Cassius Clay Confidential
It started with Cassius Marcellus Clay and now it’s come full circle to Muhammad Ali.
About seven years ago, I went to an auction at Sotheby’s and saw a photograph by Flip Schulke of Muhammad Ali,then Cassius Clay,in the Miami years before the first Liston fight. It was the only boxing photo in a large lot of photographs that had nothing to do with sport, so of course it immediately caught my eye. This was before Corbis and Getty had put their archives online and therefore before I had spent countless hours looking at old pictures of Ali. I had never seen images from that moment before. Clay was skinny and young, unmarked by the battles to come and full of the electricity of knowing how good you are before you’ve had a chance to prove it. In the photo, taken in Angelo Dundee’s 5th Street Gym in Miami, Clay’s side-stretching, hands behind his head as he leans left, eyes tracking the camera. He’s wearing a t-shirt that says Cassius Clay,in a Coca-Colaish font where a script C with a long tail stands in for the first letter of Cassius and Clay. Confronted by such beauty, I could only think one thing: I need that mother——- t-shirt.
Read the rest of this entry »
