A Front-Row Seat with the Sportswriters Who Sat There
Sit down with host Todd Jones and other sportswriters who knew the greatest athletes and coaches, and experienced first-hand some of the biggest sports moments in the past 50 years. They’ll share stories behind the stories -- some they’ve only told to each other.
Jerry Izenberg part 1: Traveling the World with Muhammad Ali
If you want stories about Muhammad Ali, you go to Jerry Izenberg. We did, and now you’ll hear tales about Ali in this episode that you’ve probably never heard before. Izenberg’s career in sports media is so special we’re presenting a two-part episode with him. He’s 91 and still writing as columnist emeritus at the Newark Star-Ledger in New Jersey, where he was hired in 1951. We’ll cover his entire career in part 2, but this first episode with Izenberg is devoted entirely to his relationship with Ali. Jerry covered more of Ali’s fights than any sportswriter, dating to their first meeting at the 1960 Olympics in Rome. He takes us inside the vicious rivalry between Ali and Joe Frazier, including a ringside seat at their brutal Thrilla in Manila. Jerry gives us an inside look at the Rumble in the Jungle when Ali reclaimed his heavyweight championship with an upset of George Foreman in Zaire. He also puts us in Las Vegas on that sad night when Larry Holmes beat up his old friend. Hear this and much more about The Greatest from one of the greatest sportswriters ever. And don’t forget to join us for the upcoming part 2.
Jerry Izenberg is one of only two sportswriters to cover the first 53 Super Bowls, from 1967 to 2019. He also covered 55 consecutive Kentucky Derbies, as well as five Triple Crown winners. He covered more than 40 World Series, nearly 30 NBA Finals, countless golf majors, and sporting events in 10 countries. He spent a day with Nelson Mandela, was courtside when Willis Reed limped onto the Madison Square Garden court in 1970, and covered Pele’s final game at the Meadowlands in ‘78. And, of course, there is boxing, which he has covered since the 1950s. Name a big fight, and Jerry was probably there typing on deadline.
Izenberg has been inducted into 16 Halls of Fame, including the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame, the Boxing Hall of Fame, the Sports Hall of Fame of New Jersey, and the New Jersey State Literary Hall of Fame. In 2000, Jerry received the Associated Press Red Smith Award for Lifetime Achievement, which is awarded for outstanding contributions to sports journalism. Among his many other honors are the Kentucky Derby Julep Cup for best Derby coverage, the Nat Fleischer award for Excellence in Boxing Journalism, and the 2010 Humanitarian Awards from the American Conference on Diversity and the Award of Excellence from the Thurgood Marshall College Scholarship Fund.
His career in journalism began in 1951 at The Star-Ledger in his hometown of Newark, N.J.. He started as a copy boy making $6 a night while he was still a student at Rutgers University. Within two months, the paper made Jerry a writer. After serving in the Korean War, he became a sports reporter for the Patterson Evening News in New Jersey from 1954-57. Jerry then rejoined the Star-Ledger before moving to the New York Herald Tribune in 1959. He returned to the Star-Ledger in 1962 as the lead sports columnist and never left. His column is the longest continual running sports column in the Greater New York Area. Izenberg wrote five columns a week for more than 36 years before cutting back to four per week in 1999.
In addition to his newspaper career, Izenberg created the “Sports Extra” television show in the 1970s, which ran for eight years. He hosted the radio show “Sports with Jerry Izenberg” on the NBC network in the 1980s. He has been the writer, narrator or producer (sometimes all three) of 35 network television documentaries, one of which – “A Man Called Lombardi” – earned an Emmy nomination. Izenberg has also been a consultant for ESPN for several years. Izenberg is often seen on HBO and the BBC as well as heard on Irish Radio. He’s a prominent voice in Ken Burn’s four-part documentary film about Ali that premiered on PBS in September 2021.
Jerry has written hundreds of magazine pieces. He’s also authored 17 books. His best-seller “Once There Were Giants: The Golden Age of Heavyweight Boxing” was re-released in paperback in 2021 to coincide with the golden anniversary of Ali vs. Frazier I. In October 2020, he published his first novel at age 90, “After the Fire: Love and Hate in the Ashes of 1967” about an interracial love story between a Black girl and Italian boy set in the aftermath of the Newark Rebellion.
Although he retired from daily work at The Star-Ledger in 2006, Izenberg still writes for the paper and its website, nj.com, from his home in Henderson, Nev., near Las Vegas, where he lives with his wife, Aileen. Jerry graduated from Rutgers University in 1952 with a Bachelor of Arts degree and has been awarded honorary doctor of humane letters degree from two other universities.
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Jerry Izenberg transcript – Part 1 of his 2-part episode
[00:25:18.770] - Todd
All right. You have since written 10,000 columns. And the one athlete that stands out among all those in your mind has to be Muhammad Ali, right.
[00:25:29.630] - Jerry
True. It's absolutely true. How come? Well, because we became friends. I admired him for his stand on Vietnam. And I met him in 1060 at the Rome Olympics.
[00:25:46.970] - Todd
Just a skinny kid from Louisville.
[00:25:49.550] - Jerry
I didn't even go to his fight big deal. He won the light heavyweight trip of the Olympics, which is like being a patchy reindeer chief today didn't mean a thing, right? But he's sitting on the steps in Rome, in the Olympic Village, and he's got the metal and he's holding it up. And athletes are walking by or above him on a kind of a street, and he's yelling, this is the Olympic metal, like they didn't know, like the heaven didn't have one. And he's saying, this is going to make me the greatest fighter in history, the greatest of all time.
[00:26:26.810] - Jerry
And I didn't pay attention to it until I noticed something. What most of the people who walked by couldn't understand what the hell he was saying. They didn't speak English. And I noticed these three girls stopped after he was speaking and looked over their shoulders, stopped and took a second look at him. And I said, there's something about this guy. I better not forget that's who he was. He was a very handsome guy, and he was brash. And I didn't pay attention to him. And he kept calling me on the phone when he got back because Angelo Dundee kept putting him up to it.
