There are probably no great compliments that I could pay
my next guest that he hasn't already paid himself.
- But I, uh...
- I happily join him and millions of others, and, um...
He's without a doubt one of the greatest sports figures the world has ever known.
Just in case he can hear me, he is the world's greatest sports figure.
Charming, good-looking, a heck of a nice guy,
can't sing worth a damn, but he's really big and strong...
Mr. Muhammad Ali.
Muhammad Ali... Mr. Muhammad Ali... Muhammad Ali...
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome Muhammad Ali.
Welcome the incredible Muhammad Ali... Muhammad Ali.
Howard Cosell's humility coach, Muhammad Ali.
He's on Dick Cavett's show so many times,
and has an intriguing and, I think, revealing relationship at times
in terms of the conversations with Dick Cavett.
I love your show and I like your style,
- but your pay is so cheap, I won't be back for a while.
He was great, but it was instinctive.
He didn't need media coaching.
You and Johnny Carson: Johnny's still nice, but you,
-you...
you are one who is so... You're like a little schoolboy,
you're so innocent, you're so nice,
and lately, you getting kind of tricky.
Ali was always my friend.
From the moment we met, we hit it off.
If you look at me, I'm pretty for a boxer.
You really get a kick out of yourself.
- Shaving must be practically an orgasm for you.
Oh, hey! Now, listen!
That was important in showing
Ali as being this intuitively playful, very clever showman.
See, most boxers can't talk like this, they're not as intelligent.
You're a witty man. They pay you to sit up here and think.
You're a brain. I'm handling you.
- I know. You...
He would say things to Cavett about whites
that you'd hear on the street corners of Harlem.
The thing that you all have done to us
is worse than the devil you told us about underground.
They seem to go to the edge
of the racial debate in the country.
It doesn't really get us very far to talk about something
as if the white man were some sort of intrinsic devil
- that no other race is. - That's the truth.
You are right. What you said was the truth.
I can get very sentimental
talking about Ali and thinking about him.
- One of the best shows you've ever had, boy. - Yes.
Ladies and gentlemen, Dick Cavett!
Dick Cavett was huge on television.
This was before you had
cable news all the time and talk shows everywhere.
You keep interrupting the long story of my life.
If you'd just shut up...
Dick Cavett was one of the few big talk show guys,
and he would have Muhammad Ali on.
- I mean, it would be, you know, very provocative...
...but at the same time, they seemed to like each other.
And he was on a lot. I mean, he was constantly on,
and it was some of the most memorable times I remember on television.
I remember watching Dick Cavett
and Ali, to the point where you wanted to see it
if you knew that Ali was coming on.
I went to see Gorgeous George, the late wrestler.
He was on television one night in Las Vegas,
just before I was supposed to fight a fight.
I saw this blond-haired white fella.
"I'm the greatest wrestler that ever lived!
"After me, there'll come no more!
"I want all of you bums in this one-horse town to buy a ticket!
"If that arena's not full, I won't come!
You're blessed! You're lucky that you see me!"
And I hear him talking so much.
"I'll annihilate him! If this guy mess my hair up,
a curl in my hair, I'll kill him!" And he was so conceited.
Before I started talking, I went to see him.
And that night, Las Vegas Convention Center,
I saw 15 more thousand people coming to see him.
And when he walked out, he had girls carrying his robe
and sprayed deodorant in his opponent's corner.
He was really cocky, and everybody, "Boo!
Boo!" And they just couldn't stand him, but I noticed,
-they all paid to get in.
And I said all these people, all these people paid to see him whipped.
I said, this is a good idea.
If he wants me, you tell this to your camera,
your TV man, your radio man,
and you right there, and the whole world...
That's where I started "I am the greatest! I am the prettiest!"
Oh, and they paid, and I went to the bank.
- One million, two million, three million.
So, that's how the thing started.
There were other television boxers,
boxers who appeared on television,
and they fought, and they were tough,
and people loved to watch them on TV.
Ali was the first product of the television age.
You know that I wrote for you once.
Uh-uh.
- You don't? - That doesn't ring a bell?
- No. You wrote for me? - Wrote for you, yes.
I once wrote a couple of poems for you
uh, when you appeared on The Jerry Lewis Show.
Remember appearing on The Jerry Lewis Show?
- Vaguely, yes. - Oh, yes.
- Pretty tough, Jerry. You're really... - Hey, hey, don't.
The Jerry Lewis Show was where I first met the great man.
- Come on. Read the poem, Cassius! - Jerry, hey, what, what...
Right over there, if you'll step over there.
- You mean you have a special setup for me? - It's all set up for you.
So I wrote a couple of poems for him, and they staged him
in a sort of classic Greek or Roman setting.
Reminds me of the Olympics in Rome, Italy.
And he did them beautifully and perfectly, and, uh...
He was much smarter than he led on.
Now for the main event.
To my friend, Jerry.
Jerry Lewis, this is to you.
I actually made a joke about the fact that
the show was going to be... terminated.
To my friend Mr. Lewis,
that magnificent clown,
who remains at the top,
though his show has gone down.
Though the critics gave him an unfriendly reception,
no one wins all the time,
though I am an exception.
When he's old and senile,
he still will be funny,
laying folks in the aisle,
just like I will do Sonny.
He intuitively understood
television, and TV was the perfect medium for him.
That's what Ali was about.
He was a television boxer.
He knew how to be outrageous.
He knew how to be serious.
He knew how to change personalities...
...in a drop of a hat.
The personality attracts.
I attract the doctors, the lawyers,
- the pimps, the players, and I attract...
...the Pakistanis, I attract the rednecks
that don't like niggas that talk like me.
- I attract, I attract
- the Black Panthers that like bad niggas like me.
And I attract the Jesus Christ Superstar
followers that don't like the draft.
And you add it all up, I draw the people!
It's a TKO decision for Cassius Clay.
At the time I started, I was 12 years old,
and I started in Louisville, Kentucky, as an amateur boxer
in the Golden Glove, and I went on to win
the National Golden Gloves title
'59 and '60, the national AAU
in '59 and '60, and the World Olympic Gold Medal.
Tell me how you came to get such a Roman name as that.
Well, as I understand, I'm Cassius Marcellus Clay VI,
and my great-great-grandfather was a Kentucky slave,
and he was named after some great Kentuckian.
Cassius Marcellus Clay is a great name in Kentucky.
Cassius Clay is not
the man that's known to history at that point.
Thousands and thousands of athletes
at the Olympics in Rome,
and this big personality
emerged as the star of the Olympics.
And it was Cassius Clay,
a light heavyweight who won the gold medal.
But he is totally unsophisticated
and totally unsure of himself,
and his relationship, not only to white America,
but his relationship to black America.
He went overseas. He's wide-eyed.
He's bright. He's excited.
He's talking to everybody.
He's a front man for the United States!
When a Russian reporter asked him,
"Isn't it hard, the civil rights movement,
"isn't it hard to find a place to eat?
Isn't it terrible being a black man in America?"
Cassius Marcellus Clay said, "Oh yes.
"Sometimes it's hard to find places to eat.
But don't worry, we've got experts working on that."
When he was outraged as a child
that he could win the Olympics,
uh, but couldn't eat in a restaurant in his native Louisville,
it gave him a sense of "I wanna fight this."
And I wanted to go in the restaurant
with the gold medal on to see what would happen.
And I just ordered a hamburger.
- This is a white restaurant? - Yeah.
Had my gold medal on, just won the Olympics.
I knew that I'm not gonna get put out now.
Got them on the spot.
And... two hamburgers.
And they look and,
"We don't serve Negroes."
I said, "I will eat immediately! Give me two hamburgers!"
- She said...
She said...
"You can't eat here." So she went in the back.
- Yeah? - And I says,
"I'm Cassius Clay, the Olympic champion."
And she went back and told some cook back there cooking.
He said, "I don't give a damn who he is. He don't eat here."
I remember as a kid going to see his fight with Liston,
closed circuit at a theater in Brooklyn.
Everybody thought Liston was gonna destroy him.
That Liston fight no one will ever forget, I'm sure.
Even if they only saw the still photo of him... plopped back in the corner.
Liston was supposed to be destroyer of people,
of men, the best heavyweight around.
He was knocking guys down with jabs in those days.
Knocked guys' teeth out with a jab.
And everybody, you know,
would cringe at the thought of maybe getting in with this guy.
Now we're getting criticized because gonna kill this poor kid.
This bouncing baby
- that doesn't look like he could fight, who rears and pulls... - Up against the bear.
...can't lick nobody against that big ugly bear, which were...
Well, this went on for months.
I paid five dollars and sat up in the second balcony,
and then watched my hero vanquish
the big ugly bear, Sonny Liston, and I couldn't believe it.
Ali was a big underdog to Liston.
Everybody thought he's just this loudmouth.
They wanted to see his mouth shut.
Most people, especially I noticed
white people, seemed to despise this guy
'cause he was so cocky, so loud.
He, uh, felt a obligation to uplift blacks,
and he saw the Nation of Islam as a vehicle to do it.
