The Ryen Russillo Podcast - Muhammad Ali Special, Part 1: With Sugar Ray Leonard and Jonathan Eig

Episode Date: August 17, 2021

In Part 1 of a two-part series, Ryen Russillo is joined by author-journalist Jonathan Eig to discuss his newest book, 'Ali: A Life.' They run through the beginning of Ali's career to the end, hitting many of his noteworthy stories and accomplishments. Then Ryen talks with Sugar Ray Leonard, world-title holder in five different weight divisions, about the origins of his professional boxing career, his perception of Muhammad Ali, as well as the first time he met Ali.Host: Ryen Russillo Guests: Jonathan Eig and Sugar Ray Leonard Producers: Kyle Crichton and Steve Ceruti Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is part one of a special Ryan Russell podcast focusing on the late great Muhammad Ali with the author of the most recent Ali book, Jonathan Ike. And we're going to do part one with Sugar Ray Leonard. First meeting, Muhammad Ali. The book is Ali, a life, a biography, and it's incredible. And the author, Jonathan Ige, joins us on the podcast. We're going to kind of do an Ali-specific pod here. So let's start at the beginning, just like the book does. His family's two generations removed from slavery. We know there's some history that none of us really knew about, even he didn't know about, about his own grandparents. He has a father who's abusive,

but talented. They weren't a destitute family by any means in their neighborhood in Louisville. It was a family that was probably doing better than some others. But I think the foundation of who Ali became as a person, how did he develop this kind of unapologetic personality, this non-compromising personality at such a young age? That's really one of the central questions to understanding Ali. And I think it goes to understanding American history. When I interviewed Dick Gregory for this book, he said to me, your book's not going to be worth a damn if you can't explain what made a kid from the Jim Crow South, same age as Emmett Till, think that he could talk back to white people and get

away with it. Think that he could call himself the greatest when everybody around him was telling him he was a second class citizen. You got to be able to understand that. What made Ali capable of that? And it's a really difficult question. I mean, it's really complicated. Part of it is that he grows up in not the deep South.

Louisville thinks of itself as more progressive. There are some opportunities that wouldn't be available to him anywhere else. For example, to walk into a boxing gym at age 12 and have a white cop offer to help him and to be able to get in the ring and mix it up with white kids. That didn't happen in Alabama or Mississippi, but just somebody who didn't think that we should have to take the conditions that we were born into because of this racist country that we live in. So Ali has all of these influences swirling around him. And then he finds out about the Nation of Islam when he's 13, 14 years old. And that really has a huge impact too. So you can't put it on any one thing, but it's so complicated that it's 13, 14 years old. And that really has a huge impact too. So you can't put it on any one

thing, but it's, it's so complicated that it's beautiful. Really. I have always thought in, in going back and, you know, starting whatever readings going all the way back to high school, um, that no matter who you were, even if you're having a hard time as a white person today in the country being like, all right, why are we talking about race every single day all right and you know maybe there's a point but if you're muhammad ali at that time cassius clay and you go to rome win the gold medal you're treated like a hero and then you come back home and you're like wait like i'm gonna get treated like shit again and then the first time you pick up any literature on the Nation of Islam and you start hearing for the first time in your life, black people talking about other black people in a

positive way and asking questions, how impressionable Ali must have been at that time. Like anybody that would go, I can't believe he went Nation of Islam. I can't believe he has these beliefs. I can't believe he went down that road. I don't know why anybody could be dismissive, at least of the idea of a young person at that time, looking at his surroundings, asking a lot of questions and wondering why things were the way they were. Yeah, no, I totally agree with you. And remember what it felt like to be 18 and want to challenge authority every chance you got and to go over there and win the gold medal. Cassius Clay has presented the coveted gold medal for his tremendous victory in the light heavyweight division

of the Olympic Boxing Championships. A magnificent conclusion to the 1960 Rome Olympics. Comeback, be treated like a second-class citizen. And hear Elijah Muhammad and hear Malcolm X saying, we don't have to do it

the way they want us to. We don't even have to do it the way Martin Luther King wants us to. We can fight on our own terms. And that really appeals, I think, also to the same sense that makes Ali love boxing. We can do it on our own. We don't have to be a part of a team. We don't have to play by anybody's rules. We can make our own rules. I think that's really attractive to an 18-year-old championship boxer who's African-American at a time when Jim Crow laws are still in effect all over the South.

So let's get deeper into it then. So he's got this group of businessmen that invest in him from Louisville, and it sounds like they fast-tracked him. What I love in this book, too, is every time Angelo Dundee, his longtime trainer, is mentioned, it's almost like Dundee's right all the time. He's just right about everything all the time. And they wanted him fighting Sonny List in there. And it felt like they were rushing this because no one really thought he was that good, right? Absolutely. You know, Ali thinks he's that good.

