“Cassius X: The Transformation of Muhammad Ali”

Published

4 years ago

November 13, 2020

BOOK REVIEW by THOMAS HAUSER — Music was the lifeblood of cultural change in the 1950s and 1960s. Cassius X: The Transformation of Muhammad Ali by Stuart Cosgrove (published by Lawrence Hill Books, an imprint of Chicago Review Press) focuses on Cassius Clay’s involvement with the Nation of Islam in the years leading up to his 1964 triumph over Sonny Liston and the expanding reach of what Cosgrove calls “Black music” during that time.

Cassius X is divided into six chapters with a coda entitled “Requiem.” Each chapter is set in a particular city – Miami, Detroit, Philadelphia, New York, London, and Miami again – that was the site for one or more pivotal events in Clay’s life. In each instance, Cosgrove describes Clay’s life and the music scene in that city in depth.

For example, the first chapter (“Miami”) includes a graphic portrayal of racial injustice in the segregated American south as well as Clay’s early involvement with the Nation of Islam and the origins of his friendship with Sam Cooke (a pioneering singer and songwriter of that era). The second chapter (“Detroit”) contains an interesting recounting of a 1962 journey that Cassius, his brother, and Sam Saxon (who introduced Clay to the Nation of Islam) took to Detroit to attend a Nation of Islam rally overseen by Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X. In “Philadelphia,” the racist underpinnings of Dick Clark’s enormously influential “American Bandstand” television show are explored.

Cosgrove is a Scottish author, journalist, television executive, and TV host with a scholarly interest in music. He’s passionate about his subject and puts words together well. His writing is infused with interesting nuggets of information such as the fact that three records recorded by Sonji Roi (Ali’s first wife) were released after their marriage fell apart. But there are problems with his work.

The biggest problem is that Cassius X is riddled with factual inaccuracies. The red flags begin to appear in the first chapter when Cosgrove writes that Tony Esperti (Clay’s third professional opponent) was “assassinated in a mob hit” in 1967 by a member of the Gambino crime family and adds, “The coroner described it as the perfect execution – a single lethal bullet to the brain.”

“That’s interesting,” I said to myself. I made a note to praise Cosgrove in this review for that bit of information. Then something in the back of my mind cautioned, “Wait a minute!”

Muhammad Ali fought fifty different opponents in his 61 professional fights. I keep a list of which opponents are still alive and the date of death for those who are no longer with us. Tony Esperti died in 2002. I have photographs of him that were taken in 1979. Yet Cassius X dramatically recounts his 1967 “execution” in a Miami steakhouse. In reality, Esperti was the perpetrator of the crime in question.

Unfortunately, there’s more.

Cosgrove writes that “more myths have congregated around Sonny Liston than any boxer before or since.”

I take issue with that. Let’s start with Joe Louis who (among other myths) inspired the allegorical tale of a black prisoner in the moments before his execution crying out “Save me, Joe Louis!” No one is said to have cried out, “Save me, Sonny Liston!”

Cosgrove also writes, “Liston won twenty-six consecutive bouts over five years, and his title-winning victory on September 25, 1962 [over Floyd Patterson] broke the record for consecutive heavyweight victories.”

But Rocky Marciano won 49 fights in a row and retired from boxing with an unblemished record. Joe Louis won 34 fights in a row after his 1936 loss to Max Schmeling. The last time I looked, 49 and 34 were more than 26.

Cosgrove writes that Angelo Dundee “panicked” after Henry Cooper dropped Cassius Clay with a left hook in round four of their 1963 fight. That’s not true. To the contrary, Dundee saw Clay through the crisis.

Similarly, the fatal 1962 encounter between Emile Griffith and Benny Paret is mis-told. After writing that Griffith was “the reigning welterweight champion” at the time (he wasn’t), Cosgrove states that Grffith “lost control” during the final sequence of punches and informs readers, “Referee Ruby Goldstein was tugging at Griffith from behind, pulling him off. As Emile, berserk, struggling passionately in Goldstein’s embrace, was dragged away, Paret, now obviously senseless, crumpled slowly and collapsed.”

That’s inaccurate. All Cosgrove had to do was go to YouTube and watch a video of the fatal round. If he had, he would have seen that Griffith stopped throwing punches and stepped back the moment that Goldstein intervened. Is simple fact-checking too much to ask of a seasoned professional like Cosgrove?

Errors like these make it difficult to know how much of Cosgrove’s factual recitation in other areas (such as music) can be trusted.

Here I might add that Cosgrove writes of a week that the writer Tom Wolfe spent with Clay in 1963 and states, “Wolfe sensed that his simplistic poetry and superficial boasting disguised a deep understanding of business and finance.”

I don’t know what Wolfe “sensed.” I do know that it’s ludicrous to suggest that Clay (or Muhammad Ali) had “a deep understanding of business and finance.”

That brings us to Cassius Clay and the world of music.

Cosgrove equates Muhammad Ali’s ultimate success with the rise of rhythm and blues and (ultimately) hip-hop to become “the preeminent form of popular music in the world.”

