Drama in the Bahamas Read online

  However, Hawaii managed to wriggle off the hook on a technicality. The commission voted 3-2 to defer Ali’s application for a license until it had received written clarification from the Nevada State Athletic Commission clarifying his exact status as a fighter there. Essentially, they were trying to buy themselves time. A subsequent phone call confirmed the truth of the earlier assertion by Harold Smith, chairman of Muhammad Ali Professional Sports, a company set up in 1977 to promote events using the Ali brand, that he had merely “surrendered” his license in Las Vegas.

  The officials were stalling, because five days after the hearing Ali would turn thirty-nine and Hawaii had a law preventing any fighters over the age of thirty-eight from being licensed, thereby rendering any future meeting on the topic moot.

  After the decision was announced, Smith had a roaring match with Ed Kalahiki, chairman of the commission and the person who had been the swing vote on the issue. The fact that the Governor of Hawaii, George R. Ariyoshi, had appointed Robert R. Lee to the commission just an hour before the meeting was something the Ali camp regarded as “mighty suspicious.”

  “The governor never told me to kill the fight, but I think he knew how I felt about it,” said Lee, two decades later. “Ali was deteriorating and people just wanted to use him and make money off of him. We didn’t know then about his Parkinson’s disease, of course, but you could tell he’d already had enough.”

  Incensed, Smith announced his intention to sue the state for an amount of money large enough to deter others from denying his man the right to fight.

  “This is a sham,” said Smith. “I feel more sadly for the people of Hawaii and Sam Ichinose [the local promoter of the proposed fight] than I do for Ali. Ali’s big enough. He can go anywhere. It’s Hawaii’s loss, not his.”

  Whatever the motivation behind the political chicanery informing the decision, the outcome of it spoke volumes for where Ali now stood. The people who ran boxing in Hawaii, a state that exists literally and metaphorically on the fringes of the American national imagination, were prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to avoid having to host an Ali fight. The prospect of being one of the cities that could be featured in the most storied résumé in the sport, alongside everywhere from Kuala Lumpur to Kinshasa, from Manila to Munich, was no longer alluring.

  During their deliberations, the Hawaiians had also received a troubling cable from London urging them not to sanction an Ali fight. At its first meeting since the Gardner bout had been proposed, the British Boxing Board of Control (who held the Englishman’s license), was adamant it did not want one of its fighters being the next man to face such a diminished version of Ali.

  “The Board’s position is clear with regard to Ali,” said secretary Ray Clark. “We are strongly opposed to Ali continuing boxing. The chairman has stated this previously and the board endorsed this view today.”

  The more vehement the opposition became, the louder those around Ali began to shout.

  “It’s his fight,” said Harold Smith. “If the fight is made it will take place in one of three places: Kingston, Jamaica; the Bahamas; or Puerto Rico. It definitely won’t take place in the United States, mainly because the media in the United States would be too hard on Ali.”

  That much was certainly true, because some in the press were already having fun at his expense.

  “Muhammad Ali has arranged to fight John L Gardner,” wrote legendary columnist Red Smith in the New York Times, “if they can find a place where the cops will look the other way.”

  Ali turned thirty-nine on January 17, 1981, and many papers across America that morning carried an interview that the Associated Press had conducted with him the previous day. Befitting somebody starting to realize that so many in boxing no longer wished to see him fight, or, indeed, would allow him to do so on their patches, his mood was fiery.

  “I’m at war with the factors in boxing that want me to quit. I’m fighting them. I’m going to show them I’m too big for them. I’m not just an ordinary Christian American Negro. I’m a world-accepted Muslim. I’m doing this just for spite, to show them I’m too big to stop.”

  Claiming that he’d been contacted by five different countries (Japan was rumored to be in the mix) offering to host the fight, he refused to name them for fear of jeopardizing negotiations. Sounding predictably upbeat about his chances of beating Holmes in a rematch somewhere down the line, he also mused about aging and the fight game.