Ali thinks he's ready. Absolutely. You know, Ali thinks he's that good. Ali thinks he's ready. But Dundee's job is to make sure he doesn't, you know, blow it too soon by putting him in the ring with somebody he can't beat. Because then, you know, your career is over and you go back to the, you know, to the B League. And Dundee is really, you know, holding the reins and trying to keep this guy in check a little bit. is really holding the reins and trying to keep this guy in check a little bit. But Ali thinks he can beat anybody, even Sonny Liston, who nobody thinks they can beat.

And in that way, Dundee is the perfect trainer for Ali because he's able to just appreciate this kid's ego and work with it without letting his own ego get stepped on at all. I don't have a mark on my face and I upset Sonny Liston and I just turned 22 years old. I must be the greatest. I am the king of the world. Hold it, hold it, hold it. I'm pretty. Hold it, you're not that pretty. I'm a bad man. I shook up the world. So he beats Liston the first time. And now, what did you get to see? Like, I have my own opinion on it here. But the Nation of Islam understood that if we're attaching ourselves to now this famous boxer who has a real high ceiling here, how did you see the motivations behind that relationship?

Not from Ali's side, but from the nation. It's messy. You know, they really kept their distance from him because they thought he was going to lose to Liston in that first fight. So why? Right. They told everybody, like, don't go down. Or did they tell Malcolm X to leave? Malcolm went down anyway because Malcolm, by that point, was on the outs with Elijah Muhammad and was doing whatever he wanted.

by that point was on the outs with Elijah Muhammad and was doing whatever he wanted. But Elijah Muhammad told the newspaper, his newspaper, Muhammad Speaks, not to cover the fight, not to pay any attention to Ali because we don't pay attention to sports. It's not serious. It has nothing to do with religion. And he's going to lose anyway. So why would we want to advertise the fact that this loser is a Muslim? And then he wins and everything changes. And suddenly Elijah Muhammad, you know, A, sees dollar signs. This kid's going to sell newspapers. He's going to bring in new recruits. He's going to be a voice bigger than Elijah Muhammad, bigger than Malcolm X's voice. He's going to have outreach to the world. So now, suddenly, Elijah Muhammad sees a huge opportunity

here and has to make sure that he doesn't let Malcolm X get in the way. So this becomes a real serious battle, one of the really difficult conflicts in Ali's life. Does he go with Malcolm or does he go with Elijah? And why do you think he went with Elijah? I think he was in awe and a little bit scared of Elijah Muhammad. You know, he thought of him as a god almost, certainly as a prophet. And that, you know, he was fascinated by this tiny little man with this squeaky little voice had so much power and spoke to God.

And he loved Malcolm too. I think in a way he was probably afraid of what would happen if he broke with Elijah Muhammad. And then he saw what happened to Malcolm soon after. Malcolm was assassinated, and most people felt like the Nation of Islam had some direct role to play in that. And that seemed to confirm all of Ali's fears. The second list and fight. 15 rounds for the heavyweight championship of the world. fight. is there more than what you were able to share in the book on just theories of of what happened to

this this guy that was so feared and look he loses the first one but the second one is the one everybody is like okay that, that was messed up. And did somebody bet? Did his own guys bet against him? What were you able to uncover in that, which so many people have said is a dive, although I've seen Ali break down the film of it. From the time the punch started to the way it landed, it was four one-hundredths of a second, which is an eye blink. Like a camera flash, that's four hundredths of a second. Now, the minute I hit Sunday, listen, all of those people blinked at that flash. That's 400 seconds. Now, the minute I

hit Sonny Liston, all of those people blinked at that moment. That's why they didn't see it. And if you go like frame by frame, you see this like magical punch that actually does take them out. But it just depends. I mean, I've been hearing about it since I was a kid. So I love that part. Yeah, I don't know if we're ever going to know. There was a punch. It didn't look like a knockout punch to me at all. And Sonny Liston could take a punch. Sonny Liston had taken plenty of much tougher punches than that. It looks to me like he's flopping down there.

Even the way he's rolling around on the mat just looks like bad acting. So I think he threw that fight. But that's just my gut. I was never able to prove it. The best evidence I found was an interview that never aired, a TV interview with Liston's wife, where she said he had diarrhea. And he just gave, had no, once he got in the ring, he was like, I got to get this over with as fast as I can.

A new theory. Yeah, not as sexy as the Nation of Islam assassins or the mafia assassins. The winner, by a knockout, and still the heavyweight champion of the world, Muhammad Ali. Okay, so he wins that fight. Now, this is where the Vietnam storyline comes in. You know, I know the first time through I was confused. I was like, so what happened? You know, my father would explain it to me.

