Clay’s ability to take Gorgeous George’s shtick and make it his own, his intuitive understanding of precisely what reporters wanted and needed, and his ingenuity in breaking into Life magazine all attested to his decision not only to reinvent himself but also to redefine how others saw him. He would not be another Floyd Patterson, quiet, dignified, fearful of making a false step or offending white America. Nor would he be another Jackie Robinson, speaking out about civil rights. His search was for autonomy in a country that had historically denied black men that basic freedom.
In this sense he identified with James Baldwin, the black writer who defied every simple definition. “I did not intend to allow the white people of this country to tell me who I was, and limit me that way, and to polish me off that way,” he wrote in his personal manifesto, The Fire Next Time. “And yet, of course, at the same time, I was being spat on and defined and described and limited, and could have been polished off with no effort whatever. Every Negro boy—in my situation during those years, at least—who reaches this point realizes, at once, profoundly, because he wants to live, that he stands in great peril and must find, with speed, a ‘thing,’ a gimmick, to lift him out, to start him on his way. And it does not matter what the gimmick is.”19
Cassius’s gimmick—and his mask—was the Louisville Lip persona. “I’m the boldest, the prettiest, the most superior, most scientific, most skillfullest fighter in the ring today,” he told Howard Tuckner of the New York Times. “Man, it’s great to be great.” Tuckner responded by calling him “a professional loudmouth” and a “windbag.” But it was Clay who determined and defined the conversation, “aware that the world may despise, but never ignore, a braggart.” Since, as Cassius said, “Floyd Patterson’s got nothin’ to say, and Sonny Liston can’t say anything,” he would determine the future of boxing. Whatever Americans, white or black, desired, he would be the man in the glass booth. All eyes would follow him.20
That is, as long as he continued to win.
THE BOMBAST OF Clay’s pronouncements were not reflected in his matches, which he won in a workmanlike, unspectacular fashion. On July 22 he fought Alonzo Johnson in a Fight of the Week, out-pointing the slick, defensive boxer in a sleepy ten-round contest. Defeated but unimpressed, Johnson told reporters who asked if Clay was ready to take on contenders, “He won’t beat them boys.”21
Dundee agreed, at least for the time being, he wanted nothing to do with “them boys.” On October 7 he put his fighter in the ring against Alex Miteff, an overweight, worn-out journeyman in the twilight of his career. Making Clay’s chances even more certain, Miteff, in the argot of the trade, was a bleeder. “The slightest blow to his nose or eyes taps a stream of blood which cannot by damned by Vaseline or medicated cotton swabs,” noted a sportswriter.22
Dundee expected that Clay would win a sanguinary victory, and he wasn’t disappointed. Not long after the fight started, Clay’s punches opened old scars on Miteff’s face. By the sixth round the Argentine fighter was having trouble seeing through the blood and swelling around his eye, leaving him practically blind to Clay’s punches. Then midway through the round, Cassius landed a short, hard right—the hardest of his career, he said after the match. Miteff fell, rolled over once, struggled to his feet, and stumbled toward a corner “in the determined important walk of a drunk.” As Clay moved forward, the referee stepped between the boxers and stopped the fight.23
After the Miteff fight, Dundee looked for another old, slow, and unimaginative opponent for his young, swift, and creative prodigy. Willi Besmanoff was perfect. The squat German heavyweight had survived internment in Buchenwald as a youth during World War II. After turning professional in 1952, he engaged in almost fifty matches before coming to America four years later. Soon The Ring ranked him among the top ten heavyweights. However, by the late 1950s he was losing more than he was winning, and by 1961 he was well advanced into the twilight of his career.
Clay realized as much. To make the fight more interesting he added a new wrinkle—a prediction. “Besmanoff must fall in seven,” he told a reporter. It was an audacious statement, an earthquake moment in the history of self-promotion. When asked to predict an outcome of a match, fighters usually mumbled that they would do their best. Some, of course, predicted victory, which, after all, was just an indication of confidence. But Clay predicted a round, a show of specificity that bordered on crystal-ball soothsaying.24