But Clay was determined to coast until the fifth and then fulfill his prediction. Ignoring Faversham’s orders, he continued his act, dancing and talking and treating Cooper like a bit player in his Cassius Clay Show. In the meantime, Cooper continued to bleed, pawing at his eye like a wounded bear. He looked to Wilson like “a red-rimmed Cyclops.” The British champion could already sense that it was bad. “You don’t actually feel a bad cut,” he said later. “It just stings and goes numb. What tells you it is a bad one is when you feel the warm blood dripping on your body. This one felt like a tap pouring on my chest.”18
Just before the end of the round, Cooper saw an opening. Perhaps, as Clay later said, he had taken his eyes off Cooper to “look at Cleopatra.” Regardless, Cooper lunged at him with a sweeping, rising left hook that landed solidly on his cheek. Clay bounced against the ropes, then crumbled to the canvas. His face was blank, like he had just come out of a powerful anesthetic. He rose to his feet quickly but moved like a drunk, unsteady, uncomprehending, his hands at his side. But the bell sounded immediately. Dundee leaped into the ring and escorted Clay to the corner.
“You OK?” Dundee asked.
“Yea, but Cooper’s getting tired,” Cassius answered.19
Dundee noticed a small tear in the seam of Clay’s left glove. While he lobbied the referee and the British Boxing Board of Control for new gloves, his second broke a vial of smelling salt under Clay’s nose, dropped ice cubes into his trunks, and massaged his legs. Later the legend would grow that Dundee’s rant to the authorities gained valuable seconds—even minutes—for Clay to recover before the fifth round. Not so. Clay had recovered fully in the sixty seconds between rounds, and he was ready to make good on his prediction.20
As Clay threw punches, small tufts of horsehair spit out of the tear in his glove like spent cartridges, noted one reporter. A punch or two and blood was flowing from Cooper’s eye in “sobbing, pulsing spurts,” splattering referee Tommy Little. Dressed all in white, the referee looked like he had been working in an active army field hospital. “Blood from the red ruin which was the left side of Cooper’s face splashed yards out of the ring and on to the paper on which I was writing,” wrote Wilson. A reporter for Time magazine said Cooper “looked like a man who had just gone through the windshield of a car.” Spectators chanted, “Murder! Murder!” and “Stop it! Stop it!” as they threw wadded-up newspapers into the ring. Liz Taylor jumped out of her seat crying, “No, no, no.” She could not watch any longer. Finally, at the same time as Cooper’s corner threw in the towel, Little halted the contest.21
Back in his dressing room, Cassius praised Cooper. He wasn’t a bum and a cripple, he admitted. “He shook me up. He hit me harder than I’ve ever been hit. . . . I was a little numb.” With his performance in England officially over, he was gracious and soft-spoken, almost as if he were auditioning for another role. But more than anything he wanted to return to America and talk with the wise men he so admired.22
THE DAY AFTER he fought Cooper, Clay returned to the United States. His victory did little to improve his reputation among boxing scribes. Jimmy Cannon summed up the prevalent opinion: “It was clear after the close fight with Doug Jones that Clay didn’t qualify as an opponent for Sonny Liston. There is no doubt about it now that Cooper has exposed him as a gabby amateur.” But he knew that after Liston dispatched Floyd Patterson in their rematch, Clay would get a title shot. Cannon’s only suggestion was that the match be held in an emergency ward, saving Cassius a ride in an ambulance.23
“I don’t need Liston,” Clay told reporters when he landed at Idlewild Airport, which would be renamed John F. Kennedy Airport at the end of the year. “He needs me.” He now fancied himself a world figure, the sort of man who could be plopped down any place on the globe and attract adoring crowds. “I’m very big in those foreign countries. They love me over there,” he said.24