You know, he was in college at the time. He was somebody that started in athletics. And by the time he was done with college, he was just a guy going to different war protests. You know, not that he just that was kind of how I always learned about Ali. It was through my father. And he would just be like, you gotta understand like even though there were so many people that hated him there was a younger generation of people that were also white that that looked at him as like hey this guy is a hero because we share his his vision or his voice on on the war and an unpopular war as

time went by um at first he failed right his his entry and then was reclassified which he kind of used but then those who would say okay he was this complete draft dodging coward he was offered the idea of just doing these boxing exhibitions where he was never actually going to have to fight and now maybe he didn't necessarily believe that but i think he could have and there was a case i think you make in the book where he had he had thought maybe I just go ahead and do that because in this case, I'm going to lose my career. I could end up in jail. I could have all of these fines. So help me sift through all of that. I know I threw a lot at you, Jonathan, so I apologize, but I'm just kind of trying to share the timeline with younger listeners that may not know the

details. No, it's really in some ways, the most important moment in Ali's life. You know, he has to decide what he really believes in. And, you know, he's the heavyweight champion. He's got millions of dollars in money-making opportunities lined up, endorsements from all kinds of big products, not to mention the fights that are coming in. And he's got to make a choice. You know, how much does he really believe in this religion that he's only been, you know, publicly associated with for a couple of years? And at first, you know, it's interesting because at first he says, well, I just don't want to fight, you know, like send somebody else there.

I got no problem with the war, but I just don't let somebody else fight it. And then he starts to say, well, it is screwed up. Why are all these Black people being sent over there to fight when we're not even allowed to vote here in this country in a lot of places? Why should they take these trills like second-class citizens over here and then expect us to go over to Asia and kill some other dark-skinned people? And then it's evolving. And this is, I think, a normal human process. It's evolving. And then he starts to say, it's also against my religion. You know, we're not, my religion teaches us that we don't fight in secular wars.

So that's ultimately what he goes to court on. And he's convicted. He's sentenced to jail. And he doesn't know that it's only going to be for three years, three and a half years. He thinks that it's permanent. He's never going to fight again. And he's willing to take that step. He says, I'll face a firing squad

before I'll go against Elijah Muhammad and disobey the rules of my religion. That's faith. That's commitment. There's no other way to explain it. Mr. Muhammad Ali has just refused to be inducted into the United States Armed Forces. How scared was he or those around him as they were trying to go through that three,

almost four-year stretch where he's not fighting and he doesn't know what he's doing, and he doesn't have any money, and I still felt like that's where the Nation of Islam, I mean, the relationship is so complicated throughout his entire life, where I think they were paying for some of it. Herbert Muhammad, the son of Elijah Muhammad started to become involved um who obviously plays a big role in the management part of him at that time you still have this Louisville group that is trying to figure out like what to do the boxing side of it like how is he how is he figuring out where any of that's going to go um and then ultimately towards the comeback which kind of happens the

way you write about it I was like oh, oh, this was sort of like, hey, can we get him licensed anywhere? And it's like, oh yeah, I guess we could do it here. And it's like, well, what the hell was the holdup the whole time? Which I thought was a part that I don't know that I'd ever picked up on before. Yeah, it's messy and it's crazy.

I spent a lot of time with Ali's wife at the time, Kalila, who was 16 when she married him. So that's his second wife, right? Second wife, right. And she was with him when he was banned from boxing and when he was home with nothing to do all day. And when she had to go out and make money to feed the family, he would drive her to work every day. And then he would just basically sit around the house or then he'd go out on some college tours and give lectures. And I got the impression that he was

frustrated that he missed boxing, but he still loved being Muhammad Ali. He loved just getting attention any way he could. So the college tours, the Broadway show he acted in, anything like that, that he could do just to have eyeballs on him made up for it. But there was never any doubt that he would make a deal. And as you mentioned earlier, he had an offer from the government just to do some exhibitions and the way Joe Lewis and a lot of other athletes did, you know, they don't have to fight and they're never going to see a battlefield. They just have to put on a little show for the troops.

But he wouldn't do it. He wouldn't compromise at all. So he finishes with Zorro Foley at 29 and 0 he's 25 years old that's 1967 and then the band kicks in he doesn't fight again until he's 28 almost 29 years old Jerry Corey um Oscar Bonaventure and then he comes back to fight Joe Frazier which which is, we're not even six months since the comeback. And I remember Dundee saying, hey, you could tell the time off. He's just a different guy. He's older. He was bigger.

His legs, though, which I love that. They were like the lugs that already we could tell, even not even at 30, the legs are a little different. I didn't know this. And I remember reading Tyson's book where he was very revealing. I don't know if you read the Sloman Tyson book where, I mean, that gets weird. I knew Tyson was kind of a mess at times, but when he was in Japan, he would just start having sex with housekeepers who were kind of like, what's going on? And then he would just keep saying, he's admitting all this in the book, that he would give them money. And then they'd come back with more housekeepers. And he was like,

it didn't matter how old they were or what the deal was. He's like, that's how messed up I was. And he was like, it didn't matter how old they were, what the deal was. He's like, that's how messed up I was. Ali was a fan of the females. But what can you tell us about the story the day of? This is his first fight against Frazier. He's 31-0 at this point. And yet he's screwing around.