Cassius Clay is a name no more, is that right?
Yes, sir. It's Muhammad Ali.
Muhammad means "worthy of all praises,"
and Ali means "most high" in Asian, African language.
The day after Cassius Clay beat Sonny Liston,
he stated publicly what many people already knew,
that he was a member of the Nation of Islam.
And within two weeks of that fight,
he changed his name to Muhammad Ali.
- Was there anybody special who gave you the name? - Yes, sir.
My leader and teacher, the most Honorable Elijah Muhammad.
He doesn't bother giving him the name Cassius I.
When many people come in to the Nation of Islam, they receive an I
before they are given their Islamic name.
Um, but Muhammad Ali is given this name right away.
But it wasn't Sunni Islam. It was the Nation of Islam.
It was something separate.
Remember, the Nation is...
"We're not part of America.
We're a separatist organization."
The Nation of Islam didn't recruit
like Harvard or Yale or Princeton.
The Nation of Islam was very good at recruiting
working-class African-Americans in particular,
and, also, attracting people who were in prison.
In fact, Elijah Muhammad came out of prison.
Malcolm I came out of prison and jails.
And that makes sense because many of those folks are
at their lowest position in prisons.
You know, there are a lot of guys in the Nation of Islam
who had very lengthy rap sheets.
There are significant differences
between the Nation of Islam and orthodox Islam.
The Nation of Islam preached that
white people were devils created by an evil scientist
with a big head, named Mr. Yakub,
and that at a given point in time,
there was a spaceship manned by black gunners
that would descend on Earth
and destroy all but the righteous.
We could go back into Elijah Muhammad's madness
and craziness about it, spaceships and all the rest,
but... here is Cassius Clay
suddenly finding identity in a way
that it has escaped him before, and comfort in America
as a proud black person, and not as a secondary,
an inferior, or someone who's...
trying to climb some ladder.
There was a very negative
media reaction.
Cassius, did the bus trip take anything out of you,
and was it worth the $1,800 it cost you?
Muhammad. My name is Muhammad. Y'all keep calling me Cassius.
I'm tired of telling you. You know, you're intelligent.
My name is Muhammad Ali, not Cassius.
Eighteen hundred dollars is nothing to me.
I make... I draw seven million dollars whenever I fight,
and 1,800 is nothing.
Champ, Liston hopes you don't have another hernia operation.
See? Now, you'd rather say Champ than Muhammad, see?
Well, when we look at Ali and the Nation of Islam,
it goes way back to his amateur days.
He's certainly showing an interest
in the Nation of Islam when he's 16 and 17 years old.
And then in June of 1962, in Detroit,
he meets Malcolm I.
The media always portrayed Malcolm I
as someone who was preaching hate.
Malcolm I was the most articulate spokesperson
for the Nation of Islam.
There's no such thing as justice in this country for a black man,
and there's no such thing as equality in this country for a black man.
This is a white man's country.
But he did not have access
to the mainstream media,
except when the mainstream media
wanted to attack the Nation of Islam.
Elijah Muhammad and the...
form of Islam that he presents is a...
oppositional form of Islam.
It's really a sort of... Couched in black nationalism.
You say we are on the road now to a better world
because the white man promised integration.
This is a disgrace.
Muhammad Ali was a gold mine for the Nation of Islam.
Cassius Clay, and then Muhammad Ali,
by virtue of being
heavyweight champion of the world,
was a story that the media had to follow.
So, you have to understand the prism through which
young Cassius Clay, soon to be Muhammad Ali,
is seen as he becomes the champion,
the heavyweight champion of the world in 1964.
I don't think you can appreciate
in early 21st century, what it means to be
heavyweight champion of the world.
At this moment, I can't tell you the heavyweight champion of the world.
If I was to get in a spaceship and go back to 1963,
everybody knows the heavyweight champion of the world.
We had not seen such a high-profile figure
get that political.
He's not playing the game
the way that the sportswriters were used to,
and they're talking about how
this defiant young guy,
who declares that he is now
Muhammad Ali, is being brainwashed,
has become a poisonous figure,
that he is someone who doesn't understand what he's doing,
but he's being used by the hateful people
in the Nation of Islam to spread hate
to other young black minds.
It becomes like the sports page
is not about the boxing.
It's about the ideology.
Malcolm I, I wanna talk with you briefly about
your affiliation with Cassius. How long have you known him?
- About three years. - And have you been advising him
-as far as his religious affiliations are concerned? - Well now,
I don't give advice to anyone. He's my brother and my friend.
I express what I know and understand around him and then...
But he has a mind of his own, an understanding of his own.
He's having a relationship with Malcolm I.
He's learning from Malcolm I.
Malcolm I is becoming his spiritual advisor.
Ali sees him as a role model,
because Malcolm is proud.
Malcolm is about
black people as capable and strong
and not secondary
in terms of the American structure.
What attracted many people to the Nation of Islam
during that time is there wasn't
a lot of history for African-Americans.
And so, you had a religion that gave
people of color a sense of pride,
a sense of identity...
That I do belong to something, that I do have a history.
And so, when my father spoke,
you see this man who was
passionate and very confident,
and that was pretty big back then because, um,
everything that was taught about being black
or being a Negro was nothing that was progressive.
To suddenly abandon his religion,
Christianity,
become a part of the Nation of Islam
at a time when civil rights was percolating,
and Martin Luther King
was becoming a huge figure.
That he would join this...
basically, segregationist cult.
It's a challenge to white America,
but not only to white America,
but many black Americans who embraced Christianity.
Malcolm I can get a Mike Wallace,
Louis Lomax interview
as a scary black man.
But when you have the Champ,
and he is, again, this happy, very attractive,
in some ways, inspiring presence,
that young man, Muhammad Ali,
he can go on talk shows, sport shows.
He can draw attention from crowds,
black, white, across the board, around the globe,
in a way that Malcolm cannot.
I watch these shows, and a lot of people,
they're just so happy to be on.
- Yeah.
Whereas you can take it or leave it?
Well, I mean, you know... I don't know.
So many problems in the world with the people...
- Yeah. -...the black people, and the white people,
in the whole world, people dying, getting shot.
And me being one of the few of my kind, being blessed
to come on the shows or to get
the privilege to make, a little money,
I just feel so guilty laughing and joking
like everything is so rosy while people are hungry
and can't find work and out of work
and getting put out of apartments,
and me up here showing my teeth and,
- "Ke! Ke! Ke! Ke! Ke!"
- You know... No.
Dick Cavett was
the whitest of white guys in America,
but he gave blacks that had been
considered outside of the mainstream,
like Ali, a chance to be heard,
and a chance to say what they wanted to say,
unfiltered, which was rare.
I'm serious, you know, this stays on my mind every day, you know.
A certain amount of guilt about being so successful...
No, not that. Just the freedom and the plight of the people
- and the scuffle, you know? - Yeah.
And, like, this is on my mind, you know, just part of my life,
more so than boxing in the ring.
- Mm-hmm. - So, I'm just dedicated to it and I just...
just can't go along with society
or with the movie stars or Hollywood, you know,
and I know what's happening.
Ali would have some of the most...
poignant feelings
of black rage that we'd have,
but it was couched in a way that
it was in people's living room,
but at the same time, you could tell
that they had some kind of bond and relationship,
that they kind of understood each other,
but it was significant
because of who Cavett was and who Ali was.
Do you feel bitter toward the entire white race,
or do you think there's something about whiteness
- that is evil? - No sir, no sir.
Whatever white people do
as far as evil or as far as mistreatment,
it's just the nature of the white race to be this way.
- If we check history... - Don't you think it might be human nature?
Yes, just human nature to kill.
If there was one, it seemed, imperfection to Muhammad Ali...
And in those days, I thought he was the perfect human being...
Uh...
it was these views that they were very segregationist
and actually, you'd have to say racist.
And I watch television,
if there's not a movie of white people
shooting white people in shootouts in cowboy pictures, they're shooting Indians.
If they're not shooting Indians, they shoot Negroes.
If they're not doing that, they're shooting reindeer or elephants or killing something.
- Just got to shoot. - The system is built on war.
I was uncomfortable about that transition.
I didn't know much about it.
I wasn't in close touch with him during that time.
It was disturbing, the fact that he maybe was being used
for some disreputable causes.
I have times where he says
the exact same thing as Malcolm I says,
the exact same thing as Elijah Muhammad says.
I mean, he's great at this.
But he's an actor learning lines.
He may believe the lines, too! I'm not saying
he doesn't believe them, but he's learning lines.
I would say the white race
when your people first got here,
they didn't have these cameras and televisions
and jet airplanes and air conditions
and Howard Johnson's and Holiday Inns and Americana and Hilton hotels.
They had to fight the Indians, watch their daughters raped and stabbed.
Uh, uh...
It took six months to go from here to Los Angeles,
now you can do it in three and a half hours.
But nevertheless, they kept fighting,
and cutting down the trees,
and they didn't see this, but they made a way
for the present whites to rule.
And the Japanese in World War II, they had these flights
called suicide missions.
