This is an excerpt from Pedro Medina León’s book TOUR: A Journey Through Miami’s Culture where each chapter highlights an underknown aspect of Miami’s unique history.
Miami Beach sunrises were altered in 1961, when an African-American man started running down the MacArthur Causeway every day at five o’clock in the morning. He was tall and sturdy. A perfect silhouette. Racial segregation was so brutal at the time, that a person of color could not walk down the street after sunset. The Civil Rights Act, which sought to put an end to this, wasn´t signed until 1964.
The first time that Cassius Clay (Louisville, Kentucky, 1942- Scottsdale, Arizona, 2016) stepped into a boxing ring he was twelve years old. Since that day he knew he wanted to be a world champion and it became his priority, even more than school. His accomplishments started early. At eighteen he won a gold medal at the Olympic Games (Rome 1960). He needed a sponsor to improve his career, but boxing was considered almost only for blacks and the only one’s supporting him were mobsters. Working for the Mafia was not an option. He had to knock on many doors until he finally got Louisville Group´s support.
Clay’s training began in San Diego, but it didn’t prosper due to a lack of understanding between him and his trainer. Then there was an opportunity to move south, to Miami, to train with Angelo Dundee, whom he fortunately knew. Cassius Clay landed at the Miami International Airport with his twenty-one years and the firm conviction of dethroning champion Sonny Liston. He settled on a motel on Biscayne Boulevard and immediately started his routine. He got up at five in the morning, jogged down the MacArthur Causeway towards the Fifth Street Gym on Washington Avenue, where he had a historic encounter with the Beatles, during the trip they made to sing on the Ed Sullivan show at the Deauville Hotel in Miami Beach, which served as a springboard for their success. He spent hours in the gym and would eat and drink frugally. While consolidating his boxing career he converted to Islam to openly fight for equality and claim the rights of his race. The Islamist leaders supported him. Malcolm X even visited Miami to spend a season with him, which cost him the respect of the community.
With nineteen fights, all in his favor, Cassius Clay challenged Sonny Liston. The fight was scheduled for February 25th at the Miami Beach Convention Hall. Liston, twelve years older than Cassius and trained at the Missouri State Prison, was sponsored by the Mafia and considered the match an audacity on Clay´s behalf. Insults and threats grew between each other, although the bets were towards Liston, who was a great boxer. He was the great champion.
Clay’s strategy was to physically deplete his rival and knock him out between the seventh and eighth rounds. Sonny Liston, on the other hand, went in for the kill. Cassius Clay fought against Liston and the rejection of the nearly nine thousand spectators, except a few, like Malcolm X, who was seated very close to his friend´s corner. The first three rounds were for Clay, but in the fourth he began to lose his sight and Liston recuperated his points and climbed higher. It is an almost proven fact that, in the break between the third and fourth rounds, Liston ordered them to spray a poisonous substance in his gloves to blind his opponent. At the end of the fifth round Clay had recuperated and, in the sixth, lashed out in such a way that Liston asked to stop the fight before starting the seventh and fled to the hospital with a dislocated shoulder, deep wounds on his face, broken ribs and two missing teeth. Meanwhile, at the Miami Beach Convention Hall, the new heavyweight champion, euphoric and delirious, shouted to journalists and the public to eat their words.