[00:27:08.050] - Jerry
If we can get him in a fight, if we can get him to come see one of your fights, we're okay.
[00:27:14.050] - Todd
Dundee was trying to get fights.
[00:27:17.290] - Jerry
He got trying to get publicity. He wanted me to come to the fight, right? So all he calls me from Pittsburgh. And he says, you got to come to Pittsburgh Thursday. I said, first of all, it's snowing in Pittsburgh right now. I don't like to stop for gas in Pittsburgh. Why would I come to see you fight a former professional football player who can't spell fight. Why would I come here to see you do that? He should be calling in the fourth round. I said, Fine. Call me some other time.
[00:27:53.530] - Jerry
I'll talk to you. I got to go to work. He calls me back after he knocks at Charlie Powell. And I'm thinking, I ought to go see him once, right? As luck would have. It the first time I actually saw him in person. No television or nothing fight was Doug Jones, and I thought he lost a fight. Yeah.
[00:28:14.710] - Todd
Doug Jones knocked him down, right?
[00:28:16.630] - Jerry
No, he didn't knock him down, but he won the fight. And Allie was a house fighter at that point. Getting ready? Well, the fight was not good. That's why he had to go to England and fight Henry Cooper Cooper. Right. Because the list and fight was in jeopardy. But we had look, a guy by the name of Haywood Plumed or that nobody remembers was an assemblyman in the New York State Legislature, and he got his committee to vote. They got to have hearings about banning boxing from New York because New York is so pure they can put up with the Mafia, but they can't put up with boxing.
[00:28:59.290] - Jerry
All right.
[00:28:59.830] - Todd
Early 60s.
[00:29:01.930] - Jerry
All right. So I go up there and I'm in the Grand Central Station because John Connor was a PR guy from the Garden, said it's going to be an exciting hearing. You want to come and cover it? I said, yeah, I will come. All right. I meet him in the lobby. And there's this commode in the lobby of Grand Central Station. Now to get attention in the lobby of Grand Central Station. God forbid you drop a bomber. So I don't know how people are going to work.
[00:29:26.710] - Jerry
They're coming back at 830 in the morning. It's a mess. And I hear this commotion and it's himself. He comes in and he's waving a magic. He's got a wand in his hand. And these four bastards during the Gray flannel suit army, they don't want to go to work. It's the same shit. Five days a week. They go back and they're not getting along with their wives. And they have a drink. They're just not happy people. He stops him. I will do magic for you. Who the hell is this nut?
[00:30:02.890] - Jerry
And then he gets up on his toes and he says, I am Levitating. I can't. This guy is crazy. So we get on a trainer, and he decides to sit next to me. We're talking the trainer. By the time we get up there, my ears are bleeding. He walks in. I noticed something. All of a sudden the room is packed with secretaries who work at the Commission and the government buildings. And they all want to see him.
[00:30:32.590] - Todd
They all want to see Ali.
[00:30:34.990] - Jerry
He gets up at Holmetor says, Well, I think it's very suspicious that you can call around in which you will win a fight. And Allie says, Well, I know you're a good God fearing Christian. You must have read the Bible. I'm a Prophet. You know what prophets are? He said, I don't think you're a Prophet. I think you're a thief. And Ali said, you think I'm a crook? Well, he said you promoted him. He was in the semi. Well, Senator, all I can say is, it takes a thief to know a thief, not a joint breaks up right now.
[00:31:06.070] - Jerry
We're going back to New York City on the midnight train. It sounds like you're still entitled. And I'm riding in my room there. We took a hotel room. Of course it's midnight. We're going to travel. He comes in a room, he says, I'm so tired. I got to sleep. I got to sweep. I said, lay down on my bed. My brothers don't make my go to sleep. So he did. And he snore it on my bed, which I never used anyway, because we were going back that night.
[00:31:39.770] - Jerry
So I'm writing. He's snoring now. Wherever we went after that, he would say, Put his arm around me and say, this man gave me his bed. This man gave me his bed. And finally, one day I said, that's because I didn't know who you were.
[00:32:04.130] - Todd
He became one of your best friends until the day he died in 2016. Why did your relationship work? You were a sports writer. He's an athlete. Why were you able to develop this type of rapport?
[00:32:18.290] - Jerry
Because both of us realized early in the relationship, I would say he was a champion by then. It was before the second listing fight. We realized neither one of us is going to take any shit from the other. And because of that, we had a lot of fun because we would play the dozens. He would say something. I'd say something to top him. He'd say something to top me. And of course, I lost most of those because he was too good at that. And it was amazing.
[00:32:50.690] - Jerry
I remember when he came back, Atlanta was sitting in his broken down fight. I don't know what it was. Gym of some kind might not have even been a boxing gym. It's broken down. It was on the outskirts of Atlanta. Now I was sitting on his bench. As I recall, the bench had three legs and we're rocking back and forth. The shower in the background is leaking. I mean, it's like a scene from Requiem For Everywhere or something. And he looks over at me and he taps the top of my head and he patched my head.
[00:33:26.530] - Jerry
He said, When I first met you, you had hair. And I reached across and tap him on the stomach and said, When I first met you, you weren't walking around with a spare tire. I said, Face it, Mohammed. We're both getting old. He said, not me. You are. But I'm not getting old. He didn't.
[00:33:49.090] - Todd
He proved it. He proved it. Hey, I wanted to ask you again so you guys would give each other crap. You never really patronized him, right?
[00:33:57.790] - Jerry
Never. And he never ran away from me. He always gave me good, true answers.
I want to tell you the two memories that I had of the two memories I only shared only one guy that was a writer.
[00:36:42.470] - Jerry
Dave Anderson, New York Times legend. He and I went to find Ali after the Zyre fight. Right.
