That was before Clay and Moore began drumming up interest. Clay’s routine produced good copy, but while he had once been good-natured and humorous, he had now turned edgy and mean. Archie Moore was a beloved and respected West Coast boxer, the sport’s elder statesman, and Cassius treated him like a two-bit bum. When the two appeared together on a half-hour television show called The Great Debate, Clay came off not so much as an occasional scene-stealer but as a serial scene-mugger. As soon as Moore said “Good evening,” Cassius began a spontaneous filibuster, drowning out virtually everything Archie tried to say. Moore considered himself a thoughtful speaker and conversationalist, but it was difficult to engage a rabble-rouser and a shouter. “Don’t humiliate yourself,” Moore finally said. “Our country depends on its youth. Really, I don’t see how you can stand yourself.”41
As the interest in the bout mounted, the Eatons decided that the fight had blockbuster potential and maneuvered to increase revenues. Although they maintained a television blackout for the LA area, they did contract for a fifty-five-theater closed-circuit broadcast, adding a potential seating capacity of two hundred thousand. By the night of the match, Clay’s predictions of his drawing power were confirmed. The fight sold out the Los Angeles Sports Arena—16,200 spectators paid a total of $182,599, both indoor records for California. Closed-circuit venues in New York, San Francisco, Boston, San Diego, Seattle, and Louisville also sold out, adding nearly another $250,000 in revenues. In a year when prizefighting was under attack and revenues were falling off a cliff, the Clay-Moore bout was the glittering exception. The Louisville Lip, the Mouth That Roared, was a certifiable cash cow.42
The term “Battle of the Ages,” as it was called, was accurate in only its most literal sense. In two years as a professional, Cassius had filled out into a sleek heavyweight of just over two hundred pounds and had entered his prime. His face creased with age, Moore was old and flabby, with a welted scar on his stomach that looked like it was from some primitive operation. Jimmy Cannon wrote that Archie “seemed to be drowning in his own fat.” Before the fight began Clay danced lightly in his corner, bouncing gracefully and rolling his shoulders. Moore managed a few knee bends, the limbering calisthenics of an old man getting ready to jog around the block. Cassius had predicted “Moore in four,” and nothing about the appearance of the two indicated that the match would not follow the young man’s boast.43
And so it went. As Al Buck of the New York Post summarized, “a 20-year-old youth beat up a tired 50-year-old veteran of too many fights. Ancient Archie was fat and slow. He had nothing left.” Once in the ring, Clay demonstrated his superiority. From the beginning of the contest, Cassius circled around Archie, who tried to protect himself with his familiar cross-armed defense. He threw an unusual number of punches for a heavyweight, repeatedly bouncing them off the top of Moore’s head. Archie ducked and weaved, avoiding many of the shots, but not nearly enough. “Clay missed 100 punches,” said Moore’s trainer, Dick Sadler, “but he threw 200.”
The punches were not as heavy as Liston’s, but they had a cumulative effect. “His speed was too much for me,” Moore recalled. “You see, he had a style, he would hit a man a lot of times around the top of the head. And if you hit the top of a man’s head, you shake up his thought pattern.” By the fourth round, Moore was as disoriented as a man who had just stepped off of a Tilt-a-Whirl. His face, commented Gilbert Rogin, was “as red as a boy who has been in a jam pot,” and his body was covered with traces of whiplash punches. Quickly, with a flurry of shots, Clay knocked him down, sending Archie’s mouthpiece skipping across the ring like a smooth rock across a pond. Dancing, raising his arms, and admiring his handiwork, he remained above Moore until the referee pushed him to a neutral corner. Moore got up at the count of eight, but Clay knocked him down a second time. Again he struggled off the canvas, and once more Clay knocked him down. The referee waved his arms, signaling the end of the contest.
Sitting at ringside, watching the fight with a benign smile, Sonny Liston seemed gratified with the results. Clay had demonstrated that he could fill an arena as well as shown Liston that he lacked real power. After the bout, Cassius had pointed at Liston, shouting, “You’re next. I’ll fix you in eight rounds.”
“If you can go eight seconds with me, I’ll give you the fight,” Liston answered.44
BY THE END of 1962, boxing was creaking back to life. “Clay ‘Saved’ Sad Year for Boxing,” headlined the Los Angeles Times. It had been an awful year. Paret had died, Lavorante was dying, Moore and Sugar Ray Robinson were limping toward the ends of their careers, and Liston and his gang had captured the heavyweight title. But in a series of matches in Los Angeles, Clay had revealed an ability to attract spectators. He seemed, as he often proclaimed, the savior of the sport.45