Yeah, he had real issues with this. And it was all his life. I think that he loved attention so much and he loved pleasing people that he saw this as like his mission in life was to have sex with as many people as he could. And one of his friends told me this story where they went to a hotel room in LA and there were 10 beautiful women in the lobby waiting for Ali. And they were all handing him his number. And they go upstairs and they check in their bags. And his pal goes downstairs to talk to some of the girls and comes back up. And Ali's in bed with the chambermaid, with the cleaning lady from the hotel room. And he says, Ali, there's 10 like playboy models down in the lobby. Why are you making love to this woman? And Ali looks up and says, well, she's going to appreciate it more. And she's never

going to forget this. That's Ali. It was just, you can't explain the guy. And you could argue that maybe, you know, fighter right before big fight has nerves and having sex as a way to, like, distract himself or, you know, ease some of the pressure. I don't think Ali even thought about it. I was just like, I think it was just, if it's available, he's ready.

Well, I mean, here we are, the Frazier fight. He's still probably not ready. Dundee didn't want to do it. He's like, we need a few more fights. And this is something that would happen later in his career. The rapid nature with his scheduling was ridiculous, which leads to some of the other stuff that we're going to get to. But his wife is with someone else,

like with some of the entourage in another room. She's like, where's Ali? Where's Ali? She calls him to the other room. A woman answers. She marches down there, barges in, grabs a steak knife. And it was a woman Ali had found off the street and paid $40. And we're talking hours before he has to be at the arena fight Joe Frazier for the first fight. In the Ken Norton fight, he ends up with like two women hours before that fight. And you just reading it going, I mean, I guess you've already answered it, but it was just another one of those deals where I didn't need a ton of reminders how different I was from Muhammad Ali, but I, you know, that was, that was part of it as well.

Let's stay on the Frazier thing though, because this is another part of the book that doesn't do Ali any favors. We all know that Ali would argue, Hey, I'm promoting the fight. I'm promoting the fight. I'm promoting the fight. I'm going to call people out. I'm going to be nasty to all these different things. But when Ali wasn't boxing, Frazier was his friend.

And Frazier, you have this incredible moment in the book where Frazier's driving him around. Ali's kind of joking about, hey, can I come work for you? I need a hundred bucks and all this kind of stuff. And then as soon as the fight is on, it's going to be a thriller and a chiller and a killer when I get the gorilla in Manila.

All the derogatory terms, the nastiness, where Frazier was like, what? thriller and a chiller and a killer when I get the gorilla in Manila. All the derogatory terms, the nastiness where Frazier was like, what? Like Frazier took it so personally. But the way Ali treated him, it's hard to just say, hey, Ali was simply doing it for interest because it got so nasty and really kind of the way he called out Frazier is kind of unacceptable. Well, number one, he's too ugly to be the world heavyweight champion. Joe Frazier, Joe Frazier is so ugly, his face should be donated to the Bureau of Wildlife. Man's too slow.

Man's too ugly. Man can't think. He's a Geechee. This one's snuff. Hey, it's Joe Frazier. Joe Frazier. Yeah, and I think that you could say I was just putting on a show to sell tickets. But when you're calling somebody an Uncle Tom, that goes deep, especially when you're somebody like Frazier, who's poor, who's from a sharecropping

family. That hurts. And you start calling somebody a gorilla, using these racist terms. You can't take that back. You can't just wipe it away and say, oh, he was just selling tickets. And it really hurt Frazier. And Frazier thought they were friends. Why would you do this to me when you know that you and I were friends? And I don't think there's any way to explain it or forgive it. I think that Ali had a dark side. And one of his friends said to me, psychoanalyzing, said, I think it's because Ali felt insecure that he was a middle-class Black kid. He came from he came from a family that had, you know, a car and he had a brand new bike and they had a dog. He went to summer camp, you know, and he felt like he lacked the street cred that Frazier and Norton and some of these other guys had. Um, and that as a result of that, he, he, he compensated by calling them uncle Tom's because he was afraid that he'd be the one who was called, you know, bourgeois middle-class black guy.

Yeah, that's a really interesting way of putting it. Cause I don't know that I don't know that I've ever heard it described that way. Uh, I think the turn for him, because at this point it's probably the peak anti Ali movement because now he he's lost to frazier which i'm sure everyone that hated ali was thrilled about and you know america hates a loser but then as you start to kind of go all right so how is he going to salvage the career and i think that's the foreman fight because everybody thought he was going to get killed foreman destroyed frazier and now we have this monstrosity of a promotion where you're like, all right, so they're going to fight in Africa. Now Don King starts to be involved. When We Were Kings is one of my favorite sports documentaries. Give me some of the best lead up to Ali going, no, I'm going to

do this thing. I'm going to fight for him when no one thought he had a chance. And considering the unique kind of political situation that he was putting himself in in a place in africa where it's like hey this is going to be for black people put on by black and it's like you're actually aligning yourself with one of the worst people in the world right now by the way um but go ahead like like let's let's see the fight yeah it's another one of those great uh contradictions. He's fighting for black pride, but he's doing it on the paycheck of one of the worst African dictators, a man who literally chops off the heads of his own people if they show any signs of dissent in Mobutu. And Ali is fine with that.