They knew they would die, but they ran that plane, right?
His life meant nothing when it came to the freedom
of his daughter, his son, the future of his nation.
And I would say like the astronauts,
three white astronauts almost got stranded in space,
- and their wives are waiting, their children are worried... - Wait a minute.
...because they might... they could've been out there now,
- still in orbit. - Yeah.
But for the progress of
white America in space, eight astronauts died on the ground
and three almost not got back.
Now, if you're going to interrogate him
beyond the lines, he doesn't have that.
It's kind of hard to put a black man...
any black person in this country in jail
because if you ask the average one, we're already in jail.
We've been there in jail 400 years.
- How does, uh...
- The subject changed so many times in that long sentence... - I've gotten this big...
I'm gonna talk for a second now...
...that I really don't know how that connects
with Howard Johnson's and everything, but...
it's a terrifically long harangue.
I felt that he was being mouth-pieced at that time.
I found it somewhat embarrassing,
and I was sorry for him if that was true.
And I really liked him so much
that I didn't really know what to say or do about it,
but I do remember there was one show at the...
People said he seemed kind of down and too serious
and not even sure he meant what he was saying.
I was with him during the nine days, I think,
when he was training for the Liston fight,
and he seemed very sincere.
Whether he has understanding to equal
his sincerity is another thing.
I think there's some honesty there, saying,
look, I don't think that this guy is any...
intellectual who has fully comprehended
the place of the black man in America.
He has not studied as I, Malcolm I, have studied.
He has not been at the master's feet,
Elijah Muhammad, in the way I have been at the master's feet.
He's perfect.
He's not as outspoken as Malcolm.
He's more willing to give the party line,
as far as the Nation is concerned.
No intelligent black man in this audience,
no intelligent black woman, in his right mind,
- don't want little white boys and white girls... Hold it.
Don't want little white boys and white girls
coming to marry your sons and daughters,
and in return, introducing your grandchildren
as little half-white, green-eyed, blond-haired Negroes.
I mean, you can't get the kind of publicity,
you can't get the kind of exposure
for Nation of Islam...
which is, I mean, you know,
kind of a offshoot,
small cult even among black American religions.
To compare it, um...
to, um, modern times, um...
Tom Cruise and John Travolta
famously became Scientologists.
And, of course, for that...
cult or group or religion,
uh, those are great gets.
There's gotta be a collision! There's got to be!
Because if I understand clearly what black youth are saying,
they're saying that they ain't going back a step further.
Now, maybe white dudes are saying, "Well, I'll be darned
if I'm gonna give another inch."
Now, do you know what that could mean?
And you know who's to blame?
All of the whites!
Louis Farrakhan, Louis I at that time, had done
"White Man's Heaven Is a Black Man's Hell."
He has a good voice, a very nice voice,
and it's a very catchy tune.
Ali memorized the album.
The Nation of Islam was going through this battle with Malcolm I.
Many people who were loyal to Malcolm I joined his organization.
Now, Malcolm thought
he could take Clay with him
and form his own organization.
But he was wrong.
It was a real testimony
to many of us who were outside of that...
That Ali remained loyal
to the Nation and Elijah Muhammad,
which had to be painful to him
to sabotage where a guy
who really nurtured and taught him.
So, as Malcolm I
is being pushed out,
Cassius Clay is coming in.
I'm sure my father was hurt simply...
with the fact that they were no longer friends.
Increasingly, Elijah Muhammad
understands what Malcolm I had brought to him,
which is the Champ.
And when Cassius stays with the Nation
and becomes Muhammad Ali,
Malcolm I knew his days on Earth were numbered.
The conflict which would lead to Malcolm's death
has to do with his challenge to the Nation of Islam,
and especially exposing
Elijah Muhammad,
noting that Elijah Muhammad
disappointed him personally
because of his involvement with some of his secretaries
and having children out of wedlock.
Muhammad interacted with
quite a few white men on a very intimate basis,
Angelo Dundee foremost among them.
I have never noticed uh, no violence or nothing
where you could say that Muslims are
physically or radically opposed to whites.
He was never one-on-one hostile to white people,
and yet, there was pressure on him,
particularly after the assassination of Malcolm I
to be super Muslim.
America's going broke today.
She's having Vietnam problems.
Not serving in the military
was part of the Nation of Islam.
Elijah Muhammad had gone to prison
for not serving in World War II.
His son, Wallace Muhammad,
had served time in prison for refusing induction.
The black Muslims do not advise their members
to avoid registering,
but tell them to search their individual consciences.
This leaves the movement free of violation of federal law.
A prominent Muslim involved in a draft-dodging case
is heavyweight champion Cassius Clay,
or Muhammad Ali.
Clay's draft board says he could be drafted in February.
Two appeals for deferment have already been turned down.
White America right now is spending
$30 million a day in Asia.
Black and white boys are dying unjustly for nothing,
just to free somebody else.
So, why I should worry about going
to little old jail to free my poor people,
who's been catching hell here for 400 years?
Most athletes, including black athletes,
did join the armed forces.
The social pressure to do so was very great.
Well, I have two decisions to make,
made on the 28th is to...
serve and abide
by the laws of the American government.
Serve and abide by the laws of
almighty God Allah, the religion Islam.
And it's just up to me to which one
I fear the most, the government or Allah.
The Nation didn't want Cassius to go into the military.
Former world heavyweight champion Cassius Clay
refused to take the oath of induction into the army.
The black Muslim fighter,
who's also known as Muhammad Ali,
was immediately stripped of his title
by the World Boxing Association.
Clay insisted that he is an ordained minister and should be exempt.
Clay also charges race discrimination
by the Houston draft board.
He refused to fight in a war
that many of us would not fight in.
And we saw the war as immoral.
Ali was a conscientious objector.
They want me to go to Vietnam to shoot some black folks
that never lynched me, never call me nigga,
never put no dog on me, never assassinated my leaders.
I'm fighting to free him,
and my mama ain't free in Louisville.
- So, since I gotta die...
...just let me die here now!
Ali was treated differently
than any other conscientious objector.
He faces federal prosecution
and a possible five-year prison sentence,
plus $10,000 fine.
Later, Martin Luther King praised Clay's courage.
You got the worst shake of anybody
in professional athletics in the history of this country.
When America gave you that bad shake,
they hurt themselves far more than they ever hurt you,
- and they hurt you plenty. - Oh, I'm not hurt at all.
Do you share the same concern
that Muhammad has for his draft status?
Oh, I certainly do. My views on the draft
are clear. I'm against it.
Well, how do you stand now with
the possibility of going to jail?
Oh, I don't know. I'm just waiting any day now.
- Do you think about...
Do you think about that, though?
Do you ever think what you'll do if you go?
Well, yes. You think about it at nights when you're in the bed.
You think about if I went this way, what could've happened.
If I went this way, and I figured it all out.
- Yeah. - No people gained freedom until some have to die,
some lose their wealth, some give up money.
Well, I am a minister of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad,
and I have been for the past good two years.
Ali objected
to the war in Vietnam.
Objected to fighting a war
that he saw as, essentially,
a white man's war.
A war that was, essentially, a white man's war.
He wasn't wrong on this.
If he's not given
full-fledged human rights
in his own country, why should he go and fight...
for someone else?
Now, the idea of a conscientious objector
is you're opposed to all wars.
By the time the case reached the United States Supreme Court,
the government had changed its position.
It said we now agree
that this is a religious belief.
We now believe that it is sincerely held,
but Muhammad Ali has said
that he would fight in a religious war.
Therefore, he does not meet the criteria
for being against all war in any form.
There's a real fight right here in America,
and if I can somehow...
fight for the freedom of black people in this country,
well, I'd sign up right away.
Deposed heavyweight champion Cassius Clay,
at federal court in Houston, is found guilty
of violating the US Selective Service laws
by refusing to be inducted.
He is sentenced to five years in prison and fined $10,000,
the maximum penalty for the offense, which is a felony.
The sentence was appealed by Clay's lawyers.
Clay contended his status as a black Muslim minister
made him exempt from the draft.
Released on bail, he faces a possible
18-month wait for an appeal decision.
I'm capable of having asked him if I could see
his ordained ministry documents,
but, uh, I never did.
Yeah...
He was right about the Vietnam War.
One did not need to be a minister
in order to be entitled to conscientious objector status
during the war in Vietnam.
I have no way of knowing if his...
adopted feelings about conscientious objection
or his new feelings about it, or if they were new,
if they were genuine, I had no idea.
He was such a sly and subtle man,
and so disarmingly
and just startlingly intelligent.
And what the Supreme Court said
in a very narrow, technical ruling
was that Ali meets the requirement,
and so therefore, we have to vacate the conviction.
He's more than 26 years old,
so he's no longer eligible for the draft.
What Ali did was...
very brave and costly to him...
The fact that he would do it
as he was entering the prime of his career.
Ali was forced out of boxing for more than three years.
He was...
peaking as a fighter then,
and it might be that we never saw what would've been
the best three years of Muhammad Ali's career.
