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M uhammad Ali’s biographers have made much of the relationship between him and the Louisville Sponsoring Group, overwhelmingly praising the organization for treating him fairly within a milieu characterized by managerial abuse of clients. But what did the Louisville Sponsoring Group do for Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali other than pay him what he deserved ? What was the actual nature of their relationship? Does the syndicate really deserve the high regard that biographers have afforded it? Does its square dealing with Clay/Ali excuse its paternalism toward him? These questions will always be a matter of speculation, but as new sources become available to scholars, they become more transparent than before. Recently, the private papers of George Barry Bingham, whose family owned the major media outlets in Louisville, including WHAS television and radio, the Louisville Times, and the Louisville Courier-Journal, were donated to his hometown’s Filson Historical Society. Within those documents are the papers of Worth Bingham, his eldest son who worked as the editor of the Courier-Journal and was also a member of the Louisville Sponsoring Group. It is this collection of correspondence that for the first time gives us an inside look at the nature of the relationship between Clay/Ali and his benefactors. The material leads me to agree with the conclusion made by previous biographers that the LSG was an enormously positive influence on the fighter’s career and deserves to be recognized as such. Any study of the relationship between Clay/Ali and the LSG must keep in mind two fundamental points: (1) the LSG wanted to make money from its association with the fighter; (2) the LSG quickly realized that it was enormously The Relationship between Cassius Clay and the Louisville Sponsoring Group A Summary 68 Louisville Sponsoring Group difficult to do so because of the massive expenses that its young protégé routinely racked up. Despite their financial acumen, LSG members got few riches from their investment. Gordon Davidson said years later, “There’s no way to view the whole experience as a financial killing, or even a financial venture. These were millionaires who ended up investing, over six years, more than ten thousand dollars each—and a lot of that was deductible—and came out with twenty-five thousand, in dribs and drabs.” Although several in the syndicate believed that the investment was going to result in a massive windfall, the failure of such a sharp group to turn much of a profit despite owning the most valuable commodity in sports indicates a number of possibilities . The most interesting are that it was either exceedingly hard for novices to turn much of a profit from boxing—no matter how formidable their business sense and talented their clients—or that it was exceedingly hard for honest people who treated their client appropriately to do so.90 In the early years, while the organization was in the red, managing partner Bill Faversham, attorney Gordon Davidson, and treasurer James Todd had to frequently remind LSG members that their investment in Clay was a long-term one and that it was unrealistic to believe that the group would show immediate profits. The impatience of several members indicates that there was a strong economic motivation behind the LSG’s partnership with Clay. One memo, for example, tells the syndicate that all of the expenses associated with managing, promoting, and training the young fighter were tax-deductible. After a $300 assessment was levied on members to pay for Clay’s larger-than-expected expenses, an accompanying note explained that the problem was not Clay’s profligacy, but that the LSG was having a difficult time finding ranked contenders to take him on. At times, group members had to be reminded to be patient. Faversham wrote them to explain that bringing along a fighter the right way took time. “We have not got a heavyweight champion today, or the next day, but we have a marvelous prospect for a couple of years from now, and, as your representative, I am not going to allow promoters to push us into fights that I think are too much for the boy at this time.” Some, like Worth Bingham, wanted to leave the group because they felt that the return on their investment was not coming quickly enough, but Faversham convinced them not to withdraw. The LSG was carefully constructed with each member having a specific role, and Clay would become upset by any change in management. Bingham decided...

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