Speaking of Indignities

PRIZEFIGHTING Speaking of Indignities

There must be times when Cassius Clay wonders what in the name of Allah has happened to him. Just yesterday he was "the Greatest," a carefree teenager who chattered amusingly about winning the heavyweight championship of the world and driving around in a tomato-red Cadillac. Now he is 24, divorced, in Dutch with the draft, condemned by Congressmen. He is the "champion of the world," but it is a smallish world: eleven states, the United Kingdom, Europe, Africa, Australia, and the Brotherhood of Black Muslims.

He can't get a license in Chicago, and he can't get a fight anywhere with Ernie Terrell, who claims to be the champion of the rest of the world.

Last week Champion Clay was reduced to fighting for pocket money in Toronto, a hockey town, against George Chuvalo, a onetime used-car salesman. When it was all over and he had won, Clay suffered one more indignity: the Canadian government held up his purse, to make sure that he paid his taxes.

Let's Be Practical. A potato-faced pug, noted mainly for his high threshold of pain and his mastery of the "upper-cup"--a left hook to an opponent's private parts--Chuvalo was ranked tenth among the World Boxing Association's top ten heavyweights. True, he had never been knocked down in 47 pro fights, but he had lost eleven, including three of the last eight--to Floyd Patterson, Ernie Terrell and an Argentine named Eduardo Corletti. Sportswriters called the fight "the mismatch of the decade"; bookmakers installed Clay as the 1-to-7 favorite--and then refused to take any bets. There were rows of empty $7 seats at Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens; the 38 theater proprietors who piped in the closed-circuit telecast took their lumps when only 50,000 fans turned out --v. 250,000 who watched Clay demolish Floyd Patterson last November.

Strangely enough, it was all it wasn't supposed to be: a fight. Slow, awkward, outreached by three inches, Chuvalo was totally practical. "I am a rough fighter, bordering on the dirty," he admitted. "I have to overpower Clay, wear him down, run him into the ground." In the first round, he rifled a left at Clay's kneecap and followed with a hook to the groin. He then grabbed hold of the champion's neck with one glove, whaled away at Clay's kidneys with the other.

Fans at ringside screamed "Foul!, Foul!", but Referee Jack Silvers just shrugged. "Chuvalo is a body puncher," he explained later, "and stopping him from hitting low is like cutting off his arm." In the third round, the Canadian pinned Clay against the ropes, belted him a dozen times with right and left hooks--all below the belt. The judges applauded that display by awarding Chuvalo the round.

Stunted Redwood. It was the only round he won. Landing five punches for every one he took, Clay bounced jab after jab off Chuvalo's unguarded forehead; his slashing right raised big pink lumps on the Canadian's pudgy face. In the eleventh round, Cassius staggered Chuvalo with a flurry of combinations; in the 13th, he landed at least 30 solid punches--left jabs, left hooks, straight rights, right uppercuts. By the end of the 15th round, Chuvalo's eyes were slits; he was cut on the scalp and right eyebrow, and blood was trickling from his nose. But he was still standing--like "a stunted redwood," wrote New York Timesman Robert Lipsyte--rooted to the canvas of the ring.

What did it prove? Nothing, aside from the fact that Clay can take it as well as dish it out. Some critics sneered that he was a powder-puff puncher; others insisted that Cassius deliberately had "carried" Chuvalo, could have knocked him out any time he wanted. Clay replied by exhibiting a pair of swollen hands that looked almost as bad as Chuvalo's face: "George's head," he moaned, "is the hardest thing I've ever punched."

Cassius' biggest pain was in his pocketbook. His share of the purse was only $100,000--the smallest payoff to a defending champion since 1952, when Jersey Joe Walcott got $92,000 for fighting Ezzard Charles for the fourth time.

After taxes, that would hardly cover the upkeep on Muslim Leader Elijah Muhammad's 18-room Chicago mansion. Clay's handlers were looking for still another nobody for Cassius to fight before he reports for the draft, perhaps in June. Henry Cooper seems to fill the bill best: the latest in a long line of swooning British heavyweights, he can be cut by a slice of bread, and he is now 31. Besides, Clay knocked him out three years ago.

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