He offered to fight in apartheid South Africa if the money was right. He was just so full of contradictions. By the way, did Mobutu ask to fight Ali for a half a million dollars? He wanted to actually fight Ali, correct? I don't remember that. I know

Idi Amin also. Oh, Idi Amin wanted to fight him. Can you tell me that story quick? Yeah. So while they were in Africa, Ali, or maybe it was after the fight, Ali and some of his guys flew to Uganda to meet with Idi Amin, who was possibly the only dictator who was more ruthless than Mobutu. And this time, Ali actually got scared.

This time, he said, this guy's crazy. Let's get the hell out of here. And I guess Idi Amin wanted to get in the ring with him. And Ali said, no way. If I beat him, I could be killed. If I don't beat him, I could be killed. Let's just run, basically, like heading for the door. All right, so he beats Foreman.

And there's two great stories out of this. We've all heard the different versions of events on Foreman. The Don King part of it's hilarious. I'm going to ask you a Don King question, but Foreman was always worried about water. He was worried about water. I mean, there's another crazy part where Foreman gets cut. That delays the fight. We knew that part, but Mobutu had taken away everybody's passports.

So Foreman wanted to get stitches somewhere like in Europe, and they were like no because then he's not going to come back like you guys are staying here almost like the fighters and the camps and the entourage and everybody were prisoners of the country because he didn't want to lose this promotion um and foreman says in the book and i'm going to ask about this, that he felt like he had been drugged. He's careful because he doesn't almost want to diminish Ali's victory. But there's clearly part of Foreman where he feels like something was taken from him that night. Yeah, Foreman's a mess. Like, he's carrying this around with him.

He knows that to be politically correct, he has to say Ali was the greatest fighter of all time and he loves Ali. politically correct. He has to say Ali was the greatest fighter of all time and he loves Ali. But I found this with everybody who faced Ali and including everybody who lost to him. They're bitter. Nobody likes to lose. These men are warriors. And when they lose, they're angry about it. They can come back and say, oh yeah, he's a great guy. He's my hero. But they're still pissed that they lost. And Foreman's really, I think, deep down still angry. And he told me this story about believing that his own trainer drugged him before the fight, that the water had something in it. And as soon as he drank it, he felt funny.

And I said, so you really still believe that you were drugged before that fight? He says, I don't believe it. I know it. And this is you know 50 years later he's still carrying that around um and and and he still puts on a good show and says well ali was the greatest but he believes he was drugged before that fight to this day yeah he says in the book and i'm gonna like i said i'll ask him he's just sluggish because i just felt a little sluggish another part that was hilarious was that and we'll we'll tie this

into the don king part of it because there was a contract that then foreman's manager would help with don king to promote some of the fights but one of the other realizations you have to just understand especially about the boxing world back then is wasn't there a complaint from one corner about the other corner paying off the ref and then ali's corner was like well that's that's bullshit. We paid him the same. You did only 20 grand. We didn't pay him 50. So that essentially both corners had paid 20 grand to prevent there being in any unfairness. Was that basically how it broke down? I mean, that was kind of the quote that I love.

I was just reading. Yeah, that killed me. Foreman said something like, well, we gave the refs 5,000 bucks to make sure that they wouldn't, you know, do anything crazy. Like, you know, sometimes Foreman would hit somebody while they were on the way down, just, you know, out of adrenaline. And he says, we gave him 5,000 bucks just to make sure that it would be a fair fight. And then Foreman said, I found out later that Ali gave the ref $10,000. And I called Gene Kilroy and I told him that story. And Gene said, that's ridiculous. That's the stupidest thing I ever heard. We only gave him five. God, I love that. All right. The reason I'm bringing up the Don King thing is I've never

read anything about him and gone, oh, he seems cool. I'm sorry. I mean, it's just, it's, I read Jack Neufeld's Only in America, The Life and Crimes of Don King. Don King, prior to the Rumble in the Jungle against Foreman, was going, how can I work my way in here? How can I figure this out? But you still have the Herbert Muhammad part of it. Don King positions himself as the savior and is nothing more than a thief because all he would do, and like a lot of promoters, he ripped them off, but he had something over Ali that was smart. It would work. Is that a boxer can have a million dollar contract, but if he sees $50,000 in cash,

he's going to take the bag of cash. And it felt like this is the combination of Herman Mohamed and Don King. When you look at the percentages, this is why towards the end, like a lot of boxers, Ali had financial problems, but it was absurd when you really break down into the numbers, what these guys were doing to him. Oh yeah. It's crazy. And, and even I, not to defend Don King, but everybody in the business was, was crooked and greedy, almost everybody. And, um, Don told me the story. He said, when he first met Ali, everybody. And Don told me this story. He said, when he first met Ali, Ali came over to his house and King had a drawer full of cash, just, you know, thousands of dollars in cash. And he said to Ali, and this is their introduction. This is like how he's, he's indoctrinating him. He says,

you can stick your hand in the drawer of cash, but it's like the crane game in the bar, you know, you get to go down once, get to clamp your hand around the cash once and whatever you pull up, you get to keep one time. That's it. You only get one time. And he said, now, if you were smart, um, you know, you'd look around and you'd see where the rolled up bills were, but nobody's smart. They're all greedy. And they're all just thinking about how they can get their hand around as much as much as they can. And they panic and they get excited. And he gets he lit up telling this story. And Ali was I let him do it three times when he every time he came to my house and the same thing happened every time. He never learned how to do it because these guys are greedy.

