Upon reflection, Cope realized that the boxer had a “history of calculated deceptions,” prompting sportswriters to wonder, who is the real Muhammad Ali? Harold Kaese of the Boston Globe asked, “Is Clay the fellow who boasts like a Viking when he has an audience, hurls venomous insults at Sonny Liston and Floyd Patterson, and makes listeners giggle with his silly little rhymes?” Or, Kaese pondered, is he “the fellow who when alone with a few friends is quiet, serious, calculating, modest, and eminently sane?” Observing Ali, one could hardly separate the man from the myth, the boxer from the actor, because he deliberately cultivated a dual identity.43
Although he displayed no genuine animosity toward individual whites, many writers painted him as a villainous automaton, filled with hatred. Ali’s ties to the Nation, Jimmy Cannon wrote, were “the dirtiest in American sports since the Nazis were shilling for Max Schmeling as a representative of their vile theories of blood.” Yet Ali was not the naive racist that Cannon, made him out to be. His feelings toward whites were more complicated. He told Cope that whites who sacrificed their lives “for colored people” were not really devils. “It’s not the color that makes you a devil,” he said, “just the deeds that you do.”44
Many white writers who had known him before he joined the Nation refused to believe that he wholly accepted the Black Muslims’ ideology. He may have preached separatism, but he did not articulate a sophisticated view beyond that basic principle. “People seem[ed] to believe this man was a threat to America’s values because of his affiliation with the Muslims, which was seen as a racist organization,” George Plimpton observed. “What they didn’t seem to realize is that Ali himself wasn’t going around calling whites ‘devils.’ He seemed to have a mind of his own on that matter.”45
Jerry Izenberg suggested that Ali performed for everyone, including the Black Muslims. “He’d be talking with you about something, and one of the Muslims would come into the room and the conversation would change completely.” Ali would do anything to please Elijah Muhammad and gain the approval of the Muslim officials around him. “He wanted desperately to be taken seriously, to be respected, and told that he was special.”46
Ali sounded sincere when he talked about Malcolm X. Probing for answers about their relationship, Cope asked Ali about their time together in Miami on the eve of the Liston fight. Irritated, Ali snapped, “I didn’t invite him down here. He came down here on his own. He’s nothing now.” Under Elijah’s trance, Ali assaulted Malcolm’s character. Taking the well-worn Muslim line, Ali said, “Our teacher took him off the streets, a jailbird, a hoodlum, and it was Elijah Muhammad’s teachings that made him able to go on any TV. But he failed. Who is he gonna represent now?” Listening to him fume, there was no doubt that Ali had buried Malcolm somewhere in Africa.47
After Ali was called back from Africa, he adopted a new role as the noble warrior, a Muslim mercenary defending Allah’s Messenger. Whenever reporters asked him about Malcolm, Ali erupted into a scornful harangue against “that chief hypocrite.” Out of the war between Elijah and Malcolm emerged the “ugly period” of Ali’s life, a viciousness aimed at anyone who opposed the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. In his zealousness, Ali believed that Malcolm had crossed “The Messenger of all mighty God.” And that, he prophesied, would prove a grave mistake. “Mr. Muhammad will destroy him through Allah. You just don’t buck Mr. Muhammad and get away with it.”48
BY THE TIME he arrived in Boston, Muhammad Ali looked like a new man. The champ had shed the excess weight around his stomach and looked stronger, broader, and more toned. His biceps measured seventeen inches around and his thighs twenty-seven inches, both two inches larger than before the Miami fight, though his waist remained the same size, a svelte thirty-four inches. He’d never felt better. Standing in front of a department store mirror, admiring his physique, he declared, “I’m so beautiful I should be chiseled in gold. Look at that build. It’s pretty. I mean, it’s ready to dance. Right now!”49