[00:36:54.450] - Todd
Well, can I set this up for you?
[00:36:56.250] - Jerry
Yeah. Go ahead. All right.
[00:36:57.750] - Todd
So in 1074, you go into the Star Ledger Editor's office of Mort Pie. You knocked on his door and you said, I'm going to Africa.
[00:37:08.130] - Jerry
How did you learn that?
[00:37:09.390] - Todd
What did mortgage say?
[00:37:11.550] - Jerry
Moort said, on vacation. I said, You're out of your fucking mind. No, at least fighting. He said, do we need to fight? I said, yes, we need to fight. He said, Well, then you go. I'll see you when you get back.
[00:37:24.030] - Todd
I'm in the champ, and Ali is trying to regain his Championship. They were stripped from him in the late 60s for his refusal to be inducted in the arms forces. And now he has fought his way back for a chance at that Championship again. And he's fighting George Foreman and Zaire. And you go to Zair. What the hell was it like there, Jerry?
[00:37:49.090] - Jerry
I didn't lose anything there that I have to go back and look for. I'll put it that way. I'm in no hurry to give the name is countries changed three times since then. I get there and immediately I got to write a column and I forget the time difference is like 16 hours and I just got to go. So I'm on the bus. I'm looking around and we're driving. I see a kid by the road with a dead monkey holding him up and selling him for me.
[00:38:19.630] - Jerry
He was one of the staples there. And I said, all right. That's note number one. And what can I write? I got to go see himself when I get there. And then he'll fill it up because he always fills white spaces for me. And he did. And we were told by a guy, I'm not making it up. His name was Shampoo Shampoo. He was the PR guy for this venture, right? The government's PR guy. Everything was controlled. We get there and he introduces himself. I write real fast because I see late.
[00:39:00.970] - Jerry
I want I go back to the press center, which is there. We're in a place called and Shelly and Shelly is a military compound. Foreman didn't stay there. But Allie did. Alley stayed there because Alley bought Veronica Porsche with him and told his wife the square business she couldn't stay with him. She had to stay downtown, Ironically, in the same hotel that Foreman was staying in the Omni. So I go to file a story and the guy says first, okay, we must go to the Censor.
[00:39:37.810] - Jerry
Did we go to war yesterday? He said, Well, you go now. The guy says, look at me. The guy that runs the press center. He says, I can't send this. What do you mean, you can't send it? What are you, a critic? What do you mean, you can't send it? I can't send it. The machines aren't working. We had a machine called Telegrams. They might have been called something else, but they were typewriters. They look like. And they can't do a candor must send for a technician to construct.
[00:40:08.870] - Jerry
You know, I got a file. You got to be here. Don't worry. Guy comes in, he fixes all the machines.
[00:40:17.270]
Brilliant.
[00:40:17.630] - Jerry
You know how he did it? He plugged them all. In other words, he rebooted, he plugged the whole thing in. He didn't take it out. They never plugged in. Right? So now we go back to the sensor and the sensor gives me hell and says to me, There are 38 tribes and dialects in a year. Now I think it's a People's Republic again or something. And they didn't get along. This guy was just missed being a Pygmy because the Pygmies were there. Very small guy. Huge metals.
[00:40:59.490] - Jerry
I'm saying, who do they fight? What are the metals for? But I got to argue with him. He says he speaks perfect English. Nice to meet you, sir. Takes a blue pencil and begins. I said, Wait a minute. That's my name. What are you doing all the way? Well, there's some things we object to here anyway. It got very serious. And finally he blows a whistle because I'm arguing with him about taking this stuff out. Blows a whistle, and six Congolese soldiers come up and they're pointing guns at me.
[00:41:37.290] - Jerry
Well, people are pointing guns at me before, and that's not an enjoyable experience.
[00:41:41.730] - Todd
Pointing guns at you because of what you wrote.
[00:41:43.830] - Jerry
Yeah, because the guy said, Point your guns out of that. They didn't know what I wrote. They couldn't read. And the one guy's gun is going like this left and right. And I realized she's never pointed a gun name before. Now it's wider than the third two with a Lincoln Tunnel. And I'm saying, hey, we got to do something. I apologize. What did I do? We'll tell you later, and it take me to jail. Well, when they let me out, which didn't take long. But it seemed like 19 hours when you're in jail, you're in jail.
[00:42:14.910] - Todd
You're in prison in Africa.
[00:42:16.710] - Jerry
Yeah. And I'm thinking, suppose they got a lever and they can pull it. And I go down into the jungle and they never see me again. I don't know, because this is on the outskirts of Kinshasa, a town which we were so modern. So everything we're told by Shampoo, you love, you got to come here. It was so modern that it had one stoplight, which is a blinker downtown. Wow. Only people who had cars were in the upperclist. So if they hit you tough on you.
[00:42:51.090] - Todd
What was the atmosphere like? How did the people receive Ollie and Foreman?
[00:42:54.390] - Jerry
They loved him.
[00:42:55.530] - Todd
He comes Ali or Foreman or both?
[00:42:58.170] - Jerry
No, they didn't love Foreman. Alley made sure they didn't love Foreman. He's standing at the top of you had to go down the steps. And there is no internal terminal. You had to walk on the tarmac. At the top of the step was Jean Kilowatt, who was a business manager. Very dear friend of mine lives here in Vegas now. And he says, Jane, who do these people? Not like Jane says, Well, I wasn't going to say white people. I'm white. So I said, the Belgians. The Belgians.
[00:43:38.590] - Jerry
I only couldn't say Belgian. He said Bill drums because he had fought the bronze metal guy was a Bell drum, according to Alley, in the Olympic. So he says the Belgians. So he stands there with his hands and ear. And he says, George Foreman is a Belgian. And all of a sudden, boom, I get, what does that mean? You're asking me what it means. They get interpreters Ali, kill him. And he goes wherever he went, wherever he walked, the people were gathering yell, Ali, boom. One guy was for Foreman.
