(THIS TUESDAY, MARCH 8, 2011, MARKS THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF BOXING'S GENUINE 'FIGHT OF THE CENTURY,' WHEN UNBEATEN MUHAMMAD ALI WAS SHOCKED BY UNDEFEATED SMOKIN' JOE FRAZIER AT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN.)
Aretha Franklin, who wore a flowery hat that looked like a beehive, start directly in front of me. On this night, March 8, 1971, “the Queen of Soul” and I were both openly rooting for the same fighter
To my immediate right was the underrated actor Jason Robards who, if memory serves, was smoking like a chimney.
Frank Sinatra had a ringside photo position for two reasons. One, he was shooting for Life magazine and, two, he was Frank Sinatra.
The first four or five rows on one side of the ring was filled with reporters, all of them as I recall, and all of them wearing red baseball caps bearing the simple but superb nickname of the fight between two undefeated world heavyweight champions, Smokin' Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali, who many including The New York Times, still referrred to by two names, adding the “aka Cassius Clay” or what Muahammad denigrated as his worthless “slave name.”
My $150 ringside pew was in the midst of superstar entertainers along with the usual flotsam and jetsam who went everywhere my idol, Muhammad Ali went. There were colorfully-dressed pimps, preachers and familiar faces from Motown (Diana Ross) and Hollywood. Kris Kristofferson was in the mix somewhere, like Aretha and I, another noisy Ali rooter expecting Frazier to get his comeuppance.
I had taken some $100 flight into New York from San Francisco on a Sunday before the Monday event.
I was taking a flyer not just on the airplane but on trying to land one of the precious tickets to see what really was “The Fight Of The Century.”
If only, I figured, I could get to Ali's mirthmaker Drew “Bundini” Brown, then the man who coined “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” and “rumble young man, rumble” would pry a ticket away from The Champ for me.
I boxed, representing University of Nevada, that Saturday night in Berkeley. In a minor tribute to Muhammad, I had introduced white boxing shoes to college boxing. Unfortunately, I floated like a butterfly and stung like a moth.
Against Cal-Berekley, I fought a strong, 156 pound (I think his name was Gus Felice) and it was either a draw or I lost.
My coach, Jimmie Olivas, said I fought so many draws that people thought I was an art major in Reno.
One night, when a lucky punch knocked out my foe from hated Chico State, “Jimmy O” told a reporter I should get a job with Western Union the way I telegraphed my punches.
But I digress.
I informed the coach I wouldn't riding back with the crew over the Donner Pass, that I was going to New York to see if I could get Ali to hand me a free ticket to the showdown with Frazier.
My old sparring partner Mike “Kid Whiffle” Mahoney from South Boston met me in midtown.
We shared a room in some Times Square fleabag where the fleas were free and they had hot and cold running hookers.
To say I was on a limited budget is understating things. I barely had enough money for a few hamburgers and a bus ride back to Boston. I had taken an unscheduled six week holiday from the spring semester of my sophomore year.
We started milling around the New Yorker Hotel, where I knew Ali was staying.
“I'm security for Ali,” Edwards said. “When the crowd moves in on Ali, I move in on the crowd.”
(He was serious as I later saw him clothesline and floor two nuns a priest who got in a crowd rush when Ali came down to the lobby.)
I told Edwards what I was trying to do. I dropped Bundini's name. I dropped (Chicago cop and main Ali bodyguard) Pat Patterson's name. I think I dropped the name of Gene Kilroy, lone white guy in the Ali circle other than trainer Angelo Dundee).
Edwards took me to Ali's heavily guarded floor. A mail and then a phone death threat (“you lose or else”) Frazier had a phalanx of NYPD detectives around him another Manhattan hotel.
The Amazing Bundini ushered me into Ali's room where, as he usually did before a fight, Muhammad was laying under the bed sheets and watching some old cowboy movie on TV.
I gave Ali my desperate, two minute ticket rap. I went back into the hallway.
After what seemed like an eternity but was really only 10 minutes, a smiling Bundini came out, waving my “Annie Oakley” (unpaid for ticket named the female rodeo star, so named because two holes were punched in them).
Courtesy of Ali, I had a ringside seat to history.
(Postscript: If you saw "Goodfellas" and remember how Samuel L. Jackson got "whacked" on the orders of Jimmy "The Gent" Burke and associates involved in the huge Lufthansa robbery at John . Kennedy Airport, well that movie character was Edwards in real life. Evidently, instead of properly disposing of a van used in the massive cash heist, Stacks went on a Charlie Sheen style drugs and hookers binge.
That was Stacks' final mistake. He "expired" in 1978.)
(More to come)
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