| Product: |
Muhammad Ali - Thomas Hauser |
| Date: |
20/07/08 (189 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: A comprehensive Ali overview
Disadvantages: None
Muhammad Ali : His Life and Times was first published in 1991 and written and compiled by the respected boxing writer Thomas Hauser. The book, which is over 500 pages long, is a comprehensive overview of Ali's life and career told mostly in quotes from countless people (both living and dead) who were there at the time. Ali, his entourage, his opponents, his parents, his children, promoters, journalists, celebrities and on and on. There is a vast amount of material in the book which charts his boxing career, political battles, relationships, friendships, rivalries and character. Although Ali now has more biographies about him than any other person, living or dead, if you had to buy just one book about him this would be my recommendation. I found the biography to be an insightful, absorbing, fascinating, sad, funny and ultimately uplifting. I still find it a wonderful book to pick up and dip into whenever I'm stuck for something to read.
The book is split into seventeen chapters with a preface and epilogue. The book begins with the (then) fifty year old Ali rising on his isolated farm at five in the morning to pray to Allah. Hauser tells us that the man quietly praying with only the sound of birdsong around him is the most famous man on the planet. He boxed through the terms of seven Presidents and was "...black and proud when many black Americans were running from their colour." After setting this scene Hauser goes backwards in time to begin the extraordinary story of Ali's life.
The book wastes little time moving through Ali's origins and pressing on into his boxing career and adult life, understandably perhaps because with Ali there is so much to pack in and his real life was more outlandish and incredible than any film script. Biographies are sometimes a struggle for me at the beginning and I prefer ones that don't bombard the reader with the family tree of someone at the start.
Ali's humble origins in Louisville, Kentucky are sketched in with contributions from his parents. His mother tells us that even as a baby he would never stop talking! Joe Martin, a Policeman who ran a local boxing club tells us about what in many ways was the 'birth of Ali'. A skinny twelve year-old boy called Cassius Clay walked through his downstairs gym crying after attending a black function elsewhere in the building. Martin noticed and asked him what was wrong and the boy replied that his bike had been stolen and that he was going to whup whoever took it. "You'd better learn how to fight before you start challenging people," replied Martin. The infamous bike is mentioned again near the end of the book by the adult Ali in a very funny way.
The story soon moves onto Ali's triumph at the Olympics and the start of his professional career. Each episode or fight is told from multiple perspectives with friends, cornermen, opponents and others. I particurly enjoyed the contribtions by Archie Moore, one of the most famous and erudite boxers from that era. The young Ali was sent to Moore's remote camp known as the Salt Mine to train and learn from the master. It didn't quite work out but it sets the scene for the time when they fought for real in a fascinating battle between the Student and Mentor later in the book.
Ali's brash interviews and predictions were relatively new at the time. The book, via the countless narrators, talks about influences like the nonconformist Jack Johnson and a loud mouthed wrestler Ali appeared on a radio show with. The young Ali quickly cottoned onto the rise in ticket sales that followed whenever he hyped up a fight. Through the book we learn how Ali met his lifelong trainer, the amiable Italian American Angelo Dundee. Dundee admits that he thought Ali was a 'nut' at first but goes on through the book to relate his time with the champ confessing that he never had so much fun. Ali's pranks on Dundee are very funny and there is a wonderful moment where Ali launches a tirade agaisnt Don King when he overhears King make a crack about his white trainer.
The book is most absorbing when it becomes caught up in one of Ali's big fights. His first encounter with Liston is fascinating to read about because it places the contest in the context of the prevailing opinion of the time. All the press hated Ali and thought he was a joke. All the famous boxing writers from the era, everyone from Jimmy Cannon to AJ Liebling are used to good effect in this section of the book. One journalist sets the scene:
"An aura of artificiality surrounds Tuesday's heavyweight championship fight between Sonny Liston and Cassius Clay...Cassius, a precocious master of ballyhoo will be seeing stars when Sonny hits him...the loud mouth from Louisville is likely to have a lot of vainglorious boasts jammed down his throat by a ham-like fist belonging to Sonny Liston, the malefic destroyer...Cassius enters the ring with one trifling handicap. He can't fight as well as he can talk."
It's fascinating to read all of this from the perspective of knowng what Ali went on to do.
As you'd expect there is a vast amount of material in the book about the Nation Of Islam and Ali's relationship to them. His friendship with Malcom X, Malcom's banishment from the group and murder and the splits that occurred in the early seventies. Elijah Muhammad, the founder of the Nation comes across as both a father figure to Ali and a slightly nutty man full of bizarre theories about race that Ali later rennounced. Ali's stance is debated by countless contributors and while Hauser is sometimes criticised for being too glowing in his adoration of Ali, he does allow for plenty of dissent from black figures of the time who felt Ali was used by the Black Muslims as a propaganda tool.
