Muhammad

Muhammad Ali and all that

During the 1970s and 1980s I worked as a publicist for boxing impresarios Harry Levene, Mickey Duff, Mike Barrett and Jarvis Astaire.

Among the champions with whom I worked in a PR capacity as they prepared for title fights were Joe Bugner, Tim Witherspoon, John Conteh, Dave 'Boy' Green, Alan Minter, Tony Sibson, Danny McAlinden, Herol Graham, Mark Kaylor, Chris Finnegan, Kevin Finnegan, Ralph Charles, Jimmy Anderson, Horace Notice, Neville Meade, Ray Cattouse, Jimmy Batten, John L. Gardner, Lloyd Honeyghan, Kirkland Laing, Terry Marsh, Sylvester Mittee, Jimmy McDonnell, Gary Mason, Richard Dunn, and a quartet of world champions managed by my close, life-long friend Terry Lawless: Charlie Magri, Maurice Hope, Jim Watt and Frank Bruno.

Most memorable of all, I had the pleasure and privilege to act as PR for Muhammad Ali when he defended his world heavyweight title against Richard Dunn in Munich in 1976.

Ali, of course, needed a publicist like Einstein needed a calculator.

He was a dream to work with and after his demolition of the brave but outgunned Dunn in five rounds he invited me to his hotel room in the Munich Hilton to give his after-fight assessment and also to autograph his gloves that Mickey Duff had arranged to have auctioned for charity.

One of my most treasured possessions is an autographed book that Ali gave me and signed at 3.00 o'clock in the morning after his midnight showdown with Dunn.

I arranged to have flown in a hypnotist called Romark to try to put a spell on Ali before the fight. What I did not know is that since I had last seen Romark he had suffered a stroke, and one eye had become stuck on his face higher than the other. When he tried to put the stare on Ali before the weigh-in the champion fell to his knees in helpless laughter.

After the weigh-in, Romark turned his attention to Richard Dunn. He tucked him up in bed in the Munich Hilton, and sent him to sleep while telling him the story of Cinderella and he kept dropping in the phrase: "Your fists have turned to iron ... your fists have turned to iron ..."

Some eight hours later Richard put up the fight of his life and rocked Ali a couple of times before losing in the fifth round. Romark sat sobbing at the ringside, saying: "I told him his fists had turned to iron ... I forgot about his chin."

Great memories, all of which I have stored away for my autbiography. Make a note of every worthwhile experience when you are preparing your autobiography or are ghosting one for somebody else. Anecdotes make the biographer's world go round.

I was lucky during my writing and reporting career to meet many sporting legends including Emil Zatopek, Pele, Stanley Matthews, Tom Finney, Tommy Lawton, John Newcombe, Ian Botham, Len Hutton, Denis Compton, Bob Mathias, Fanny Blankers-Koen, Roger Bannister, Franz Beckenbauer, Bobby Moore, Jack Dempsey, Georges Carpentier, Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson and Lester Piggott.

With respect to them all, Ali stands out head and shoulders above all others as "My most unforgettable character". Even now he has became a shuffling shadow of himself because of ill health he has retained that magical charismatic presence with which only the great are blessed. And, as Ali repeatedly reminded us, he was 'The Greatest".

Boxing has always been like a magnet, even though there is part of me that argues that it is a barbaric sport that should not be part of our civilised world. Of all the sportsmen I have mixed with, boxers are my favourites. There has rarely been one that I have not instantly liked, and they were invariably able to follow Rudyard Kipling's advice and meet triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same.

I was working as a reporter/lay out subeditor for the trade paper Boxing News when Henry Cooper became British heavyweight champion for the first time, and I stayed close enough to 'Our Enery' to collaborate with him on three books. I also ghosted three books for Frank Bruno, with whom I was a long-time adviser through his manager and mentor Terry Lawless.

It was master motivator Terry who turned around the career of Jim Watt, one of the most intelligent sportsmen I have ever encountered. Jim and I worked in harness on a book called Watt's My Name. He autographed a copy for me and wrote, "To the Ghost with the Most."

Voice of Boxing Reg Gutteridge (I was once his copy boy) joined me in a collaboration on two biographies on Mike Tyson, the second one of which – Release of Power – sold very well in the United States.

We had kept a close watch on Iron Mike from when he was just 15 years old after his manager and mentor Cus D'Amato had told us: "Look out for this kid. One day he's going to be heavyweight champion of the world."

So we started watching, first with casual interest and then with fascination followed by excitement as he began to develop into an extraordinary fighting machine. What we did not realise is that our Tyson Watching would turn into a frightening, stomach-churning experience.

Suddenly it was like watching a runaway truck, and there was nothing we could do to stop it. Many of us in boxing wanted to reach out and help him, but he was a law to himself and always had a finger on the self-destruct button.

I am only relating this story so that you can understand how there are some books that fall into your laps. Reg and I had a head start on the rest of the scribes because we had been collecting material on Tyson for more than two years before he became a household name.

Our first Tyson biography, For Whom the Bell Tolls, was on the bookshelves within six weeks of him becoming the youngest ever world heavyweight champion at the age of 20.

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