And that, you know, the point of the story is that cash is king and king is cash. And then, you know, the point of the story is that cash is king and king is cash. And he would rip people off all the time by, you know, offering them cash instead of, you know, a better deal on the, nobody wants to wait for a check. And, you know, he took that as like a measure of his, of his black savvy pride, you know, like he comes from the street, he knows how people think. And that's how he knows. And that's why he's able to do business with these folks. Yeah, you're right. I mean, it's not like he's able to do business with these folks yeah you're right i mean it's not like he's the only promoter that was ripping everybody off it's just not a lot of the other promoters have a murder and then we're able to bribe a judge to like get i mean

the back story on the newfeld stuff with king is i mean it's just tough i mean it's crazy yeah you just go this is absurd and that's why only in in America is a perfect title for that. All right. Let's finish up here because towards the end, I always kind of thought like, look, those last three fights, three of the last three losses, like whenever I think of his losses, I go Ken Norton's second loss, broken jaw. Frazier probably shouldn't have fought him at that point. So you could raise those. I'm not saying erase those, but how absurd the record could actually be,

56-5, the career record. But as you point out, he should have lost to Jimmy Young in the decision. Ken Norton won there. At that point, they were just giving Ali decisions. And sometimes I felt like it was positioned as Ali didn't really want to fight, but he did want to fight.

Everybody around him wanted to fight. So they were all kind of complicit the same way where Ali, when he would make terrible business deals, it's still, even though I get mad on his behalf about how people were ripping him off, he also was the guy signing all these ridiculous contracts when people were constantly trying to help him and saying, hey, let's get your affairs in order. And he couldn't help himself. So I thought those two parallels were the exact same thing where financially he couldn't ever stop saying yes to people, but as a boxer, he couldn't ever stop saying yes, not just to the paycheck, but going out there. And that's where, you know, the Holmes fights a joke. I mean, look, you thought he was done at 36 years old, 35 years old. He came back

and fought at almost 40 years against Trevor Burbick in what was it um that was was that the Bahamas and like nobody yeah nobody was even there it sounded like the wrestler it reminded me like Mickey Rooney in a wrestler scene in that movie where he's he's at some weird high school gymnasium and it's Muhammad Ali right it's it's tragic and um yeah he could never say no to anybody he couldn't say no to the women He couldn't say no to the women. He couldn't say no to the fights. He couldn't say no. It was easy money. And he didn't like training. So by scheduling a ton of fights, it forced him to at least do a little bit of training to stay in shape. The fights alone would keep him in shape. Some of it comes from having success so

early, from being a child star and feeling like you get whatever you want in life. But some of it was just baked into who he was, that everything was always going to be okay. And whatever I do, it's going to work out in the end. And usually, he was right. You did a lot of work on some of the punch totals, you know, and I don't think you presented it as if, Hey, this is, you know, this is the absolute definitive total of punches here, but how significant were some of those numbers in understanding the toll that Ali took in the second half and ultimately led to all of his health challenges towards the end? Yeah. What you see is that, is that there's a great shift. In the beginning of his career, before the Vietnam layoff, he's not getting hit much

at all. He's out slugging his opponents. He's really not taking much punishment at all. And then by the last third of his career, he's getting out hit dramatically. And he's learning to win these fights by absorbing punishment, letting the guys get tired and then winning on points or coming back and winning those late rounds to steal the fights. And that takes a brutal toll. And he absorbs all of this punishment. Not only that, but you can not only count the punches, which we did, I worked with CompuBox to count every punch,

but you can also see how it's affecting his cognitive abilities because we measured his speaking ability fight by fight. And you can see with each fight how it affects his ability just to form words. You were counting syllables, right? It was pretty crazy how you did that. Yeah, it's something they do to look for signs of Alzheimer's in folks. they measure their speaking rate, just syllables per second. And with Ali, you can see how after these fights, even in age 30, even after the very first Frazier fight, you can see that his speaking ability begins to fall off.

And he loses something like 26% of his speaking speed between age 30 and age 40. And you really shouldn't be losing any at that age normally. I heard a line as we finish up here. That was a good line. It was from a few people have thrown this around. So I don't know who owns the line, but it was America only liked Ali once he couldn't talk.