[00:44:21.190] - Jerry
And he said, Foreman boom. And that's where most of the world felt about that fight. Yeah.
[00:44:27.310] - Todd
They thought Foreman was going to win this issue.
[00:44:29.230] - Jerry
The irony of that fight, we had about maybe 40 newspaper guys, German Americans, basically Canadians, Americans, the other guys I never counted. And only two of them, they take the AP poll. Two guys picked Ali to win the fight by knockout. One was Jerry Whisker, the sports editor of The New York Post. And the other was Jerry Eisenberg. And this is how it happened. About ten days before the fight. I said to list it was my traveling buddy all the time, kept trying to get me out of trouble.
[00:45:10.330] - Jerry
Not very successful at that. And I said, let's go up the Deer Lake and push his buttons. He's getting ready to go. And we're going to go ten days later.
[00:45:23.710] - Todd
In Pennsylvania.
[00:45:24.550] - Jerry
Right. We go up to Deer Lake. I knew something that Lister didn't know, and very few people knew because Kiloi told me the last three years or two and a half years before he went into exile. And shortly after that, he had traumatic arthritis in both hands. And he stopped when he went to fight Foreman about two years before he stopped hitting the heavy bag because of his hands. And if you look there outside of the guys who couldn't even hold their own hands up, he wasn't knocking anybody out either.
[00:46:07.690] - Jerry
He'd wear them down. They'd faint. Finally by attrition. So we're standing in the doorway. And I swear that's when I was convinced this son of a bitch restaurant, my buddy had eyes in the back of his head because he never turned his head. I swear he knew that we were standing in the doorway. He's banging away on the heavy bag. Boom, boom. What the Hell's going on? Because he hadn't hit him so long. Bang, bang, I'll knock that suck around. I will knock that suck around people.
[00:46:39.430] - Jerry
I will be the greatest of all high fellas. That guy have never convinced me. He didn't know we were there. That was a performance art, right? And he says, I'll knock him out. Well, then I find out. Jean took him to Philadelphia to a guy, a doctor. I don't know his name, but I wish I had him now with my back tremendous. And he said, don't take any more shots. None. And that was a Slam at the fight, doctor, you're going to soak your hands in hot wax three to five times a day.
[00:47:26.210] - Jerry
As hot as you can take it, we're not going to cure it. But I guarantee you, by fight time, you can throw the punches. They won't hurt. And you'll be okay in the fight.
[00:47:37.070] - Todd
So he did that. He soaked his hands in the hot last.
[00:47:39.170] - Jerry
So I knew this now, as we're leaving Jerry's to me, did you learn anything today? I said, yeah, I learned. I'm picking alley by knock out in the 8th round. I think he knocked him out. I picked him in 19. Knock him out in the 8th. We're around. But that's just a look, right?
[00:47:55.550] - Todd
One of the great upsets ever.
[00:47:59.090] - Jerry
Why would you do that? I said, Let me tell you something. You saw what happened in there that I told him about the arthritis. He says he's going to knock him out a long time ago. And I never thought I would be quoting Alice poetry. But he said to me, If I say a mosquito can pull a plow, don't argue. Hitch them up. I said, I'm hitching my prediction to that statement. And boy, when it happened, there were 30 guys made selections. One other guy picked Ali by decision.
[00:48:42.090] - Jerry
The other guy, we were the only guys, and we picked it by knockout.
[00:48:45.690] - Todd
What did you think, Jerry? What did you think as a fight unfolded when Ali started doing the ropedope strategy, what did you think was going on?
[00:48:53.010] - Jerry
Well, first of all, let me tell you, I have a different opinion. I don't call it strategy because he got hit in the first round. When Former hits her, he hit you. So we went to the ropes to figure it out. Well, he's standing there like this, trying to say, all right, now, what am I going to do? Because that's the way I already thought it. And Foreman is winging these planes. He's going to get through these two gloves. You couldn't get through there with a mortar because Alley's holding his hands, he doesn't hit him in his stomach.
[00:49:26.910] - Jerry
He's going through the two gloves because he was stubborn. And he admitted that to me years later, Ali says, Well, this is not so bad. Let him punch himself out. The arms are heavy, big muscles, you know, you punch like a girl. You still haven't hit me.
[00:49:47.490] - Todd
Oh, could you hear all these saying.
[00:49:49.470] - Jerry
No, but he told me that later. And Foreman told me that. Foreman told me he came up to him before the fight and said, you punch like a girl. And Dundee and the brain trust is yelling, Get off the ropes, get off the which I probably would have yelled if I were a corner man. Get off the ropes. By the fourth round, Alley realized he wasn't getting off those ropes. Came and said, Everybody here, shut the hell up. Just shut up. I know what I'm doing because Angelo was a great PR man.
[00:50:19.950] - Jerry
And Angelo was a good trainer. Not a great trainer. But he was great during the fight. The guy's doing this, you should do that. That's when he was really earned his money. Alley trained himself as far as do I want a box today. Do I don't want you. Okay, so now the punch is coming all during the fight. Lister, by that time, Mister hadn't taken over the New York Post yet. He was a Sportset of the London son because Murdoch wound up owning both papers. So he's going to broadcast a blow by blow to London because it's a shorter time frame.
[00:50:58.110] - Todd
He's dictating during the five.
[00:50:59.370] - Jerry
Yeah, exactly. Because they're going to get in the paper and get an extra out. And I said, what are you doing? The phone. He said, Well, I'm going to do. I said, the phone is not going to work. This is the morning of the fight. It's not going to work.
[00:51:11.490] - Todd
Nothing works here.
