Playboy Classic: Muhammad Ali

He dubbed himself "the Greatest" and then

proceeded to live up to the title—both inside

and outside the ring

M

uhammad Ali was "the Greatest." a title no less accurate lor having l>een U'stowed. with characteristic swagger, by All himself. Indeed. Ali was among thi' greatest and most Ix'loved l>oxers in the history of ihe sport. He won a gold medal at the I960 Olym­pics and went on to win 56 out of 61 professional lights. He is the only lx>xer in history to defend the worlil heavyweight championship 10 times. In 1999 S/iorls Illustrated, which leatured Ali on its cover 3ii times, named him s|x>rtsman of the century.

In the ring Ali was known for toying with his opponents. As he famously described his style, he would "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee." dancing around his competition, exhausting them as he landed hammer blows. Outside the ring he became a larger-than-life celebrity who hung out with politicians and movie stars. (The actor Will Smith portrays him in one of several biopics.)

All's career was not without controversy. Horn Cassius Clay (he changed his name when he joined the Nation of Islam). Ali l>egan fighting at the age of 12 after his bicycle was stolen. He wanted revenge. and a police officer told him to learn to light. A se­ries of local matches led him. at 18. to the Olym­pics victory. He was drafted in the 1960s during the Vietnam war but refused to enlist. (He said. "1 ain't got no quarrel with them Vietcong.") He was arrested, found guilty, stripped of his heavy­weight crown and barred from I mix ing. a suspension that lasted until he won an ap|x-al in front ol the U.S. Supreme Court. Fighting again, he went on to win some of the most memorable bouts in boxing history—against Joe Frazier, Sonny I.iston. I>eon Spinks and (George Foreman—though his career ended after a series of humiliating defeats.

As a Muslim. Ali became politically active, working in the civil rights struggle. I,ast year lootball legend Jim Brown said. "America started with slavery and ended up with a black president. Muhammad Ali was a part of that...a big part." Shortly alter the end of his boxing career. Ali be­came ill with Parkinson's disease but continued to work as a philanthropist. He also tried his hand at diplomacy. In 1990 he flew to Iraq and met with Saddam Hussein to secure the release of American hostages. Ali. who has nine children and is on his fourth marriage now lives near PliiM:nix. He has received two presidential awards for his public service. "As a lighter, you wen* something spec-tacular." Harack Obama told Ali on his birthday in 2012. "You shex'ked the world, and you inspired it loo. And even after all the titles and legendary bouts, you're still doing it." Our interviewer, jour­nalist Lawrence Linderman, met with Ali in 1975 alter his historic win against the favorite. George Foreman, in the famous Rumble in the Jungle in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo).

PLAYBOY: W hat's the physical sensation of really being nailed by hitters like George Foreman and Joe Frazier?

ALI: Take a still tree branch in your hand and hit

it against the Hmr and you'll leel your hand go

boingggggg. Well, getting tagged is the same kind

of jar on your w hole bixly. and you need at least

10 or 20 seconds to make that go away. You gel hit

again lx'fore that, you got another boingggggg.

PLAYBOY: After you're hit that hard, does your

body do what you want it to do?

ALI: No. because your mind controls your lxxly

and the moment (continued on page 137)

ALI

(continued from page 101)

you're tagged, you can't think. You're just numb and you don't know where you're at. There's no pain, just that jarring feeling. But I automatically know what to do when that happens to me, sort of like a sprinkler system going off when a fire starts up. When I get stunned, I'm not really conscious of ex­actly where I'm at or what's happening, but I always tell myself that I'm to dance, run, tie my man up or hold my head way down. I tell myself all that when I'm conscious, and when I get tagged, I automatically do it. PLAYBOY: [Before your recent fight with George Foreman] you called him all kinds of names. How does that help? ALI: You mean when I called him the Mummy, 'cause he walks like one? Listen, if a guy loses his temper and gets angry, his judgment's off and he's not thinking as sharp as he should. But George wasn't angry. No, sir. George had this feeling that he was supreme. He believed what the press said—that he was unbeatable and that he'd whup me easy. The first three rounds, he still believed it. But when I started throwing punches at him in the fourth, George finally woke up and thought, Man, I'm in trouble. He was shocked. PLAYBOY: Do you think Foreman was so confident of beating you that he didn't train properly?

ALI: No, George didn't take me lightly. Who­ever I fight comes at me harder, because if you beat Muhammad Ali, you'll be the big man, the legend. Beating me is like beating Joe Louis or being the man who shot Jesse James. George just didn't realize how hard I am to hit and how hard I can hit. PLAYBOY: Foreman claims he was drugged before the fight. Did you see any evidence of that?

