Hate & Love

"I'm gonna whup him. I'm gonna give him a humiliation. I'll keep hittin' him, and I'll keep talkin'." So said Cassius Clay before meeting Ernie Terrell for the heavyweight championship. Why so angry? Well, Cassius calls himself Muhammad Ali these days because he's a Black Muslim, and Terrell did not appreciate the significance of that fact since he kept calling Cassius, Clay.

In Houston last week, Cassius finally became champion of all the world by beating Terrell, the World Boxing Association's champion, in a methodical 15-round fight that shocked quite a few sportswriters. He did not knock Terrell out--or even down. Instead Cassius carefully closed Ernie's left eye, opened a bloody gash over his right eye that later required seven stitches, and generally made mincemeat of his man. Then, with Terrell dazed and helpless, Clay screamed, "Uncle Tom nigger!" "What's my name?" he demanded again and again. "That's it, baby!" shouted Clay's Muslim handlers. "Make him say your name!" Terrell refused, and took his licking. Afterward, Clay announced that he had really enjoyed beating up Ernie "because he said bad things about my advisers."

"Clay at his cheap-shot worst" was the reaction of the Washington Post. "Contemptible!" "Cruel!" "Disgusting!" cried papers from Los Angeles to London. Once again the New York Times called for the abolition of boxing in an editorial. Terrell, forced to undergo surgery for a "blowout fracture" in the bony structure under his left eye, filed an official complaint against Clay for dirty fighting.

The outcry mounted--until Clay finally heard it. In an interview, he tried to repair his image by apologizing for "making the ring a speaking rostrum." Terrell, he said, was "a real man." Later, Clay had a substantial piece of evidence on his side: movies of the fight showed that the only foul punches were thrown by the blinded Terrell. By week's end Clay had regained some of his old pre-Muslim composure. Appearing on NBC's Tonight Show, he was asked whether he was by any chance in love. Replied Cassius coolly: "Not with anybody else."

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