[00:51:12.390] - Jerry
Don't you understand that? He said, look, and he dialed the number and somebody picks it up and says, Hello, you see, it works. Jerry, I will take you to lunch at 21 in New York City. If that phone works during the fight and if it doesn't, all you got to do is get me a Big Mac. That's how sure I am. Well, all during the fight, he's saying he's on the ropes. I don't know why he's there. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. He's not getting tired.
[00:51:44.850] - Jerry
I think he's hurting out. He's one everywhere. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear. And he goes on all through the fight. Bing bang, right cross, sneaky, right hand, lead, left hook, right again. But he's going down by that time. And as whisker, he's going down. Looks up. Can you hear me? And across the ring, the bells and technicians. Yes, I can hear you. He has broadcasted the entire fight from one end of the ring to the other end of the ring, and it's never got to London.
[00:52:15.930] - Jerry
And that fight was better than Alley Foreman. Jerry went across that ring because Jerry had been a boxing scholarship holder at San Jose, stated, but anyway, it ends.
[00:52:31.110] - Todd
I'll leave wiring down the rope of workforce. ##man Tires out. Ali knocks him out. What was it like at that moment when Foreman fell to the camp?
[00:52:40.470] - Jerry
Well, first of all, it was like chopping down in California Redwood. He fell in sections, like his ankles hit the ground, that his knees hit the ground, then his chest hit the ground. He says today he thinks he might have beaten the count. I don't think he beat the account. And he had no inclination. And like he said to me, I know he knew it because later on, years later, when he went back to title, he said, I should have died. I should have gotten up and died not to lose that title right then and there.
[00:53:09.570] - Todd
What was the crowd's reaction?
[00:53:12.150] - Jerry
Well, the whole crowd, it was pro Alley. There are a number of American celebrities in it who couldn't refrain from posing, even in Africa. When people didn't know who they were. Several American novelists were there.
[00:53:29.310] - Todd
Mormon Mailer and others.
[00:53:32.010] - Jerry
But anyway, it ended. Everybody goes crazy. Now, one of the two most poignant moments I ever had with Ali transpires here after the fight, it pours rain and African rain. If it had rained an hour earlier, there'd have been no fight.
[00:54:15.650] - Jerry
It was incredible. But this is Africa. When it stops, the sun is getting ready to rise. So I say to David, he's gone. And I said, we were so rushed. I like a second shot at this, maybe for a follow up for tomorrow. Let's go find him. And Dave said, Well, you know where he is. There's like, 3000 acres on this military thing. So I said, I think I know where he'll be because I know him. Something about the river is mystic to him. The Congo River.
[00:54:50.750] - Jerry
He's going to go down by the river. I just feel it. I just feel it. So we go back. We go down by the river. We're standing on a little Hill. It's not big, but it's your rise so we can see everything out there. Alley is facing the water and he's looking toward what was once French Congo. His head moved. I know he's yelling. I have no idea what he is. We can't hear him, but we can see it. And we also know whatever it is.
[00:55:24.090] - Jerry
It's not a performance, because as far as he's concerned, nobody is there but him. The river and the crocodiles. That's it. And suddenly he shoves his hands up to the sky in a Rocky pose and he's still yelling, puts his hands downstairs, turns around and walks away, sees us. Don't ask me what tonight meant to me. I couldn't tell you. And if I could, I don't have the words. And if I could, you wouldn't understand him. And I thought to myself, when people ask me the way I like to think of him that moment, thinking he was all alone, arms to the heavens, facing out after having done an impossible deed in that instant, he was the King of the world.
[00:56:20.230] - Jerry
That was one. The second was the homes fight. The home's fight was a horror, right? I was in Alley's room the night before the fight, alone the two of us. And he said to me, who are you picking? I said, Mohammed, listen to me carefully. I didn't come here to talk about the fight. I came here to tell you. I would think this might be your last fight. And like everything else about him, I was wrong before it one more time. And I just want to tell you we had a hell of a ride, didn't we?
[00:56:53.710] - Jerry
He says it ain't over. He jumps up, rips his shirt open, buttons flying. He stands there arms like this son of a bitch. He looked like he did the night before. He Fort listed. He said, now, what do you think? And I said, Mohammed, you could have done that in the European house. What I didn't know was he'd been taking diuretics for a month. He was so weak when he got in the ring he could barely lift his arms. I didn't know that after that fight, which is horrible, one of the most unprofessional.
[00:57:29.110] - Jerry
I like to think it was the only unprofessional moment in my life. But by the fifth or 6th round, he hadn't thrown a punch in my opinion. And I'm yelling. I jumped to my feet and I yelled to Richard Green, referee, Richard stopped the fight. You're going to get him killed. And then I sit down and realize what I done. I mean, how unprofessional is that? And they stopped the fight too, by the way, for your listeners information. It wasn't Angelo Dundee who stopped that fight.
[00:58:00.730] - Jerry
It was Herbert Mohammed, the manager who was sitting five rows back and got a go for it and said, Go down here, you tell Angelo this stops now.
[00:58:15.830] - Todd
It's a horrible night.
[00:58:17.090] - Jerry
All right.
[00:58:17.510] - Todd
Now when Homes beating.
[00:58:18.710] - Jerry
Yeah, I gamble. I lose because that's why these buildings in Vegas do are standing because they make the guy at the door knew me. I sneak into the showroom and Sinatra is there featured attraction. And by the way, in the sign outside, Sinatra is Second Banana. It was Ally Homes on top. And then that was Sinatra in the showroom. And he's talking about he just came from Ali's room, and he was a great man. And we said, I don't want to hear this shit. So I walk out and I gamble.
[00:58:59.070] - Jerry
I lose. I gamble some more and I lose some more. Now I'm really pissed off at every I'm pissed off with Caesars. I'm pissed off at Alley for having four. I'm pissed off with the fact that Homes was in an embarrassing position. He didn't want to be in.
[00:59:13.230] - Todd
Yeah, because Homes loved Alley.
