The comment prompted an exchange of insults.
“What have I got to spy on you for? You’re no fighter,” Sonny shot back, and then offered Cassius a job as his sparring partner.
But Sonny was out of his league in the game of the dozens. “You ain’t so hot,” Clay said. “I could leave both legs at home and beat you.” Sonny was nothing but a “big ugly bear,” he shouted as he shifted to a more personal assault. “Ugly! I hate him because he’s so ugly. I’ll murder the bum,” he told everyone in the gym. Then he began to climb through the ropes to get closer to the champion.18
Liston charged. Clay scrambled back through the ropes to the security of the ring. What had started good-naturedly as a publicity stunt had not gone well for Sonny, and he was angry. “I’m not training for Patterson—I’m training for you,” he fumed as he left the gym. Clay smiled. It was a small, early victory in his campaign against Sonny Liston.
ON MARCH 6, a large gathering of reporters and radio and television men greeted Clay when he stepped off the train at Pennsylvania Station. Wearing a brown sports jacket and gray slacks, he looked fresh after a long ride from Miami, but his voice was subdued, at least at first. Was he surprised that the fight had attracted so much interest? a sportswriter asked. “That’s only natural,” he said matter-of-factly. “The fans know what they want. They’re coming to see me—to see the greatest.”19
It was the beginning of operation hype, but his quips were not covered in the Times, Daily News, Herald Tribune, Journal-American, or any other New York City newspaper. The timing of Clay’s campaign could hardly have been worse. Cassius, the sportswriter’s dream, was silenced by an army of linotype workers, photoengravers, paper handlers, office boys, and other members of Local No. 6 of the International Typographical Union and a patchwork of affiliated organizations. They had gone on strike against the owners and publishers of New York City’s seven major newspapers, walking off their posts on December 8, 1962, and not returning for 114 days.20
For New York sports fans and gossip devotees, it was like a citywide blackout. The strike cut off the circulation of 5.7 million daily and 7.2 million Sunday newspaper copies in a city where newspapers dictated the rhythms of millions of lives. No Arthur Daley and Gay Talese (New York Times) or Red Smith (New York Herald Tribune) with their morning coffee; no Dick Young (New York Daily News) or Walter Winchell (New York Daily Mirror) for their subway rides to work; no Milton Gross (New York Post) for their subway rides home; no Dan Parker and Jimmy Cannon (New York Journal-American) or Westbrook Pegler (New York World-Telegram & Sun) as they relaxed after dinner. Although on February 28, 1963, New York Post publisher Dorothy Schiff abandoned the other owners and resumed the publication of her paper, the rest of the magnates grimly fought the unions.
Of all sports, the strike had the greatest impact on boxing. The major professional and college team sports have their seasons, with game schedules and times readily available and widely distributed. But boxing has no such predictability. Matches are made and scheduled willy-nilly, and promoters depended on sportswriters to promote the contests by visiting training camps, interviewing combatants, and generally creating the sense that each upcoming battle promised to be the greatest grudge fight since the Paleolithic era. It was the sportswriters who awarded the pugilists personality quirks, created heroes and villains, and imbued the sport with drama.
Better than any other fighter, Clay understood the role of sportswriters and sought to give them what they wanted when they wanted it. Arriving in a city where he had an upcoming fight, he acted like he was running for mayor, prepared to talk to every voter and kiss every baby. There was hardly a newspaper, television, or radio reporter whose attention he did not covet. “The only ones I send away,” he admitted, “are those guys from the little radio stations—they put you on at 4:30 in the afternoon when no one’s at home and no one’s listening.”21