boxing

Ali’s ‘hype man’ Drew Bundini Brown finally gets his due

Jim
Hamilcar Publications

If you’re a big fan of Muhammad Ali, you’re likely also a fan of his entourage, the core being trainer Angelo Dundee and Ferdie Pacheco, a.k.a. the Fight Doctor, both of whom wrote two of the scores if not hundreds of books recounting the Ali experience and era.

But there was a third and far more colorful member of Ali’s in-ring trio, who never wrote a book, and about whom one was never written—until now: assistant trainer and cornerman/confidante Drew “Bundini” Brown. Thanks to Todd D. Snyder, author of BUNDINI: Don’t Believe the Hype (Hamilcar Publications), this noticeable gap in the Ali library has been filled.

The charismatic Brown, as BUNDINI’s publisher Kyle Sarofeen has written, was “the greatest hype man in boxing history”—a “hype man” being the onstage hip-hop cohort/motivator/emcee of a rapper who cheerleads for him and eggs him on.

“I can watch the end of the [historic Ali-George Foreman] Rumble in the Jungle 20 times more and still get chills, in particular because of Bundini, wrestling his way to Ali, hailing him through tears of joy,” said Sarofeen.

As Ali has been hailed by Public Enemy’s Chuck D for his influence on hip-hop (Chuck D hosted an ESPN production, Ali Rap), Brown can be seen as the prototype for the likes of that group’s clock-sporting hype man Flavor Flav. Best known as “Bundini,” he got the moniker when he was in the Navy and stationed in India, where as his ship pulled out, some women yelled out the word, which means “lover.”

The Florida native settled in Harlem afterwards, where he worked the counter at a restaurant near Sugar Ray Robinson’s bar Sugar Ray’s and became known in the 1950s as “Fast Black.” Also a captivating street poet/philosopher, Bundini married a white woman from an Orthodox Jewish family and converted to Judaism (he always referred to God as “Shorty”); this, along with his taste for alcohol, were among the traits that put him at odds with Ali’s Nation of Islam, but except for a brief exile, not out of Ali’s orbit. He also later acted in films including Shaft.

After meeting Robinson, he worked with him for seven years, then teamed up with Ali (then Cassius Clay) before his 1963 fight with Doug Jones. Both he and Ali pronounced “Bundini” as “Bodini,” and as Bodini, he came up with Ali’s most famous war cry, “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee! Rumble, young man, rumble! Aahh!” Ali was out of the country when Brown died in 1987 at 59, but sent flowers along with a card saying, “You made me the Greatest.”

“Bundini gave Ali his entire heart,” Larry Holmes has said. “He was Ali’s right-hand man [and] was the one guy who could really get him up to train and get him ready to fight.” Boxing News lauds BUNDINI for unveiling “an exceptionally complicated man and the orchestrator of exceptionally complicated relationships” and succeeding in “resurrecting what was one of the most enduring and important relationships of Ali’s entire career.”

Certainly, Dr. Todd D. Snyder brings a unique perspective to Brown. The son of a West Virginia boxing trainer, he is an associate professor of rhetoric and writing at Siena College in Albany, N.Y. His writing reflects his life experience, with a focus on working class masculinity, having previously authored The Rhetoric of Appalachian Identity and 12 Rounds in Lo’s Gym: Boxing and Manhood in Appalachia. He currently teaches a course at Siena in hip-hop studies, and has contributed a chapter to The Oxford Handbook of Hip-Hop Studies.

“It’s hard to think of a better background for exploring the life of a man who influenced the world’s best boxers with his words and spirit,” says Sports Book Reviews.

Snyder recently spoke with jimbessman.com about BUNDINI: Don’t Believe the Hype:

Bundini’s background was remarkable, and so is yours.

I grew up in a small coal mining  town—Cowen, West Virginia–in a really remote, secluded mountain part. It was originally a coal mining camp, and all the men in the family were miners and in the industry.

How did boxing fit in?

It got me out of the region! My dad had a gym that I wrote a memoir about–The Rhetoric of Appalachian Identity and 12 Rounds in Lo’s Gym: Boxing and Manhood in Appalachia. I grew up around boxing, and boxed in high school. But I never wanted to pursue it as a profession: You grow up around the sport and see a lot of good people get hurt—“Even the greatest—Muhammad Ali,” my dad said.

So what did you do?

I wanted to be like my dad, but when I turned 18, he wanted me to give college a try—and I was the first in my family to go. The ironic part was that I’ve never stopped going: Now I’m a PhD and a professor!

And you say in the book that you wrote it at Starbucks!