[00:59:15.210] - Jerry
So I go into love them so much. So when Alley gave him a black eye as a sparring partner, he wouldn't put beef steak on it. He wanted everybody to see the black eye when he got home because it came from Alley. All right. So I go into the men's room. It's like 330 in the morning. Elderly Afro American gentleman hands me a towel. When I go to wash my hands, I say, elderly today he'd be a kid to me. But back then he had lines on his face.
[00:59:49.050] - Jerry
He was old and compared to what I was, I was in my 40s. I said to him, do you mind if I ask you a question? He said, no, go right ahead. I said, Did you bet on this fight? He said, you bet. I did. And I said, who did you bet on? He looked at me and didn't say anything. He looked at me again, and then he said, I bet I'm a man who gave me dignity, greatest eulogy I ever heard. For all the anywhere.
[01:00:25.030] - Jerry
Anytime. Those were two moments that I treasure a lot of moments because we had crazy times no matter where we went and it was a circus.
[01:02:06.070] - Todd
All right, Jerry. So you were ringside at one of the most famous fights ever, the Rumble in the Jungle, when Ali regains his Championship from George Foreman. And then a year later, you're in the Philippines for the thrill in Manila. And you can't talk Ali without talking. Joe Fraser. So Ali and Frazier, the third fight in Manila.
[01:02:26.710] - Jerry
What was it like in that arena was the greatest heavyweight fight ever held. Some people want to debate me on that. And I explained to them my camel died on the way to the Cain and Abel fight. So I missed the first two rounds, and it ended before then I knew who won him because I was wrong. Cain had a Mark on his head, and I thought that Abel had hit him. But that wasn't what it was. So the greatest fight I ever saw was our greatest heavyweight fight, probably the greatest fight that in which there were no knockdowns, which went 14 of the 15 rounds.
[01:03:12.250] - Jerry
Unbelievable fight. And I knew things going in that other guys, a lot of guys didn't know, for example, tell us. Yeah, I will tell you. And we'll keep it between us. I don't know how many people listen to this podcast. We'll see millions. Well, then I can't tell you. Well, what happened was this Eddie Flights was the manager by then and the trainer and the trainer because James Dorm died. And Frasier was a good friend of mine. Frasier was a marvelous man. We had a great rapport, and he used to call me The Alley man, but we did have our own relationship.
[01:03:56.350] - Jerry
Flutch gets a Holy George Benton, great middleweight fighter who now is a trainer. He says, George, I'm taking you to camp. And here's your job. We got, like, two or three months to get ready for this fight, and I think they knew it when he I think that fight was privately made before the Foreman because he thought it would be his last five. Clean up all accounts. Right. So, Benton, this is your job. Teach him to throw a right hand. I don't care if it's any good.
[01:04:36.110] - Jerry
I don't care if it misses. Alley is the most thoughtful fighter I've ever seen. We got to give him something to think about. Because everybody knew George was a one handed fighter. Joe was a one handed fighter.
[01:04:50.990] - Todd
Yeah, because Joe was a left hook. The mighty left hook.
[01:04:55.310] - Jerry
He could triple up on a left hook. It was amazing.
[01:04:58.010] - Todd
Wasn't there something about his arm that made that arm?
[01:05:00.470] - Jerry
Yeah. His father was a sharecropper, a very poor family. And Joe's job, when he was about ten or maybe nine, was to bring the big pig they had in and out of the style. They had him in and he was chasing the pig in, and the pig turned on him and he ran away, tripped over a rock and broke his arm and left arm. And the father looked at the father had one arm, by the way, said, Well, it'll be all right. We don't have any money for a doctor.
[01:05:38.810] - Jerry
We'll watch it. You'll be okay. They never went to a doctor. His left arm was deformed, and for some crazy reason, it enabled him to do more with it than most people could do with the left hand. Don't ask me why or how. That's what Joe said. That's what his son Marvis said. And that's what his daughter told me how to be true.
[01:06:03.330] - Todd
The left hook is what knocked down Ali.
[01:06:08.250] - Jerry
I used to tell him to tell you a story about that in a minute. I used to tell him, hey, if your right shoe race comes untied, don't take another step because you're going to fall on your ass because you can't tie it with your right hand. You got no right hand. And Benton agreed with me, but Benton taught him to throw this little bitty right hand, and it got a little better as he learned. The whole idea was to distract him. Now, in round one of that fight, Frase Romans got knocked out.
[01:06:42.210] - Todd
Yeah, because it was one sided early. I want to ask you this. In that fight, there was like, no air conditioning in that arena, right?
[01:06:51.270] - Jerry
No, it was blazing hot. Well, I will tell you, Marco's wife had a hand in the building of the arena because she was like him. She stole everything that wasn't nailed down. So instead of air conditioning, I said, We'll put the roof here. A roof here. And then the top of the building will be open, but it will be here. And the wind will come in to the space that everybody will be air conditioned, right?
[01:07:19.530] - Todd
That's what they call air conditioning.
[01:07:20.790] - Jerry
It was about 115 degrees in the ring when they turned the lights on, maybe more. But now he's losing the fight. And I'm saying, I think Joe's lost it. I mean, lost it, period. He can't fight. He hits him with a right hand. Now you got to understand something, Fraser. Joe and he always talked to each other in the ring and Alley talked to everybody in the ring. Ali was saying to me, Why do you write that? Crap. I don't speak in a ring. I'm focused. He was so into the fight, he didn't know what he was doing.
[01:07:59.190] - Jerry
So he comes out. And if you look at the team, I mean, he's looking great. He's got to knock him out.
[01:08:33.270] - Jerry
He's screaming at Fraser. Now. I didn't hear this. Of course. Fraser told me this story a week after the fight. And I know it's true because I heard him yelling about other things. He says, Fool, Fool. You've got the fool. It's been ordained. I will be a heavyweight champ forever. You can't stand up against God. You can't stand up against God. And the second time he says that Fraser slips a punch, left hook, side of the head. And as Ali catches this Friday says, Well, God is getting his ass whipped tonight.
