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Archie Moore vs Cassius Clay
He put Archie away in the predicted four rounds, and the crowd booed as he stomped around Archie, shouting: "Where's the dishes? Where's the laundry? Gimme the laundry!" After the fight he visited Clay. "I'm tired," he said. "I'm done. Never show up other fighters, son. You may be coming down yourself one day." Clay shrugged him off, laughed; to him Archie was just a busted out swami.
1962
Alexander the great meets Socrates.
1962
Alexander the great meets Socrates.
The Syndicate said they were in no hurry. Clay needed direction and protection, "would not be sacrificed." They submitted him to the light of Archie Moore, still fighter, and known as a sharp mind. Alexander the great meets Socrates.
Archie was a man of many parts. His diction was precise, his manner effortless and worldly. He played piano, was an expert pistol shot, a splendid cook who needed three wardrobe sizes as he chased the money well over twenty six hard, hard years in something like four hundred fights. He was the first to look different as a fighter, stepping into the ring in blazing colors or looking like a Moorish King. He was the first to make predictions (usually wrong) and to create rhyme. In London he walked the streets in a top hat, striped pants, and tapping a cane. Clay would later make all the papers and the cover of S.I doing the same. The syndicate thought Archie would give the kid some maturity. cultivate discipline and presence.
There were also aspects to his craft. Relaxation, he said , required slipping into impregnable defense until the danger passed against heavy punchers. He called it the "turtle shell," and Clay used it (naming it the Rope a Dope) against George Foreman in Zaire. Escapology was back pedaling; Breathology was conservation of breath. And Applied Muscular Tension was the use of feinting and moving to defuse the other man's tension, a grouping of striking force. His every move was calculated, a patient search for one moment, where he would drop a eight-inch right hand from a ninety degree angle. "with five hundred pounds of pressure per square inch," he would add. Ever the scientist with examining monocle, Archie.
Clay turned up on the Moore grounds outside San Diego in 1960. Archie joked that the place was more suitable or indigent managers. He'd supply them with cheap cigars, get them out of bed"with a black snake whip," and give them a hour to lie and boast after a five mile of roadwork. He'd have a common name for them-bum; that's what they called the "kids they saved off of." It was a hot, desolate camp, suitable for Archie, who thought deprivation and isolation cleansing; the place was called the salt mine, and the gym was the Bucket of Blood, all of it on a rocky ridge of hills, up which Clay would have to run daily. "The place was hell," He'd say. He had expected a retreat, perhaps a shaded oasis where he and Archie would sit around eating grapes and contemplating the kids infinite future. He instead saw an Archie Moore, divested of his plummery, who looked like a tenant farmer. Archie handed him some blue overalls. Sometimes during a break, they sprawled on the rocks, and the old campaigner would discuss ring craft as he were probing quasars. They talked about comportment, the need to have character, bowing to no man. They didn't talk about race except when Archie told him about his role in Huckleberry Finn, how he resented the word "******" in the script and quietly went around the director to get it excised.
"I want to stand straight and high as a champ," Clay said.
"So does an oak tree," Archie said. "But you have to bend and stray. Oak trees make good coffins too."
Once an ex-fighter, not to old, came by, and Archie slipped him some money and gave him a meal. "He lives out in the desert here," Moore told Clay, "like a prairie gopher. You can see he's not well mentally. The trick, son, is not to end up in any kind of desert, to be smart, know the road out."
"Took too many punches, huh?" Clay said. "well, I don't take punches that's for sure."
"The ring isn't play," Archie said.
"Don't be worryin' 'bout me."
"Well, with that attitude, I'll tell you where you're going to end up. With people laughing at you in the gym, or people feeling sorry or you. People dropping a buck on you, and if they remember, and you were good enough, maybe a benefit to hep you, and then they'll forget. There are no pensions for boxers, no old age homes."
"That's not me," Clay said. "Do I look dumb?"
"Listen. Look at me. What do you see?"
"You got some years on ya, not much else."
"Do I talk like I got a mouthful of mush? You see a man behind these eyes, a working brain?"
"Come on, Mr Archie," Clay said. "I don't like starin' at people."
"Just get like me," Archie said. "that's all I want. You're a good kid."
"So does an oak tree," Archie said. "But you have to bend and stray. Oak trees make good coffins too."
