Ali’s Women

Although, his mother said that Ali never fooled around as a teenager, there is no doubt that like most champions, he developed an enormous appetite for the ‘foxes’ as he called them. His love of women had been apparent at the 1960 Olympic Games where he challenged the Olympic champion Wilma Rudolph to a race that he lost. He became very close to Ms Rudolph.

Early on when he was a junior in high school, Clay dated a girl named Areatha Swint. Her account went thus: “Cassius usually wore a red and gray jacket with a ‘golden gloves’ appliqué. He didn’t say if he liked my hair. He was more interested in Floyd Patterson. Sometimes, he told me I was the prettiest girl he ever saw although he didn’t see many girls. After three weeks, he asked for a kiss, but didn’t know how to do it. I was the first girl he ever kissed and I had to teach him. When I did, he fainted and fell hard. I ran upstairs to get a cold cloth. When he recovered, he said I’m fine, but no one will ever believe this.”

Ali has vividly described the first time that he was treated to a little of ‘God’s freely given pleasure’ by a willing woman and concluded that having a woman shortly before a fight does deplete a boxer mentally and physically. But he has had his share.

He married Sonji Roi after the first Liston fight and divorced her not long after for failing to comply with Islamic laws such as abstinence from alcohol. Astonishingly, Ali had proposed to Sonji (who was an unwedded teenage mother) on their first date! Sonji, who was reputed to be a sexual artist with great knowledge of the Kama Sutra, is credited with having taught Ali exhaustively. Sonji denied this. She said she did not teach Ali anything about sex. He already knew what to do before they met. She was emphatic that the picture painted about her – as if she was running around in her underwear – as if she was a six object, was grossly unfair. She may have made him want to do it. She was alarmed to hear that a psychology book mentioned how her sensuality may have impacted on the great Ali. After their divorce, he told Sonji that she had traded heaven for hell. For a long time, he didn’t date any woman, because he said that he could not get Sonji off his mind. Literally, he said that he continued to perceive her perfumes. However, when he did make his comeback, it was with a vengeance. He never dated white women seemingly in strict adherence to his Muslim faith since Ali is not racist all said and done. In fact, many of his closest friends are whites and these include his manager and doctor during his boxing days.

He married Belinda Boyd during his exile from the ring. Belinda had twin daughters, Rasheeda and Jamillah as well as Ali’s only biological son, Muhammad Eban. When Ali divorced Belinda, he paid her $2 million and gave her some houses. Veronica Porche replaced her and had two daughters Laila and Hanna. Belinda’s daughter Maryum (Ali’s first child), called Veronica Porche, the ‘show wife’. Veronica replied that Maryum was only saying what her mother had told her. She also said that Maryum never wanted any woman around her father. After the divorce from Veronica, Ali paid her $750,000 and gave her a big house. Ali then married Lonnie. They have an adopted son called Assad. Ali also had two daughters (Miya and Khaliah) from two girlfriends. Ali established $1 million trust fund for each of his children.

Ali has always accepted the mistakes of his womanising for which in retrospect he is ashamed of, but has always sought to exonerate himself by saying that the temptation he faced from both white and black women was extreme. He said numerous pretty women literally pleaded with him to have amorous affairs with them.

Ali womanised to the point that his doctor Ferdie Pacheco called in a ‘pelvic missionary’. One other writer said that Ali might have thought that he was signing sexual autographs, especially, during his fight in Malaysia against Joe Bugner when he was reputed to have had liaisons with numerous women. An observer thought that Ali might also have been trying to establish a reputation as the heavy weight womanising champion of the world!

In spite of his love for women, Ali remained a male chauvinist believing that women should not take the same pedestal as men. He has wonderED why most hurricanes are named after men and not women – why we say ‘Amen’ after prayers and not ‘A women’, ‘Mansions’ and not ‘womansions’. He went on to say, “if the female liberationists are serious, we should tear down the ‘ladies’ and ‘gents’ signs on toilets and let everyone go where he or she pleases.”

That was Clay at the pinnacle of his powers. By the end of his career, he had conquered all kinds of worlds. As he said after the Foreman fight, he was carrying the burden of the world. “In some countries like Egypt, women weep when I lose, nations go into mourning, people scratch their faces. So, many are for me. In Libya (Gaddafi was a big fan), the USA, the hippies, young people, England, Switzerland, Ireland, Morocco, Venezuela etc, they are all Ali countries. I can go to any country in the world and they know me.”

If Jimmy Cannon once described Joe Louis as a credit to the human race, only goodness knows with what superlatives, Ali ought to be described. Clay was good and Ali was great. If there was an advocate of the ‘power of positive thinking’, it has to have been this remarkable man. A highly psychological man, he pulled off incredible achievements on guts alone. Ali once said, “your fans keep urging you on, Keep asking for more. One day, they will ask you to pluck a piece of meat from a lion’s mouth. Then, you either die in the attempt and they will be sorry for you, or turn you back and they will regard you as a phony forever.”

For those fans, he gave so much of himself. In a moment of inspiration, the doyen of boxing had intoned:

“When your hands hurt so much
You can hardly punch.
When your legs feel so heavy
You can hardly move.
When your whole body aches so much
You can hardly breathe
Then is the time, to fight one more round!”

Round after round, he fought, accomplishing all sorts of feats, until satiated affectionate fans felt that ‘the greatest’ had seen it all and done it all and that it was time for the curtain call.

After one of his title defenses, his doctor, Ferdie Pacheco, noticed blood in Ali’s urine and warned of the possibility of kidney damage. When the doctor also noted the slurring in Ali’s speech, he called for his immediate retirement from the ring and quite in protest when this was not forthcoming. Specifically, Dr. Pacheco wanted Ali to quit after the third Frazier fight. After the fight against Earnie Shavers in 1977, the good doctor quit Ali’s corner. But Ali continued. In my opinion, the fights that damaged Ali the most were the first and third Frazier encounters. After the Manila affair, one columnist wrote that the body beating that Ali took from Frazeir was without parallel in the history of heavyweight title defenses. The encounters with Norton, Foreman, Shavers and finally with the compassionate Holmes also took their tolls. In spite of its inherent heroism, the strategy of making Foreman tired by punching himself out on Ali’s body could hardly have passed without its effects. It is quite probable that the punches endured in these difficult fights, inflicted the Parkinson’s syndrome with which the great man has been beset.

The irony of it all was that Ali was the greatest defensive fighter in history and had vowed to quite boxing intact. Before his exile, he had the strongest legs in boxing. Those legs and his astonishing reflexes and speed kept him out of harm’s way in the ring. Finally, his greatness was sealed by the fact that he proved he also possessed the greatest heart and chin in boxing history. But at what cost?

Happily, the prognosis of this ailment is far brighter than most people realized initially. It is said that the syndrome is not as bad as the disease. Ali’s condition is controllable. In fact, the champion has been responding to medication after initial default at taking them.

In another turn, “The Black Adonis” who once said that even if he was knocked down a thousand times, his heart would never be down, showed his chivalry again by pleading for boxing not to be banned. It would still not be possible to ban it in the street corners. In retrospect, this is a far cry from his rendering before the first Frazier fight – “I’m gonna close the book on boxing. I will add one more page and then close it up. Ain’t gonna be no boxing after me.”

Momah, recipient of the National Sports Merit Award, was president of Confederation of African Tennis. This piece is excerpted from his book, Muhammad Ali, A story about Superman written by a Superfan