My sister moved to New York and her home was next to Starbucks, and they had all these nice tables and I found that it was a nice place to write. The day I got the book contract I went there and plotted the timeline of Bundini’s life, and no one bothered me. I guess I’m a bit superstitious: Things were going really well, so I kept going back and by the end all the baristas knew what I was doing from my stack of Muhammad Ali books! Angelo Dundee’s son called me, and I had to go out on the patio and thank him for his help.

You talked to a lot of people in researching it.

Yes. This book required an extensive amount of interviews. I spoke with Bundini’s son [author and motivational speaker Drew Bundini Brown III] 58 times, and went to Atlanta and read the  whole book to him word for word. I spoke with George Foreman, Larry Holmes, [Ali sparring partner and former heavyweight champion] Tim Witherspoon, [Ali’s business manager] Gene Kilroy–hundreds of interviews.

What gave you the idea to write the book?

One of the courses I teach is The History of Hip-Hop Culture, and Chuck D was on campus for a hip-hop celebration. He’s an Ali fan, and playfully places him as the original rapper. The students were all asking him Ali questions like, “Do you really think that?” And he said, “Why, sure. Why not? ‘Float like a butterfly…’” So I said, “That makes Bundini the original hype man! He built Ali up and served him in a metaphysical role as his motivator.” And Chuck D looked at me and said, “Someone should write that book [about Bundini].” It put the idea in my head: Here’s an undermined research gap in the Ali story and boxing history–since Bundini worked with Sugar Ray and [Ali sparring partner and former heavyweight champion] Jimmy Ellis, too. Usually Bundini gets only one or two paragraphs.

How did you get the book deal?

My publisher Hamilcar is boxing-based, and posted a blog about Bundini that received a lot of traffic. They were looking for a writer who knew a bit about hip-hop and boxing, because they wanted a book with hip-hop flair. I was the first one who came up because I write about both areas, and they linked me up with Bundini’s son. I went to see him in Atlanta in order to really know Bundini, and he opened up bar mitzvah books and poetry and postcards, and I got to know the man as a person–and it was really cool. Forty-five of the pictures in the book came from Drew, and they’d never been published before.

So what was Bundini like?

His story is so multi-layered: A black man who marries a white Jewish woman from Brighton Beach—which was extremely taboo! He marched to the beat of his own drummer, and was a true original thinker.

What about his marriage?

It was fun writing about that relationship. It was not a traditional marriage. But from the very start the book was, “This is Bundini Brown. I can’t give him a boring bio. If it were [1940s featherweight champion] Willie Pep, maybe. But this has to have flavor. I have to make it more action-packed and funkier than if it were for someone else.”

It’s anything but a traditional third-person bio.

I went to Atlanta and Bundini’s son picked me up in a Rolls-Royce—and it starts from there. I wanted you, the reader, to experience it all with me—to take the readers with me on my journey. You can pretend that biographies are infallible, but the reality is that they’re giving someone’s truth. So in BUNDINI, we see him through the eyes of his son: We usually only look at him as this wild, crazy sidekick of Muhammad Ali, but I give him the story from his son’s perspective.

You say at the end that part of what we loved about Muhammad Ali belonged to Drew Bundini Brown–regardless of whether we knew it or not.

I’ve never forgotten how one time in a literature course, we were watching a video of Maya Angelou, and she mentioned her friendship with Ali, and “Float like a bee….” She said, “That rhyme is just as good as any poem I’ve ever written,” and I knew it was Bundini’s line. Watching it, part of me felt a little hurt: As great as Ali was, it was Bundini’s line, and it personified him—and he should get the credit. So much of what I loved about Ali was stoked by him, because he was a natural born motivator and knew what made him tick. He brought out that side of him and accentuated it before the training camp for the first Sonny Liston fight—and it all might have been different otherwise. It’s like you can’t be a Tom Sawyer fan and not a Huck Finn fan, just as you can’t love Ali without Bundini Brown. It makes me sad when my students don’t know who Bundini is.

And you don’t shy away from his failings.

No one wants to write a biography that shows only the good side. Bundini’s son was open with me about his father’s alcoholism and how he’d blow money, and I showed that part of him, too. He was a very complex man: He could certainly frustrate you, and let you down, too.

You talk about not wanting to “redeem” Bundini’s reputation, nor “vilify him for the benefit of Ali’s legacy” as others have done.

Look at some of the films, like Ali [2001, with Will Smith], and there’s a scene where he steals a belt for heroin money—which wasn’t true. Or Don King: Only in America [1997, with Ving Rhames], where Bernie Mac plays him as sort of disloyal to Ali in teaming with Don King—which certainly was not the case. Filmmakers and documentarians refashion Ali with Bundini being a bad influence–a wild drug addict or court jester or class clown, even though he was funny. But he wasn’t a fickle turncoat, though he certainly did battle alcoholism. In filmic recreations of Ali history, he’s more of a cheerleader than motivator and more of a flunky or leach. He certainly was not a yes man: They’d argue about religion and some very serious stuff, and they had their tiffs. I didn’t want to make him into Superman or portray him unfairly, as he has been in films.