ALI: George is just a sore loser. The truth is that the excuses started comin' as soon as George began to realize he lost. He couldn't take losing the championship. Now that I got it back, every day is a sunshiny day: I wake up and I know I'm the heavyweight champion of the world. Whatever restaurant I walk into, whatever park I go to, whatever school I visit, people are sayin', "The champ's here!" When I get on a plane, a man is always sayin' to his little boy, "Son, there goes the heavyweight champion of the world." Wherever I go, the tab is picked up, people want to see me and the TV wants me for interviews. That's what it means to be champ, and as long as I keep win­ning, it'll keep happenin'. So before I fight, I think, Whuppin' this man means everything. So many good things are gonna happen if I win I can't even imagine what they'll be! PLAYBOY: Did you like the idea of Zaire as the fight site?

ALI: When I first won the championship from Sonny Liston, I was riding high and I didn't realize what I had. Now, the second time around, I appreciate the title, and I would've gone anywhere in the world to get it back. To be honest, when I first heard the fight would be in Africa, I just hoped it would go off right, being in a country that was supposed to be so undeveloped. Then, when we went down to Zaire, I saw they'd built a new stadium with lights and that everything would be ready,

and I started getting used to the idea and lik­ing it. And the more I thought about it, the more it grew on me, and then one day it just hit me how great it would be to win back my title in Africa. Being in Zaire opened my eyes. PLAYBOY: In what way? ALI: I saw black people running their own country. I saw a black president of a humble black people who have a modern country. There are good roads throughout Zaire, and Kinshasa has a nice downtown section that reminds you of a city in the States. Build­ings, restaurants, stores, shopping centers— I could name you 1,000 things I saw that made me feel good. When I was in training there before the fight, I'd sit on the river-bank and watch the boats going by and see the 747 jumbo jets flying overhead, and I'd know there were black pilots and black stew­ardesses in 'em, and it just seemed so nice. In Zaire, everything was black—from the train drivers and hotel owners to die teachers in the schools and die pictures on the money. It was just like any other society, except it was all black, and because I'm black oriented and a Muslim, I was home there. I'm not home here. I'm trying to make it home, but it's not. PLAYBOY: Why not?

ALI: Because black people in America will never be free so long as they're on the white man's land. Look, birds want to be free, tigers want to be free, everything wants to be free. We can't be free until we get our own land and our own country in North America. When we separate from America and take maybe 10 states, then we'll be free. Free to make our own laws, set our own taxes, have our own courts, our own judges, our own schoolrooms,

our own currency, our own passports. PLAYBOY: Since it's unlikely they'll get one carved out of—or paid for by—the U.S., are you pessimistic about America's future race relations?

ALI: America don't have no future! Amer­ica's going to be destroyed! Allah's going to divinely chastise America! Violence, crimes, earthquakes—there's gonna be all kinds of trouble. America's going to pay for all its lynchings and killings of slaves and what it's done to black people. America's day is over—and if it doesn't do justice to the black man and separate, it gonna burn! PLAYBOY: Elijah Muhammad preached that all white men are blue-eyed devils. Do you believe that?

ALI: We know that every individual white ain't devil-hearted, and we got black people who are devils—the worst devils I've run into can be my own kind. When I think about white people, it's like there's 1,000 rat­tlesnakes outside my door and maybe 100 of them want to help me. But they all look alike, so should I open my door and hope that the 100 who want to help will keep the other 900 off me, when only one bite will kill me? What I'm sayin' is that if there's 1,000 rattlesnakes out there and 100 of them mean good—I'm still gonna shut my door. I'm gonna say, "I'm sorry, you nice 100 snakes, but you don't really matter." PLAYBOY: Didn't white freedom riders of the 1960s—at least four of whom were murdered—demonstrate that many whites were ready to risk their lives for black civil rights?

ALI: Look, we been told there's gonna be whites who help blacks. And we also know

there's gonna be whites who'll escape Allah's judgment, who won't be killed when Allah destroys this country—mainly some Jewish people who really mean right and do right. But we look at the situation as a whole. We have to.

Yes, a lot of these white students get hurt 'cause they want to help save their country. But listen, your great-granddaddy told my great-granddaddy that when my grand-daddy got grown, things would be better. Then your granddaddy told my granddad-dy that when my daddy was born, things would be better. Your daddy told my dad­dy that when I got grown, things would be better. But they ain't. Are you tellin' me that when my children get grown, things'll be better for black people in this country? PLAYBOY: No, we're just trying to find out how you honestly feel about whites. ALI: The only thing the white man can offer me is a job in America—he ain't gonna offer me no flag, no hospitals, no land, no free­dom. But once a man knows what freedom is, he's not satisfied even being the president of your country. And as Allah is my witness, I'd die today to prove it. If I could be president of the U.S. tomorrow and do what I can to help my people or be in an all-black country of 25 million Negroes and my job would be to put garbage in the truck, I'd be a garbage-man. And if that included not just me but also my children and all my seed from now till forever, I'd still rather have the lowest job in a black society than the highest in a white society. If we got our own country, I'd empty trash ahead of being president of the U.S.— or being Muhammad Ali, the champion. PLAYBOY: You've earned nearly $10 million in fight purses in the past two years alone.

