In November 1961, Roy McHugh, a young reporter from the Evansville Sunday Courier and Press, finally got the assignment he wanted—a feature story on undefeated Kentucky boxer Cassius Clay. He left town early, driving 120 miles from Evansville, Indiana, to Louisville. At the local hotel where Cassius and his group were lodging, McHugh called Angelo Dundee from the house phone. “Come on up,” Dundee said. “Cassius is here. You can get acquainted.”1
When he got to Clay’s room, the boxer was nowhere to be found. Dundee was the picture of contrition. Cassius had left to avoid the interview, he said. “He’s shy, you know. Newspapermen scare him to death.” Almost before McHugh could digest the news, Clay rolled out from under a bed and bounced to his feet laughing like “a smooth-cheeked adolescent prankster.”
McHugh spent the rest of the day with Cassius, listening to his unconventional “trash talk” and wild predictions. The reporter was so captivated that he returned to Louisville a year later to gather material for a longer feature for Sport magazine. Again he spent the day with Cassius, riding in the backseat of his pink Cadillac while Cassius’s brother Rudy chauffeured the two around the town. They stopped for gas and a car wash, a haircut, a bite at his parents’ home, an evening outing at a bowling alley, and a late-night snack at Big Boy. McHugh watched Clay mooch money (mainly from him) for gas and food, flirt with women, and work a crowd at the bowling alley—greeting diners, shaking hands, and kissing babies. “‘Listen folks,’ his body language said, ‘I’m running for heavyweight champion, and I’d appreciate your vote.’”
In 1963, the Louisville Sponsoring Group, Cassius Clay’s management team, sent him to England to fight heavyweight contender Henry Cooper. By shipping him to London, they also hoped to distance Cassius from Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam. Clay came off the canvas to win the fight, but the LSG lost their bid for control over his personal life. Associated Press
It was a delightful adventure for the sportswriter. Cassius seemed to be genuinely open and friendly, as transparent as a picture window. But there were several disquieting moments. Rudy was clearly uncomfortable driving a white man around the black section of Louisville. He was solemn, seldom speaking to McHugh unless he was asked a direct question. Even then, his answers straddled the line between brevity and rudeness. Whenever they got out of the Caddy, at the parents’ home in Mont Clair Villa or the Champion Lanes bowling alley, Rudy would disappear into another room.
Rudy’s attitude toward the day’s activity was an easy read. Only once, silently and secretly, did Cassius reveal his inner thoughts. Twice during the day, Clay ordered stops at the San-Se-Re—“Sanitation, Service, Relaxation”—barbershop, where he put coins in a jukebox and chattered with a barber whom he called “Country Girl.” At one point, when McHugh was looking in another direction, Cassius and Rudy made “derisive gestures” toward him, pantomiming their true feeling about the white reporter. In a room full of mirrors, however, McHugh had eyes in the back of his head.2
Deception, of course, was essential to Clay’s profession. It was what separated contenders from ham-and-eggers. The moves Clay made in the ring—all the feints and shifts and creation of openings and avoidance of punishment—were the results of deception. Even outside the ring, deception was essential to Clay’s rise to prominence. His outrageous acts, his poetry routines, and his constant boasting hid more than they revealed. As long as he was talking, no one asked what he was thinking. As long as he spent so much time in public, few people wondered what he did in private. He showed only what he wanted others to see—but gradually, what he wanted others to see was changing.