Reinterpretations of history are always welcome when solidly grounded. And there’s a lot of interesting information in Cassius X about Clay’s transformation to Muhammad Ali, the Nation of Islam, and the music of that era. But there are times when Cosgrove’s methodology of viewing Clay through the prism of music comes across as forced.

I’m not a scholar with regard to popular music from the 1950s and 1960s. But I know it pretty well, having lived through that time. Lloyd Price and Chubby Checker (acknowledged by Cosgrove to have been important figures during that era) have been guests for dinner in my home. My first real bond with Ali when I began spending time with him while researching Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times (published in 1991) was music.

Muhammad was four years older than I was, but we’d grown up with many of the same songs. We’d drive from the airport to his home in Berrien Springs or be in his car on the way to a restaurant. We’d pop a tape of songs sung by black recording artists into the cassette player and sing along.

“I can’t believe you know all the words,” Muhammad said to me one evening. “I never would have thought it.”

Cosgrove has an impressive resume. Among his many credits, he’s the author of a three-book study of soul music. That said; there are places where he falls victim to hyperbole in advancing his thesis. Twist and Shout, first recorded by the Top Notes and made famous by the Isley Brothers (two black vocal groups) was not “the song the Beatles had become synonymous with” when they came to the United States in 1964. A Christmas Gift for You featuring Darlene Love and the Ronettes was not “one of the greatest pop albums of the era.” It was a celebration of a certain style of music but a repetitive and formulaic compilation. Sam Cooke Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963 is an excellent recording but not “universally acclaimed as one of the greatest live albums of all time.”

Cosgrove writes that sports columnist Jimmy Cannon “erupted when he learned about the Beatles meeting Cassius in Miami” in 1964 and that Cannon wrote, “Clay is part of the Beatle movement. He fits in with the famous singers no one can hear and the punks riding motorcycles with iron crosses pinned to their leather jackets and Batman and the boys with their long dirty hair and the girls with the unwashed look and the college kids dancing naked at secret proms held in apartments and the revolt of students who get a check from dad every first of the month and the painters who copy the labels off soup cans and the surf bums who refuse to work and the whole pampered style-making cult of the bored young.”

That’s a dramatic quote. But Cosgrove puts it in a misleading context. Cannon wrote those words in 1966 after Ali was reclassified 1-A by his draft board and uttered the words, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong.” That was more than two years after Clay met the Beatles.

And Cosgrove writes about Clay’s dalliance with singer Dee Dee Sharp as a serious relationship before characterizing it more accurately as a “brief affair” and then exaggerating its gravitas again.

There’s also some sloppy copy-editing. By way of example, Cassius X states that Sonny Liston refused to allow Liston-Clay I to be shown on closed circuit in theaters in New Orleans “if the seating in New Orleans was not segregated.” I assume that Cosgrove meant “integrated.”

These flaws are disappointing because Cosgrove has a lot to say that’s of interest. At its best, Cassius X contains some very good – even enlightening – material on the evolution of music in the 1950s and 1960s and Cassius Clay’s sojourn through that time.

Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His next book – Staredown: Another Year Inside Boxing – will be published by the University of Arkansas Press this autumn. In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism. In 2019, he was selected for induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

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Thomas Hauser

Thomas Hauser is the author of 52 books. In 2005, he was honored by the Boxing Writers Association of America, which bestowed the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism upon him. He was the first Internet writer ever to receive that award. In 2019, Hauser was chosen for boxing's highest honor: induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Lennox Lewis has observed, “A hundred years from now, if people want to learn about boxing in this era, they’ll read Thomas Hauser.”

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Floyd Mayweather has Another Phenom and his name is Curmel Moton

Published

2 days ago

April 22, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Floyd Mayweather has Another Phenom and his name is Curmel Moton

In any endeavor, the defining feature of a phenom is his youth. Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Bryce Harper was a phenom. He was on the radar screen of baseball’s most powerful player agents when he was 14 years old.

Curmel Moton, who turns 19 in June, is a phenom. Of all the young boxing stars out there, wrote James Slater in July of last year, “Curmel Moton is the one to get most excited about.”

Moton was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. His father Curtis Moton, a barber by trade, was a big boxing fan and specifically a big fan of Floyd Mayweather Jr. When Curmel was six, Curtis packed up his wife (Curmel’s stepmom) and his son and moved to Las Vegas. Curtis wanted his son to get involved in boxing and there was no better place to develop one’s latent talents than in Las Vegas where many of the sport’s top practitioners came to train.

Many father-son relationships have been ruined, or at least frayed, by a father’s unrealistic expectations for his son, but when it came to boxing, the boy was a natural and he felt right at home in the gym.

The gym the Motons patronized was the Mayweather Boxing Club. Curtis took his son there in hopes of catching the eye of the proprietor. “Floyd would occasionally drop by the gym and I was there so often that he came to recognize me,” says Curmel. What he fails to add is that the trainers there had Floyd’s ear. “This kid is special,” they told him.

