On the 68th birthday of the greatest

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By Larry J. Kolb
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It has been one of the great honors of my life to be a friend of Muhammad Ali. We met first when I was chosen to accompany him on a good-will tour to Japan. After a week together in Tokyo, we were friends, and after that I spent years travelling the world with him. On humanitarian missions and promotional tours, and even twice on secret diplomatic missions covertly arranged by the White House.
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For a kid like me, just twenty-eight years old when I became a close friend of the most famous and most beloved man on earth, what a life it was. I was meeting presidents and kings and dictators. I was enjoying the elaborate spectacle of Mobutu Sese Seko's birthday party for his wife; or, actually (and this part was said to be a Zairian state secret) for his identical twin wives. I was in the Bahamas, in Muhammad's last training camp, sitting around the rec room with Muhammad and his best friend Howard Bingham and others, cheering on John Travolta as he danced around the room swinging Muhammad's wet jock strap over his head.
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I was learning my reaction to gunfire (not good), when shots are fired in Muhammad's bedroom by his bodyguard Chicago cop Pat Patterson when a riot of pissed off sparring partners and spit bucket carriers breaks out a few hours before the last fight of Muhammad's career, and the bullets happen to miss me and my groin by less than six inches before ripping into a dresser and through a couple of Muhammad's shirts; when that happens, I learned, I don't handle gunfire all that well.
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I was falling in love with beautiful women glimpsed across the room in nightclubs. I was meeting half the journalists on earth and learning how to deal with them. I was up late with Muhammad -- in hotel suites, when everyone else was asleep, and after he'd had a catnap -- talking about philosophy and religion and power and pussy. Of all Muhammad's favorite topics, and all mine, those were the ones which overlapped.
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And for all the hundreds of hotels I must've stayed in with Muhammad, I also must've spent the night in Muhammad's home in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago and the Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, and on his farm in Michigan, at least 50 times, because Ali was not the kind of man to let you stay in a hotel, not if you were his friend and he had room for you.
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He is probably the best man I will ever meet. He is wise, thoughtful and generous, and I believe that's why he is universally beloved. It's not only that he was the heavyweight champion. He transcended boxing and sports. It's that he is a champion in his very soul.
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I have gathered this assembly of photos and memories on the occasion of Ali's 68th birthday. If he were in better health, he would be in Haiti right now.
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Muhammad Ali was born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr., on January 17, 1942. On January 17 he is be 68 years old.
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Here is a Howard Cosell tribute which was aired as part of Muhammad's 50th Birthday television special.
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GET UP, SUCKER!
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This is probably the most iconic Ali photo of all. Muhammad standing over Sonny Liston, during the first round of their rematch, in Lewiston, Maine, on May, 25, 1965, Muhammad taunting "Get up, sucker!"
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And here is a video of the entire fight. It was said that Liston took a dive, that Liston was felled by a phantom punch. But years later, super slow-motion imagery of the fight from another angle showed Ali delivering a devastating punch.
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If you watch the entire fight, you will note that the referee was Jersey Joe Walcott, himself a former world heavyweight champion. And here is my sweetest memory of all my sweet memories of acts of kindness by Muhammad. I've watched him do many amazingly kind and generous things. But for some reason this is the one that comes back to me most often. I don't remember the year, but it was sometime in the early nineties, and somewhere in New York, at one of dozens or hundreds of charity events I attended with Muhammad. A black tie dinner. Sitting to Muhammad's right was Jersey Joe Walcott, an old man by then, and nobody recognized him, or paid any attention to him. People were lining up to shake Muhammad's hand and ask him to autograph their programs. And most of them were bumping Jersey Joe in the process of making their way to Muhammad. I was sitting on Muhammad's left. He pulled my face right up to his and whispered to me: "I want you to get up and work that line and tell all these people Jersey Joe is right there and he is also a great heavyweight champion, and Muhammad is not going to sign anything for you unless you ask Jersey Joe for his autograph first." And, of course, it worked.
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Here's a nice memory about the Rumble in the Jungle.
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I like this video and music package.
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Here's a link to Muhammad post-fight interview just after he destroyed George Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle, in Zaire.
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The first Cassius Clay - Sonny Liston weigh in, 1964, in Miami Beach. It convinced many, including Liston, that Clay was crazy.
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Cssius Clay's Sonny Liston poem
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CASSIUS CLAY CONQUERS THE BEATLES AND SONNY LISTON
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Muhammad's Recipe for Life
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Muhammad's poem on truth
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MUHAMMAD ON HIS GREATNESS, AND ON RACISM AND VIETNAM
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The great and famous Michael Parkinson interview of Muhammad Ali.
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Michael Parkinson picked the wrong book to bring up during his interview with Muhammad. For some reason, Muhammad didn't take well to that Budd Shulberg book. And yet, I ate three or four very happy and friendly meals with Muhammad and Budd after that interview. Somehow, during that interview, Parkinson brought out a side of Muhammad that I have seen many times, but that, as Muhammad aged, we saw less and less of. After Elijah Muhammad's death, Muhammad renounced the racist teachings of Elijah Muhammad and embraced true Islam.
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There was always the sweet Muhammad and the angry, crazy, righteous Muhammad. What you were hearing, of course, when you heard those conflicting voices inside Muhammad, were echoes of Cash and Bird.
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Cash was Muhammad's nickname for his father, Cassius Marcellus Clay, Sr. A wild man, womanizer, and braggart of biblical proportions. "He ain't the greatest," Cash would say indignantly when someone fawned over his son. "I'm the greatest."
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Bird was Muhammad's nickname for his mother, Odessa Clay. You'd have to look a long time to find a sweeter, kinder woman.
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Once you knew them, you came to realize that Cash and Bird have been warring inside their son forever. And that, as Muhammad ages, Bird is winning.
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And now Muhammad is age 68.
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Use this link to send a birthday message to Ali..
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4 Comments

By Ashe on January 17, 2010 1:05 PM

Strange the way you can take someone as interesting as Ali and a director as gifted as Michael Mann and produce one of the most unremarkable biopics in all of history.

PS: After filtering through more of your comments on the previous entry, I saw that you had already confirmed it was the actual shot of Majid (or whomever). Again, there's an abbreviated version of that shot at 13:24. Unfortunately, I do not see it as a smoking gun at all. Like the movie's final shot, these shots of Majid (or whomever!) explain absolutely nothing.

God, I love this movie.

By Matt Walker on January 17, 2010 3:44 PM

Does it not bother anyone that Muhammad Ali went to a Klan rally and advocated for the separation of the races, belittled Joe Frazier with racist taunts though he was someone that gave him financial support during his ban from boxing, and that he continuously cheated on many of his wives?

If I believed in Karma I'd say that it's evidence is in his current condition...but I don't, so I won't bother.

By Shawn McGuire on January 17, 2010 7:07 PM

I saw When We Were Kings back when it came out I and was amazed at his ability to be so bold, yet so undeniably charismatic. I had never heard anyone say the things he said. To know someone like that? I couldn't even imagine. You are truly fortunate to have him in your life, Roger. Great 50th birthday clip. It made me cry. I know you speak about many things other than film with you friends, but did you ever speak with Ali about films? I'm curious to know what his taste was like, or if he even liked to watch movies.

By Ina JONES on January 17, 2010 8:52 PM

Ali did some great things in life...who can take that from him. No one is perfect and hopeful he has repented for all his wrong doings.

Happy 68th birthday Ali!