How, then, would you characterize him?

Think about it this way: Not a single person turned me down for an interview! They didn’t love just Ali, but also Bundini. I’d go to an interview and say to myself, “This will be the first one to say something negative,” but I could just hear in their voices how much they cared for him and missed him, and how much fun he was to be around. He made an indelible impact on the people he was close to, and while he wasn’t a perfect man–and I don’t make him out to be one—he was one of a kind. Tim Witherspoon said there’s never been a Bundini before, and there never will be one after—and that’s 100 percent on point.

The last chapter, which documents Bundini’s grim final years and death at 59, includes his last meeting with Ali in the hospital. It is incredibly moving and very sad. But you finish it on an upbeat note, focusing, like you did in the beginning, on Bundini’s son.

It’s one of the tricks I pull in the book. I knew it ended in a sad way: Most of us who know about Ali know that Bundini died after suffering injuries in a car accident and a fall at home, without much money–and that Ali helped take care of him. But I wanted to go “From the Root to the Fruit” [the title of the chapter] and also show how successful his son and grandchildren were—how he had such a big impact on his family, and that they went on do great things and rectify, in their way, some of the demons he couldn’t overcome.

So how would you sum Bundini up?

He was something out of a Shakespeare tragedy, or Dickens, maybe. A poor black boy who grew up in Sanford, Florida, with no expectations–and had a wild, unbelievable life, ranging from presidents and dictators to the most famous athletes, musicians and poets, spanning the Harlem Renaissance and the civil rights movement to the Shaft era and the bubbling of hip-hop.

And BUNDINI: Don’t Believe the Hype?

It was an unbelievable journey to shed light on Bundini’s legacy, on boxing and life. It was a wonderful book to get to write.

A conversation with Michael Olajide, Jr. on Ali, Horus and fitness

Jim

olaj1

I was very lucky to meet Muhammad Ali on several occasions, talk to him on the phone, write about him at length. I was also very lucky to be great friends with his best friend and photographer Howard Bingham, and it was through Howard that I met Angelo Dundee and Michael Olajide, Jr., at a VIP screening of Will Smith’s 2001 biopic “Ali” at New York’s Ziegfeld theater. Indeed, I was so friendly with Ali’s assistant at the time that I called her the next day to tell her how great it was, and she put me on hold for a moment, then a soft and familiar voice picked up and said, slowly, “So did you like the movie?” He hadn’t seen it yet, but I assured him it was great.

I was lucky to become great friends, with Michael, too. A former No. 1 ranked middleweight, Michael Olajide, Jr. was born in Liverpool and moved with his family to Vancouver in 1970. Trained by his father Michael Olajide, Sr. and the renowned boxing coaches Hector Rocca (Buddy McGirt, Arturo Gatti) and Dundee (Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard), he turned pro at 18, and became known as “Silk” for his exceptionally smooth footwork, hand speed and head movement. He fought Thomas “Hitman” Hearns for the World Super Middleweight Title in 1990, having held the WBC Intercontinental Middleweight Champion belt in 1987. His professional record was 28 wins and four losses, with 20 wins by knockout.

After retiring in 1991, Michael served as a fight consultant/choreographer for major movies and theatrical productions, including, besides “Ali,” Brian DePalma’s Black Dahlia and Spike Lee’s Subway Stories, Blade to the Heat (starring Kamar Delosreyes at the Shakespeare Public Theater) and Golden Boy (starring Alfonso Ribiero at City Center in New York). He’s also served as private consultant to celebrities including Josh Hartnett, Mark Wahlberg, John Leguizamo and Iman, and has worked with many, many others–Hugh Jackman, 50 Cent, Liv Tyler, Eva Mendes, Mickey Rourke, Jane Krakowski and Dustin Hoffman, to name a few. Most significantly, though, he developed an innovative boxing fitness program at top New York fitness facilities and eventually launched his own gym Aerospace, with former ballet dancer and spa innovator Leila Fazel.

“My father taught me how important conditioning is to being a true champion,” Michael says. “I think that advice has always stayed with me.”

The Aerospace website greeting, meanwhile, sticks with me: “Welcome to the most savage and serene fitness experience on the planet.” The site explains how the “machine-free sports-emulation high performance fitness center” is geared toward uniting body, mind and spirit via the best workout techniques from professional sports, including Michael’s smooth boxing moves combined with conditioning basics like jumping rope, push-ups and lower body lunges in his Aero workout programs Aerobbox, Aerojump, Aerosculpt and Aeroimpact.

