The morning definitely did not show Gorgeous George in his most gorgeous light. Born George Raymond Wagner in 1915, the forty-six-year-old performer showed up at the Las Vegas radio station looking hung over and worn out. His skin had a sickly pallor; his famous platinum blond hair hanging uncharacteristically loose without his “Georgie pins.” The most famous professional wrestler in America was less than one and a half years away from retirement and two and a half away from dying of a terminal liver condition brought on by decades of heavy drinking. But at showtime, George could still muster enough energy to please the crowds.
Clay arrived in Las Vegas on the evening of Wednesday, June 21, 1961, and the next morning he met the wrestler at the station. They both had tickets to peddle. George had a grudge match—they were all grudge matches with him—scheduled for June 23 at the Las Vegas Convention Center against Freddie Blassie. Clay was fighting Kolo “Duke” Sabedong, a six-foot-seven Hawaiian of Samoan ancestry, at the Convention Center on Monday the twenty-sixth.1
Turning first to Clay, the show’s host asked about his chances with the experienced, hard-punching Sabedong. The Hawaiian had a mixed career that included wins over club fighters and losses against better boxers. He had also fought contenders, though he usually did not finish those fights on his feet. When the host asked Clay about his own chances, he was circumspectly confident. “I can’t say I was humble, but I wasn’t too loud,” Clay later recalled.2
“Who made me is me,” Cassius Clay announced. But his identity was subject to interpretation. He was like a magician, revealing only what he wanted his audience to see and hiding the secrets behind his tricks. Associated Press
The host then turned to George. In the early years of television, Gorgeous George practically invented the persona of the flamboyant, bombastic villain. After observing that the untalented “freaks, baboons, and foreigners” who passed themselves off as professional wrestlers attracted the largest audiences and purses, he asked himself, “What if a guy had a flair for showmanship and could also wrestle—would he go over?”3
George Wagner reinvented himself as Gorgeous George, a villain of the first order. He dressed effeminately—long, dyed hair; gold-plated, sequined “Georgie pins”; satin outfits; reportedly an ermine jockstrap; monogrammed towels; and robes that looked like they had been lifted from Liberace’s closet—and swished down the aisle to the ring to “Pomp and Circumstance.” Once inside the ropes, his valet sprayed a fine, sweet-smelling mist from an atomizer on the robes, canvas, and, stealthily, on the referee and opponent. The Gorgeous One performed other pre-match rituals with great solemnity and formality, but once the bell sounded he was capable of committing any vile trick or underhanded tactic to win a match. Gorgeous George was, in short, the very negation of the American male athlete; the persona he originated was equal parts drag queen, aristocratic prig, and lowdown cheat. And audiences in arenas across the country and on television could not seem to get enough of him.
The host asked George, what would be the outcome of his upcoming match? “I’ll kill him; I’ll tear off his arm,” Clay recalled George saying. “If this bum beats me, I’ll crawl across the ring and cut off my hair, but it’s not gonna happen because I’m the greatest wrestler in the world.” Floating on a sea of self-endorsement, he continued to wax eloquently about how great and beautiful he was. “And all this time,” Cassius remembered, “I was saying to myself, ‘Man, I want to see this fight. It don’t matter who wins or loses; I want to be there to see what happens.’”4
Clay closely watched the match, noting the wrestler’s grand entrance illuminated by a spotlight and covered by a red velvet gown lined with white satin. George moved imperiously toward the ring, shouting that the spectators who booed him were “ignorant peasants.” It was a sensational act, and afterward Clay vowed, “[Although] I’d never been shy about talking . . . if I talked even more, there was no telling how much money people would pay to see me.” He later told Dundee about George’s performance, concluding, “This is a gooooood idea.”
“Ni?o con boca grande!” the Cubans in the 5th Street Gym had called Cassius. But in Las Vegas his mouth, like the Grinch’s heart, seemed to grow three sizes bigger. A few days later he told sportswriter George King what to expect in the fight: “Someone’s got to go before the 10th—and you can bet it won’t be me.” There was no way he would lose, he explained. Losing a fight against a big Hawaiian just was not a possibility.5