  “The reason that I’m doing this is that I don’t want nobody telling me what I can do or can’t do as far as my occupation is concerned. I might say forget it even before I fight Holmes again. I just want the right to do what I want to do if I want to. A lot of fighters get knocked cold several times and keep on fighting, heavyweights in my division, and they haven’t stopped them. If the authorities won’t accept me, I’ll go to the authorities of other worlds.”

  By which he probably meant Puerto Rico. He had previous experience there.

  When he fought Jean-Pierre Coopman, the so-called Lion of Flanders, in San Juan in 1976, he was still near his box office peak. Six hundred fans paid $5 each day just to see him train. While the Roberto Clemente Coliseum only held 10,000, another 11,000 Puerto Ricans crowded into a stadium next door to watch a live television feed of him dismantling the overmatched Belgian, finally ending the contest in the fifth round.

  But that was five years before. An eternity in boxing. An age in promotional terms, too. Although Ali applied for a license in Puerto Rico and the talk was of an April fight at the Hiram Bithorn Stadium, a baseball diamond, doubts now existed about whether San Juan was that interested. Of course, through all the embarrassing refusals, Gardner remained willing to go wherever was needed for the fight to happen. Well, sort of. He, too, had some reservations.

  “As a fan, I think Ali should not box again and not get a license,” said Gardner. “As a professional boxer, I hope he gets his license. This fight could set me up financially for life. If I beat him many would say Ali was an old man and over the hill. But it would still go into the record books, and I would be the only British boxer who had ever beaten the great Muhammad Ali. That is what would matter to me.”

  That and the proposed purse of $300,000 (it had shrunk from initial suggestions of half a million), which would make it the biggest payday of Gardner’s life. His had been a plodding career, and he’d only become European champion after the title was taken off Italy’s Lorenzo Zeno, who took a lucrative world title shot against Larry Holmes rather than defend the belt.

  “If I personally had my way, Ali would not fight again, but I’m saying that as an Ali fan,’’ said Mickey Duff, adding his voice to those questioning the moral if not financial wisdom of the whole enterprise. “As Gardner’s manager, I have a responsibility to my fighter. Still, if I thought that by saying ‘no’ that would cause Ali’s retirement, I would recommend to Gardner that he not fight Ali. But there are at least two opponents waiting in the wings if Gardner says no, and I think he’s as eligible as anyone else to fight Ali and this might be the fight to convince him to retire before he does get hurt.”

  Hawaii and Puerto Rico soon faded from the conversation, and rumors began that Ali had turned his sights on Africa as a potential location. There were reports out of Morocco that he now wished for his “last” fight to take place in an Islamic state, and that Casablanca was the leading contender. Nothing would come of that either.

  If January had proved a month when doors were closed in his face all over the planet, there was, amid the steady drip of negative headlines and steadfast refusals, one cameo that reminded everybody what all the fuss was about, why Ali was such a big deal.

  Shortly after 2:00 p.m. on Monday, January 19, Joseph Brisbon began to climb the fire escape of a high-rise building on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. Upon reaching the ninth floor, the twenty-one-year-old eased himself out onto the ledge and shouted that he intended to commit suicide. The police were quickly called to the scene and, as this African-American man in a hooded sweatshirt and jeans started to roar in military jargon about the Viet Cong coming to get him, the commotion drew a crowd onto the street below.

  The first cops to answer the 911 call tried their best to reason with Brisbon, but soon realized more serious professional help was needed. A psychologist was brought up to the ninth floor to try to persuade him to move back to safety and to reconsider. To no avail. A police chaplain spoke to him at length but, again, there was no convincing the poor man that ending his life was not the best option. Brisbon remained balancing precariously on the ledge for so long that some onlookers on the sidewalk below could be heard laughing and joking about his plight, intermittently shouting up at him, “Jump! Jump!”