Which is a little like knowing that
there were three symphonies written by Beethoven
that were somehow lost to time.
Right now, there's a so-called tournament going on...
between eight title contenders.
Four of them who I have already
completely annihilated!
And the other four...
the other four that I haven't fought yet,
- I'll whoop them all tonight, right here in this field house!
When Ali was in exile
and went out on the college lecture tour
to make money to support his family,
in a way, it was like a...
presidential candidate,
who's going around the country, to the Iowa State fair
and the Ice Ball festival in New Hampshire,
and all these places they go,
sowing the seeds for primaries later on.
Such actions, such actions
that they are now taking
is an insult on your intelligence
when you know all the time who the champion is,
now to take some bum that I have whooped
- and make you think he's the champ!
I don't know a great deal about heavyweight boxing.
My interest in it spans the Billy Conn-Joe Louis fight,
up to the marriage of Ethel Merman and Ernest Borgnine.
There seem to be several heavyweight champions these days.
Will you welcome one of them, Joe Frazier.
There was nothing not to love
about Joe Frazier if you were a fight fan.
When Ali was stripped of his championship,
the WBA had an eight-man heavyweight tournament.
Joe decided not to enter that tournament.
Jimmy Ellis emerged victorious.
Ellis, Joe fought each other.
Joe annihilated Ellis.
Joe Frazier wins the title, but he knows
until he fights and defeats Muhammad Ali,
he will not be the real champion in the eyes of the world.
If I was still boxing,
or if my title hadn't
been taken the way it was, I would say that
Joe Frazier would've possibly been a contender, but...
we never did meet and never will.
Never will. Can you say that... flatly?
- I mean, there's no chance you'll ever fight again? - Right.
- That's right. - Yeah.
Gee, that seems a shame because it's like
a great talent is being wasted. Do you feel it that way?
- No, I don't think about that. - There's no nostalgia for the ring?
I'm just glad to be able to be blessed by...
almighty God to come out of the thing
unmarked and unscratched
and well invested and still with a good mind.
I guess there's no possibility of your fighting him, is there?
Well, it does look bad,
for me and him to meet each other
because right now, he does have a problem,
it's a great problem,
but I think if he should come back, I'll be able to take him.
Joe Frazier was a contender,
but now that I've retired, he is the legal champion.
I recognize him as the champ because I'm no longer active.
When Muhammad Ali was going through the period
where he was barred from fighting,
that period between '67 and '70,
and he was running out of money, Joe Frazier's giving him cash!
Joe Frazier saying, "Look, look, Muhammad.
"As soon as we can get your license,
I'll fight you for the championship."
By the time Ali fought Zora Folley,
which was his last fight before he was sent into exile,
the American public had started to grow tired of him.
He wasn't making as much for his fights as he had before.
In your mind, what rank does Muhammad Ali have now?
I think he's one of
the good fighters beside myself.
- But, uh...
I don't really get into it because...
I try to stay away from uncle as much as possible
because politics is really not my business, you know?
- Right. - And I think
this is politics, so I stay away from it.
- But I really think he's a great guy. - Mm.
- The other day, he said he'd put you into orbit.
Well, I heard that before, Dick.
Many guys have tried, but they have failed.
I remember when Ali came back to the ring
and fought Jerry Quarry,
and Jim Brown debated Lester Maddox.
Your statement on the day of the fight was something like this.
That it's a dark day in Georgia
because this fight is being put on.
You gotta remember, Lester Maddox
was the guy who was governor of Georgia.
The lawmakers finally choose segregationist Maddox
as their new governor.
The former restaurant owner, who gained national publicity by refusing
to integrate his fried chicken place,
ran on a platform of states' rights and preservation of the race.
And his claim to fame was he would chase blacks
out of his restaurant with an axe handle.
I felt very happy that this fight took place in Atlanta.
- How did you feel about it? - I felt very sad.
- And why was that? - Here's a man that has said
well, here, I wanna fight in the ring for money,
but I won't even wear the uniform of my country.
He says that I can't do this...
In other words, I'm gonna act different from
these other people who stand up for their country
and put on the uniform.
Had they not fought for this country,
if they were not even fighting today and wearing this uniform,
that he could not even get in a ring and fight
- and be a free man to fight. - But isn't it true...
So, he's helping to tear down this country
with this philosophy, with this belief.
He is expressing the view that millions of people hold.
Suppose every American, Mr. Brown,
suppose every American had decided that they were not gonna
put on the uniform of their country and not fight for it.
We wouldn't have a United States of America,
and I couldn't be on your show,
- and you probably wouldn't even have a show tonight. - Isn't it true...
If everybody had had that attitude, and I don't like it,
and I don't care whether you like it.
- Don't care who don't like it. - Millions of people
see Muhammad Ali's refusal
to go fight for his country as being hypocritical.
This man followed the law of the land.
He made his stand. He has been fighting through the courts.
He has gone to the higher courts,
and he will go to jail if he is proven guilty.
- Well, I hope he does go... - Can I finish?
Can I finish? Can I finish? Don't you feel
that whenever a man goes through the courts
that he is abiding by the laws of the land,
and that man who is willing to stand up with that decision
is a brave man, regardless of what his beliefs might be?
This is a time where the country is extremely divided.
- Because we represent... - Did you have any problems from the bigots, in the South?
- Have any problems with what? - From the white bigots,
because you did so much for the black man.
What do you mean, which white bigots? There are black ones
- and white ones I have trouble with from time to time. - No, I said white bigots.
So, he was the symbol of Southern segregation.
Mr. Brown asked you, Governor Maddox
if you'd had any trouble from your white admirers
- for the fact that... - He didn't say admirers, sir.
- No, he said bigots. - Well, why didn't you say it like he said it?
- You have me there.
Why didn't you say it? Now, see there what I'm talking about, Dick?
- I do see it, yes... - You take words and twist them around,
and you mislead the people in your audience and all.
I would say that I phrased the question in a way
that was not exactly accurate in the sense that
he did say bigots.
Have any white bigots been upset
because you have done certain things for the blacks?
But you came back and said my admirers,
and you haven't apologized yet, and you got 15 seconds.
All right, now let me use those 15 seconds.
I apologize for suggesting that
a bigot would be the way of characterizing
all of your admirers.
- No, sir. - Wait a minute, wait a minute! There's more time!
- Good night, sir.
He walked off a scant 88 minutes into the show.
When Lester Maddox walked off Dick Cavett's show that night,
it might have been humiliation for him,
it was jubilation for us.
We won against the Maddoxes of the world.
I would like to hear this from you,
and I want the world and the cameras to hear it.
Who's the heavyweight champion of the world?!
There are a lot of states in which
you are not heavyweight champion.
I know this is an old tiresome subject, but what is this?
I can't keep up with the fact that in some states,
they don't recognize the champion that other people recognize.
Well, it really bothered me also.
- Mm-hmm. - I don't know much about it.
Only thing I usually do is keep up with the fight game.
Joe Frazier was a very good fighter.
One of the sad things about
Joe's saga is that he was never really able
to enjoy his time as champion as much as he should have
because of the omnipresent shadow of Muhammad Ali.
They would both run, do their morning roadwork
in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia,
so they saw each other all the time.
So, it was a friendly- unfriendly rivalry,
and Frazier knew his fate was tied in with Ali,
and Ali knew that his fate was tied in with Frazier.
You think Muhammad Ali ought to get to fight Frazier?
- Well... - Are you interested in seeing that?
Well, I'd like to see it as everyone else would,
but, uh, I can't say,
Dick, whether or not he should fight or not.
I wouldn't want to pass any opinion on that.
After the exile when he came back,
he got paid more for the Quarry fight
than he had ever received for a fight,
and then two fights after that,
Ali and Joe Frazier each received the unheard of sum
of two and a half million dollars to fight each other.
I beat Sonny Liston twice,
- and they wasn't convinced... - We know that!
- That's all over! - Let me finish talking, Joe!
- Now you ain't fighting Sonny Liston. - Joe, you talk after me.
No, you listen! You listen now!
- Let me finish something, then I'll listen to you. - No, I'm the champ, you ain't.
Frazier also knew how to play to the crowd.
Ali was the genius at it, but Frazier was pretty good too.
- You in trouble. I'm serious. - You in trouble?
You cannot keep this title because it's not the real title.
I got the real title.
You ain't nothing but a big phony.
Oh yeah? When I'm through with you, Joe Frazier,
you gonna be so messed up, Vitalis won't even help!
How about that. Hey, look here. Hey, hey, Clay.
Hey, Clay. Clay!
Joe Frazier said, "His mama called him Clay.
"That's what I call him. His mother was Mrs. Clay,
his father was Mr. Clay, I call him Clay."
That really rankled on Ali, and he took that as not only
a disrespect of his chosen name,
but also disrespect for the Nation of Islam.
He told me he's the only one who's got enough guts to call you Cassius.
Well, I'm gonna straighten him out.
After this fight, he will be glad to call me Muhammad Ali.
I promise you that!
Well, there was a reference to your calling him Clay.
- And, you know... - He just says that to agitate me. He's a nice man.