Ali's refusal to accept the Vietnam draft and his subsequent ban from boxing is also covered in extensive detail.
From there we move onto Joe Frazier. Has there ever been a more epic sporting rivalry than the one between Ali and Frazier? Their first contest makes for great reading. Ali has lost some of his movement from his long ban but he discovers that he can take a punch. Promoter Butch Lewis says that the tension at ringside before the first Ali v Frazier fight was so electric that people were being carried from the arena. Ali's three fights with Frazier are covered extensively.
Ali's taunting of the less articulate Frazier is discussed by many people and it seems to have left Frazier with permanent scars. In conversation with Hauser, Ali admits that he sometimes went too far and says that Frazier is a great man and he'd want no other person beside him in a Holy War.
Further chapters include 'Zaire' - the rumble in the jungle with George Foreman ("Ali coming back to beat Foreman is the greatest sports fantasy of all time," according to writer Michael Katz), 'Manila', 'The Lion Grows Older', and chapters relating to his ill advised comeback agaisnt Larry Holmes, his complicated finances, his ill health and his rebirth as a campaigner for charitable causes.
Ali's frequent acts of charity are a constant part of the book with hundreds of stories of him giving money away countless times to strangers with sob stories, groups that had written to him and just various homeless people he'd passed in the street and felt sorry for. The book suggests he isn't as rich today as he should be because people took advantage of his nature. The book makes a interesting point when it suggests that Ali's personality contained both his parents in equal measure. The brashness and anger came from his father and the sweet, generous side from his mother.
Don King, no suprise here, comes out of the book in less than glowing terms as does Ali's manager Herbert Muhammad. Herbert was Elijah Muhammad's son and Ali felt a sense of loyalty for that reason despite few people having a good word for Herbert who took a huge chunk of Ali's purses despite apparently being an upstanding Muslim who didn't believe in money or material things. Writer John Sculian lambasts both of them for allowing Ali to fight Holmes. "That man (Don King) is a total scumbag," he says in the book. "It's hard to imagine how hard his heart must be. I'll bet King has a lump of coal in his chest."
Former heavyweight Tim Witherspoon who worked in boxing camps for both King and Ali sums it up when he says that "Everyone in Ali's camp loved Ali and everyone in King's camp hated King's guts."
The book also details Ali's struggle to adapt to a life without boxing, fame and the rush of the entourage and travel. His entourage also chip in and there is a palpable note of sadness as they look back to those incredible days. Lonnie Shabazz, who cooked for Ali at his Deer Lake camp, talks about getting an offer to work for Mike Tyson. She went to see him fight and came away saying "That boy is crazy. He's going to kill someone." She decided that she could never work with anyone else after working for Ali. It would never be the same.
Ali's medical problems are also extensively discussed and Ali makes it clear that he doesn't want anyone to feel sorry. He had an incredible life and with his current wife Lonnie is still happy and finally content to be out of the spotlight after such a crazy life.
Larry Holmes also has an interesting contribution to a section where various boxing trainers and figures discuss what would have happened in a Ali v Tyson fight with both men in their prime. "Ali would have slapped Tyson all over the ring," says Holmes. "Tyson was a bully and Ali always dealt with bullies. Can you imagine the things Ali would have said about Tyson before the fight?"
Most of all I enjoyed the contributions from the boxers that Ali fought. Chuck Wepner (who inspired the film 'Rocky' by fighting Ali) has some very funny stories and everyone from Foreman, to Frazier, Holmes, Liston, Quarry, Patterson, Terrell, Norton and on and on is put in the spotlight again in a very entertaining way.
Jean Pierre Coopman, an unknown Belgian who fought Ali in the seventies makes for a great section. He worshipped Ali and kept hugging him at press conferences much to Ali's exasperation. Ali then suggests he should pretend he has been kidnapped to drum up interest and return just before the fight! Leon spinks and his fights with Ali are also very entertaining to read about. Spinks' manager Butch Lewis : "It was time to start training and no one knows where Leon is. I tracked him down to a little shack drinking moonshine whiskey and smoking dope, groggy as hell." Lewis soon takes to locking Spinks in his room!
So overall this is a must for boxing fans or anyone interested in the legend of Muhammad Ali.
Near the end of the book Bert Sugar sums up.
"Ali stood up for what he believed in. He believed he had a debt to God and society. No one ever tilted at windmills more often and when Ali tilted at windmills, thank God, he usually won."
The book also has a nice selection of photographs from Ali's career and private life.
Summary: The Greatest
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