” film of Liston's destruction of Patterson in Las Vegas. When the film ended, an assistant removed the screen, revealing the champion, standing still and expressionless in a ring elevated on a stage. The combination of his immobile face, massive body, and fearsome reputation sent ripples of applause through the audience. Only then did Sonny begin his workouts. He shadowboxed, gliding across the ring with a sparring partner, each throwing punches, bobbing and weaving, feinting and ducking, but never making the slightest contact during their choreographed performance. Next he punched a speed bag with a rat-a-tat-tat syncopation and the heavy bag with a thud-thud-thud demonstration of rib-breaking power. After pounding the bags, it was time for Liston to receive some punishment. His trainer, Willie Reddish, picked up a fifteen-pound medicine ball and threw it with all his considerable strength at the champion. The ball seemed to explode into Sonny's stomach, but without the slightest change in expression he trapped it on the rebound. While the exertions exhausted Reddish, they hardly seemed to interest Liston.
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The last exercise was the capstone of the show. To the soulful beat of “Night Train” he skipped rope, man and music in perfect harmony. “Note,” an announcer said, “the champion's heels never touch the board. He does it all on his toes.” It was almost too much for the spectators to contemplate—the most devastating puncher in the world, perhaps the most powerful fighter in the history of the sport, was also as graceful as a tap dancer.

It was a fine show, and after it was over its star mixed with the audience, answered a few softball questions, and posed for pictures. But
from the opening day of the Sonny Liston Revue, Clay threatened to crash the gate. Wearing jackets with “
BEAR HUNTING
” on the back and carrying walking sticks, members of Cassius's camp watched Sonny train, creating an uneasy feeling in the champion's quarters. Cassius also spoke often about invading Liston's plush digs. Liston wasn't amused. “This guy is some kind of nut,” he said. “They had better stop him or I will. Enough is enough.”
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But enough was never enough for Cassius. On February 7, he made his move. Dressed in a tuxedo and carrying his hand-carved cane, he led a march to the Surfside headquarters. Denied entrance, he hollered and protested, sure that some constitutional principle was at stake. “I'm ready to go to jail if I'm breaking the law,” he asserted. “This is a public place and I have the right to be here.”
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For the generation of sportswriters who had matured during the era of the two Joes—DiMaggio and Louis—Clay's performance indicated the passing of an age when dignity framed the game. None was more outraged than Jimmy Cannon, the dean of the reverential school of sports journalism. “In the year of the Beatles, it is right that Cassius Clay fights Sonny Liston for the heavyweight championship of the world,” he wrote from Miami. “It is the time of the freak on earth. You see it all and watch it happen, but you can't believe it. It belongs in the territory of dreams. The next war must be between the sane and the insane.” To Cannon, Clay and the Beatles were the essence of modernity—of artists “splattering canvases with gobs and streaks,” of actors who “seem to be reading their lines off pieces of confetti thrown up on a windy day,” of musicians “who repudiate melody,” of “the bored children of the atomic age.”
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