Robert Lipsyte, sportswriter, journalist, author and former ombudsman for ESPN, started covering Muhammad Ali in the 1960s. In this extensive and personal interview, recorded a few days before Ali’s funeral, Steve Jaxon began by noting that it had been a very busy week for his guest, who had a lot to say about Ali.
“It’s been a very busy week, and kind of a bittersweet week. As you know, I covered Cassius Clay, Muhammad Ali, for 52 years and his death was not unexpected. In many ways, on the one hand, he really kind of died a few years back when this most mobile and garrulous person on the planet is suddenly struck mute and immobile by the gods. And yet on the other hand, I guess he will never die for so many of us because he was important in so many symbolic ways and his picture will live forever.”
Steve said, “As you said, it wasn’t unexpected, and he made it to 74, which is not bad, considering,” and Robert Lipsyte agreed, “I’m really so glad you said that, Steve. When I met him he was 22 and I was 25 or 26, and he was one of those kind of explosive novas, shining stars, you know, I thought that he would never make it to 30. The idea that he would live to 74 and in those final years be such a beatified – one writer described him as America’s teddy bear – you know, such a beatified secular saint was almost amazing.”
Steve mentioned that Robert Lipsyte was writing for the New York Times in 1964 and they sent him to cover Muhammad Ali fighting Sonny Liston and that made the memories come pouring out.
“It’s crazy because, I think that was the fight of the century and of course the moment of the century. That was when the ’60s really began. As we talked about it, what happened was that, Cassius Clay, this nobody who was kind of famous for his poetry and stuff, but he had not made his bones as a fighter, but they needed a box office for Sonny Liston and so he got the fight. The New York Times regular boxing writer did not think it was worth his time to go down for this one-round knockout. So it was suggested that the kid go down from night rewrite. You know, he was not doing anything important. So they sent me down and my instructions were so basic. As soon as I got to Miami Beach, rent a car, drive back and forth between the arena where the fight was going to be held, and the nearest hospital, so that I would waste no time following Cassius Clay into intensive care. God help me, I did that!
“OK, so then I get there, in my rental car, I drive to the 5th street gym, which is in a kind of decrepit building in this slummy part of Miami Beach, which is now the very trendy and glamorous South Beach. And I walk into this gym and I’m told that Cassius Clay has not arrived yet and there’s this hubbub behind me, and there are these four little guys around my own age, they’re wearing these matching white terrycloth cabana jackets, and they had these bad haircuts and British accents. I asked at the door, who are those guys? Oh, they’re some British band is in New York and they’ve come to Miami. And they just went to have a photo op with the champion, Sonny Liston, who took one look at them and said, “I ain’t posin’ with them sissies.
“So they got stuffed back into the limo and, second best, they were sent down here to have a picture with Clay. So Clay is not there and these four little guys are screaming and ranting. You know, they’re trying to get out, so they’re pushed up into an abandoned dressing room. If I had any smarts at all, if I had known who they were or if I had been a teenage girl I would have been much shyer. But you know, what the hell who are these four little jerks? So I kind of pushed my way into the room with them. The door is locked. So these are the 15 minutes, Steve, where I am the fifth Beatle. And I said to them, ‘Hello, I’m Robert Lipsyte from the New York Times, I’m very important.’ And John said, ‘Hello, I’m Ringo.’ This I figured out later. And Ringo said, ‘Hello, I’m George.”
And I said, ‘Who do you think is going to win?’ ‘Oh, Liston’s going to knock that little wanker out.’ And they they started really cursing and banging the walls. They were really kind of tough, nasty little guys. And then, bang! The door opens up and there is the most beautiful creature any of us had ever seen. And he said, ‘C’mon Beatles, let’s make some money.’
“And so he led them out into the ring and if I hadn’t known better I thought it would be choreographed. The Beatles lined up in a row, he tapped the first one on the head, I think it was George… and they all go down like dominoes. And then they kind of create little pyramid with probably Ringo on top, trying to hit his jaw. It’s amazingly hilarious. And they caper around for 5 or 10 minutes then the photo op is over and the Beatles go off to their destiny and Clay works out.
