Word: cassius
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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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...
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...
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...