[01:09:09.510] - Jerry
That's a true story.
[01:09:17.770] - Jerry
And you can hear this now he yells at Frasier. You ain't got no right. Fraser hits with a right hand and he stops. Didn't hurt him. But he had a boxing IQ of like, 9 million. I mean, he said something's wrong here. This guy can't throw a right hand. Okay? He said you ain't got no right hand. You're too old. You can't go to a right hand. You can't do it. And, Fraser, you better go talk to George Ben goes. Here comes another boom. Not if I turn now.
[01:09:52.210] - Jerry
It's like a Wall Street graph. Hours up. Alley is down. No knockouts until the very end when they're almost dead. No clinches. Why are there no clinches? Good question. You think about this the greatest fight ever held. And no clinches. That mean anything. Yeah. Heavyweights. Two days before the fight, the alley group registers a protest with the Commission, the Filipino Boxing Commission. We do not want a Filipino to work this fight as referee. What we want is Zach Clayton. Of course they wanted Zack Clayton, but Zach Clayton loved that alley.
[01:10:36.610] - Jerry
Well, Fudge didn't want Jack Clayton. Fudge had another candidate. I think it was Jay Edson, but they both agreed on the reason no Filipino was big enough to separate these two guys because it's really emotional, right? Rules meeting. I go to the rules meeting, which is usually nothing. But I want to see what happens to the protein. I want to see who's going to work this way because referees have styles too. And that can impact on the fight. So incomes. This guy is a Colonel in the Filipino Army, reaches in his pocket, pulls out this Cannon, puts it on the table.
[01:11:14.710] - Jerry
Biggest gun I ever saw. I don't know what the caliber was. 190. I don't know. And he says, I understand there is some controversy about the official. There will be no controversy. This fight and he taps the gun will be refereed by a Filipino. Any protest? Not me. I'm not going to say that gun out there.
[01:11:36.910] - Todd
Not a word.
[01:11:37.870] - Jerry
Now he brings the referee in. It's a guy named Sonny Padilla, who later moved to Vegas and worked some fights out there and then went to work for the government. Sunny is the biggest Filipino I ever saw in my life. Outside of Roman Gabriel, the Graham's quarterback. He's big, he's broad shouldered and he worked a masterful fight. He's the only guy I ever saw. Caution Ali right at the start. Ali had a habit. Put his hand behind your neck, pull your neck down. Uppercut. He put the hand there.
[01:12:16.630] - Jerry
The upper cut never came because he jumped in and said, Next time I'll throw you out of the Arena, Fraser hit them low. Same round. Next time I'll throw you out of the arena. So they didn't clinch. They were afraid of this guy. It was marvelous. And up and down, up and down, up and down. And now we get to like, the 12th or 13th. I haven't seen the fight for a while. I got a copy of it. I watch it a lot. And now Frager is in trouble because his eye is starting to close both eyes.
[01:12:55.730] - Jerry
Really. But this one particular left one you can't see. And when he goes out for the 12th to 13th. But she said, look, you got to straighten up now. Fraser was in a Crouch fighter. You got to straighten up. I don't want you fighting when you can't see. Or I'm going to stop this. All right. Now, when he straightens up, that's an invitation. Jab, jab jam. Fraser is standing there in the 12th to 13th round. Maybe somewhere is in there. Arms at his side, legs are trembling like wet spaghetti Alley's a foot away.
[01:13:30.350] - Jerry
All he's got to do is walk a foot, push him. Fight over alley. Could not walk that foot. That's how much these guys left in that ring. And when it ended.
[01:13:44.570] - Todd
The 14th round ends. And Neddy Fudge tells Fraser he's going to stop the fight.
[01:13:49.010] - Jerry
Well, he tells no. He knew he'd have trouble, he says to Benton, cut off the gloves. Benton takes his scissor and Fraser gets up. He says, you touch his gloves. I'll kill the both of you and fragrance his son. Your eyesight means a lot more to me than who wins this fight. They stopped the fight. Meanwhile, Killoi who was in the corner. And we disagree on the only thing we've ever disagreed on about Ali. He says Ali had developed a habit because people would jump in the ring and he didn't want to get hurt.
[01:14:27.410] - Jerry
After decision, she would fall to the ground. After two steps, he fell to the ground. And that's my story. And I'm sticking to it.
[01:14:36.410] - Todd
He was so exhausted.
[01:14:37.790] - Jerry
So you don't know whether who knows what would have happened if there was a 15 drop. Thank God there wasn't. I had said in the 12th round to Jerry Lizard was sitting next to me. Let them send these guys home and say they both won. I can't watch this anymore. I mean, it was the most brutal fight I've ever seen in my life. And it ends. And now Ali is walking up the aisle, and it's Dave Anderson, Jerry Whisker and me. We were three guys he recognized immediately.
[01:15:10.850] - Jerry
And when he had to pass us, when he got to us, he leaned in and he said, Fellas, that's the closest thing to death you'll ever see. And he goes by and he wasn't far from wrong. I got to write this a time difference. I got, like, 30 minutes to write a column. To write a story is one thing to write a column with an opinion. Here's how I started that column. I said, Mohammed Ali and Joe Fraser did not fight for the WBC heavyweight Championship here in Manila last night.
[01:15:51.810] - Jerry
Nor did they fight for the Championship of the planet. They fought as though they were on a melting ice flow in a telephone booth. And what they were fighting for was the Championship of each other. And in my opinion, that never has been and never will be settled. That was pretty good.
[01:16:20.410] - Todd
Under the gun, too, man.
[01:16:22.810] - Jerry
If I had time to think, it might not have been that good.
[01:16:25.570] - Todd
Well, the thing was, that was such a bitter rivalry for Frasier. It never really want his bitterness about Ali never went away.