Would you really part with all your wealth so easily?

ALI: I'd do it in a minute. Last week, I was out taking a ride and I thought, I'm driving this Rolls-Royce and I got another one in the ga­rage that I hardly ever use that cost $40,000. I got a Scenicruiser Greyhound bus that sleeps 14 and cost $120,000 and another bus that cost $42,000—$162,000 just in mobile homes. My training camp cost $350,000, and I just spent $300,000 remodeling my house in Chicago. I got all that and a lot more.

Well, I was driving down the street and I saw a little black man wrapped in an old coat standing on a corner with his wife and little boy, waiting for a bus to come along—and there I am in my Rolls-Royce. The little boy had holes in his shoes, and I started thinkin' that if he was my little boy, I'd break into tears. And I started crying. PLAYBOY: How has Elijah Muhammad's death affected the Black Muslims? ALI: Naturally, it was saddening, because it's bad to lose him physically, but if we should lose him in ourselves, that's worse. PLAYBOY: What difference did he make in your own life?

ALI: He was my Jesus, and I had love for both the man and what he represented. Like Jesus Christ and all of God's prophets, he represented all good things, and hav­ing passed on, he is missed. But prophets never die spiritually, for their words and works live on. Elijah Muhammad was my savior, and everything I have came from him—my thoughts, my efforts to help my people, how I eat, how I talk, my name. PLAYBOY: Do you think you could ever lose the faith? ALI: It's possible that I can lose faith, so I gotta

pray, and to keep myself fired up, I gotta talk like I'm talkin' now. It's the kind of talk that keeps us Muslims together. And you can tell a bunch of Muslims: no violence, no hate, no cigarettes, no fightin', no stealin', all happy. It's a miracle. Most Negro places you be in, you see folks fussin' and cussin', eatin' pork chops and women runnin' around. You've seen the peace and unity of my train­ing camp—it's all Elijah Muhammad's spirit and his teachings. Black people never acted like this before. If every one of us in camp was just like we were before we heard Elijah Muhammad, you wouldn't be able to see for all the smoke. You'd hear things like "Hey, man, what's happenin', where's the ladies? What we gonna drink tonight? Let's get that music on and party!" And hey, this isn't an Islamic center. We're happy today. And we're better off than if we talked Christian­ity and said, "Jesus loves you, brother. Jesus died for your sins, accept Jesus Christ." PLAYBOY: You find something wrong with that?

ALI: Christianity is a good philosophy if you live it, but it's controlled by white people who preach it but don't practice it. They just organize it and use it any which way they want to. If the white man lived Chris­tianity, it would be different, but I tell you, I think it's against nature for European people to live Christian lives. Their nations were founded on killing, on wars. France, Germany, the bunch of 'em—it's been one long war ever since they existed. And if they're not killing each other over there, they're shooting Indians over here. And if they're not after the Indians, they're after the reindeer and every other living thing they can kill, even elephants. It's always vio­lence and war for Christians.

Muslims, though, live their religion—we ain't hypocrites. We submit entirely to Allah's will. We don't eat ham, bacon or pork. We don't smoke. And everybody knows that we honor our women. You can see our sisters on the street from 10 miles away, their white dresses dragging along the ground. Young women in this society parade their bodies in all them freak clothes—miniskirts and pantsuits—but our women don't wear them. A woman who's got a beautiful body covers it up and humbles herself to Allah and also turns down all the modern conveniences. Nobody else do that but Muslim women. You hear about Catholic sisters—but they do a lot of screwing behind doors. Ain't nobody gon­na believe a woman gonna go all her life and say, "I ain't never had a man," and is happy. She be crazy. That's against nature. And a priest saying he'd never touch a woman— that's against nature too. What's he gonna do at night? Call upon the hand of the Lord? PLAYBOY: Are Muslim women allowed to have careers, or are they supposed to stay in the kitchen?

ALI: A lot of'em got careers, working for and with their brothers, but you don't find 'em in no white man's office in downtown New York working behind secretarial desks. Too many black women been used in offices. And not even in bed—on the floor. We know it because we got office Negroes who've told us this. So we protect our women, 'cause women are the (concluded on page 141)

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field that produces our nation. And if you can't protect your women, you can't pro­tect your nation. Man, I was in Chicago a couple of months ago and saw a white fella take a black woman into a motel room. He stayed with her two or three hours and then walked out—and a bunch of brothers saw it and didn't even say nothin'. They should have thrown rocks at his car or kicked down the door while he was in there screwing her—do something to let him know you don't like it. How can you be a man when another man can come get your woman or your daughter or your sister—and take her to a room and screw her—and, nigger, you don't even protest?