“Using the techniques of professional athletes is the best way to perfect every physical and mental attribute–endurance, dexterity, power, speed and focus,” Michael says. “It’s the most efficient, effective and rewarding workout on the planet. We always say, ‘Everyone flies in space.’”

Olaj

One other thing about Michael Olajide: Forget how menacing he looks in this picture from the Aerospace website, lean, mean and muscular, with that weird, metallic eye patch covering his right eye. He’s about the sweetest guy in the world.

I went over to Aerospace in Chelsea a couple weeks ago to sit down with Michael and talk about Ali.

What does Muhammad Ali mean to you?

I grew up in the 1970s–and without my father. It was just my mom and sister and myself, and being in Vancouver, there weren’t many positive black images. One was without a doubt Muhammad Ali. But I also loved the way O.J. Simpson would run! Those were my two go-to guys, though as time went on and I got experience with boxing, Ali was obviously it.

You must have been pretty young.

I would argue in elementary school that Ali was going to kill Joe Frazier, when all the other kids were saying Joe Frazier was going to kill Ali, George Foreman was going to kill Ali. Not having a positive black male influence around, I looked to Ali, who provided me with confidence. My younger sister did not have a positive image, in a completely white, Asian society, and as a [black] child growing up you need somebody to hold on to and hook on to. She didn’t have that, unfortunately, but I found Ali and wanted to be like him growing up.

Did he influence you as a boxer?

I started late, when I was 15-years-old. Most people who start in boxing get in when they’re six, seven, eight, and get introduced with kids’ gloves–and by the time they’re 11, 12 and 13 you get used to punches coming at you. When I started watching Ali intensely–and other fighters as well, and seeing what they did—I learned certain maneuvers and practiced them in the gym and they worked so incredibly well. It was like studying a playbook: This person threw a left hand, and this is how you counter it. This one threw a right hand, this is how you counter. There were so many different ways of watching Ali—how he moved, how he recuperated when he got in trouble. It was like a bible of boxing—an encyclopedia of how to take a fighter apart.

But people always said how Ali wasn’t really a classic boxer.

He was unorthodox. As a heavyweight, with his speed and reflexes, he fought like a lighter-weight fighter in the heavyweight division, and could always get away with a lot of those things like having his hands down. But being a lightweight fighter, I knew those were not things I could do and get away with because you’re fighting guys who are just as fast as you, if not faster.

What else can you say about Ali as a fighter?

He was a very unique beast, as well. His vision was incredible, and he could predict what a guy would throw and play off that. And he had an incredible amateur career: Notice how virtually every single great fighter all had extensive amateur careers. You have to serve your apprenticeship first–the only one who didn’t and got to that level and dominated four or five divisions so incredibly was Roberto Duran.

How else did Ali affect you?

It remains in my life how he used to write poems before he fought, and how I’d see him on TV and he’d be picking at his hair afterwards–and I did the same things: I even had those tassels on my shoes! But it was all about believing in yourself: Someone as creative and independent as he was—it teaches you. At first you do what he does and then you find your own way. You just have to be shown the way.

What about his behavior in the ring?

I didn’t talk to dudes inside the ring—none of his braggadocio. That’s not me. But at the same time I understood why he did it: Instead of intimidating the other guy, he was empowering himself. Sonny Liston was big and intimidating and was a knockout puncher and brought fear in people, and the more you face your fear, the less intimidating that fear becomes–and that’s the thing with Ali. You address it and address it and address it over and over again until you see that fear as so much less than what it is. That’s what Ali did.

And Sonny?

He made Sonny so much less. In the heat of situations in ring, you still have to execute—and he took what Sonny liked to put on people and completely reversed it. It was like, “Why are you not afraid of me?” and in boxing, once you get a person hesitating, it’s over! It’s all about who hits who first and most often. So that’s what I thought Ali was able to do—perfect a style to fight someone like Liston, but there was more to it in that he developed a psychological edge that helped him over and over again throughout his career, though for some people maybe it worked against him! Like Oscar Bonavena, and Frazier, of course—it incensed Joe, and every time he gave a super human performance with Ali that he couldn’t have done otherwise, for they were both extremely skilled heavyweights and gold medal-winning amateurs with the highest skills.

How did you meet Ali?

