SPORTS

SPORTS

THE FIRST COMEBACK THAT’S MATTERED

R. Meltzer

Could a Dylan comeback matter? Could a Beatle comeback matter? Could a Who comeback matter? Could an Elvis comeback matter? Could a, could a, could a. So aside from a Brian Jones comeback the only one that could matter would be a Cassius Clay (a.k.a. Muhammad Ali) comeback, well he came back (the latter did): Muhammad Ali came back, all the way back for all intents and purposes but not in the record book, and the book counts, but he’s back.

The fight was five days old but Howard Cosell still wasn’t ready to plunge right in so he said “Before we get started, Muhammad, have you ever seen the exciting sport known as Irish hurling?” It was on \Vide World of Sports and they hadda do the hurling, the 18-ft pole vault and the record-breaking land speed record before they did the fight. So they put on the tape (it might’ve been a day old, it might’ve been an hour old but it was old, not live) of Cork vs. Wexford for the big hurling showdown and Jim McKay over in Ireland also addressed himself to Ali about how he oughta see the wonderful land of Irish whisky. It was like Joe Garagiola introducing John and Paul on the Johnny Carson Show (first he said “Here’s someone who needs no introduction by last name cause only the first name is enough” and he meant Tallulah not John & Paul) and first having some worthless cretins play shit reed stuff versions of Beatle songs.

So it was just as Ali always was the man who made such an impression because his big deal was to show the rest of sports just how unbelievably lame it was. Here just as always they had to try to humble him and contextualize him all over again, particularly since it was the whole wide world of sports (and don’t forget he was the only man ever to tour the world he was champion of and he knew Nasser, he knew Nkrumah). And maybe it always was that boxing itself has just been waiting for the rest of sports to negate itself sufficiently so that BOXING IS BIG AGAIN (and not even just cause of Ali’s return but because his official TV return was via this show and the show’s best stuff has always been its occasional boxing). So because of Ali it was not just Ali vs. Sports but also Boxing vs. The Rest of Sports and also Ali as the King of Boxing (hence Sports) (and Ali as the King of Sports independently too).

Well boxing has always had at least as much unit interest (the round) as the short cut or the single in rock. Another good parallel with rock is that even promoters in rock have lost interest in the scale necessary for dream events, just like the demise of Joe Louis just about destroyed promotional interest in dream bouts starring Ezzard Charles. Boxing has always been the pursuit of John L. Sullivan, whom nobody but traveling aristocrats ever saw. He retired beaten by Corbett and it wasn’t until Jim Jeffries that an official figurehead emerged but Jeffries wasn’t good enough to match the Sullivan legend. Then it wasn’t until Jack Johnson and what people really detested about him was not just that he was black but that he was that John L. Sullivan and happened to be black. After him it took until Dempsey, then Louis, then Marciano but in each era it was always the longing for the guy before, who in turn wasn’t as good as they guy before that. Clay dismissed the whole show, he transcended history as succession, he was The Greatest because he was the first one to understand what it meant. He destroyed boxing by occuring after it had died and resurrecting it as it had never been. Even before the Muslims, even before Quarry bopping Ali with one that didn’t. the draft evasion, even before the second Liston fight he was feared by those remaining promoters and commissioners who feared their inadequacy to keep pace. At the same time he was the best of the best they were the lamest of the hacks.

More Irish hurling shit. Football news flashed across the screen (all the scores, one by one) with enough linearity to choke a squirrel. It was finally over and so was the rest but Cosell had to force everything into easy continuity by asking the star of the show what he thought. Ali didn’t mind saying “Those hurlers can hit it real far and it seems dangerous, I bet they could hit it as far as Willie Mays” (he didn’t say Richie Allen, a good sign that he never forced himself into renewed sports jive consciousness a la Cosell). The fight tapes were shown to him in a studio in New York instead of Atlanta where the fight took place and all the guys on camera at ringside were the least elegant ones, the dull ones, the Quarry fans (the whites). Those guys sat there waiting for the fight less time than Ali had to wait since they made him sit there watching all the swill for the whole duration: Wide World of Sports ’ use of him was just like Ed Sullivan’s use of rock, wait til the end but get teased about it all the way thru. It was a little worse because here the star himself had to do the waiting and teasing himself.

The tape of the Folley fight (Ali’s last one at Madison Square Garden 3 years ago) was shown. What a punch! The right he got him with and the angle it was from and the impact that it made and the direction Folley fell (on his face and belly). How can those assholes like Nat Fleischer say he’s got no punch? Actually it’s probably Fleischer’s lack of real indignation over Clay getting banned and his title taken away that made it possible in the first place. Had he said the guy’s great, great, the greatest they never would’ve had the nerve because Nat’s the official awesomely respected old coot of boxing journalism (the Jann Wenner-Paul Williams-William Randolph Hearst-Toby Mamis of boxing). Also the World Boxing Association’s organ has always been Boxing Illustrated (which was originally entitled Boxing Illustrated-Wrestling News and sold copies mostly to the wrestling fans) and probably the only reason Fleischer bothered recognizing Clay as long as he did in the face of opposition was his Ring’s competition with Boxing Illustrated (Ring is the most extensive coverage of any subject matter in the world, period, so it’s a genuine good one; Boxing Illustrated does fake statistics about deaths in other sports like golf and tennis and they used to have their artists steal illustrations out of Sports Illustrated). But recognition is a different thing from praise: one’s a matter of bookkeeping and one’s a matter of enthusiasm, heart, belief and all of that shit, none of which Fleischer could feel for any but the old-timers and occasional Far Eastern bamtamweights.

