Ghosts of Manila - Mark Kram [32]
“That’s not me,” Clay said. “Do I look dumb?”
“Listen. Look at me. What do you see?”
“You got some years on ya, not much else.”
“Do I talk like I got a mouthful of mush? You see a man behind these eyes, a working brain?”
“Come on, Mr. Archie,” Clay said. “I don’t like starin’ at people.”
“Just get out like me,” Archie said. “That’s all I want. You’re a good kid.”
Friction soon broke out in the camp. All the young trainees had steady chores, and Archie insisted they be carried out; just as vital as good gym habits. Clay began to object to the meniality. It disfigured his idea of his own rank. “I ain’t washin’ dishes no more,” he told Archie. “I ain’t no pearl diver.” Eventually, Archie called Bill Faversham, head of the Louisville Syndicate, saying: “I have to ask you to bring the boy home. My wife is crazy about him, my kids are crazy about him, and so am I. But he just won’t do what I tell him to do. He thinks I’m trying to change him in some way, but all I want is for him to grow.” Faversham said that, maybe, he needed a good spanking. “He sure does,” Archie said, “but I don’t know who’s going to give him one, including me.”
Archie summed up his view of Clay years later. “Underneath,” he said, “he’s a fine human being. But his ego and fears are always in battle, and sometimes it leaves him empty inside. He’s always going to be that, a lonely and hollow man. He’s scared of life, never learned to live it right. He wanted to listen. But his ego wouldn’t hear. I’m not so sure the Muslims are using him. It may be the other way around.”
Two years later Archie got a spanking from Clay. He must have been flattered even to get the bout, for he had begun his career in 1936, and here he was in 1962 being taken seriously. Well, not that much. Clay advertised what he thought of Archie by hiring a sixty-three year-old sparring partner and another named One-Round Andrews. He put Archie away in the predicted four rounds, and the crowd booed as he stomped around Archie, shouting: “Where’s the dishes? Where’s the laundry? Gimme the laundry!” After the fight he visited Clay. “I’m tired,” he said. “I’m done. Never show up other fighters, son. You may be coming down yourself one day.” Clay shrugged him off, laughed; to him, Archie was just a busted-out swami.
Clay soon moved to Miami to be under the eyes of Angelo Dundee at the Fifth Street Gym, a specialist in Cuban fighters with a large influence among the national press. He immediately saw in Clay a heavyweight with a welterweight’s speed, as rare as finding a jaguar on the streets of Kansas City. He was a shrewd matchmaker, crucial for a young pro. Overmatch him, put him in against the wrong style, and his will can dissipate. Dundee guided him smartly when he looked desultory. He kept the atmosphere light, never indicating in any way he wanted any part of Clay’s stage. Instruction by indirection worked best with Clay; make him think that all was his discovery alone, that a change in technique was something he had on his mind all along.
After the Archie Moore fight Clay got his first close glimpse of Sonny Liston, the champion. Sonny drew up to him as he was rouging parts of his face with a red powder from a disc, and Clay said, “I keep lookin’ like an angel ’stead of a punched-up fighter.” Sonny was almost avuncular in approach, putting a hand on Clay’s shoulder and saying: “Take care, kid. I’m gonna need you. But I’m gonna have to beat you like I’m your daddy.” Clay was speechless, which alone impressed a veteran manager who was there. “The kid looked at Sonny,” Ketchum said, “like Sonny had a gun to his head. Don’t let anybody tell ya that Clay wasn’t scared to death of Liston.” Sonny was in no hurry; prison does that to a man. Though he insisted otherwise much to the annoyance of the Syndicate, Clay wasn’t ready to trade leather or blinks with the inglorious, aspiring sociopath.
Much doubt followed Clay’s progress. The public and the old heads in boxing were used to seeing big, coiled men with the skimpy moves like Joe Louis,