I made a line of “aero fight icons” t-shirts with symbols describing types of fighters. The symbols were part of the “Aero Boxer In-depth Analysis System”: I used to write for Boxing Illustrated,and when a fight was coming up I’d identify the fighters and categorize them using the zodiac symbols according to the way a fighter fights. I graded their attributes on a scale of one-to-10—agility, dexterity, power, resilience, etc., so that people who weren’t boxers could see why one boxer would win over the other based on the stats and assessing these qualities. People think it’s just two guys in the ring and they scrap and the strongest guy wins, but it’s not necessarily like that—someone could bench more than Ali but still lose.

And the icons?

So I had all these “super aeros” icons, with one weighted above the other: Duran, Hagler, Marciano, the Ali icon. I met with him and his wife Lonnie many years ago in a hotel and he loved the idea of it. But my focus couldn’t stay with it and I didn’t end up marketing it–but I hope to have the opportunity to do so in the future.

How did you end up working on “Ali”?

I trained with Angelo Dundee from 1988 to ’90—and he was great. A lot of trainers don’t understand that when you’re taking a fighter over, it’ not a matter or teaching and remaking him but complementing what he’s already doing—and Angelo knew that. He didn’t say, “Ali, you better keep your hands up and go to the body and double up on the jab!” but complemented on what already existed with him and enhanced what he did so well. You have to know the personal style and make it better—bring out the better of you, and not be a conventional trainer and teach you how to stand, for example, but take what’s there and develop it and enhance your game.

How did Angelo impact you?

I think I was unique in not getting the best out of Angelo! Mentally, my love for the sport just wasn’t there any more. You have to love it, and unfortunately I didn’t have the same fire and drive. I found this out when I fought Troy Darrell on NBC-TV in 1987, who was one of Angelo’s fighters. We were both 23 and 0, and Angelo was saying, “We’re gonna whup this kid!” He was shorter than me and no way he could out-jab me–which was my thing–and he shocked the hell out of me! I beat him, but whenever I jabbed he’d slide at the same time and throw his jab and cut my reach down and connect before me! He was just so smart, and I couldn’t understand it during the fight and my cornerman wasn’t telling me how to adjust!

I gutted that fight out and dropped him a couple times and he came out stronger in the middle rounds, but I carried the fight the last few rounds. But that fight was solely on Angelo’s intelligence because I dropped him twice in the first round, and he told him to stop pulling out of the clinches, and he adjusted and adapted.

You fought the legendary Tommy Hearns in 1990 for the super middleweight title.

I lost a unanimous decision. I knew title fights were 12 rounds and not 15 anymore—which makes it an entirely different fight–and should have taken the fight to him earlier and waited until the seventh round before going toward him. Angelo said, “I don’t want you to stop and engage until I say okay,” then I listened and in the seventh, Hector Rocca said too many rounds were going by, “okay, this is the round, start taking it to him.” But I’m not a Hagler-type fighter and have to find the right time to let go. I can’t wade through punches—I’m not built for that. It’s insane how hard Hearns hit! It felt like concrete.

So I started too late, and Tommy’s an incredible boxer as well as puncher and gets on his toes and decides to box! Sugar Ray Leonard caught him, but that’s about it.

How do you assess your pro career?

One thing remains my undoing as a pro fighter: my lack of an amateur career. When you step in the ring, your instincts are an extremely important part of it. You need to trust your instincts. Sugar Ray, Roberto Duran, Ali–any great fighter you name, they all get advice, and what they need, they take, and what they don’t they cut out. They’re their own rudder–they know the direction they have to go to win. But fighters like me listen to their corner and don’t overrule it. It’s what you learn as an amateur—what you have to do. The kind of stuff that’s only the fighter’s responsibility. You have to be able to take what you need and use it, and push the rest to the side–and that has stayed with me in life. What you need in life you take and don’t put aside because nobody knows your experience like you.

So it was your work with Angelo that led to “Ali”?

I’d done some stuff: I choreographed boxing set to music for Blade to the Heat, a great play based on the fight between Emile Griffith and Benny “the Kid” Paret [Paret, who had allegedly taunted Griffith over his sexuality, died from injuries from the fight], with Paul Calderon in the lead role [based on Paret] and Kamar De Los Reyes [based on Griffith] and George C. Wolfe directing. Angelo heard about me doing that and recommended me to Michael Mann when he was directing Ali. He told him, “I know this kid I think can really help if I’m not here, who can be your eyes and keep everything true to what Ali did and knows what real boxing is all about,” and that’s how I got it. And it was incredible! I got to meet Ali and his daughter Laila and go to Mozambique, and it was just a great, incredible experience. Will Smith was great, and I cast [former champion] James Toney as Joe Frazier–and he was perfect. A lot of other real fighters were used, too, including Charles Shufford, who was a top heavyweight contender at the time, as George Foreman. Michael Mann’s set-ups were very beautiful and special, and to this day Will’s rendition of Ali was special—it showed a different side of Ali, a more serious side.