And I went, I get the history, even though I can only do you know research on it but i think that's such an inaccurate and dismissive line like it's a good line to kind of get your point across but i think it would rule out what made him so special is that some somehow most people came around to the idea of of getting enjoyment enjoying who muhammad ali became and maybe you were late to it maybe you were early but eventually i think it had way more to do with people kind of coming around to his side of thinking or seeing something in him that they never had in themselves. Yeah. And I mean, there's a level of truth to that line because for some people who, who, um,

maybe were hardened racists, they, they learned to love Ali when he was, when he was feeble, um, when they saw him with Parkinson's and they saw him lighting the Olympic torch, but for a whole lot of other people, black and white, Ali became a figure of pride and courage and, you know, and, and, you know, and commitment to your religion. And, you know, when he stood up and said, you know, I don't have to be what you want me to be. I don't have to say what you want me to say. I'm free. That spoke not just to black people who were at the time, you know, fighting for civil rights, that spoke to everybody who'd ever been picked on, everybody who felt like a second class citizen for whatever reason. And that's what made him a hero. Not the docility that we saw late in life when it was easy to love him. I think he was loved

for the right reasons, as well as for the easy ones. Jonathan, incredible work. I hope you have moments where you're still thinking about this book and you're proud of it. I know I can't wait. You've finished a Ken Burns documentary. So why don't we give a little plug for that when that's coming out? Yeah, that'll be out in mid-September and it's a four-part, eight-hour documentary. It's fabulous. I've hour documentary. And it's fabulous. I've seen it. It's, it's really great. They've got some, they found some stuff that I didn't find, which really ticked me off a little bit, but I'm, but I'm, but I'm really proud of how it turned out.

Well, I'm, uh, I'm happy for you on that. I can't wait to see it. So thanks again. Thanks. Fun talking to you. the great sugar ray leonard one of the great boxers of his generation titles in five different weight divisions joins us now what's going on man all right how you doing buddy i'm good so i'm trying to get the timelines as I was matching them up last night. You're 65 now, so you were 14 years younger than Muhammad Ali.

So can you take me through your first, like the first time you ever learned about him? Because I can guess, you know, you're probably 10, early teens. What was it like that first moment you were aware of him as a fighter? Well, when I first began boxing, I was like, what, 9, 10. early teens what was it like that first moment you were aware of him as a fighter well when i first began boxing i was like what 9 10 and number two boys drop in washington dc and uh i mean at that time i had not really heard of muhammad ali um and i actually hit me in the nose and i and i quit i quit for three, four years before I came back. So I'm around 13, 14 in Maryland.

And my first guy, my first kind of like idol was Joe Frazier. I used to box like Joe Frazier, you know, with the hook and everything. And then I watched, all of a sudden I saw this guy, Muhammad Ali. And he would just talk trash. He backed it up. He was smooth. He was cool. And I started boxing like Muhammad Ali.

Then I became a friend of his. And from then on out, I mean, he was my idol. He was the idol for me in boxing. And in life, I should say. Also in life. What was it like the first time you met him? He was bigger than life. I think the first time that I really met him was that I was like maybe a year from

the Olympics, 1976 Olympics. I was 19 years old. I vividly remember this. And they called upon me because when it happened, someone was supposed to present an award to Muhammad Ali, but he got sick or something happened. They said, well, this he was kid Ray Leonard he's going to the Olympics and he's gonna be the next hot stuff and I mean I didn't have a big name at the time and I accepted doing to present him with the awards so I'm sitting there at this table and all of a sudden who sits beside me Muhammad Ali I'm hyperventilating I'm so nervous man I mean the greatest of all time and he just talked to say hey you know he said you like sex says sometimes he said so how long do you wait before having sex before a fight? I said, about three days. He said, you're a bad dude, man.

Because the thing with sex and boxing, you're supposed to stay away from it for months at a time. And it was just, I mean, it was like I was like a student and he was the professor. He was the teacher. He taught me so much. He gave me so much advice and suggestions and things of that nature. Always say, always sign your own checks. Always do this.

I mean, I didn't, again, I was young and naive. I didn't know what he was talking about, but he gave me the right advice. Yeah. When I read in his book,

I don't know. He took a sex advice all that closely himself based on some of the stuff that we ended up finding out about in the book oh we don't stretch it out uh yeah you ended up in the olympics like you won gold montreal um and you know looking at the foreman fights in 74 so that's two two years before 76 you You know, you're starting to, I think your first amateur fight is like 72 or something like that. So what was it like? How were you following the Ali story?

Because, I mean, he refuses induction in 66. You're what, like 11 years old, 10, 11 years old. Were you paying attention to that kind of stuff? Because it's amazing to think just, you know, 10 years later, now this guy's your friend. Right. But everyone's talking about it. You know, everyone's talking.

I didn't, I didn't really know what was going on, what was taking place, how significant it was, but it was talking about Muhammad. Well, cash is playing Muhammad Ali. And,

um, I just, I don't know. You know, it was like something very spiritual. Something happened. Something transpired. Something came together.

