On Thursday, November 12, for more than an hour, he danced around the ring, jumped rope, and hit the speed bag at the Boston Arena annex. When he finished working out, he showered while Clarence X and a few other large men abruptly ordered his fans to leave. A few minutes later, the champ reappeared for his daily news conference. Ali sat on the wooden stands, flanked by two court jesters, Bundini Brown and Lincoln Perry, better known as “Stepin Fetchit,” the first black movie star of the 1920s and 1930s. No one really knows how Fetchit met the champ, but his presence in Ali’s camp puzzled reporters. Once billed as “the World’s Laziest Man,” the tall, lanky comic had created a minstrel caricature based on the worst stereotypes of black men as lazy, shiftless, and ignorant. Writers could not comprehend how Ali, the embodiment of racial pride, could ever befriend an actor who denigrated blacks with his performances. “It would be difficult to find a more incongruous situation than the Clay-Fetchit association,” one writer suggested. “The world’s perhaps most famous and most arrogant Negro, Cassius Clay, has among his entourage the Negro who probably has done more than any man to label his race with all things Clay isn’t.”50
Ali didn’t see any problem having Fetchit around him. In some ways, he could relate to the aging actor. For years, most Americans perceived “Lincoln Perry and Stepin Fetchit the character as one and the same,” much the way people viewed Muhammad Ali and the Louisville Lip, an outrageous, loudmouthed character. Sportswriters and biographers have failed to recognize that Ali created the Louisville Lip not just for show business but also to hide his emerging political defiance. Experts in subterfuge, both Ali and Fetchit had mastered the game of “putting on ole massa,” a shrewd masking tactic employed by slaves. In this tradition, Ali and Fetchit embodied the old folk tune sung by plantation slaves: “Got one mind for the white folks to see; ’nother for what I know is me.”51
Fetchit understood that Ali’s shrewdness confused people, but that was the way the champ had designed it. “People don’t understand the champ, but one of these days he’ll be one of the country’s greatest heroes,” he predicted. “He’s like one of those plays where a man is the villain in the first act and then turns out to be the hero in the last act. That’s the way it’ll be with the champ. And that’s the way he wants it, because it’s better for the box office for people to misunderstand him than to understand him.”52
The following evening, three days before the fight, Ali stretched out on his bed at the Sherry Biltmore Hotel while he watched Little Caesar on a sixteen-millimeter projector. After a five-mile run earlier that morning, he’d spent the day resting and visiting with friends in his sixth-floor suite. His brother Rahman, Captain Sam, and Bundini served his every need.
Suddenly, around six fifty, he became nauseous. Ali streaked toward the bathroom and began vomiting.53
“Oh, something is awful wrong,” he groaned. “You better do something.”
“I’ll call a doctor so the press won’t find out!” Rahman said.
“Damn the press! Get me to a hospital, man. I’m real sick.”
Within minutes, paramedics placed Ali on a stretcher and rushed him to the emergency room. When the ambulance reached the hospital, a Boston Herald photographer attempted to snap a few pictures, but Captain Clarence and the Fruit ran him off. “Keep away!” Louis X shouted. Then the minister gave his lieutenants strict orders: “Nobody goes through these doors. Somebody will get hurt if they try.”54
At the hospital, doctors discovered that Ali had “a swelling the size of an egg” in his right bowel—in medical terms, an incarcerated hernia. Had Ali waited any longer to call an ambulance, the hernia could have killed him. After emergency surgery, the surgeon announced that Ali would be fine, but he would not be able to box for several months, delaying the fight. The Black Muslims suspected foul play, theorizing that someone had poisoned the champ. Patrolling the fourth floor, “the X boys”—Leon, Sam, Louis, Otis, and Clarence—guarded his recovery room. Before the police arrived, Clarence stood on a chair, giving orders. Watching the brooding Captain, Jimmy Cannon observed, “There wasn’t any doubt who was in charge.”55
Devastated, Sonny Liston mixed a screwdriver when he heard the news. He really believed that he was in the best shape of his life. All those hours of training now meant nothing. He would have to wait months until Ali could fight, which meant that he would have to start training all over again. He had no idea if he would be able to train with the same focus and the same ferocity that he had built up on the eve of the fight. All he could do now was shake his head, muttering to himself, “That damned fool. That damned fool.” Then he took a long drink.56