Who else did you get to meet?

I went to Africa and met Nelson Mandela and had dinner with him! It was such a good time! We talked about how much he loved boxing and Ali–and how he was one of his strengths when he was unjustly incarcerated.

You’ve had Aerospace a long time, now.

Fourteen years in the meatpacking district originally, and three years here in Chelsea. In October we’re opening a gym in L.A. Boxing for fitness wasn’t happening in gyms until I started teaching it in 1991, and now it’s everywhere! It’s fun, social, and very much about believing in yourself and finding yourself and taking your experience. My boxing career was my apprenticeship for my teaching people something fun that can go on forever.

What distinguishes Aerospace?

Our methodology is absolutely considerably different! Our level of expectancy of people is not matched anywhere else: When we train people, I expect them to get in the ring with any boxer or professional boxing trainer and know how to throw a punch, not get hit, do anything a professional boxer can do. That’s the goal, and in giving those skills, they also get all the benefits without all the headaches like detached retinas and other injuries!

I’ve seen other classes and people trying to emulate what we do, but the real love and passion isn’t there, and neither is the knowledge: Take people who haven’t boxed before, teach them head movements, feints, fading back, footwork and things that are all so intricate that there’s no way you can learn everything you need to learn in boxing! Not one fighter knows everything! You can study it forever, and we try to capture that and put it in everyone who comes here.

Speaking of injuries, what’s the story behind your eyepatch?

It’s an Egyptian symbol, the eye of Horus—the falcon-god. It’s so interesting to me on so many levels: From the beginning I was an Oakland Raiders fan, and the Raiders logo has an eyepatch and I used to wear one like it. But I wanted a different design and was always interested in Egyptian art and saw the god Horus: He and his brother Set came into conflict and Set hurt him and took out an eye, but Horus came back and conquered his brother. The story symbolized for me taking a negative and making a positive—using the injury I suffered in my career as a strength instead of a weakness. You never stop! In life you have to adapt, and if you can’t adapt, you die and get wiped out. There was a series of things in my life that I was always having to adapt to, and I became good at adapting!

What about the injury?

Initially it was an eye injury from sparring in the gym. I wasn’t in the mood to box and was having spiritless fights and had moved from Vancouver and wasn’t hungry or paying attention–and he was a hungry kid.

I was going through the motions and he whipped this uppercut out of nowhere and dislodged my eye and I had double vision from then on. I was 20 and 0 and 21-years-old or so, and I couldn’t tell the press or anybody in the media. I had to keep quiet so I wouldn’t have to go back to Vancouver, and the boxing commission wouldn’t let me fight. I was able to get by with double vision, but the eye got weaker and weaker and every fight it got worse. That’s why the Hearns fight was easier, because we both had dominant left hands, and even though he had a really fast right, I could pick it up.

But once I hit the Top 10 and had the injury, it was hard. Everyone’s so great up there at the pinnacle, and there wasn’t a greater time than that, with Sugar Ray Leonard, Hearns, Hagler, Wilfred Benitez, Iran Barkley—I could go on and on. You go through the Top 20 middleweights then and anybody could be champion today—that’s how deep with talent the division was, and it’s never been matched in any era in any division, except maybe welterweight with Leonard, Hearns and Jose Cuevas. So the slightest disadvantage is huge when you get in a fight with those guys and are going for a world title. There’s immense pressure on you, and then you get into the Top Five and you can’t afford a single mistake.

I was 28-4 with 20 knockouts. They say 27-5, but I say 28-4 because I knocked the guy out [Dennis Milton, in 1989] and the ref stopped it, but these guys where we fought upstate [Albany] were connected and it was a non-TV fight for $100,000—-which was unheard of–and the guy ran around and shouldn’t have held his hands up. I dropped him and he was out and the ref waived the fight off and sure enough, they waited and there was a controversial decision, and they decided that because they stopped the fight because the ref thought he heard the bell! It was so crazy it was out of a movie! Randy Gordon, the commissioner, got a visit from the kid’s managers, and [boxing writer] Michael Katz wrote about it, so did Wally Matthews. Randy told Matthews, “I had to give the fight to Dennis.” Matthews said, “Why do that when it was obviously a knockout for Olajide?” Randy said, “His management said if I didn’t give the fight to him, they’d throw me out the fucking window!” Nobody wants to get thrown out of a window!

Any other thoughts about Ali?

