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After Muhammad, A
Graveyard
The heavyweight champion won an interesting fight against
an aging but surprisingly worthy challenger. Now Ali's
clouded future raises the possibility that the ring soon
may be deprived of its most colorful
figure
by Mark
Kram
Issue date: April 3,
1967
While Muhammad Ali—with the Muslim guard prancing in front
of him and shouting, "Out the way, get
out"—entered the Midtown Motor Inn across from
Madison Square Garden after the fight, Zora Folley departed
like an old, humble preacher leaving a gospel
tent. He faded into the darkness of Eighth Avenue, a street of
no faces and no names, where already the scramblers and the
ramblers, and the drifters and grifters, who did not have
the price to get inside, were yowling that one Zora Folley
was just
another stiff for a bigmouth draft dodger.
Still, Folley did accomplish some things. He cut the ring
down on Ali. He hit the champion more often than any other
opponent with solid right hands and slip jabs. He did not
panic when Ali got cute and, faking and feinting, he forced
Ali to miss
several good punches. On the negative side—besides being knocked
out—he obstinately clung to one strategem; while moving to
his right, he kept looking to throw a right-handed counter.
It did not take Ali long to learn that he could go in
flat-footed and ram
home his good right hand, which so many people doubt he
possesses.
It is also a popular opinion that Ali just played with
Folley the first two rounds, but it is more likely that he
was measuring Folley's reactions and the strength of his
punches. It wasn't until the third round that Ali began
working. His straight left
hands—not his jab—kept snapping Folley's head back, and
these were the punches that started Folley on his way out.
At the end of the third round, Ali told his corner that
Folley had begun to tire, that his punches had lost some of
their
life.
In the fourth, Ali, now punching flat-footed, spun Folley
around with a left hook and then banged a right hand in
back of his ear. Folley went down; he was flat on his
stomach, and then suddenly he was up, his nose streaming
blood, and he was kneeling
and looking to his corner for the count. Folley raged back,
but he had left too much of himself on the floor. Ali, it
appeared, carried Folley in the fifth and sixth rounds, but
going into the seventh Herbert Muhammad, his manager, told
him to "stop
playin'." He did. Two rights, the first of which traveled
roughly six inches, gave Ali his 29th straight successful
title defense, and sent Folley back to the anonymity in
which he has long labored—and seems to prefer.
The gate was plainly in danger, until the draft board
requested Ali to appear for induction on April 11. That
same day he began to create the character dramatization
that rescued the box
office.
"This may be the last chance," he said, "to
see Muhammad Ali in living color, so if you have always
been wanting to see me you'd better come to the
Garden." Later he said: "Perhaps in one to three
years I will fight again." The "one to
three" seemed to
indicate he would choose a jail sentence to military
service. He would not disclose his decision, but his hints
were cleverly camouflaged. "My life, my death, all my
sacrifices," said Ali, who has a curious bent toward
martyrdom, "are for Allah. I am the
tool of Allah and because of my sacrifice it will come out
that hundreds of Muslims are in jail rather than fight in
the Army. Or even just go into the
service."
It is likely that Ali will not fight again in the near
future; already, in an effort not to antagonize the
government, he has canceled his May 27 fight with Oscar
Bonavena in Tokyo. His lawyer, Hayden Covington, originally
believed that the course of
appeals would take at least a year, but his appeal on the
grounds that Ali is a Muslim minister and conscientious
objector has been refused. Covington's latest maneuver—the
suit against the draft board contending there is a lack of
Negro representation and
therefore existing prejudice—is no more than a delaying
action. Covington believes he will win in the courts on the
question of Ali's minister-objector claim, but this will
come only after he reports for induction, which could be
in May in Houston. No
one is sure he will report. If he fails to do so, he will go
to jail and Covington will get him out on bond until the
issue is decided.
"After
I go," said Muhammad Ali, "boxing will be a
graveyard."
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CNN/SI followed Holyfield through a typical day of training.
Check out the video clips, but be sure to come back to Evander's
Believe It Or Not.