“And then, after he works out, he comes back to the dressing room and I’m in there, waiting to interview him. We hadn’t met yet and he beckons me over to him. ‘You were with those guys?’ I said, yeah. He said, ‘so who were those little sissies?’ So he was as clueless as I was. That was February 18, 1964, and I think that’s the moment when the 1960s actually began.”
Steve Jaxon, awestruck, commented, “Wow, what a story!” and Robert Lipsyte continued, “Talk about dumb luck! That was my start. The next 52 years, we’ve talked about it, it’s been an amazing ride. Right now I’m kind of high, as people often are after a tragedy or a death. It’s interesting that most of the email that I’ve got (I’ve got a lot of email) has either been offering consolation for my grief, as if he were a close family friend, which he was not, or recounting their own moment. And you know, anybody who’s had a moment with Muhammad Ali really remembers it vividly because he had such a kind of humanitarian glow about him. Even if he was across the room, it seemed like he could hug you.”
Steve asked when was the last time he ever saw Ali in person and we heard, “The last time I saw him I was sitting at ringside with Ali and Will Smith, who played him in the movie. And this was in the same arena where he had beaten Liston in Miami Beach. And a high-level bookseller named Taschen had just put out a $10,000 volume of pictures and prose about his life. This was at Art Basel, the big art show in Miami Beach. I remember watching Ali and Will Smith (who did, in a terrible movie which I hated, but did a very credible job of being him) watching the two of them kind of capering like children and I had this amazing thought. Maybe great celebrity athletes and movie stars are basically children and they have to be children.
“The reason I thought it was a terrible movie not just because there was a character in it named Lipsyte. And my kids were thrilled because the actor who played the character named Lipsyte was so cute and they thought he was so much better looking than their dad was, they were just thrilled. But he said all kinds of things I never said. What I really hated about the movie was that it gave the impression that Cassius Clay who became Muhammad Ali, kind of emerged as some sort of American and world hero with these principles and these senses of what was right and proper social justice, when the truth was, it was an evolution. When I met him back then with the Beatles in 1964 he was a callow, not very educated, rather ignorant boy who since he was 12 years old had kind of been focused through a tunnel of boxing and really didn’t know too much about the world itself. He kind of evolved. And some of the really most important things that he said he didn’t really come to understand until many years after he actually said it. When he said, ‘I’ve got nothing against them Viet Cong,’ which sounded like a powerful anti-war statement, it was really in exasperation for having been classified as 1-A. That same day when he found out that he could be drafted, his first response, Steve, was, ‘Why me? I’m heavyweight champ. All my taxes buy all of those tanks and helmets and rifles for soldiers. Why don’t they spend time and draft poor boys who don’t give taxes?’ So I mean, that’s not principled. That did not evolve until later. But he got there. And maybe that’s the powerful and important story about how Muhammad Ali and America all kind of changed and evolved through the 60s, 70s and 80s into a higher level of consciousness, rather than this kind of present iconography.
I’m glad you invited me to kind of rant on your show. What really made me so crazy was these obits where he was described as this important Civil Rights leader. He was not a Civil Rights leader. He was against Civil Rights when he first came out. He belonged to this segregationist sect that was making deals with the KKK and wanted to carve a piece of Mississippi where the sect could live until the seven-foot black men in space ships came down and saved the righteous. So I hope that story is not lost as we make him this hero. As Bill Clinton will speak at the funeral and there will be a couple of days of this sort of orgasmic celebration, I hope we don’t really lose the idea that this was an interesting man who kind of became something else in the crucible of America.”
In closing, Robert Lipsyte told Steve how much he liked the new documentary “OJ: Made in America” and added, “The reason why OJ was so promoted is that he was the counter-revolutionary black athlete, in many ways, the counterpoint to Muhammad Ali, to Jim Brown and to Carlos and Smith who raised their fists at the ’68 Olympics,” and they agreed that may be the subject of his next appearance on the show.
For more about Robert Lipsyte:
Search Google Images for “Cassius Clay Beatles” to see the pictures he describes from 1964.
For more from Robert Lipsyte, visit his website, www.robertlipsyte.com.