There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats.
—Julius Caesar, Act IV, Scene 3
But there was. In Miami Beach last week, Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. acted out a scene that was worthy of the Old Bard himself—or maybe P. T. Barnum. Just as he said he would, he took the heavyweight championship of the world away from Charles ("Sonny") Liston thereby proving that the mouth is faster than the eye.
Clay's mouth was practically supersonic. "I am the greatest," he chattered. "I am the prettiest. I am so pretty that I can hardly stand to look at myself. I am the fastest. I am the fastest heavyweight that you ever did see. Next to me, Liston will look like a dump truck." He did.
Momma, Momma, Momma. Cassius' narcissistic posturing was not meant to convince. "Actually," he confided, "I respect Liston. That look of his shakes me." It was meant to humor, to prod, to annoy, to con Champion Liston into thinking that a young (22), tall (6 ft. 3 in.), sturdy (210 Ibs.) heavyweight with 119 amateur and pro victories behind him would be easy pickings for the man-monster who had twice butchered Floyd Patterson. And, my, how he succeeded, thanks to his unwitting accomplices, the sportswriters.
Challenger Clay led them all a merry chase. He met Liston's plane at the airport, spouted insults at Sonny and his wife. He threatened to picket Liston's training camp. He offered to fight Sonny on the street, for free. "I cannot be beaten," he insisted. "It's prophesied for me to be successful." But at his public training sessions, Clay looked impressively listless. The experts hooted. And the prefight weigh-in did nothing to change their minds.
In pranced a corps of teen-aged girls —"foxes," in Cassius' vocabulary—carrying signs that read: MOMMA, MOMMA, MOMMA, CAN WE FIGHT! Clay's eyes rolled. "This is my show! My show! My show!" he raved. "I'm ready to rumble! Ready to rumble!" He shrieked at Liston: "You nothin'. You scared. You a chump, a sucker. I'm gonna eat you up." Newsmen shook their heads sadly. "Schizophrenia," suggested Milton Gross of the New York Post. "Hysteria," said New York Timesman Arthur Daley. The boxing commission doctor reported Clay's pulse rate at 120—v. his normal 54. "This is a man who is scared to death," diagnosed the doctor. "He acts like a man off the beaten path." The performance cost Cassius a $2,500 fine, and out in Las Vegas, bookmakers raised the odds against Clay from 7-1 to 8-1. Smiled Cassius: "That's fine. I like being the underdog."