With Mouth & Magic

There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats.

--Julius Caesar, Act IV, Scene 3

But there was. In Miami Beach last week, Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. acted out a scene that was worthy of the Old Bard himself--or maybe P. T. Barnum. Just as he said he would, he took the heavyweight championship of the world away from Charles ("Sonny") Liston thereby proving that the mouth is faster than the eye.

Clay's mouth was practically supersonic. "I am the greatest," he chattered. "I am the prettiest. I am so pretty that I can hardly stand to look at myself. I am the fastest. I am the fastest heavyweight that you ever did see. Next to me, Liston will look like a dump truck." He did.

Momma, Momma, Momma. Cassius' narcissistic posturing was not meant to convince. "Actually," he confided, "I respect Liston. That look of his shakes me." It was meant to humor, to prod, to annoy, to con Champion Liston into thinking that a young (22), tall (6 ft. 3 in.), sturdy (210 Ibs.) heavyweight with 119 amateur and pro victories behind him would be easy pickings for the man-monster who had twice butchered Floyd Patterson. And, my, how he succeeded, thanks to his unwitting accomplices, the sportswriters.

Challenger Clay led them all a merry chase. He met Liston's plane at the airport, spouted insults at Sonny and his wife. He threatened to picket Liston's training camp. He offered to fight Sonny on the street, for free. "I cannot be beaten," he insisted. "It's prophesied for me to be successful." But at his public training sessions, Clay looked impressively listless. The experts hooted. And the prefight weigh-in did nothing to change their minds.

In pranced a corps of teen-aged girls --"foxes," in Cassius' vocabulary--carrying signs that read: MOMMA, MOMMA, MOMMA, CAN WE FIGHT! Clay's eyes rolled. "This is my show! My show! My show!" he raved. "I'm ready to rumble! Ready to rumble!" He shrieked at Liston: "You nothin'. You scared. You a chump, a sucker. I'm gonna eat you up." Newsmen shook their heads sadly. "Schizophrenia," suggested Milton Gross of the New York Post. "Hysteria," said New York Timesman Arthur Daley. The boxing commission doctor reported Clay's pulse rate at 120--v. his normal 54. "This is a man who is scared to death," diagnosed the doctor. "He acts like a man off the beaten path." The performance cost Cassius a $2,500 fine, and out in Las Vegas, bookmakers raised the odds against Clay from 7-1 to 8-1. Smiled Cassius: "That's fine. I like being the underdog."

Only Three. As fight time approached, Miami Beach's 16,448-seat Convention Hall (scaled in price from $20 to $250) was only half full, and Promoter Bill MacDonald grimly contemplated a $300,000 loss. A rumor circulated that Clay was on a plane headed for Mexico; another had it that he was in the hospital--in a straitjacket. Huh-uh. Resplendent in a tight black tuxedo, Cassius was standing quietly in the back of the auditorium, watching his brother Rudolph Valentino Clay pound out his first pro victory in a preliminary bout. United Press International took a prefight poll of 46 reporters at ringside. Only three gave Cassius a chance to win.

Rarely have so many been so wrong. "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee," was Clay's strategy--and it proved brilliant. Out shuffled Liston, planning to pot his patsy early. Out danced Cassius, chin out, gloves dangling carelessly alongside his thighs, a certain invitation to disaster. Or was it? Liston jabbed with his left--whiff! He hooked with his right--whiff! He hooked with his left --whiff! Bobbing, weaving, ducking, back-pedaling,Cassius slipped punch after punch. Then, stopping suddenly in his tracks, he drove a volley of eight stiff punches to Liston's head. The crowd roared with delight--so loudly that neither fighter heard the bell until it rang for the third time.

"He's Human!" Between rounds, Clay sprawled indolently on his stool. Trembling with rage, Liston refused to sit. At the bell, he roared out, throwing rabbit punches, kidney punches, backhand punches, leaping "kangaroo" punches. A few landed. But Clay effortlessly dodged the crunchers. Now it was Round 3 and Clay counterattacked. Eyes wide with excitement, he drove Liston into the ropes, cut loose with a slashing one-two. The left landed squarely on Sonny's right eye, instantly raising a puffy purple bruise; the right opened a deep gash under his left eye. Blood spurted from the wound, Liston wiped it off with his glove, glanced at it curiously. "My God!" exclaimed a woman at ringside. "He's human! He bleeds."