  This was the scene when Howard Bingham, photographer and Muhammad Ali’s best friend, happened to come upon the crowd. He watched the drama play out for a bit, then approached a police officer and offered to call Ali (who lived nearby) to get him to come over to try to coax this distraught character in from the edge. Bingham had traveled the world with the boxer and witnessed his extraordinary impact on men, women, and children of every creed in every situation. Surely, it was worth a shot. The officer in charge thought not but, undeterred, Bingham took matters into his own hands.

  “I went back to my car and called Ali anyway,” he said. “I told Ali there was a guy up here on a building about a mile from his house, and maybe he could get through.”

  Minutes later, Ali’s Rolls-Royce came driving the wrong way up Wilshire, lights flashing, and his horn occasionally beeping people out of the way. Initially, the officers busily trying to prevent a man plummeting to the pavement were not thrilled by the fighter’s arrival. In the home of Hollywood, the last thing they wanted was to encourage celebrity involvement in
trying to save potential suicides. Unsurprisingly, their first move was to refuse to allow Ali into the building. Then matters on high took a turn for the worse.

  “He [Brisbon] said he was definitely going to jump, and actually came close to jumping,” said Sergeant Bruce Hagerty. “We decided to give Muhammad a chance at talking to the man.”

  Once he reached the ninth floor, Ali opened a window just yards from where Brisbon was perched and stuck his head out.

  “It’s really you!” shouted Brisbon.

  It was really him, immaculately turned out in a suit and tie. Now those gathered below were treated to the sight of the most famous athlete on the planet chatting with a man struggling to find a reason to live. Even by the bizarre standards of tall tales in Tinseltown, this was turning into quite an epic drama.

  Then, Ali did what Ali had always done best. He instantly connected with somebody in that wonderful way he had about him. He learned quickly that Brisbon was depressed because he couldn’t find a job and had issues with his parents. After chatting from the nearby window, Ali asked if he could move to the stairwell of the fire escape to make it a little easier to talk. For the first time all day, Brisbon agreed to allow someone into his immediate vicinity.

  “The police thought he had a gun,” said Ali. “Nobody would go near him. I told him I’m coming out and don’t shoot me. He said, ‘I won’t shoot you, I don’t even have a gun.’ I took his word and walked on out.”

  The conversation continued with Ali now standing in the fire escape almost close enough to touch Brisbon, who remained, in every way, on the edge.

  “I’m no good,” said Brisbon. “I’m no good.”

  “You’re my brother,” said Ali. “I love you and I wouldn’t lie to you. You got to listen. I want you to come home with me, meet some friends of mine.”

  “Why do you worry about me?” asked Brisbon. “I’m a nobody.”

  “You ain’t a nobody!” said Ali, so moved by the plight of the young man that he started to cry.

  “He saw me weeping and he couldn’t believe I was really doing that, that I cared that much about him.”

  Ali assured Brisbon he’d help him find a job and he’d even intercede with his parents on his behalf. But, he also warned him that the step he was trying to take had a finality to it.

  “If you jump,” he warned his new friend, “you’re going to hell because there’s no way to repent.”

  More than once during an encounter that lasted twenty minutes, journalists watching from below were certain that Brisbon was going to go through with his desperate threat. Finally, he clambered back in off the ledge and fell sobbing into the embrace of Ali, the moment captured by the television cameras which, by then, were inevitably in attendance. The pair of them walked back into the building.

  As a testament to the powers of Ali, it was a magnificent moment. When all else failed, he leapt into action and saved the day, leading even the staid CBS Evening News to compare him to a “superhero.” Larry Holmes might have exposed the stark nature of his physical decline in Vegas three months earlier, but here was evidence that the charisma, the personality, and the magnetism remained undiminished.

  It’s not so much that no other athlete could have pulled it off; it’s that no other athlete would probably even have tried. Supremely confident in his own ability, Ali didn’t seem to give the awful possibility of failure a second thought as he stayed the course with Brisbon. He followed through on a promise made during the negotiation that he would ferry him to the Veterans’ Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation, and spent $1,800 of his money paying for new clothes and an apartment for him.

  As they left the building together, strolling towards the Rolls-Royce, the remaining onlookers chanted “USA! USA!” in a bizarre endpoint to the episode.

