VARIETY
IN CLAY'S CORNER
Frank Conroy
The sportswriters' pique may come out of a sense of having
been used. In the beginning, when Clay needed them to get the fights
that would make him champion, he virtually wrote their copy
himself,
spoon-feeding them a selected diet of ba:hy-food-s.o much bragga–
docio, so much outright arrogance, a dash of sexual vanity, exactly
s,o many poems-all of it whipped together by lazy, grateful reporters
and served warm to fat America. But eventually Clay stepped out of
his brash bag, into his much roomier serious bag, and left the press
holding another sort of bag altogether. It became clear that Clay
was a religious man, and that he would apply his celebrity as heavy–
weight champion of the world to his w.ork as a Muslim minister, the
disapproval of a white, Christian press notwithstanding. Myopic re–
porters felt frustrated and betrayed, and when Clay wouldn't fight in
Vietnam they attacked hysterically-sensing, no doubt, that he was
escaping them forever, disappearing over a larger moral horizon than
that seen in Madison Square Garden ,on even the clearest nights.
They call him a tool of the Black Muslims because they know he
is not a tool of the press and are incapable of thinking of
him
as his
own man. They say he wouldn't have beaten Joe Louis because it can
never be put to the test. When all is said and done they are enraged
at his position on the war because young Negro prizefighters are sup–
posed to leave morality to the whites and do what they're told.
America has lost a beautiful champion. She becomes more and
more blind to beauty, even her own.
