Muhammad Ali — Leader
L’écriture automatique (the surrealist automatism) — uncalculated, swift and precise strikes; reactions that are freed from conventional composition of postures and techniques. It is poetry in motion as an expression of instincts driven solely by the subconscious mind; surrealistic expression of freedom of spirit, where the absurd motives of smoothly floating butterflies intertwine with the ones of aggressive bees. A beautiful dance of doom that brings pain and frustration; dynamic calligraphy amidst a canvas framed in 16 ropes. An off-center painting created by an eccentric fool abashing all the others. Irrational victory of the emptied mind which can never be repeated. Immortality of the original … Cassius Clay resentfully observed the big, kitschy painting on the wall of a Baptist church. It was a simple, two-dimensional drawing high above the plain pews — with no depth, no idea or emotion. He wasn’t expecting to find melting watch or burning giraffes there, but a boring figure in long, trimmed clothes was a real disappointment. The only white man in the room had his arms spread unnaturally and stern eyes. Cassius looked around and his resentment turned into anger. A group of black men were cringing humbly before their white master even at a place so sacred as a church. His father apparently hadn’t managed to liberate himself from the dictation of reason with this work. He had just pragmatically created what others had been expecting from him and had also been granted the reward he had expected for that from them in return. For an instant, this had set him free from his life with nothing but cheap alcohol which was worth just a chump change … Little Cassius made a decision at that moment: he would not go down the same old road, he would change his fate instead …
The first step that gave rise to an absolute change was a coincidence. If the subconscious mind is ready and the soul is hungry, storm surges may be caused with just a sweep of butterfly wings from somewhere in the distance. The case of a bicycle stolen or rather robbed from the little Gee Gee, who reported it to Joe Martin, a police officer, never got solved but it made Clay begin to train boxing with Joe as a precaution against similar incidents. From then on, the hyperactive tall boy stopped running aimlessly up and down the streets and had opted for a more meaningful use of his energy excess.
That turned out to be the time when he was becoming familiar with the basic technique and nothing, apart from his insatiable desire to train, had been pointing to Cassius’s phenomenality. He either watched boxing matches on TV, jogged or hit the trunk of an old catalpa tree in the yard of their house with his gloves on.
It was Chuck Bodak, an experienced trainer and theoretician, who resumed to train Cassius following his first victories. Even though Cassius was quite tall, his graceful moves was what had caught Bodak’s eye. No one had been using this boxing style since Tommy Loughran. Cassius danced around his opponents with the lightness of a middleweight boxer. His lowered arms were precise and fast like an electric discharge. He did not vanquish his opponent with force and harshness. Blow by blow, he patiently and adamantly punched opponents, not risking revenge. Like a hungry piranha, he was chewing through his opponent’s ego. Round after round he peeled pieces of their self-confidence until the only thing that remained was just their defenseless naked torso. Only after he had won more than forty bouts was he awarded the highest trophy in the amateur boxing tournament called Golden Gloves and won the Olympic gold. It seemed that this must have been gratifying to the eighteen-year-old sportsman. That, however, wasn’t the case. “I had trophies, cups, awards and no money” recalled Clay later in an interview. The golden Olympic medal on his neck looked good in magazines and on TV, but it just wasn’t enough to be able to enter a restaurant full of white guests in the times of racial segregation. Cassius eventually threw that valuable metal off of a bridge into a river, and drowned it together with his original name, faith and beliefs. Four years later, David and Goliath met in the ring: a gloomy, illiterate prisoner with a punch hitting harder than a freight train against an elegant and intelligent strategist.
The bout started long before the hammer struck the initial gong. It must have been the first time ever in the professional boxing history that someone used a mind game as a tool to succeed. Cassius followed Sonny Liston everywhere he went, provoking and offending him. He had even hired a trailer and used a loudspeaker to challenge Liston to fight at three o’clock in the morning. He claimed that he would defeat Sonny in the eighth round and make that ugly, smelly bear into a bear skin rug for his fireplace. It was funny, well thought out and it worked. Liston was enraged; Cassius had nothing to lose and the medialization just pushed the prices up. Clay’s trainer, Angelo Dundee, had elaborated a perfect training plan and match strategy at that time. Facing the awkward grizzly, Clay moved with the lightness of a gazelle. Trying to hit a butterfly with a hammer was a mug’s game. The tall specter punished all the opponent’s mistakes with his long arm until Goliath used up all the energy. Sonny Liston — Tyson of the golden era in boxing — gave up at the opening of the seventh round……