"It's all over," said one fan. "Only a lucky break can save Liston." But if the fight was surprising until then, it now became fantastic. In the fourth round, Clay got a stinging substance in his eyes--coagulant from Liston's cut perhaps, or liniment from his gloves. Blinking furiously, Cassius staggered back to his corner. "I can't see," he told Trainer Angelo Dundee. "Cut off my gloves, Angelo," he pleaded. "Leave me out of here." When the bell rang for the fifth round, Cassius was still sitting on his stool. "Clay, get out here," yelled Referee Barney Felix. Trainer Dundee hastily shoved Cassius into the ring. "This is a big one, daddy," he said. "We aren't going to quit now."

Amazingly, Cassius stuck out his left hand and propped himself against Liston's nose--like a drunk leaning on a lamppost. And always he kept moving --never allowing the great, lumbering Liston to plant his feet, never presenting a stationary target. Wild with rage, Liston could not hit him. He was defeated--totally, utterly, bewilderingly.

"Get Mad!" Clear-eyed again, Clay sprang from his corner in the sixth round. Rat-a-tat-tat, a flurry of eight punches made Liston double up. "Get mad, baby," Clay's handlers chanted. "Go after him." Fighting flatfooted, Cassius ripped off a roundhouse right that just missed. Jab, jab, jab, jab, the cut under Liston's eye began to ooze blood again. Two left hooks snapped Sonny's head back. Cassius sank back onto his stool and leaned through the ropes. "I'm gonna upset the world," he told a TV announcer.

The warning buzzer for Round 7 rang, and Cassius mentally began ticking off the seconds to the bell. Across the ring, Liston spat out his mouthpiece. Clay blinked: Liston was not coming out. With a wild whoop, Cassius leaped to his feet, gloves high above his head. The fight was over--and Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. was the new heavyweight champion of the world. Round the ring he danced, leering down at the sportswriters and bellowing gleefully: "Eat your words! Eat! Eat!"

Puzzled fans milled aimlessly about, begging for information. Heavyweight champions, like Spartan warriors, are supposed to leave the field of battle carrying their shields, or riding on them. But Sonny Liston--indestructible Sonny Liston--had quit without even standing up to say goodbye. Liston's corner had an explanation: Sonny had suffered a painful muscle tear in his left arm, swinging and missing in the first round --"an honest injury," it was called after a hospital examination. That was enough to satisfy the Miami Beach boxing commission, which released Liston's $250,000 purse--only to have it attached by federal tax men.

A scattering of sportswriters took defeat hard enough to hint "fix," but the rest took their medicine. And bitter it was. "Hypocrites!" yelled Cassius Clay at the press conference. "Whatcha gonna say now, huh? Huh? Who's the greatest?" "Cassius," came the faint reply--too faint to satisfy the new champ. "Let's really hear it!" he hollered. "Who's the greatest? I'll give you one more chance: Who's the greatest?" The chant was loud and clear. "You, Cassius, you. You're the greatest."

"Allah Said No." Next day Cassius turned up for another press conference to take care of one last item of business. Weeks before, he had promised reporters a "whole new personality" if he won the title. Now Clay rummaged around in his bag of tricks. And what did he come up with? A white rabbit? No--a Black Muslim. Cassius used to be a Protestant. No longer. He had joined the militantly antiwhite Negro sect. "My religion is Islam," he said, "and I am proud of it. Followers of Allah are the sweetest people in the world. They do not carry knives or weapons. Their women wear dresses that touch the ground. We pray five times a day. God is with us."

That bombshell reverberated round the world. CLAY PROUD TO BE A MOSLEM, read a headline in Karachi. At Cairo's University of Al-Azhar, Sheikh Sayed Sabik said: "We are all pleased that a Moslem set such a well-mannered religious example of sportsmanship." And at a "Savior's Day" rally in Chicago, while 4,000 delirious followers shouted "You tell it, dear apostle," Black Muslim Leader Elijah Muhammad claimed a share of the heavyweight title for himself. "White people wanted Liston to beat up and probably kill poor little Clay," said Muhammad. "But Allah and myself said no. This assured his victory."

Was Cassius kidding? Nobody knew. Nobody ever knows with Cassius. All anybody knows is that, at 22, Cassius Marcellus Clay's mouth and magic have cornered the world championship and most of $1,000,000--$600,000 from last week's fight alone. There is no telling how much more money Clay can make if he decides to give Sonny Liston a return bout. There is the unsettled matter of his Army service, and there are rumors of a fox in his future. But whatever he does, it will probably turn out right. "I've got a lock on life," says Cassius. "A long time ago I decided where I was going, and nobody has come close to knocking me off those golden stairs."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.