I first met Ali in the early ‘80s, in Vegas. Maybe it was a Tyson fight. Me, Dad, my little brother. There was a big crowd commotion following Ali, and beside him was Bundini [Drew Brown Bundini, Ali’s assistant trainer, cornerman and colorful sidekick]. Bundini looks at me and says, “Hey! You’re that kid Olajide, right? I’ve been watching you!” and he goes, “You wanna meet the champ?” You’re kidding me! So Bundini brought me up to Ali’s room, and that’s how I met him.

They say there will never be another boxer like him? I don’t think there will ever be another human being like him! He was so beyond boxing in what he stood for and what he was able to do. And he appealed to so many people for so many reasons. It was his character, not his color—and the ability to not be affected by the superficial, like so many people. That’s unfortunate in our society.

World Kindness Day, Muhammad Ali and Jack Nicklaus

Jim

It’s horribly ironic that the Paris massacre took place on of all days, World Kindness Day, yet altogether fitting that the man who most exemplifies kindness is the world’s most famous Muslim.

“Kindest person I know?” tweeted Matt Lauer. “@MuhammadAli. Always has been, always will be.”

Hear! Hear!

Ali is somehow always in the news. It’s always a big anniversary of one of his famous fights, or the passing of another opponent, another big endorsement deal, publicized support for a person or cause or sports team, and of course, concern for his health.

In the last few weeks have come new reports of his impending demise, which resurface understandably at least once every year. But they were quickly denied by a family spokesman, and sure enough, tweets under both the @Muhammad Ali and @realALI_me Twitter handles have continued, some with photos showing the Greatest of All Time if not lively, most certainly alive.

But the big Ali news of late came last week when it was announced that Jack Nicklaus has been chosen to receive the Sports Illustrated Muhammad Ali Legacy Award, which was established in 2008 to honor athletes and sports figures who have embodied the ideals of sportsmanship, leadership and philanthropy. It was renamed in tribute to Ali last month during a ceremony at the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville that was attended by Ali, his wife Lonnie, and such notables as George Foreman, Larry Holmes and Shaquille O’Neal.

Ali and Jack remain my two biggest sports heroes, and I’ve been lucky enough to interview them both.

“It gives me great pleasure to know the first Sports Illustrated Muhammad Ali Legacy Award will be given to one of sports’ biggest living legends, Jack Nicklaus,” Ali said, though I’m sure Lonnie read his statement. “Jack’s passion for excellence on the golf course is only surpassed by his love and passion for children and their well being. For decades, he has used his celebrity to bring awareness and support for children’s health. I can not think of a more deserving person for this special inaugural award than the Golden Bear, himself.”

Jack received the Congressional Gold Medal earlier this year (along with the Presidential Medal of Freedom—which he also has, it’s the highest honor given to a U.S. civilian), and now joins Special Olympics founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Earvin Magic Johnson as Legacy Award honorees.

“There are very few in the sporting world who are more synonymous with the word ‘legacy’ than Muhammad Ali, so to have his name attached to the prestigious Legacy Award is so fitting,” said Jack. “He is not only known universally as the ‘Champ,’ but he has been a wonderful global ambassador for sports and our country. This is a marvelous way to honor his contributions past and present, and to ensure that generations going forward will have the opportunity to learn, respect and admire all Muhammad Ali has done for the sporting world. That is why to be the first recipient of the Ali Legacy Award is both humbling and an honor.”

What I love so much about this is that Jack comes from a completely different world than Muhammad—white, establishment, well-to-do, the type who likely would’ve hated him when he was Cassuis Clay and especially after he changed his name and religion and refused induction into the armed forces. But Jack was always a great sports fan and greater sportsman, and he and Ali famously met at the 1996 PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club in Ali’s Louisville hometown.

Ali actually had a previous experience on a golf course that was also famous–and nowhere near as pleasant. Just before his first fight with Ken Norton in 1973, he was hitting golf balls at a driving range and sprained his ankle. He explained that he was bored just standing there and hitting balls, and decided to try driving them after a running start. Ali went on to lose the Norton fight on a split decision, and suffered a broken jaw in the process.

In 1999 Jack was chosen as Sports Illustrated’s Individual Male Athlete of the 20th Century.

“Jack is the ultimate ambassador for golf and the sporting world,” said Sports Illustrated group editor Paul Fichtenbaum. “From his play, which set the standard in golf for decades and is still held up as the benchmark today, to his successful business pursuits and tireless efforts to support a range of charitable causes, Jack is one of a kind. Having spent a lifetime using his celebrity and influence for philanthropic endeavors and goodwill missions while serving as an inspiration for so many people around the world, Jack represents the ideals of the Legacy Award and stands up perfectly next to the award’s namesake, Muhammad Ali.”

Indeed, Jack has supported numerous charities and with wife Barbara started his own–the Nicklaus Children’s Health Care Foundation, which provides pediatric services in various communities
nationwide and has raised tens of millions of dollars over the last decade.