Once an ex-fighter, not to old, came by, and Archie slipped him some money and gave him a meal. "He lives out in the desert here," Moore told Clay, "like a prairie gopher. You can see he's not well mentally. The trick, son, is not to end up in any kind of desert, to be smart, know the road out."
"Took too many punches, huh?" Clay said. "well, I don't take punches that's for sure."
"The ring isn't play," Archie said.
"Don't be worryin' 'bout me."
"Well, with that attitude, I'll tell you where you're going to end up. With people laughing at you in the gym, or people feeling sorry or you. People dropping a buck on you, and if they remember, and you were good enough, maybe a benefit to hep you, and then they'll forget. There are no pensions for boxers, no old age homes."
"That's not me," Clay said. "Do I look dumb?"
"Listen. Look at me. What do you see?"
"You got some years on ya, not much else."
"Do I talk like I got a mouthful of mush? You see a man behind these eyes, a working brain?"
"Come on, Mr Archie," Clay said. "I don't like starin' at people."
"Just get like me," Archie said. "that's all I want. You're a good kid."
Friction soon broke out in the camp. All the young trainees had steady chores, and Moore insisted they be carried out; just as vital as good gym habits. Clay began to object to the meniality. It disfigured his idea of his own rank. "I ain't washin' dishes no more, " he told Archie. "I ain't no pearl diver." Eventually, Archie called Bill Faversham, head of the Louisville Syndicate, saying: "I have to ask you to bring the boy home. My wife and kids is crazy about him, and so am I. But he won't do what I tell him to do. He thinks I'm trying to change him in some way, but all I want is for him to grow. "Faversham said that, maybe, he needed a good spanking. "He sure does," Archie said, "but I don't know who's going to give him one, including me."
Archie summed up his view of Clay years later. "Underneath," he said, "he's a fine human being. But his ego and fears are always in battle, and sometimes it leaves him empty inside. He's always going to be that, a lonely and hollow man. He's scared of life, never learned to live it right. He wanted to listen. But his ego wouldn't hear. I'm not so sure the Muslims are using him. It may be the other way round."
Two years later Archie got a spanking from Clay. He must have been flattered even to get the bout, for he had began his career in 1936, and here he was in 1962 being taken seriously. Well, not that much. Clay advertised the fight what he thought of Archie by hiring a sixty three year old sparring partner named One-Round Andrews.He put Archie away in the predicted four rounds, and the crowd booed as he stomped around Archie, shouting: "Where's the dishes? Where's the laundry? Gimme the laundry!" After the fight he visted Clay. "I'm tired," he said. "I'm done. Never show up other fighters, son. You may be coming down yourself one day." Clay shrugged him off, laughed; to him Archie was just a busted out swami.
Endings
They were gone now, most of those who peopled the parabola of his ring life, and memory calls them up, just flickers of thought with no ordering of place or value. Oscar Bonavena: shot to death outside a Nevada whorehouse for trying to woo the owners wife and take the joint over. Jerry Quarry the best heavy since Marciano, constantly trumped by his betters in the division, not knowing how to find the bathroom in his brothers small house, his food having to be cut in small pieces, then dying of erosive brain trauma. Cleveland Williams: having to run down his manger for his money on the street, then being handled a swindling $37.50 as his end, with his manager Hugh Benbow berating him. "I'm ashamed of you." The big cat died in an accident coming home from dialysis treatment. George Chuvalo: a good man with a bad roll, two sons lost t o drugs and suicide and finally the suicide of his wife. Archie Moore: the mentally bejeweled fakir, above all, who knew he most and was listened to the least; he ;lived, like one of his oaks, to a grateful, long age.
December 13, 1913 – December 9, 1998
RIP
"He wanted to listen. But his ego wouldn't hear."
-Archie Moore
After the fight he visited Clay. "I'm tired," he said. "I'm done. Never show up other fighters, son. You may be coming down yourself one day." Clay shrugged him off, laughed; to him Archie was just a busted out swami.
1981
"If he listened to what I was trying to teach him, he wouldn't of had to take such a bad beating during the second part of his career"
-Archie Moore
Next:
Frazier goes to war
The police put a watch on Frazier, his wife, and his children. History had proven that Ali's Muslim collegues were capable of killing.
Sources:
Ghosts of Manila: The Fateful Blood Feud Between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier
- Mark Kram
Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times- Thomas Hauser
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