BLACK IS BEST by Jack Olsen. 255 pages. Putnam. $4.95.
In the past seven years, Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. has fought 28 of the best-publicized fights in boxing history. Some of his victims were stiffs, but most of them were decidedly more skilled than Clay's critics would admit. Nobody today denies that he is a superb boxer, but Clay himself beclouded that fact long ago in a great golden haze of self-generated mythology about his life outside the ropes—his ridiculous, irreverent verses, his portentous prophecies, his jazzy clothes, his religion, his wife, the draft board that he dodges as agilely as he ducks a left jab.
With all that, Clay can take credit for having doublehanded led boxing out of its racket-infested ignominy. In 1950, total gate receipts in the U.S. had dropped to a nadir of $4,000,000. Thanks to the class that Clay has brought back to the game, the take in 1966 was nearly $11 million.
All of which still leaves a lot of questions about the Clay in street clothes. In this sharp-eyed biography, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED Writer Jack Olsen succeeds with the formidable challenge and produces a portrait of the man that actually makes sense.
Rave On, Samson! Cassius is seen most revealingly in the pages on the Champ's parents. His mother Odessa calls him Gee Gee, in honor of Cassius' first words. An unruffled mistress of the house, she shouts down her husband by yelling, "Rave on, Samson!" Cassius' determined will and his unwavering discipline are strictly the work of Odessa.
From Cassius Sr. comes the sideshow clown that the Champ's fans know and loathe so well. The father, says Olsen, is a tiny, mercurial man "whose arguments take the form of loud outbursts accompanied by agitated wavings of the arms; he stutters and swallows and backs up and repeats and runs into the bathroom to spit. He has no speech defect except an uncontrollable urge to be heard right now." The Clays have had a stormy marriage, and most family members believe that their battles, which often were refereed at the local police precinct in Louisville, contributed to young Cassius' wavering hold on his emotions. Today, mother and father hold court in a trim bungalow in Louisville. In the driveway stand two castoff Cadillacs from Cassius, "His" and "Hers." Odessa still tries to keep a semblance of cool around the house, while Old Cassius tromps around thinking up ideas for commercial schemes—food endorsements, perhaps a nationwide chain of "Clay's Kitchens" or "Clay's Whatnot Shops."
"We're gonna make a lot of money in advertising," says Cassius Sr. "You know, endorsements? So we don't want to spoil that by giving away the names of foods he ate, things he drank. So we'll just say in his life story, 'I believe he was born champion, waiting to be cultivated. And one great cultivation was Pet Milk.'" Mother Clay interrupts. "No, no. We won't name the milk, we'll just say, 'the milk his mother gave him.' Then we can sell advertisements to them later."