Cassius 'Goes to Graveyard' And Drags Boxing Along

"When I'm gone," Cassius Clay said last week, "boxing will go to the graveyard." Clay is gone now, gone to his own graveyard, dumped there by sportswriters, chauvinists, and fight promoters. And sure as his name is Muhammad Ali, he will drag boxing along with him.

It was a chilly, gray Friday in Houston, and Clay had been inside the induction center for hours. Newspapermen and assorted fans were milling around. Then the colonel came out and told them what they had known would happen all along. Cassius Clay had refused to step forward when his name was called. He had refused to enter the United States Army.

The heavyweight champion of the world explained it in a Xeroxed statement: "It is in the light of my consciousness as a Muslim minister and my own personal convictions that I take my stand on rejecting the call to be inducted into the armed services." The government would begin to prosecute Clay, but that would take a month or two. The men who run boxing started right away.

The President of the World Boxing Association said that Clay "had defied the law of the U.S. regarding selective service and so has forfeited any protection of his recognition of his boxing title." Then he said something about how a champ should be "an example of patriotic dedication," someone who should display "exemplary and inspiring conduct." But Clay, alas, had not, so he was stripped of his title.

There is no central authority in boxing, but the other commissions followed suit right away, right on cue. The New York State Athletic Commission suspended Clay's license indefinitely, pending the outcome of the legal case, which may not be decided for another two years. The European commissions did the same.

No more champion. Cassius Clay, who had won 29 bouts in his professional career after taking the gold medal in Rome in 1960, was suddenly not a boxer anymore.

Of course for the WBA Clay had only been champion for a few months, since Feb. 6 when he beat the recognized titleholder, Ernie Terrell. The Association had plucked the crown away two years ago because Clay had agreed to a return bout with Liston, a deal which reportedly cost promoters $50,000.

The boxing commissions were the first ones to show their righteous indignation. But they weren't the only offended Americans. Sportswriters, who have despised Clay for his Muslim beliefs and his big mouth for years, had a field day.

Jimmy Cannon wrote in the New York World Journal Tribune: "He (Clay) desires martyrdom. But what religion has thugs to do its missionary work with kicks? There were Black Muslims in the mob of assassins that killed Malcolm X. The karate is an expression of their piety in street rumbles. It is Clay's cop-out that he is a minister of this furious sect."

Milton Richman enlarged on the theme for United Press International: "Cassius Clay finally made it. Today he is a martyr. Some martyr!... He promptly tosses names around like Jesus, Columbus, and Abraham Lincoln, the implication naturally being that some day his name may be bracketed with theirs. He has a long way to go before that. A long way."

And then there was Al Hirshberg in the Boston Traveler: "Go to your little man in the mansion in Chicago, Cassius Clay (Elijah Muhammed). ...But don't walk the streets of my America a free man."

But why all these slurs? Clay has not even had his day in court yet. The answer, at least as far as the sportswriters are concerned, is pretty clear. Men with flair and irreverence are not welcome anymore in sports. Look for the clean, humble guy. And beware of showmen like Bill Hartack, Wilt Chamberlain, Phil Rogers, and Bo Belinsky.

Howard Cossel, who made a pile verbally sparring with Clay (and losing most of the time) told the champ he liked him better this past year or so because he wasn't so loud. Somehow it's wrong to be loud and write poetry and predict the knockout round and tell off sportswriters and beat Sonny Liston so quickly and beat Ernie Terrell so brutally and become a Black Muslim and apply for exemption from the U.S. Army because you're a Muslim minister and because you object to the war in Vietnam. But it's worse, far worse to refuse to obey a law because of your religion and your conscience.

Cassius Clay is sincere. There is no doubt about that. He reportedly could have entered a Reserve unit, as pro football and baseball players do, and escaped the Army the respectable way. But he stayed to fight and now he isn't the champion any longer.

Lipsyte wrote in his extensive piece in the Times Sunday that the men who run boxing wanted to see Clay refuse to serve. "The discrimination was purely economic," he writes. "Clay was too good to make money with any longer." This just could be the reason for the WBA's hasty action.

But the men who think that a heavily-promoted elimination tournament to choose the new champion will make loads of money for them are mistaken. Clay has clobbered four of the eight and the others are lunchmeat. The public wants a winner, not "some dodo or junior champion," as Clay puts it.

Boxing is not really big business anymore. In 1965 bouts grossed less than nine million dollars, and most of that on eight title fights. And boxing without Clay will suffer. Those three years when Clay was on top of the heap, when he defended his crown nine times against everyone he could find, those years will be the last great years for boxing. Perhaps the greatest