He say that because it used to make me mad,
- but it don't no more. - Oh, does he?
See, the press... Now, everybody calls me Ali.
The press call me Ali. You call me Ali.
- The Ku Klux Klan even call me Ali.
So now, you know a brother who's still calling me Clay,
he really ain't no Uncle Tom.
He's just doing that to make me mad.
When Ali, you know, called him an Uncle Tom,
it was cruel, and it was personal.
Now, Ali had done
similar things with other opponents,
um, but not quite like this.
And Joe Frazier would always say, "Wait a second!
"I came up desperately poor!
"Cassius grew up, basically,
"middle class African-American.
"He wasn't desperately poor. He wasn't like me.
"Look at his management group.
"Look at his trainer. Everybody's white!
"Why am I getting
painted with this brush of being an Uncle Tom?"
And it hurt him terribly.
Ali was so dominant in that media space
in terms of not only defining himself,
but defining his opponent.
What Joe Frazier never understood
is the defiance was more important to us than the story.
Muhammad Ali became larger than just a boxer.
He represented, he symbolized,
essentially, our sentiment.
He was the person who was defying
and standing up to America,
who spoke out against American imperialism,
who spoke out against American racism.
Joe Frazier, on the other hand,
represented the Great White Hope.
Joe Frazier was a race man.
Joe Frazier cared about his race.
He cared about blacks.
But Ali is going to paint him as an Uncle Tom,
as the symbol of white America.
This fight had become
a polarizing social,
political event.
If you were a political conservative,
you supported Frazier.
If you were against the war in Vietnam, you supported Ali.
If Ali would make one more crack,
say, about the war or his draft status,
the money coming out of the American Legions' halls
- would drive the price up to two to one for Frazier.
Joe Frazier had no idea, uh, what was going on politically.
The world probably was on the side of Ali.
Nelson Mandela told me he was in prison
and that everybody knew about it.
I mean, if you lived in an igloo or a hut some place,
you knew about that fight.
So, I have a sparring partner
who reminds me of Joe Frazier.
Flew him all the way here.
- Gorilla Joe! Gorilla Joe!
Let him in! He can go a round or two.
Gorilla Joe. Take your time, Gorilla.
- This gets me ready for Joe Frazier!
- He resembles Joe Frazier.
His taunting of Frazier was over the line.
Um, you know...
in part because
America was over the line. It was divided.
Joe's gonna come out smoking,
and I ain't gonna be joking.
I'll be pecking and a-poking,
pouring water on his smoking.
Now, this might shock and amaze ya,
but I will destroy Joe Frazier.
I think he knew what he was doing.
His instincts were great... How far to go,
how much to say, how insulting to be,
and, at times, he went over the line.
- Let me tell you something, boy. Somebody told me... - Huh? What was that?
- I said Roy. - Oh.
Well, that might be a good place to stop!
He also claims he's got a spy in your camp,
somebody that phones him up every day
and gives him a report on your progress.
- Does that bother you? - They're not gonna be in that ring March 8.
Would it be unethical for you before the fight
of the century to say who's gonna...
- who you think is gonna take it? - Not at all.
I give the edge to Joe Frazier.
- I do it reluctantly because of my relationship with Ali. - Yeah.
I think Ali, four years ago,
was the finest fighter I ever saw.
Certainly one of the great athletes I've ever seen.
His swiftness was incredible.
But I don't think he's superhuman,
and I think four years away in the most demanding,
fundamental, and brutal of all sports,
it's simply not possible to recapture what you had.
People like Howard Cosell, you know...
- I mean...
"Muhammad Ali is just a mere shell
of the fighter he was 10 years ago."
-"Muhammad,
"you're not the same man as you were
15 years ago, is that right?"
Now, you know that's a silly thing to say
Ain't nobody the same as they were 15 years ago.
If I were you, I'd reach up and muss up his hair.
- Yeah. Nah.
No, I'm not gonna...
- I'm not gonna mess it up. - I'm gonna pull it off!
He wasn't the same Muhammad Ali who had fought Cleveland Williams.
When he came back and he fought guys like Jerry Quarry,
he just wasn't the same.
He had lost four valuable years, prime years of his career.
Is it bad taste to ask you who's gonna...
who's gonna emerge victorious?
Well, I like Frazier.
I'm somewhat...
believer, like Howard said that
three and a half years, or four years,
awful long time to stay away from a sport.
Now that we've all demoralized Muhammad Ali
by predicting that those couple of years are gonna be...
the decisive factor in this,
maybe you should give him a couple of pointers.
- I know he never misses this show.
The hype for the fight itself
was so high, and then the fight not only
transcended the event,
but transcended the expectations for the fight itself
in terms of drama.
I did go to the fight last night. Gee, that was exciting.
Wow, I've never had anything like that happen.
I went with my wife, who does not like
to go out in public with me.
No, it's because of the inevitable, "Ooh! It's you!"
at a celebrity, you know?
And I just can't help it. When I see a celebrity,
- I go, "Ooh! It's you!"
I sat behind Aretha Franklin,
the first lady of soul, and next to the famous actor
Jason Robards.
Frank Sinatra was in press row with a camera.
- The atmosphere was unbelievable.
The most exciting night, I believe,
in sports history... March 8, 1971.
I was sitting in the last row of the mezzanine,
at the far end of the arena,
and it was a magical night.
That fight was not on TV live,
but it was on radio live, so I heard it over the radio.
Great fights are never simply about athletic competitions.
They're always about the symbols
that surround and intertwine with the fight.
Now, that's a fight that had the great symbols,
but it was also a great fight!
When Frazier, late in that fight,
reached back and knocked Ali down,
all of us felt that blow.
For a person of enormous bombast...
"I'm the greatest. If I lose, I'm gonna flee the country.
You'll never see my face again."...
Ali was a great loser.
I mean, he lost with such grace and class.
I, myself, was not
as sure as the officials of the total result.
I think that some of the establishment wanted to see
Frazier beat Ali.
It was a very close fight,
but the knockdown in the last round
closed the argument.
If possible, Muhammad Ali, who was bigger than life before,
seems even bigger now as a result of this fight.
Will you welcome please a most astonishing athlete,
Muhammad Ali.
- I see... I see...
I see you were looking for aftereffects.
I still have a little swollen jaw.
I was looking there. There is something about your face
-that's not exactly even... - It was twice as big on the night of the fight,
but it's going down a little.
What'd you say? It's not exactly even, huh?
I'm surprised that it's still...
Can I see how it feels? Is it this...
- Does it kind of hurt? - Kinda hard, yeah.
- It's going down. No pain.
- What do you? Do you soak it every day or do anything to it? - Well, I was supposed to.
It would've been down, but I was too lazy.
How'd you get that anyway? I, uh...
I haven't seen you in a while,
and I haven't been reading the papers.
- Couple of hard left hooks. - Yeah.
You know, I saw the films the other night of the fight.
Boy, that was a... Have you looked at the films?
Yeah, I saw it the other day.
I went to see it in New Jersey, yeah.
That left really looks even harder than it did there.
I was at the fight, and I saw you hit the floor...
Yeah, it was hard. When you see me go down, it was hard.
- Right, I noticed.
I, uh...
If that punch had hit me, I would've stayed down
- till about the 23rd of June, I think.
- Maybe the 24th. - I think if that punch had hit you,
- you'd have had a new fellow on this show. - Right.
He took defeat better than anybody thought he could.
And it was fascinating to watch.
I was quite sure I was winning on points.
- As far as points... - You really were.
- Right?
- As far as, as far as the...
I would say, as far as punches landed in rounds,
I lost probably six rounds. I think I won nine, but...
- Mm-hmm. - But that was the opinion of the judges, and that's all over,
so ain't no sense in protesting. We'll just do better next time
- if we have another one. - But the guys
in your corner were telling you, weren't they, to stop clowning?
- Did they feel that you might be losing... - Couple times, yeah. Yeah.
Why did you decide not to listen to them?
Well, let's see, you know, once you get in the...
in the ring, it's kind of hard to do what people tell you, you know?
Yeah. But I'd clown less, if I were you.
No one likes a silly heavyweight champion.
After all...
Did you learn much from watching the films?
Were there any surprises in the films for you?
- No, the surprise was in the fight itself. - Yeah.
- Then, um...
- Then, I didn't... - I didn't realize
that I could be hit so many times
with the same punch, you know?
Usually, one or two left hooks
or right crosses, I usually catch onto it.
But I have to give it to him, I ain't taking nothing from him.
He's really good as far as slugging is concerned.
He's not skillful, but he's real strong
- and he keeps coming. - Mm-hmm.
He takes five or 10 punches to land one,
- but when he hits you, you shook.
He and Frazier both wound up going
to St. Claire's Hospital,
but Ali did point out later on
that Frazier spent more time in the hospital than he did, and it's true.
Even though Frazier won,
he took a worse physical beating than Ali did.
He got hit by one punch very hard,
and it blew a little blood vessel, which, uh...
- exuded this blood into the space of his jaw... - Mm-hmm.