Ali, of course, has devoted his life to promoting world peace, civil rights, cross-cultural understanding, interfaith relations, hunger relief and humanitarianism. His name has been attached to at least a score of charities and institutions, including the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center.

He remains the role model for courage and grace in the face of enormous challenges and odds, and that he is still here is a blessing for all of us.

Tales of Bessman: Of Magic and Muhammad Ali

Jim

I don’t believe in magic or anything, but I did actually levitate once.

It was at the Dane County Coliseum in Madison, the night of Oct. 30, 1974–until Obmama’s election, the happiest night of my life, the night Muhammad Ali fought George Foreman in Zaire.

Not a day had gone by from June 25, 1967, when he was stripped of his heavyweight title five days after his conviction by an all-white jury for draft evasion (“I ain’t got nothing against no Viet Cong,” he said, famously. “No Viet Cong never called me nigger.”) and sentenced to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine, to the historic “Rumble in the Jungle” with the seemingly invincible champion Foreman, that I hadn’t dreamed of him regaining that which had been taken, not only from him but from all of us for whom he represented so very many things starting with opposition to the war in Vietnam and ending with the fight for justice for all—including, on this glorious night, himself.

Maybe someone did, but I don’t recall anyone giving Ali much of a chance in hell. In fact, the few people who loved him since his Cassius Clay beginnings (including me) and the many more who had grown to love him for the dignity in which he dealt with his questionable crime and its indisputably costly consequences, genuinely feared for his health, if not his life at the hands of the feared Foreman, who punched so hard that he seemed to actually lift both Joe Frazier and Ken Norton into the air.

But when he dropped Foreman at 2:58 of the eighth round, as Foreman went down, everyone in the small Coliseum crowd stood up simultaneously, and when I sat down again, after the knockout’s count-out, I was in a different row. I was so high on joy that I levitated myself into the row behind me.

It was his greatest victory—that and his 8-0 unanimous Supreme Court decision overturning his draft evasion conviction and affirming his right to refuse induction on religious grounds—when everyone knew that, in fact, he never would have seen combat anyway, and had refused induction—at the incalculable price of the best years of his boxing career and the intense hatred of much of white America–out of principle.

I’ve been lucky to meet Ali over the years on a handful of occasions (including a small dinner party) and even spoke with him on the phone and become big friends with his best friend, the legendary photographer Howard Bingham. And today I wish the Greatest of All Time a happy 73rd birthday after defying the odds once again.

I’m referring, of course, to his biggest and longest fight, against the ravages of Parkinson’s Syndrome, which he was diagnosed with in 1984. I just read where the average survival span while suffering from Parkinson’s is 16 years. “By that estimation it is extraordinary that Ali has lived beyond his late 50s,” wrote Jeff Powell in a South African independent newspaper group’s online service.

“Thirty years, going on 31 now, is a monumental tribute to the fighting spirit which continues to infuse Ali’s life so long after it galvanized the hardest game of all, nerved him to champion civil rights in America, steeled him to oppose the Vietnam War and even now rouses him to condemn the violent extremists who pervert the religion to which he converted,” wrote Powell. I couldn’t have put it better myself, hence I gladly quote him.

Powell’s full piece is here, but I’ll take one more line from it—“Parkinson’s has virtually silenced what was once the most loquacious tongue in sport but it has not dulled a kaleidoscopic mind as dazzlingly brilliant as his footwork and handiwork in the ring”—while adding that the awful disease has not stopped him from continuing his path of greatness, albeit at a much slower pace, never complaining, never shutting himself off from people, though he long ago lost the ability to dance, as he did so adroitly in the ring, let alone speak.

But today, on his birthday, fears for his life have resurfaced to a greater degree than before the Foreman fight. Just after spending two weeks in the hospital for what was thought to be pneumonia, then diagnosed as a severe urinary tract infection, he was readmitted after reportedly being “unresponsive” at home, then released again yesterday. All this follows his absence at the October premiere of the I Am Ali documentary, and periodic reports of his imminent demise.

Yet somehow he’s still with us, thanks to his courage, determination and will to live and essentially be there for us all.

He has blessed us with a career of history as an athlete, celebrity and world statesman, and blessed us more with his continued example of over 30 years of holding his head high in proud in the face of the most debilitating adversity. Again, the word “dignity” comes to mind.

My birthday wish for him remains selfish, that he will continue to bless us and the planet with his presence, against the inevitably ever-increasing odds that he always manages to surmount with his special magic, or as Powell put it, “with the fortitude with which he resisted the sledgehammer punches of Sonny Liston, Foreman and so many others in a golden era for heavyweight boxing.”