Float Like A Butterfly
Yeah, so there I was in the Blessed Sacrament schoolyard at recess, wearing the B.S. uniform: white button-down shirt, striped school tie, grey flannels and bucks. I looked like a goddamn dork.
I was telling the lads that Cassius Clay would win the Olympic Gold medal and then go on to be the Heavyweight Champion of the World. None of the lunkheads ever heard of Cassius Clay. They thought I was all hot air, no balloon.
So sure as shootin’, Cassius Clay won the Olympic Gold in 1960 at the age of 18. And on February 25, 1964, he whipped the big ugly bear Sonny Liston to win the World Heavyweight Championship.
What brought back those schoolyard memories was a story I read about how it took filmmaker Leon Gast twenty-two years to make When We Were Kings, the great documentary about the Ali-Foreman fight in Zaire. The Rumble in The Jungle.
Foreman was the undefeated champ. At 25, he was 40-0, with 37 knockouts. Ali, 32 years old and a heavy underdog, shocked the world by knocking out Foreman in the eighth round.
In 1997, Leon Gast won the Oscar for Best Documentary for When We Were Kings. Persistence pays off. At the awards ceremony, after the producer and director thank yous and yabba-dabba-doos, they called Ali up to the stage. The Champ was really hurting and shaking with Parkinson’s. To everybody’s surprise, George Foreman jumped up and helped Ali down the aisle and up the stairs.
That’s the great thing about life sometimes. Somebody knocks you down and years later you help them up. We should all act more like that today. Especially Democrats and Republicans. You know what I’m sayin’. And, by George, go out and get yourself a Foreman grill. Keep your dukes up.