The Croatian Candidate

"He's a new Chuvalo, mentallywise," Ungerman said. "He listens, he abides. What I'm enjoying is there is such good harmony."

Ungerman said the fighter gets 50% of his gross earnings; A polio pays the expenses from its 50%. He said Chuvalo has a drawing account but has never asked for all he is entitled to. "He doesn't want any charity out of me," Ungerman said. "He never went to a training camp before the Jones fight. He has a trainer he has a great love for, four sparring partners, new bags, proper everything. Theodore tapes his hands every time he trains, just like it's a real fight. So it cost me $50 a month in tape. It's psychology. I got him goggles. He likes to chop wood. I never managed a fighter before. I used common sense. God forbid a chip should get in his eye. He carries an ax in his car because he sometimes gets an urge to chop wood. A couple of years ago, he's driving near my country place, he gets an urge. He asks a guy whether it's all right to chop a tree here. He tells him it's all right. He's chopping a tree and an old, English-type woman arrives. She sees him cutting a beautiful tree and she says it's her tree. George has to go to court. It develops the tree was six inches or a foot outside her property. The case was dismissed. George is a decent, honorable guy. He only cut the tree because the guy said it was all right.

"I keep impressing him: this is only the beginning. During the Jones fight, while I'm letting air into his trunks, I'm telling him, 'You're the champion of the world. You've got it. You're made.' I'm so grateful he won that fight. Before, I was a little dubious about getting my name mentioned. Now I'm proud of it. I sent a couple of my maintenance men up to his house to make a railing by his steps. I'm always sending up chickens and rabbits. After the fight I gave him a cake with 'It's Only the Beginning' on it. He saw me order it before the fight. It's psychology. They never encouraged him before. They left him all alone. I got him dressing different. I'm getting him to meet people. I use a little bit of the Canoe cologne. He gets a kick out of it. I told him it was $7.50 for a little bottle. Keep fighting, I told him, it's yours.

"I'm not saying he's smarter, cleverer, more polished than Patterson. If he loses—I have to face reality—it wouldn't change my thinking a bit. I wouldn't drop him."

"Why should you?" asked Mrs. Ungerman.

"If he really did lose that fight," said Ungerman, "I'd be that much more devoted to him."

"George, the tanker. George, the tanker," said Shelley, laughing. "That's what all the kids in school say to me—George, the tanker."

"George Jell-O," said Temmy, or something near it.

"Are you calling George yellow?" said Howie.

Cassius Clay has frequently, and vaguely, termed Chuvalo "the washerwoman" in the deprecatory vein in which he refers to Floyd Patterson as "she" or "the rabbit." In the same breath Clay has ostensibly called Chuvalo "a dirty fighter," which bewilders Chuvalo because of the seeming inconsistency. Nevertheless, when he was in Miami Beach for the Alongi fight, Chuvalo paraded in drag—an old bonnet, a dress, his face made up like a crone—on Collins Avenue with McWhorter, who held a placard which read, "Cautious Cassius Afraid to Fight This Old Washerwoman."