[01:16:34.990] - Jerry
Right?
[01:16:35.230] - Todd
Like, 25 years later.
[01:16:36.370] - Jerry
Ali.
[01:16:38.350] - Todd
Didn'T Ali ask you to tell Frasier?
[01:16:40.990] - Jerry
Well, they had a phony reconciliation at one point, but it was phony. 25 years after the fight. I'm saying still the best fight I ever saw. And I've seen a few thousand fights. Okay, I'm going to do a retrospective 25 years later, see if these guys change any opinions. So I get Sunny Padilla, the referee. I got Angelo. I got Eddie Fudge. I got a couple of other people, and I got the fighters. Now. First I called Ali. He says, I don't know why he's mad at me.
[01:17:24.430] - Jerry
I said, Mohammed, you know Marvis, you've seen him grow up. Marvis came home from school crying Joe's son Marvis. Yeah, because they're calling his father a gorilla because of his father saying, I'll be a thriller and a chill when I get the gorilla in Manila and his son was in tears, how do you expect him to think about you? He said that wasn't my intention. I was trying to sell tickets. I said, My old man taught me never a bullshit, a bullshit. Or you weren't selling tickets.
[01:17:58.910] - Jerry
Those tickets were gone and sorry. But you are an apology. He said, were you going to talk to him? I said, yeah, right after I hang up this phone, I'm calling him and I'm going to tell him everything you said. He said, okay. You tell him. I said, if Marvis was really hurt, I'm sorry about that. It's never my intent to hurt his family. I said, I'll tell him I call up Marvis. And before we go into it, I tell him what I'm going to do.
[01:18:29.790] - Jerry
And he says, you speak to him yet. He would never say Ali, you speak to him. I said, yeah, I spoke to him.
[01:18:40.170] - Todd
This is Joe.
[01:18:40.650] - Jerry
You're talking to Joe is Joe. What did he say? And I told him exactly what he said. He said, that exactly that I said, absolutely. Was he sincere? I think it was. Call him back when we're done and tell him take his apology and shove it as far as we'll go up his ass. That was 25 years after the fight. Now Ali was still alive but couldn't speak years later. And I go to the Boxing Writers dinner. I'm getting some kind of Phony Baloney award or something.
[01:19:21.810] - Jerry
And the table next to me and my wife is Joe Fraser. He leans over and he says to me, you hear him today? You hear him try to talk that's somebody up there giving me justice. Wow. He went to the funeral. I mean, no, he didn't go alley, went to his funeral. That truck would have it. Yeah, but Ally was convinced he knew he went too far. But he was having such a good time and the world was having a great time. The gorilla Manila. They loved it because they didn't think it was going to be any fight joke.
[01:19:59.430] - Todd
They didn't see the pain that caused Frasier.
[01:20:01.230] - Jerry
Oh, no. Absolutely. Well, pain is a funny thing. That kind of pain is so subjective, you say, Well, what the hell is he? They split the two fights, the first two fights and he was a champion. And I only gave him a shot the third time. Why would he be mad at him? That's why Joe is a very sensitive guy. He had an aunt that he loved in South Carolina who is dying and he wanted to go to the funeral. But when nobody knew and I didn't know it at the time.
[01:20:40.470] - Jerry
Later on, when Marvis told me he was nearly blind in his left eye, doing a lot of his fights. And the way he got approved by the Commission, you know, that thing you hold up, which is one side of it is got a block in it. So you have one eye here. Okay. Now flip it over and give me the other eye. He would drop it on the floor when he picked it up. He'd go back to the good eye. And that's how he passed the Commission each time wow.
[01:21:09.810] - Jerry
Any way point where she couldn't fight. But he wanted to get to her funeral because I knew at that point about that. He said I saw a tail light in front of me and was going to South Carolina. Somebody I knew was going to funeral. I just hooked in behind that tail light. And that's how I drive to South Carolina. But I had to see her. And he had a lot of bitterness about Alley, which was not Ally's. Remember when Ally said he got into boxing because some kids stole his bike?
[01:21:45.250] - Jerry
That was the big story. It was a great story. He did. But the point is, Fraser said, don't tell me that, man. He was twelve years old. I was twelve years old. I was plowing a field, working every day. And in the morning, all the boss said to me was, I'd say One boss, and he'd say to the mule, and then I'd say, lunchtime, boss. And he'd say, in an hour. And then afterwards I'd say, quitting time, boss. And he'd say, in the morning I was twelve years old.
[01:22:24.790] - Jerry
That's what I ran away from. He was mad about his bike. I got to New York and I couldn't do anything. I was fat. I want to lose weight. I went down to Philly because I had an aunt down there and I lived with her. And I worked in a slaughterhouse. I used to hit cows between the eyes with clubs and there'd be blood on the floor all over, like a river running. And he had a hard time going up. I started with nothing, and I thought well enough that I was discovered by the first manager, Yancy Dorm, and he put together some guys who put up some money and whatever.
[01:23:13.910] - Jerry
But he started getting his salary the minute he turned pro. Right? I don't want to hear about his problems. I got my own.
[01:23:23.510] - Todd
Well, that rivalry is as good as it gets in sports, as brutal as it gets in sports.
[01:23:29.930] - Jerry
And as you knew.
[01:23:32.150] - Todd
You knew all the heavyweights listing, Patterson Norton Homes, Tyson Hollyfield. And you wrote about them in one of the great boxing books. I want to make a plug for once. They were Giants, the golden age of heavyweight boxing.
[01:23:43.970] - Jerry
The new one released.
[01:23:45.170] - Todd
And it's a great great book.
[01:23:48.050] - Jerry
The paperback, which is the new one, has it forward by Manny Paccyo. That's the book I want people to buy.
[01:23:54.350] - Todd
I yeah, highly recommend it. Nobody has boxing stories like you, Jerry.
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