The last thing anyone would accuse Ali of being is a saint ... that being said, I just don't see thievery in his wheelhouse. Having read several biographies of him that reported all his wrongdoings in sometimes embarrassing depth, even as a kid I don't think he ever had the reputation of being a thief. Anything's possible, kids do stupid sh!t all the time, but unlikely. Just my .02, I could be wrong -
Forgot about Bundini Brown. Apparently he sold one of Ali’s belts. The WBA from the Spinks fight I think for a couple of hundred dollars. The throwing it in the river story sounds too dramatic. Either he genuinely lost it or someone in his camp stole it and kept it or sold it on.
rahman ali confirmed the story in a recent interview. quote: "i was right there with him, standing right beside him". according to rahman, there were only two persons present on said bridge that day. one is deceased. the other one is him, who says cassius threw his gold medal into the ohio river. This content is protected
It's part of the myth, just like Dundee saying he tore Clay's glove and they had to call time and he saved Ali. Repeating it over and over again doesn't make it true. A gold medal is actual gold. You can sell gold anywhere. The last place that medal would've ended up was in the Ohio River. (LOL)
Sometimes a teeny innocent story grows into humungous proportions, only meant to excite the readers. Who knows?
i agree that there are a lot of myths referring to ali´s life. one of the problems is that muhammad spread some of those rumors himself. when it comes to the glove myth from the henry cooper fight, we have proof on film that the 1-minute-break after the round was not (considerably) prolonged. the story around his olympic gold medal is another matter. throwing it into the ohio (in my humble opinion) is fitting to young cassius impetuous and reckless character. so i can imagine him doing something like that (remember, he never cared about money, which was always a means to an end to him). what we have here is - almost 60 years after - rahman´s recent interview comment. if i don´t consider him senile or wrapped up in the ca. 45 year old myth (first mentioned in ali´s first biography with richard durham?), misremembering, you will understand that i take rahman´s word over the opionions of each and every member here, simply because none of them were there that day with cassius. but another interesting question springs from our discussion: do you or does someone else here know, where the medal story/myth originates from? am i right in assuming that it stems from ali´s 1975 book "the greatest: my own story"? or is it even older?
talking about young cassius´ 50s red bike with chrome finish and whitewall tires (it think i read it was a classic "schwinn" cruiser) again, i always found his 1978 incredulous reaction to host eamonn andrews about the whereabouts of his bicycle hilarious (after having been stunned with other surprise guests): "you don´t have my bike here ... ?" This content is protected
The between rounds against Cooper wasn't prolonged at all. In fact, there is video of an interview with Angelo Dundee immediately after the fight saying no time was taken up between rounds, and hundreds of interviews with Dundee in the years after where he changed his story. (I'll try to find it.) The same way the "gold medal" story changes. I don't believe you find Ali ever talking about throwing his gold medal into any river until his bio came out in the mid 1970s, a book that was commissioned by the Nation of Islam after he regained the title ... and Elijah Muhammad had recently died and they were trying to change his image (which is when he started talking less about black vs white and started appearing on variety shows and trying to be more of a jokester). That's when it made news -- 15 years after it supposedly happened. Muhammad talked about winning the gold until the mid 70s, and he never said he threw his gold medal away until then. And, here's an interview with Ali in 75 where he says a friend "Ronny King" was with him at that restaurant when he got humiliated, left and threw it away. Not his brother. And Ali says he actually beat up a couple people in the restaurant, too, which probably would've made news at the time, particularly in his hometown, if he'd gone to a restaurant after returning from the Olympics, was refused service, beat up some people in there and then fled and threw a gold medal off a bridge. https://studsterkel.wfmt.com/programs/muhammad-ali-discusses-his-book-greatest-my-own-story That's not something that remains a secret for 15 years. It's a made-up story. Much of that particular biography - which became the movie The Greatest" in 1977 - is considered a fair amount of fiction.
thank you for reminding me of that great audio interview. i agree that, unfortunately, muhammad often was no reliable source when it came to details of his own life. it is difficult. is his brother more reliable? i don´t know. believe it or not, in rahman´s 2019 book "my brother, muhammad ali" the author mixes up archie moore with jersey joe walcott, when writing about the trainer who took young cassius to his house and trained him shortly during his first pro year.