But nobody touches our women, white or black. Put a hand on a Muslim sister and you are to die. You may be a white or black man in an elevator with a Muslim sister, and if you pat her on the behind, you're supposed to die right there. PLAYBOY: You're beginning to sound like a carbon copy of a white racist. Let's get it out front: Do you believe that lynching is the answer to interracial sex? ALI: A black man should be killed if he's messing with a white woman. And white men have always done that. They lynched niggers for even looking at a white woman; they'd call it reckless eyeballing and bring out the rope. Raping, patting, mischief, abusing, showing our women disrespect— a man should die for that. And not just white men—black men too. We will kill you, and the brothers who don't kill you will get their behinds whipped and prob­ably get killed themselves if they let it hap­pen and don't do nothin' about it. Tell it to the president—he ain't gonna do nothin' about it. Tell it to the FBI: We'll kill anybody who tries to mess around with our women. Ain't nobody gonna bother them.... Let me ask you something. PLAYBOY: Shoot.

ALI: You think I'm as pretty as I used to be? I was so pretty. Somebody took some pictures of me and they're in an envelope here, so let me stop talking for a few seconds, 'cause I want you to take a look at 'em....

Hey, I'm still pretty! What a wonderful face! Don't I look good in these pictures? I can see I gotta stay in shape if I want to stay pretty, but that's so hard. I've been fighting for 21 years and just thinkin' about it makes me tired. I ain't 22 anymore—I'm 33 and I can't fight like I did eight or 10 years ago. Maybe for a little while, but I can't keep it up. I used to get in a ring and dance and jump and hop around for the whole 15 rounds. Now I can only do that for five or six, and then I have to slow down and rest for the next two or three rounds. I might jump around again in the 1 lth and 12th rounds, or I might even go the whole rest of the fight like I used to, but I have to work much more to be able to do it now; weight is harder to get off, and it takes more out of me to lose it. That means getting out every day and running a couple of miles, coming into the gym and punching the bags four days a week and eatin' the right foods. But I like to eat the wrong foods. I'll

go to a coffee shop and order a stack of pan­cakes with strawberry preserves, blueberry preserves, whipped cream and butter, and then hit them hot pancakes with that good maple syrup and then drink a cold glass of milk. At dinnertime, I'll pull into a McDon­ald's and order two big double cheeseburgers and a chocolate milk shake—and the next day I weigh 10 pounds more. Some people can eat and not gain weight, but if I just look at food, my belly gets bigger. That's why, when I'm training, about all I eat is broiled steaks, chicken and fish, fresh vegetables and salads. I don't even get to see them other things I like. PLAYBOY: Since you've already told us that age has been steadily eroding your skills, what makes you think you'll still be cham­pion when you're 38? ALI: Hey, Jersey Joe Walcott won his title when he was 37. Sugar Ray Robinson fought till he was in his 40s, and Archie Moore went until he was 51. PLAYBOY: At which point you took him apart with ease. Would you want to wind up your career the same way? ALI: Archie didn't end up hurt, and he's still intelligent—in spite of thinking Foreman could beat me. Going five more years don't mean going till I'm 51, and I can do it just by slowing down my style. You also got to remember I spent three and a half years in exile, when they took away my title because I wouldn't be drafted. That's three and a half years less of tusslin', trainin' and fightin', and if not for all that rest, I don't think I'd be in the same shape I am today. Because of my age, I don't have all of those three and a half years coming to me, but I have some of them. PLAYBOY: Was that period of enforced idle­ness a bitter part of your life? ALI: I wasn't bitter at all. I had a good time speaking at colleges and meeting the students—whites, blacks and all kinds, but mainly whites, who supported me a hun­dred percent. They were as much against the Vietnam war as I was. PLAYBOY: When you returned to the ring in 1970, most boxing observers felt you'd lost a good deal of your speed and timing. Did you think so?

ALI: Nope, I thought I was about the same, maybe even better.

PLAYBOY: Does your claim of being the greatest mean that you think you could have beaten every heavyweight champion in modern ring history? ALI: I can't really say. Rocky Marciano, Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, Jack Dempsey, Joe Walcott, Ezzard Charles—they all would have given me trouble. I can't know if I would've beaten them all, but I do know this: I'm the most talked-about, the most publicized, the most famous and the most colorful fighter in history. And I'm the fast­est heavyweight—with feet and hands—who ever lived. Besides all that, I'm the onliest poet laureate boxing's ever had. One other thing too: If you look at pictures of all the former champions, you know in a flash that I'm the best-looking champion in history. It all adds up to being the greatest, don't it?

Excerpted from the November 1975 issue.