...and at the angle of the jaw, and that was all that happened to him.
- He was very tired. - I never saw him look swollen after a fight before...
He's never been hit like Joe Frazier hit him after the fight.
- Yeah. - Joe Frazier is an excellent fighter,
and he did what no one else has been able to do...
Get to Muhammad Ali.
Up through '67 when he goes into exile,
up through the Zora Foley fight...
He's just amazing.
I mean, that's where he's got the Ali shuffle going.
He's never hit.
He hits the person anytime he wants to hit him.
It's... You know, he's taking no punishment.
I mean, he's just spectacular.
When he came back from exile,
he didn't have his legs anymore.
He couldn't dance the way he once had.
He also didn't have his timing down.
He slowed down. He didn't train really very well
during his exile period.
He's a different fighter.
He loses to Frazier, but then you have this trilogy,
these three fights.
And you see him get hit in brutal fashion.
I mean, these are savage fights,
and you understand,
yeah, he may be your...
Superman in boxing trunks, but guess what?
Superman's getting hurt here.
And he would always allow people to get in and whale away at his midsection.
Always taking punches on the kidneys and in the liver.
I mean, those are...
those are punches that are gonna have an effect on a person.
I got hit more in this fight than, I would say,
my last six fights put together.
The fight against Frazier,
everybody had a lot of money to make in that, not just Ali.
And maybe somebody should've said to Ali, you know,
"Let's take off a little bit. Let's train.
Let's see what's going to happen."
But...
when they wave that much money in front of your face,
uh... it's hard to say no.
The Supreme Court decision didn't come down in his case
until after the first Frazier fight.
There was always the chance that the Supreme Court would say,
"No, you're going to jail now."
And because that was hanging over him,
Ali had to fight Joe Frazier as soon as possible.
It's somebody's job to protect your fighter. Okay?
It's the management's job. It's the trainer's job.
Ali-Frazier one was a great fight.
The public loved it.
The public wanted a rematch.
Ali wanted a rematch, Joe Frazier didn't want it.
"He don't want me no more." Real silly talk.
- And Joe Frazier, since I fought him... - Yeah.
...I have fought eight times.
- This fight will be eight. - Yeah.
You can't buy a ticket to Madison Square Garden,
yet he wants to know why am I as valuable as him.
I've had eight fights, he's had two.
His two fights were men that I couldn't fight
because the people would, like, boo me out the arena.
Terry Daniels and then Ron Stander,
and after that, he thought he'd take an easy third fight,
which was against George Foreman.
One of the disciples of Sonny Liston
was a guy named Big George Foreman,
who idolized Sonny Liston.
Well, George Foreman wasn't so easy.
He pulverized Frazier in Jamaica.
Now, George Foreman is the new heavyweight champion in the world,
and all of a sudden, an Ali rematch looks better to Joe.
Ali, meanwhile, had lost to Ken Norton.
I'm always thinking he can win, he can beat anybody.
But then you see him take some bad beatings.
You see his jaw get broken,
um, and you start to understand,
you know what, he's not dancing like he used to dance.
People are catching up to him.
Punches that previously would have missed
as he was pulling back, now are catching his jaw.
- Do you think it was a lucky punch? - I really don't know.
My mouth wasn't completely closed I remember, but...
- You can remember the moment that it happened clearly? - Yeah.
- You know, when the jaw went? - Yeah, yeah.
I don't make excuses, you know, for losing.
So, but my major reason
was because I didn't train properly.
One of my favorite moments in my life with Ali
was when he came on the show
after the notorious fight in which
- his jaw was broken. - The Joe Frazier fight...
- Yeah? -...my jaw was still that big,
- and only Dick Cavett called me up.
And this Ken Norton fight,
I've only got calls from Dick Cavett.
He was just adorable.
You are really my main man,
because this is the only show that invites me right after I get whipped.
I don't take any chances.
"You my main man."
And I didn't know the phrase.
When you're washed up, when you're downhill like me,
and when you're just an old, retired bum,
you can tell who your friends are.
And I want to thank you for still inviting me on your show after being defeated.
Starting the next day,
I think I was shooting something up in Harlem
for the Apollo Theater or something,
and one person after another came over and said,
"Do you know what a compliment you had last night?"
Did I say it like the writer told me to say it?
- I never knew anybody like you. - Thank you.
He beat Norton in the rematch,
so the stage was set for Ali-Frazier two.
I'm in a remote part of Pennsylvania,
and I'm at the training camp of Muhammad Ali.
Deer Lake, Pennsylvania.
- Deer Lake. Maybe it's not so remote. - Schuylkill Haven County.
Obviously, the second fight, um, between...
Ali and Frazier was also a major event,
but it didn't, um...
it didn't have all the juice that the first one had.
Are you planning to knock out Frazier? I know that's a technical question.
I will stop Joe Frazier, but the round I can't reveal
until a week or so before the fight.
- You know what it is, though, do you? - Frazier will fall.
It was an interesting fight because they both had tarnished reputations.
Frazier can't take the punches, he's not the same man.
George Foreman annihilated him.
Joe Bugner shook him up,
and I'm gonna finish him!
I'm at his training camp in Pennsylvania.
He was delightful.
He was funny. He took me into his cabin.
He had old-style stuff.
I wanna see the inside of your house. Is this it?
This is an old, antique house, replica of a 200-year-old cabin.
- A real water pump. - Did you design this yourself?
- Designed everything. Old antique bed in it. - Yeah?
A coal stove. No electricity.
Coal oil lamps. Everything is real,
just like in the days of Jack Johnson.
And he kept using the same words at one point.
"Dick, this is my old antique pump,
and that's my old antique bed."
Hey, I love what you've done with the place.
Oh yeah, this is all antique.
I did all this up myself, Dick.
This is a 200-year-old rope bed here.
He had such charisma and charm
and sex appeal and everything.
So, this is an old water well,
and my old dishes and stuff here.
And these things are hundreds of years old.
He pulled a kind of dirty trick on me at one point.
He knew two homely women...
and... but they were friends of his.
And as we were lunching at his camp,
he said, "Dick, see these two women coming in?
They're for you later."
And then he broke up...
He broke himself up laughing and almost spoiled the joke.
- No electricity. - How do you watch television?
No television. I go over in my kitchen to watch television.
- What do you watch? - I watch the Johnny Carson show mostly.
- The Dick Cavett Show sometime.
The card who's got the most colored guests on.
- The most colored? - The most colored guests, yeah.
Oh, I see. What colors do you prefer?
But the night that you have me,
and now that me and Joe Frazier's on your show,
I guarantee you, everybody will have more ratings.
- Do you think he'll show up... - I think he'll show up.
Let's see, Frazier's back there.
- Ali is being kept in an isolation booth down that way.
He thinks he's on The Dating Game,
-so don't, uh, tell him.
The old story: Two guys are gonna try to batter each other virtually to death,
and they're having a good time laughing and telling jokes backstage.
Will you welcome two gentlemen named...
Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali.
Neither one was a champion,
Frazier having lost the title to Foreman,
but we were curious about...
what was gonna happen in the ring.
I saw that in the film that Dick Cavett did with Muhammad Ali
that he does all kinds of things in the ring to make him angry at you.
I mean, he has this guy in the ring
who's dressed as a gorilla and all this sort of thing.
Well, I don't need that. All I need is a man in front of me.
I'm not worried about losing.
- 'Cause he gonna beat... - I really don't think about it.
I have made no preparations for loss.
I'm down to 210.
I'm moving like I should move. I'm no longer playing. I'm boxing.
This man comes in, anybody can hit him.
All his sparring partners are ramming him every day, and they are nothing to me.
- No class. No footwork. No speed. - Right.
- Ooh! - When I get those little bitty gloves on and be real serious,
- and no playing... - Wonder what they're gonna put on me.
...just sticking and moving. All he's got is some hooks...
What kind of gloves I'm gonna have?
- He can't stop me... - What kind of gloves I'm gonna have on?
- You answer that. - The man's asking you a question.
- You have on the same gloves you had last time. - You gonna have little gloves.
- What they gonna put on me? Sledgehammer or something? - You gonna have on the same...
- Now that sounds silly. - That's another crazy question.
- Everybody know he's gonna have on gloves like me. - All right, then!
- Well, why you making a statement like that? - Can I ask a question?
What am I gonna have on? Okay, you prove...
- You have on gloves like me. We always have the on same... - You said it was... Right.
- All right, then. - You come on now. We ain't gotta...
- No, we can't have it.
We don't want it here! No, no. It would be very bad.
You better... No. You could get hurt!
You could... No. You'll hurt your hand or something.
You will. You could hurt yourself.
- Get in there, Michael, get...! - You get in there.
- You're coming very close.
Watch it, watch it, watch it, watch it.
They were still better than almost everybody else on the planet at their weights.
There is another attitude toward this fight, and that is
that it's really two old guys who are just over the hill...
- Two old guys over the hill? -...still in your prime...
- Listen, Joe Louis, Sugar Ray... - Wait a minute, let me finish.
It's just gonna be palookasville at the Garden that night.