Ali and Quarry stared at each other before the start of round 1, as old a boxing move as there is but this time relevant by way of football and Dick Butkus in terms of mass sports consciousness. Both guys had mouthpiece moves too: Ali looked like a bulldog, Quarry looked like a fish. From the first minute Ali was defining his own planes for punching. He threw a perfectly horizontal left hook that connected. It almost looked like he was looking at his arm as much as at Quarry’s head just to measure the punch for aesthetic purposes knowing that merely landing was a cinch. He looked in one direction and stuck out his right hand and Quarry was so baffled that he didn’t even know where to aim for Ali’s head, he just wasted a few punches in the air without even a potential target (and without even being fight-weary at the time so it really looked silly), he was just incapable of dealing with sudden subtle weirdness.

Then Ali played around with some top-of-the-head shots because Quarry wasn’t gonna stick his head up out of his defense. And because it would’ve been dull to continue altho he could of, Ali stopped after just a couple of such punches in round 2 just to start something new. Quarry’s impressive straight near misses were all misses, Ali’s defense made likely the kind of punches that make for a non-boring fight and all he had to do was move his head (that’s all), even bolder than the mere backup against Liston which creeps thought would spell doom.

Lots of times he threw an easy left from out of left field without his face even tipping off intent, almost like a polite basketball shot from outside up close by Dick Barnett for a mere 2 points, no more decisive than that. By choice. After two rounds Aliwas called upon to describe the fight, something besides ads had to fill the space between rounds. And he was up to it: “His corner must’ve told him he was behind so when you’re two rounds behind you know you have to catch up,” etc.: great jiving, like what’s two rounds, it sure ain’t 12 or 13.

For the decisive round 3 they had to slow the tape down just to see all the punches, just like what music hicks used to do with Charlie Parker. Ali picks his positions to hit from and attains them in mid-movement, the perfect combination of thought and action just like what (using a current sports metaphor) Bobby Orr is known for but where the striking distance is less and is constantly less (and thus the decisions of where to move are always immediately relevant and non-gratuitous). This is the antithesis of Joe Frazier, who needs perfect position first in order to even think about what kinda punch he’s gonna throw, you shoulda seen him against Oscar Bonavena where he didn’t even know what distance to be away from him in the ropes in order to hit him with his hook! If you wanna wonder what the Ali who was in the ring with Quarry would do against Frazier who’s stronger and is better at putting on the pressure: Ali’s subtlety of movement both on offense and defense is additionally just camouflage for the frantic moves he can also make without an instant’s hesitation if necessary. Ali vs. Frazier (ha), only politics make it much of a fight on the horizon, Ali might even decide to be bored for 15 rounds like with Chuvalo and Terrell and sometimes decisions are expedient anyway (Ali’s the man himself who in fact reintroduced the full distance for heavyweight fights, the last time prior had been Marciano-Charles in 1954).

The cut that ended it was so deep that Quarry’s father could see eyeball thru eyebrow (not even eyelid). Nev dimensions in cuts has always been a major portion of Clay’s big move anyway, not just a great boxer but a great cutter too. He did it twice to Henry Cooper but Henry was always an easy cut anyway (even Brian London used to cut him in British Empire title fights). Now here was a really, really, really great cut. Eleven stitches and even Quarry admitted the next day he was glad his corner halted the fight (people fear damage to their physical image as much as to their physical person these days, it takes a man of insight like Ali to exploit even that now that boxing is known to be the — in actuality — least violent sport).

Cosell had to bring it all back home at the end so he insisted that Ali listen to Quarry on the phone. He seemed more worried about the phone than he had been about anything else all week, phones are probably the most boring challenge in the world to get up for. No that wasn’t all, Cosell still had to impose questions in order to drag out more agreement from Ali on his fjersonal bundle of details on the fight: isn’t that Tony Perez an excellent young referee (if no newtime fighters are promising since the only good one is beyond youth and beyond promise) and isn’t that Leroy Neiman a fine artist? By the way one of the judges was none other than lew Eskin of Boxing Illustrated, those guys had to get in on the action somehow (what inconsistent heretics!) and — of course — with some control. Self-interest is one thing, self-interest is what boxing is all about (usually, well at least it’s the context for it in many a dodo’s book) but that Howard Cosell: wotta dipshit, he’s far more embarrassing than Ed Sullivan himself, who isn’t as good as Ted Mack, who isn’t as good as Lawrence Welk! (For the pre-champion Cassius Clay, read what I had to say in Us No. 1.)