American Hunger
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1998/10/12/american-hunger The Sporting Scene As Muhammad Ali revisits the night he dethroned Sonny Liston, a portrait emerges of a self-invented icon—and the America he remade. “Sometimes he sounds humorous, but sometimes he sounds like Ezra Pound’s poetry,” Archie Moore said of Clay.Photograph by Gordon Parks / Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery DAVID REMNICK - The New Yorker By October 5, 1998 On the night of February 25, 1964, Cassius Clay entered the ring in Miami Beach wearing a short white robe, “The Lip” stitched on the back. He was fast, sleek, and twenty-two. But, for the first time in his life, and the last, he was afraid. The ring was crowded with has-beens and would-bes, liege men and pugs. Clay ignored them. He began bouncing on the balls of his feet, shuffling joylessly at first, like a marathon dancer at ten to midnight, but then with more speed, more pleasure. After a few minutes, Sonny Liston, the heavyweight champion of the world...
