Ghosts of Manila - Mark Kram [33]
There really was no reason to believe that Clay couldn’t handle a big punch. Early in 1962, Sonny Banks had burned him with a left hook, dropping him early in a Garden fight, and he got up to knock Banks out in the fourth. Dundee sighed with relief; he had seen what you can never foresee, a positive response to a direct, crumpling hit. Clay returned to the Garden some time later to meet Doug Jones. The newspaper strike at the time did not please him. But he found an outlet before the New York legislature, where a hearing was being held on boxing. One legislator asked if all his seventeen victories (fourteen by knockout), being suspicious of his predictions, were on the level. “They say it take a crook to know a crook,” Clay said. He missed his prediction against Jones. Trying to win over the crowd, he entered the ring with tape slashed across his mouth. They howled injustice when he was given the decision.
Despite hectoring the Syndicate for a shot at Liston, who didn’t want him anywhere near him, Clay showed up in London for more controversy against Henry Cooper, a chivalrous and proud left hooker. British heavyweights were not respected in the United States, but Cooper was of solid mettle and was cherished, with one big negative—a butter face. But he was a serious man, not a straight line for Clay’s comedy. The Brits weren’t too enamored of Clay, though Noël Coward pronounced him a man of “grand style.” He had emulated Archie Moore with his dress, and having gone to a hatter to be measured for a bowler, the man told him his head was lopsided. “You mean I’m not perfect!” Clay shouted. “Can’t be.” One other beauty observation was made during the physical exam when the doctor said: “My God, man, you do have an extraordinary arse!”
The fight found Angelo Dundee in the middle of an incident that is still misapprehended. With blurring combinations, Clay dug a deep cut on Cooper’s eye. In the third round, Cooper banged a high-grade left charge off Clay’s jaw, dropping him to the count of two as the bell rang. Unaided, Clay moved back to his corner, where Dundee motioned to the ref to examine a split in Clay’s glove. The story came down through the press and British public that extra time was bought by the request for a new glove. No new glove was produced, no time was lost, yet many at ringside believed that Dundee had slit the glove with a razor to give Clay’s groggy head time to clear. “Never happened,” Dundee told the press. It didn’t help matters that Clay then carved Cooper into a filet. Accusations of tampering with the outcome spread through the crowd, and that part of the press that disliked Clay later embellished the harmless incident. Clay said afterward he got tagged because he had looked down and was distracted by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Having worn a royal red robe into the ring, he was now being hatted with a crown by his brother, Rudy. Dundee stopped the coronation, saying: “Get out of here quick. This crowd’s going to kill us.”
Clay had been in with some genuine bangers, did not for the most part have the usual dreamy skate through the ranks. His narcissism had deceived; he could take a real shot to the mouth. But the problem that would detonate, be one for many years, was still embryonic, known by only a few. “The Louisville people,” Odessa said, “should never have sent him to Miami.