  “He knows my address,” said Ali later. “I’ve told people to bring him to me when they let him go. I’ll help him. He knows he’s got a home, my home.”

  Among the entourage accompanying Ali into and out of the building that day was Norman Thrasher, a member of the famous Detroit R&B group, The Midnighters. Now known as Norman Bilal Muhammad, Thrasher had embraced the Nation of Islam in the late 1950s and was an old friend of Ali’s. The pair first met when they attended the same mosque in Miami in the early 1960s.

  If Thrasher was a familiar presence in the ever-changing crowd that always seemed to orbit Ali, there was a less well-known figure also along for the ride on Wilshire Boulevard. That was James Cornelius, a friend of a more recent vintage who was blown away by what he’d just witnessed.

  “Even now I am still awed by how Ali was able to quickly and effectively gain the confidence of that young man,” wrote Cornelius. “I had read stories and I had seen pictures of people being coaxed not to take their own lives, but even in the movies the task is wrenching and time-consuming. But for the Champ, plucking Joe back to reality seemed effortless. He approached the task with the same air and confidence with which he faced his opponents in the ring.”

  And, it turned out, Cornelius was determined to be the man to help Ali get back into that ring.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Sweet Science of Fraud

  This will be my last fight. It’s got to the point where it’s not the money. It’s your name. It’s hearing the people when you’re on top that’s important. I just want to get my title back, then preach my religion.

  Muhammad Ali, Deer Lake, PA, August 26, 1974

  JAMES CORNELIUS WAS A STUDENT at Henry McNeal Turner High School in Atlanta when he first heard the name Cassius Clay. He was working part-time as a bus boy at the Riviera Motel on Peachtree Street one day in 1964 when he saw all his co-workers poring over a newspaper. They were drinking in reports of how Clay had downed Sonny Liston and become champion of the world. A story to fire any teen imagination.

  More than a decade later, Cornelius finally got to shake the hand of the man who ended Liston’s reign. By then Clay had morphed into Muhammad Ali, and the teenager had also changed his name and embraced Islam. As a member of Atlanta’s Temple #15, home base of the Reverend Elijah Muhammad (leader of the Nation of Islam), he now went by James X Cornelius, and many in the Muslim community bought cars from him at his used car lot in the south-west of the city.

  Cornelius also supplied surplus U.S. Mail vehicles to the Fruit of Islam, the paramilitary wing of the Nation, which was running a very successful fish distribution program in the Georgian capital and other cities across America. When he was introduced to Ali in the late 1970s, Cornelius was known around town as “auto man,” and had the reputation of somebody always helpful to a co-religionist needing a set of wheels.

  However, the nickname and the popularity disguised the fact that he was not quite the businessman he made himself out to be. In 1975, he pled guilty to five counts of theft, agreed to pay $23,000 back to individuals and banks, and was placed on five years’ probation. By 1980, there was also an ongoing investigation into his dealings with Trust Company Bank and several other financial institutions around Georgia. In particular, the FBI were chasing down a link between him and a bank official with whom he did regular business.

  Not for the first time, a criminal past was no barrier to gaining Ali’s confidence. Somehow, Cornelius used his Nation of Islam connections to inveigle his way into the fighter’s inner circle during the buildup to the Larry Holmes bout. Indeed, that evening in Las Vegas he was part of the entourage in the dressing room, and even walked to the ring with Ali. Not long afterwards, by then down on his luck financially, Cornelius decided it was time to cash in on the relationship.

  Originally, Cornelius had a plan to run a golf tournament with Ali’s name attached to it. He’d even contacted the LPGA Tour with an eye on meeting to discuss it further. It all seemed very plausible and possible, except for one problem: the small matter of him being on the FBI’s radar and the subject of an ongoing investigation. To try to escape scrutiny, Cornelius secured a new identity from a contact in law enforcement in Georgia. Replete with a state-issued driver’s license and a fresh Social Security number, he relocated from Atlanta to California. The mountain would move to Muhammad.