The first round began predictably. Clay came out on his toes, circling away from Jones’s left leads, flicking out whiplike jabs meant to aggravate more than injure. His head down and protected by his hands, Jones moved straight forward in a direct, no-nonsense fashion, his eyes locked on Clay, looking to land power punches. Both fighters concentrated on head shots, avoiding body punches as if they had been outlawed for the fight.37
Less than a minute into the bout, Clay made a critical error. Since his amateur days, conventional boxing experts had criticized his habit of avoiding punches by moving straight back instead of slipping to one side or the other. It was like avoiding a speeding train by backing up on the tracks rather than by jumping off them. Now, as Cassius pulled back, Jones leaped forward with a sweeping right hand, landing with devastating power on Clay’s chin. Cassius’s knees buckled momentarily as he stumbled back into the corner ropes, hitting them hard and bouncing off into a charging Jones. He was hurt, and, as the over eighteen thousand spectators in the Garden rose out of their seats as if they had been shocked, Jones pressed his advantage.
Cassius grabbed Jones’s arms, pulled him close, and hugged him like a long-lost friend, placing his face cheek-to-cheek with his opponent’s. The desperate maneuver gave him ten or so seconds to clear his head and steady his legs. When the referee pried them apart, Clay fought like a seasoned professional. He backpedaled, pushed out defensive jabs designed to keep Jones at a distance, and gave himself more time to run a check on his senses. A half minute later he was out of danger and back in control of the fight. Jones had missed an opportunity, and Clay was wiser for the exchange. He had taken Jones’s best punch, and now he knew just how fast the Harlem fighter could strike.
After the first round, the fight settled into a pattern. Jones worked to connect with another hard right, and Clay fought from a distance, content to score points and avoid damage. Neither combatant was very aggressive, and Liebling contended that both had “repertories . . . as limited as the club fighters.” In the next two rounds Clay landed the most punches, but when Jones reached Cassius with anything approaching a clean shot, the Garden exploded with cheering. It was the sort of match that the judges had to watch carefully with their eyes so they would not be influenced by their ears.
There was another factor that played against Cassius: his prediction. At the weighin he had boasted, “I’m changing the pick I made before. / Instead of six, Doug goes in four.” If he did not fulfill his prophecy, the partisan fans would interpret it as a victory for Jones. And although he increased his attack in the fourth, he was unable to hurt, let alone finish, his opponent.
As the big electric clock in the Garden counted down the seconds in the round and Jones remained upright and strong, the jeers and catcalls built like the climax of a Beethoven symphony. The spectators felt cheated, and they rained insults into the ring. “Clay, you’re a big bum! Nothing but a bum!” a ringsider shouted. “You can’t fight or write poetry!” cried another. The round ended with Clay landing a hard right at the bell, which created another stir of discontent. The round had come and gone, and Doug Jones moved briskly back to his corner with no sign of damage.
In the middle rounds Jones fought Clay evenly, but the unconditional support of the spectators made it seem like he was winning. In Clay’s corner, watching the action and listening to the fervor, Angelo Dundee was alarmed. After the seventh round, he felt the fight slipping away. Imploring Clay to action, he told him “he could kiss Tomato Red goodbye.” That got Cassius’s attention. “Dundee shook me up,” he said after the fight. “I came out in the eighth saying, ‘So long Dougie, hello Tomato Red.’”38
In the last three rounds, Clay consistently landed three or four times as many shots as Jones did. He fought with heart, cutting the distance between Jones and him and taking more chances. Victory, at this juncture, was more important than survival. Following the fight from just behind Clay’s corner, Bundini Brown beamed. “When I saw . . . how he bear down . . . and start beatin’ the man to death, he made me fall in love. I was with him from that fight on.”39