- What would you say to a person who said that? - I'd say this:
People expect me to do good, uh, when I was young...
Olympics, Golden Gloves, Sonny Liston, Floyd Patterson.
Now, I'm considered getting kind of old.
Been fighting now... it's been 10 years since Sonny Liston,
- and it's been 20 years since I started boxing. - Almost to the day.
Twenty long years, so naturally,
a human should start withering away,
his timing should get off, he should get slow.
But when you see me get into that ring with Joe Frazier, at 210 pounds,
which is two pounds lighter than I was 10 years ago,
when you see me on my feet, dancing faster and better than I did with Ken Norton,
which was 90% of the time for 12 rounds,
and when you see the punches, I'm gonna be so fast,
he's gonna think he's surrounded.
- Am I ever gonna get... - Listen, when you see...
- He's talking now. He's not fighting. He's talking. - Let me finish!
They were not at the primes of their careers anymore.
Should they have retired?
You know, um,
I used to say I'm not gonna tell them to retire
because I don't want them to tell me when to retire.
He told me at the camp that you sleep
-with a teddy bear in your bed.
Now, I don't make these things up, you know.
- That's what he said? - This guy tells me this.
Let's be friends for one minute, just to get him.
- No, come on. Please!
No, come on! Oh, no. No!
These are my good things.
- Let's show him... - Oh, what?
- Pick him up. - Fellas, I really don't appreciate this.
It's unnecessary.
- What time is it? It's...
- Let me tell you something... - Oh, no!
Let me tell you something. Let me tell you something.
I looked over at a monitor and I saw this,
and I wondered if these were my last moments.
That was not in the script!
- Take my pulse. - That was unrehearsed! That was my idea!
I saw that up on the screen.
- It looked like a giant Oreo cookie.
Joe didn't have the same intensity
as he had in the first fight,
so it was a relatively lackluster
12-round decision for Ali
in a fight that was lacking in action.
Has anyone besides Patterson ever won back
a heavyweight championship?
- Uh... no. I think... - He's probably the only one.
What would be so unusual about me winning mine back,
-when I do...
...is that Patterson fought Ingemar Johansson.
Ingemar Johansson surprisingly knocked him out,
and the next year, he came back and won.
But my title was taken after the draft trouble...
uh, from the government or whoever took it... the boxing authorities.
- Mm-hmm. - And then for four years, I was out.
And then, they created James Ellis and Joe Frazier.
Ellis beat... Frazier beat Ellis,
- then Frazier was the homemade champion. - Yeah.
Then Frazier held it for a while, then I came back to fight Frazier,
but I had never really lost it.
And then, I think, I won that fight, it was so close,
and physically, took the worst punishment.
Now, since Frazier, it's been probably some three
to four years before I get another shot at it,
and then I'm fighting a man like George Foreman,
who's younger and stronger
than the first Liston that I fought.
Now I'm 10 years older than I was when I fought the first Liston.
So, if I beat a man better than that first Liston I fought,
and I'm 10 years older, that makes me triple great.
He might've peaked in Zaire when he fought George Foreman.
That was probably the best he was after the layoff.
But then you see the fights go on and on and on.
Some people really fearing for Ali...
of whether this young, strong, unbeaten Foreman
was the kind of force of nature that even Ali couldn't overcome.
Everybody was saying
Foreman's gonna kill him. Foreman's gonna destroy him.
This is Sonny Liston reincarnated 10 years younger.
Ali said to me once that the...
fight that he was at his best as a fighter in was Cleveland Williams.
The fight that was the best for fans was Ali-Frazier three in Manila.
But the fight that meant the most to him
was beating George Foreman in Zaire.
Punches that used to miss Ali by, uh,
you know, this much or this much,
he was hit solid shots by the heavy-hitting...
Maybe the hardest puncher in heavyweight history,
next to maybe Joe Louis,
Earnie Shavers, the Acorn, as Ali called him, he was a tremendous puncher.
Ali got hit flush a lot of punches in that fight,
and that fight went the full 15 rounds.
Teddy Brenner opined in the New York Post and elsewhere
that Ali has to quit now.
Of course, Ali ignored that.
The people around Ali wanted to keep milking him,
and, uh, you know, I didn't see Herbert Muhammad
or anybody else that had a hand in Muhammad Ali's pocket
ever push him towards retirement.
Look, Ali had many chances to retire,
but that's not what most athletes do.
Most fighters are defined by being fighters.
It's their life. It's... the way they live.
It's what they do.
The last time I saw you on television was with me,
I mean, the last time we worked together.
No, not the last time, but the time before that,
you had been beaten still another time, and, uh...
I don't mean to bring up an unpleasant memory.
- How are you?
- Pretty good. - Say, let me ask you a quick and sudden question.
There's something here in the paper
as we sit here now...
"Leon Ducking Ken."
Do those names ring a bell, and what's going on here?
Well, as you know, Leon Spinks is the new champion...
- Yeah. -...for about another four months.
- And, um...
- He has the...
Six months, eight months,
-whatever the time... - He has the title "temporary champion of the world."
And Ken Norton is one of the top contenders.
- He's actually the number two contender for the crown... - Mm-hmm.
...and he believes that he deserves a new shot
at the crown, which nothing's wrong with that.
- Yeah. - And Leon Spinks is offered
a million five hundred thousand dollars for fighting Norton.
Norton's offered 200,000.
He's offered five million for fighting me,
so it's not hard for him to make up his mind.
Plus, not only is he offered five million,
but the world wanna see me go after the crown
- for the third time and make triple history. - Yes.
Plus, the whole country so, um...
But you're here to reveal tonight
that you're never going to fight again.
- Did I get it wrong?
I know another interviewer
who gets paid for being an idiot. What's your excuse?
Every day, he was sparring
and wearing the little rubber headgear,
which doesn't do much to shield you from the punch.
You're still... Your brains are getting punched in.
To watch, as I was growing up, watch him deteriorate
in terms of those skills, take these beatings,
to me, it was like, wow,
I believe he can beat anybody. He can do anything.
But then, you're constantly brought back to Earth,
and then you start to worry about his condition, so...
at that point, you just start to think,
why is he getting back in the ring?
And then you hear horrible things, you know, how he's getting ripped off by Don King,
he didn't have money, this and that.
You think, gosh, Superman's looking tattered!
But...
it's more than Superman looking human.
It's the icon being eclipsed by reality.
Boxers usually have the image of being illiterates or not smart.
Do you know how smart Spinks has gotta be to whup me
and to plan his battle...
Something like Einstein I would think.
- Yes, it is amazing. - And to know when to come in, the window... It's not easy.
I liked the fact that you didn't say I was robbed,
even though there were... Well, nobody thought you...
Yeah, some people did feel you were.
In fact, there was a little anxiety there
when the decision was a split decision.
I watch a lot of events. I watch boxers, I watch wrestlers, ballplayers.
It's a bad thing when a person lose...
"No, I was robbed! No! No, they took it from me!"
- It's not gonna help you. The decision has been made. - No class.
They're not gonna reverse it.
Then the people say, boy, look at him suffering and grieving.
- If you lose, you lose. - Yeah.
I lost the fight.
The battle plan was wrong,
and the man won, and just get ready to come back.
See, I've been on top so long,
it's good to fall sometime to realize where I was,
so I can come back and really appreciate it.
So sometimes, I don't mind getting beat.
I could probably name on one hand
fighters that retired when they should've retired.
It just doesn't... Athletes that retire,
they all think they have another game left.
They have another fight left.
It's natural that he and I fight again because people just
are not yet ready to believe that Muhammad Ali's finished.
What will I do when I retire?
What will you do when you lose the show?
- Oh, I don't know. I'll probably get... - I mean, when you quit the show.
Probably go to work for whoever's heavyweight champion at that time.
I like to defy odds, do the impossible...
- That appeals to you? - ...perform miracles.
Yeah. I'm finished now, all washed up.
To be champion a third time...
No man has won the title three times.
- No man in history. - Floyd Patterson was the first to win it twice,
and I was second, but three times?
Records are made to be broken, they say, and records are continually being broken.
But to win the championship three times,
I'll bet for the next 100 years, 200 years,
I don't think nobody'd ever come back and win it three times,
so I'm gonna do the impossible.
I wasn't surprised that Ali beat Spinks in their rematch,
because I think, by that time in his career,
Ali was either unwilling or unable
to do the kind of serious training
that he needed to do,
unless he was fighting an opponent
he had the highest respect for.
Where do you feel the age, really?
You said in one interview that
when you get up there around the 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th round,
at age 36, you start to feel it.
Where? Is it literally hard to keep the arms up at that point?
No. Things you see that you wanna do,
you can't do it. Like, we're right here, right?
And I'm right... I should really hit you, right?
- Yeah... - And then I throw one,
and it lands right there, and I miss you.
Yeah. You can still do that, luckily.
Well, with you, the wind from the punch would knock you down.
- The wind... - Yeah, I heard you.
- I was just thinking about it.
But usually, your reflexes, your timing...
- Yeah. -...you see punches coming, you can't get away quick enough.
