(6 of 9)
At 1:35 of the fourth round, tired old Archie was down for the count, and Cassius was ready with another poem:
Some got mad
And some lost money
When I ripped home that right
As sweet as honey.
When Clay knocked out Charlie Powell, a sometime pro football player, in the third round—just as he promised—people started saying that he had called the shot in all his knockouts. The experts were mesmerized. Maybe, just maybe, he really was the greatest. Cassius soared to No. 2 challenger for the championship, just behind Floyd Patterson, and the papers were full of stories about his clever feints, quick hands and swift legs. "Clay has such good movements that he can make you do exactly what he wants," said onetime Heavyweight Champion Jack Sharkey. "Great! Great!" nodded Middleweight Paul Fender. "He's the first heavyweight I've ever seen who can get hit with one punch and be gone before the second one comes."
"That Big Ugly Bear." Shooting for the moon. Cassius started talking up a storm about a championship fight with Sonny Listen, the mountainous, oft-arrested badman. who destroyed Patterson in a farce of a fight last September. "That big ugly bear," scoffed Cassius. "I hate him because he's so ugly. I'll murder that bum."
Three weeks ago, the two met in Miami Beach's Fifth Street Gym, where Clay was training for his 18th professional fight and Listen was training for his return bout with Patterson. Cassius started heckling. "You ain't so hot," he sniffed. "Yeah?" snarled Liston. "I could leave both legs at home and beat you." Finally Cassius decided, "I can lick you," and began to climb through the ropes. Sonny wheeled and charged. Back through the ropes tumbled Cassius, chuckling happily. "Get him the hell out of here," said a Liston adviser. Raged Liston: "I'm not training for Patterson—I'm training for Clay."
But first there was a trip to New York and that 18th fight, 18th victory and 15th knockout to dispense with. The match was against Doug Jones, a quiet young New Yorker, who at 26 ranked No. 3 in the heavyweight listings. He looked puny beside Cassius—188 Ibs. to Cassius' 202. only 6 ft. tall to Cassius' 6 ft. 3 in. But he had won 21 of his 25 fights, and nobody had ever knocked him out.
"I'll Annihilate Him." "That Jones!" hooted Cassius. "That ugly little man! I'll annihilate him! You know what this fight means to me? A tomato-red Cadillac Eldorado convertible with white leather upholstery, air conditioning and hifi. That's what the group is giving me for a victory present. Can you picture me losing to this ugly bum Jones with that kind of swinging car waiting for me? I get sore, and Jones fall in four."
He said it everywhere—in the newspapers, over the radio, on the Tonight show. He even said it in the Bitter End, a Greenwich Village poetry-and-coffee house peopled by curiosities in faded jeans anti beards. In his tuxedo, at noon, Clay was a curiosity himself.
My secret is self-confidence, a champion at birth.
I'm lyrical, I'm fresh, I'm smart, My fists have proved my worth.