The Greatest: My Own Story

I start dreaming: I can see myself telling my next-door neighbor, “I’m getting ready to fight for the Heavyweight Title of the World!” And coming back the next night to say, “I’m now the Heavyweight Champion of the World!” The rain is cold and pouring down harder, and I ask myself, “Can I?” At this time I can’t even beat everybody in my own gym.

I have gotten there just in time to hear the announcer crying out above the noise, “And still the Heavyweight Champion of the World, Rocky Marciano!”
A cold chill shoots through my bones. I have never heard anything that affected me like those words: “Heavyweight Champion of the World.” All the world? And from that day on I want to hear that said about me.

I walk over to him. “You Jimmy Ellis?”
“You Cassius Clay?”
“Why don’t you gain some weight,” I say, as if being skinny is his fault. Tears are in his eyes. “We both lost four dollars because you’re too skinny.”
“We lost four dollars because you’re too heavy!” he shoots back. “You’re too young to weigh that much.”
I can see he feels as bad as I do. I am two years younger than Jimmy, but I am also heavier.

HOW CASSIUS TOOK ROME By Cassius Clay, Jr.
To make America the greatest is my goal.,
So I beat the Russian, and I beat the Pole,
And for the USA won the Medal of Gold.
Italians said, “You’re greater than the Cassius of Old.”
We like your name, we like your game,
So make Rome your home if you will.
I said I appreciate kind hospitality,
But the USA is my country still,
’Cause they waiting to welcome me in Louisville.

My heart was pounding. A minute before, this had been a noisy, chatty place with thirty or more customers. I pushed away from the counter. Ronnie went through every motion with me as though we’d rehearsed the act. I stood up. Knives, forks and chitchat stopped, and all eyes were on me. My mouth felt hot and dry. Never in a hundred fights did I feel blood rushing to my head as I did then.

“Worse place in the world is an old hometown when you’re down,” Chris Dundee once warned me. “Let them remember you as a winner; never come home beaten.”

Invite Muhammad Ali to fight,
And your country will share the world spotlight