But Ali did not care that she was not a Muslim. He wanted her, and that’s all that mattered. On August 14, forty-one days after they met, Ali and Sonji wed in a private ceremony in Gary, Indiana. He made it clear that he expected her to be a submissive wife who obeyed his rules and the Nation’s. The only reason he married her, he said later, was “because she agreed to do everything that I wanted her to do.” He told her that she could no longer wear makeup or short skirts. She had to quit drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, and eating pork. Sonji complied, accepting the Nation’s religious code. When they were alone, Ali revealed his affectionate side, singing her love songs and blowing her kisses. Gradually, though, friction developed between them. When Ali explained that they could not buy a house because the Mother Ship would arrive in three years and take them away, she asked him why, then, did Elijah Muhammad live in a mansion? Ali objected to her questioning him and Elijah. “Woman,” he scolded her, “you’re too wise. Don’t be asking them questions.”36
As time went on, Sonji noticed that when the Muslims were around, Ali became more controlling. “When nobody was around, he’d want one thing from me; and then in public it was another. I couldn’t understand his two faces.” Too often, she said later, the Muslims interfered with their marriage. “They wanted to control his entire life.” Being the wife of the Muslim champ became an isolating experience, especially after they began renting an apartment in Chicago to be closer to the Nation’s headquarters. When she wanted to eat at a restaurant, he took her to the Muslims’ luncheonette. When she wanted to go shopping, they visited the Muslims’ department store. When she wanted to see her old friends, he said that she had all the friends she ever needed at the mosque. And when she thought it would be a good idea to do interviews, he reminded her that she could not speak to reporters unless Herbert had sent them from Muhammad Speaks.37
Not even the best investigative reporters knew much about her. When Myron Cope asked if he could interview Sonji, Ali replied that he had to make a phone call and see “if they’ll give me permission.” The following day, Ali told Cope that Sonji could not talk to him because “they” had denied the request. “They” said it was time for Ali to quit messing around with Sonji and get back in the ring.38
In the six months since he last fought, Ali had hardly trained and had gained nearly thirty pounds. In mid-September, after he signed a contract for a rematch against Liston that would take place at the Boston Garden, Angelo Dundee urged him to get back to work. The trainer worried that the champ was losing interest in fighting. The problem, Dundee discerned, was that Ali knew that he would fight Sonny again, but he no longer feared him.39
Yet Ali still had something to prove against Liston. Most observers still believed that his last victory was a fluke or, worse, a fix. Some of his friends would not admit it publicly, but even they questioned whether he could beat Sonny again. After all, Ali didn’t knock Liston out, and many people still wondered how he had won the fight after being temporarily blinded. When Sonny refused to rise from his stool, Ferdie Pacheco said, “it tarnished the victory.” It seemed almost too easy, like Liston had handed him the title. “All you knew for sure somehow was that this kid had survived,” Pacheco reflected. “There was some doubt.”40
ALI DIDN’T QUITE remember it that way. In his mind, there had never been any doubt that he would defeat Sonny Liston. In Miami, when he was not training at the 5th Street Gym, he liked to replay the fight film, reliving his moment of glory, round by round, blow by blow. Studying the film, he recognized that he was too fast for Sonny. He could see that Liston had become slow and predictable, planting himself before he threw a punch. Liston could only hit a man who moved forward, but Ali dodged his punches, bouncing forward and backward and side to side. The film did not lie: Liston had become a shell of himself, “a shadow on the wall—bleeding, tired, suddenly aged, an imposter.”41
When Ali was not training, Myron Cope followed him around Miami. Since he last wrote a profile of him in 1962, Cope learned, the boxer’s innocence had faded as he was hardened over time by the pressures of fame and politics. Two years after their first meeting, the “Muslim champ” sounded more like an evangelical preacher at a tent meeting than a boxer, “convinced he is a beacon of righteousness in a wicked world.” Looking back on his time with the young contender in 1962, Cope realized that even then, before any reporter knew that he had been attending the Nation’s meetings, the boxer hid a part of himself. At that time, Cassius Clay had schooled the writer about the dangers of pork without explaining that his dietary views came directly from the Muslims. “Poke ninety percent maggots,” he had told Cope.42