And it was us, in a strange way. But it was us who came together. Because I was a shy guy. And I'm still a little shy. But I was extremely shy, non-confrontational. So to talk to anyone, which I spoke very little of, Ali, when I met Ali, when I was around Muhammad Ali, again, I didn't say much, but I listened to every word he said.

And it was like learning, you know, on the streets. By the time he's fighting Foreman, I mean, are you completely in the Ali camp? Are you worried for him? I mean, I imagine you weren't rooting for Foreman. When I heard he was fighting George Foreman, I cried. Because I saw how George was such a mammoth,

a big guy. And when he fought, I think he fought Joe Frazier. And the way, I mean, the destruction of George Foreman, he's such a big guy, strong guy. I was so afraid. I cried. Again, I remember this so vividly. I cried.

But when I saw the fight, I was like, yes, yes, yes. Okay, so do you remember watching the fight? Like, I mean, obviously you said you watched it, so I don't know. Did you watch it in real time or were you able to see it somewhere? I know that like a lot of the closed circuit stuff and how it worked was kind of complicated. I did watch it and I was just, I screamed my heart out. I mean, because he just, he did the impossible. That's what it is.

He did the impossible. That's what it is. He did the impossible. Yeah, really, it really is to be able to talk about somebody that, I mean, everybody was doubting him. I mean, and I can only go back and read about it and talk to my father about it, who was like, you don't understand. Because after what Foreman did to Frazier, people were just telling Ali you're nuts like you can't do this you can't do this and then all the circumstances all these things have changed did you ever think of well i guess at that point you you know once you become well your first professional fight is 77 correct yes so what's the transition like olympic gold medalist now at this point you're kind of like america's sweetheart you know like people people are like man here comes sugar ray what was that time like for you

uh you know i didn't want to fight i didn't want to be a professional fighter i i had no intentions of being a professional fighter so once i had that gold medal draped around my neck heading home um i was going crazy man because all of a sudden once I got home my dad went to a coma but that has finally spinal meningitis and tuberculosis and some other stuff but he they didn't think that he would live you know week or so and we had no that's what we had no money and I said how can I help the family I asked one of my mentors james warden i said jenks how do i make fast money he said turn pro i said okay i'll do that without

any second considerations i said i'll try pro i in fact i was not going to turn pro i was going to go to university of maryland further my education get a good job. But because of my father's condition, health conditions, turning pro sounded good to me, which I did. I turned pro, and I did it for my father. I did it for my mother. I did it for my family. I did it for myself. Did you ever talk with, you know, because at that stage,

as you're turning pro,'s when muhammad should have been done fighting and he takes those late fights uh we've been over it you know people around him but ultimately like fighters like to fight and he certainly wanted to keep trying to find a way to get paid what was that like as you were getting started watching him at an end that should have been ended previously? I wasn't that sharp. I wasn't that, I mean, I was not, I was like this, I was this one dimensional. And whatever he said to me, in fact, I said, that's what I should do.

He said, Ray, if you turn pro, get Angelo Dundee. He has the right complexion and the right connection. And naturally, I got Angelo Dundee and I had James Morton, Dave Jacobs, Pepe Carrera, my other trainers. And, you know, I just felt having Angelo Dundee, Muhammad Ali's trainer in my corner, oh, my God, it was precious, man. It was priceless, too. And my career was happening.

Now, although it's mano a mano, you know, you against me, I had a team. I had a corner, Ryan. I had a corner. I had a group of guys, a team that helped me. And they didn't say, Ray, do you want to fight Joe Small or Tommy Hearns or whatever? I said, just guys, whoever you say, I'll do it. So my career was one of an independent one in a sense. And I remember also my guy, my attorney, my partner, Mike Treanor, putting together 30 people. Each one of them gave me $1,000. I paid them off my first fight, became an independent contractor.

From then on out, I did it myself. Yeah, that's an amazing story because you had this group that had funded Muhammad Ali that still had a piece of him for going on forever. And then it got switched over to kind of Herbert Muhammad. And then they were doing... But you paid everyone back, right? The loan, the first loan. How were you able to do that? My first fight, six rounder, I made $40,000 and $50,000, which is,

well, still somewhat unprecedented. Your first fight in Maryland, you made that much? Yeah, between $40,000 and $50,000, which again was unprecedented. And I,

and I paid off, well, my trainer paid off all the guys. Okay, we're going to take a quick time out there. We're going to have part two of Sugar Ray and a little bit on him, that Hagler fight, some other stuff,

then bringing it full circle on the health concerns for a fighter later on in their career. We're going to have part two of that, but coming up on the next episode, we're going to have author Matt Taibbi on his book, Hate Inc., the media and why we are the way we are and recruiting stories. So some bonus stuff in there,

including Amari Stoudemire, Jermaine O'Neill, Rasheed Wallace, potentially being at Georgetown with Iverson. So some really good stuff out of that and life advice. That's all in the next episode. Outro Music you