Muhammad Ali: The Making of an Icon

The Most Hated Man in Boxing? The Early Bouts, 1963

A rctic cold gripped Pittsburgh near the end of January 1963. Temperatures of eighteen below zero, accompanied by snowfall and winds reaching thirty miles per hour, had paralyzed the city. Traffic jams, impenetrable roads, school closings, business shutdowns, frozen and burst pipes, frostbite cases, and other chaos dominated the local scene. You did not want to be outdoors unless you had to.66 Despite these frigid and inhumane conditions, however, an undeniable excitement had taken hold of the Steel City, for Cassius Clay was in town for a fight with former gridiron star Charley Powell. Even Clay’s workouts had become public spectacles, drawing crowds of over 600. The clamor notwithstanding , ticket sales for the bout were slow. The cold weather had made it difficult to get people out of their homes on a weeknight. With just twenty-four hours remaining before showtime, only 7,000 tickets had been sold.67 But on fight night, the Pittsburgh Civic Arena was packed to the rafters. What started as a trickle of walk-up business had turned into a flood. By the time Clay entered the ring, over 11,000 tickets had been sold for a gross of about $56,000, shattering the city’s attendance and gate receipt records for a boxing match, and insuring a nearly five-figure profit for promoter Archie Littman. It wasn’t just fight fans who showed up. Vast crowds of men, women, and children who had never before gone to a boxing match wanted to be at this one. They came to see whether Clay could fulfill his promise to knock out Powell in round three. They came to boo the Louisville Lip. They came The Most Hated Man in Boxing? The Early Bouts, 1963 50 Louisville Sponsoring Group to see greatness. They were not disappointed. Cassius Clay, the fistic Pied Piper, would put on a display not easily forgotten.68 That evening, fans witnessed a shellacking of the highest magnitude as Clay pounded out a one-sided, two-fisted, three-round decimation of Powell. Although some charged that Clay’s successful prognostication indicated a fix, all they had to do was examine Powell in the dressing room to understand how real it was. The former pro footballer had been reduced to a near corpse. An inch-long gash over his left eye required five stitches to close, and he spent an hour after the bout vomiting blood in his dressing room. He was told by the ringside physician to take at least six weeks off from the sport, and he indicated afterward that he was contemplating retirement. It hardly seemed worth the $6,700, before doctor’s bills, that Powell had earned. Clay took in nearly $14,500 for doing what was necessary. He had electrified boxing fans and destroyed the opposition. Powell was no great fighter, but he was competent , and the victory was impressive. Having just turned twenty-one years old, Clay was already telling reporters that he wanted a shot at champion Sonny Liston, vowing in the headline of a Life magazine profile that he would “chop that big monkey to pieces.”69 Clay was walking a dangerous line as he seized upon the promotional strategies he had learned from Gorgeous George. His transformation from a popular local boy, an Olympic hero seemingly divorced from civil rights turbulence , into an obnoxious, loudmouthed ring assassin was paying dividends. But for how long would people tolerate this? The Louisville Sponsoring Group was worried, but as long as the fighter avoided things political, he would likely be insulated from official sanction that would compromise his road to the top. The Moore and Powell fights had proven that Clay was both the most hated man in boxing and the sport’s biggest attraction in many years. For a fighter not yet perceived by most insiders to be championship material, especially compared to a juggernaut like Sonny Liston, who many contemporary observers swore was the best heavyweight ever, media interest in Clay was virtually unprecedented in boxing history. Record-setting crowds were coming to see him work. While the phenomenal response he had evoked signaled to the LSG that it was on the cusp of making enormous money on its investment, it also indicated to Clay that he wielded power. He alone was responsible for generating millions of dollars for others. Knowing this gave Clay new confidence in revealing his true identity as a member of the Nation of Islam. If people were bothered that he...