More people are coming out of retirement,
even as we sit here, someone else is.
Foreman is coming out. Frazier's coming out.
You know something I thought about?
If George Foreman was told that he's got to fight me again,
-he would stay in retirement.
If you told Joe Frazier to fight George Foreman,
-he would stay in retirement.
If you told Norton he's gotta face Foreman,
-he would retire!
I'd be left all alone again.
I didn't want to see him fight Larry Holmes.
I felt that he had nothing else to prove.
I was all for him fighting Larry Holmes.
What happens happens, done.
When you had to stop that fight, did you want to stop it earlier?
Yes. I wanted to stop it.
After the fifth round, I told him. He said, okay.
See, he had told me before he was gonna wear the guy out the first five.
And I said to myself, "Well, okay, the first five are over.
Let's start throwing some punches."
But there was nothing to throw, he was an empty shell.
He didn't have nothing.
I don't wanna belittle the performance of Holmes
- 'cause he's a good fighter. - Mm-hmm.
But the kid had nothing that night.
- This happens to every fighter. - It was depressing.
It was just heartbreaking because you think
if he had left a little earlier,
if there was a way that he had had...
not only the money, but the sense of confidence
that he was larger than life in the American mind,
and specifically for black people,
that he would've understood there were other ways for him
to stay current, to stay popular, to stay relevant.
I thought he had no chance to beat Holmes,
but there's an old saying in boxing:
Every great fighter has one great fight left in them.
And people had that...
that reel in their minds of
the great fights and the great comebacks that Ali had,
and some people gave him a chance,
but I didn't see how he was gonna handle Holmes,
who had been his sparring partner
for him way back in the day.
Here's a man who conquered the world,
stood up to US government.
How can you tell him that this other mountain that he's gonna
climb and conquer he can't do?
And I think it hurt
Larry as much as it did anybody else.
And to see this gladiator,
who had caught lightning in a jar,
just get to where he was almost defenseless,
it was a very sad night.
- Do you want him to fight again? - No.
No, I think it's wrong for him to fight again.
There's nothing to prove,
and especially if you're fighting a lesser guy.
Dundee was worried about Ali, clearly.
He was an intelligent man.
And he stayed along right up to that last
dreadful fight.
I was at the last fight with Trevor Berbick
down in the Bahamas. Ali won four rounds,
Berbick won six.
Ali could barely walk.
Did he need money? Maybe.
You always have excuses, right?
So, it took one more bad fight
to realize...
for the world to realize, come on.
This is not what we wanna see.
Maybe his problems started when
Earnie Shavers shook him up.
Would the Holmes fight have made any difference
in the long term?
We don't know.
Many fighters have gone there.
But it also throws into question
the whole boxing game.
We have to question the sort of brutal sport where
people are beaten about to the point where
they become disabled.
It's easy to have conflicted feelings about boxing
because, obviously,
on a high level, it is an art.
A marvelous athletic art. On the other hand,
it's a brutal, exploiting, and murderous,
crime-riddled game.
I spent a lot of time with Muhammad Ali
in the late 1980s and 1990s.
The effects of Parkinson's Syndrome
were very noticeable by then,
but he still had a good quality of life.
And his feeling at that point in time was that
his difficulty speaking bothered
other people more than it bothered him.
He looked so great. This...
body was there still,
but it was hard for him to talk
and he didn't try to talk publicly.
In my blogs that I write for the New York Times,
my online column,
I devoted a couple of them to Ali,
and people were really surprised
to find that I used phrases like,
there was a time in my life when it felt like
- he was my best friend. - Ray Robinson didn't actually jump the rope.
He just sort of did this with it and he used to whistle.
He did that.
He was a great dancer, put a lot of rhythm.
Just keep going, Dick. Keep going. Don't stop.
I can't get both feet over it at the same time.
Can I do it backwards?
You do better backwards.
Many scenes from my life are with him,
- horsing around. - Listen, the danger
- is of my hurting you. - I've been wanting to do this ever since I come on your show.
I treasure that. It was just...
a wonderful feeling to be around him.
He had a magic that was palpable when you were with him.
- This is my son.
I thought you were doing a ventriloquist act there.
You know, seriously, knowing you
is one of the nicest things of my life,
and that time you stayed at my house overnight. Remember?
There was a documentary Ali and I were in,
and it was shooting out near my house
in the end of Long Island, in Montauk.
After we finished, we went to dinner at a restaurant there,
and it was getting to be near bedtime, and I said to him,
hey, why don't you, just for fun, stay at my house tonight?
Thinking he'd laugh.
And he said, I wanna see how you live.
- Yeah, yeah. I was at your house. - That's right.
- I slept in your bed. - That's right.
So, I drove him to my house,
and put him in the bedroom.
So, I went and got his wife, brought her back,
and when I got back, I found out that my wife
had called from New York.
Let me tell you the story. I was in Dick's bed.
The phone rang. Ring!
I said hello. And the lady says,
"Hello?" I said hello.
She says, "I have the wrong number."
- Dick's wife.
And then she called back. Dick, she called back.
I figured it was something she didn't know I was in the bed.
So, I said hello, this is Muhammad Ali. She said,
"Oh, yes. Oh yes.
Is Dick there? Let me talk to Dick. This is his wife."
- She must've been shocked. - She was shocked because,
first of all, her voice is lower than yours.
She said, "Well, Mr. Ali,
this is an honor. I will put a plaque on that bed."
An offer she never made for me.
He was a wonderful house guest. He...
treated me as an equal and...
Oh, I forgot. Wait a minute.
I forgot how you said you wanted these done, but...
I just did the one.
I'd like to think he would've played with me as a kid
if we were the same age and shared a playground.
And sometimes, he seemed almost like
a brother to me.
Ali...
was at the Olympics,
and went up
with his hands trembling, took that torch.
All kind of thoughts went through my mind.
For some reason, they hadn't told who
the big mystery figure was going to be.
Who would get this incredible honor?
And then, literally, it was like
dramatic to see
the shaking hand,
this figure emerging, Muhammad Ali.
And for me, I gotta tell you, I cried, man.
It was unbelievable!
I remember my heart ached for him and...
for those of us who loved him.
Here's a guy fighting through his illness
to hold up a torch for everybody else.
Here's a guy trembling.
It meant so much to me
that the American people would select Muhammad Ali.
'Cause to me, you know, it's Superman,
but it's also in terms of racial identity.
So powerful.
America comes to peace with itself
about race and about change.
And when he held up that torch,
it was a victory over the disease.
It was a victory over being rejected
and isolated because of your political
and religious view.
There's one man that represents who we are...
modern America.
In terms of our race relations, but even beyond that,
in terms of our aspirations,
what it means to be great.
And that one person would be Muhammad Ali.
Unbelievable to me.
And I think unbelievable to lots of other people.
Black, white,
Asian, Hispanic.
It was like...
the American...
promise fulfilled in that moment.
He really was holding up a torch for the, for the,
for the strength and victory of the human spirit.
That's what he has come to represent.
He had become bigger
than he ever could've imagined.
Bigger than boxing, bigger than the heavyweight championship.
He was, in some ways, my best friend
because, in a unique way,
he was my best friend in that
no other friends of mine resemble him in any way.
He just seemed to have all...
good qualities.
And in a way, he remained a big kid.
In some ways, to his detriment,
but what a guy.
Hmm.
It's funny to think that I knew you 10 years ago
when you were young and immodest.
Here you are now. Remember how you used to be
a loud-mouthed, bragging jackass?
- Right. Well...
- Remember...
I'm your main man, remember?
- Not no more you ain't. - No no! Please, don't take it back.
- Brothers, get him! - No, no!
I'm surprised that you're in such good shape.
Don't see a bit of fat. Nothing but bone.
- We have a message...
- Good night. - No, you can't leave!
- Oh, get him back here, will you? - No, we can't leave yet!
Can't be walking off the show. That's not right...
An enormous number of people, black people usually,
came to me and said, boy, when Muhammad said you...
- you were his main man, that was it. - Helped you out. Helped you out.
- Now you...
- What's that? - Now you can walk through Harlem.
When are you going into the movies, Ali?
I don't go into movies, brother, because the movies
that the black people make are belittling.
- And they're not good.
The movies that they allow black people to make
is a big trick bag, and the rest of them don't see it.
So, movies like...
the title, Cotton Come To Harlem...
Nigga Charlie,
Cleopatra Jones...
What's this judo picture out now? Black judo picture called
- Judo Jones or something.
Movies like... All kind of movies
showing prostitution, showing dope.
Negroes in Cadillacs. They don't make movies...
I'm not gonna make a movie until it's like Charlton Heston.
- Dick Cavett, come here. - No... Wait a minute.
- This is the slow bag? What do you call this? - No, this is the heavy bag.
- The heavy bag? - This is where I build up my hitting power.
- Can't you hurt yourself? - This is for stamina.
- Oh! - It's not for speed, it's for power.
This bag weighs about twice as much as you, Dick.
- Oh, that's hard to imagine. - Sixty pounds.