It costs a great deal of money for a kid to travel around the country competing in a slew of amateur boxing tournaments. Only a few have the luxury of a sponsor. For the vast majority, fund raisers such as car washes keep the wheels greased.

Floyd Mayweather stepped in with the financial backing needed for the Motons to canvas the country in tournaments. As an amateur, Curmel was — take your pick — 156-7 or 144-6 or 61-3 (the latter figure from boxrec). Regardless, at virtually every tournament at which he appeared, Curmel Moton was the cock of the walk.

Before the pandemic, Floyd Mayweather Jr had a stable of boxers he promoted under the banner of “The Money Team.” In talking about his boxers, Floyd was understated with one glaring exception – Gervonta “Tank” Davis, now one of boxing’s top earners.

When Floyd took to praising Curmel Moton with the same effusive language, folks stood up and took notice.

Curmel made his pro debut on Sept. 30, 2023, at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on the undercard of the super middleweight title fight between Canelo Alvarez and Jermell Charlo. After stopping his opponent in the opening round, he addressed a flock of reporters in the media room with Floyd standing at his side. “I felt ready,” he said, “I knew I had Floyd behind me. He believes in me. I had the utmost confidence going into the fight. And I went in there and did what I do.”

Floyd ventured the opinion that Curmel was already a better fighter than Leigh Wood, the reigning WBA world featherweight champion who would successfully defend his belt the following week.

Moton’s boxing style has been described as a blend of Floyd Mayweather and Tank Davis. “I grew up watching Floyd, so it’s natural I have some similarities to him,” says Curmel who sparred with Tank in late November of 2021 as Davis was preparing for his match with Isaac “Pitbull” Cruz. Curmell says he did okay. He was then 15 years old and still in school; he dropped out as soon as he reached the age of 16.

Curmel is now 7-0 with six KOs, four coming in the opening round. He pitched an 8-round shutout the only time he was taken the distance. It’s not yet official, but he returns to the ring on May 31 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas where Caleb Plant and Jermall Charlo are co-featured in matches conceived as tune-ups for a fall showdown. The fight card will reportedly be free for Amazon Prime Video subscribers.

Curmel’s presumptive opponent is Renny Viamonte, a 28-year-old Las Vegas-based Cuban with a 4-1-1 (2) record. It will be Curmel’s first professional fight with Kofi Jantuah the chief voice in his corner. A two-time world title challenger who began his career in his native Ghana, the 50-year-old Jantuah has worked almost exclusively with amateurs, a recent exception being Mikaela Mayer.

It would seem that the phenom needs a tougher opponent than Viamonte at this stage of his career. However, the match is intriguing in one regard. Viamonte is lanky. Listed at 5-foot-11, he will have a seven-inch height advantage.

Keeping his weight down has already been problematic for Moton. He tipped the scales at 128 ½ for his most recent fight. His May 31 bout, he says, will be contested at 135 and down the road it’s reasonable to think he will blossom into a welterweight. And with each bump up in weight, his short stature will theoretically be more of a handicap.

For fun, we asked Moton to name the top fighter on his pound-for-pound list. “[Oleksandr] Usyk is number one right now,” he said without hesitation,” great footwork, but guys like Canelo, Crawford, Inoue, and Bivol are right there.”

It’s notable that there isn’t a young gun on that list. Usyk is 38, a year older than Crawford; Inoue is the pup at age 32.

Moton anticipates that his name will appear on pound-for-pound lists within the next two or three years. True, history is replete with examples of phenoms who flamed out early, but we wouldn’t bet against it.

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Arne’s Almanac: The First Boxing Writers Assoc. of America Dinner Was Quite the Shindig

Published

4 days ago

April 20, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Arne's-Almanac-The-First-Boxing-Writers-Assoc-of-America-Dinner-was-Quite-the-Shindig

The first annual dinner of the Boxing Writers Association of America was staged on April 25, 1926 in the grand ballroom of New York’s Hotel Astor, an edifice that rivaled the original Waldorf Astoria as the swankiest hotel in the city. Back then, the organization was known as the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York.

The ballroom was configured to hold 1200 for the banquet which was reportedly oversubscribed. Among those listed as agreeing to attend were the governors of six states (New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Maryland) and the mayors of 10 of America’s largest cities.

In 1926, radio was in its infancy and the digital age was decades away (and inconceivable). So, every journalist who regularly covered boxing was a newspaper and/or magazine writer, editor, or cartoonist. And at this juncture in American history, there were plenty of outlets for someone who wanted to pursue a career as a sportswriter and had the requisite skills to get hired.

The following papers were represented at the inaugural boxing writers’ dinner:

New York Times

New York News

New York World

New York Sun

New York Journal

New York Post

New York Mirror

New York Telegram

New York Graphic

New York Herald Tribune

Brooklyn Eagle

Brooklyn Times

Brooklyn Standard Union

Brooklyn Citizen

Bronx Home News

This isn’t a complete list because a few of these papers, notably the New York World and the New York Journal, had strong afternoon editions that functioned as independent papers. Plus, scribes from both big national wire services (Associated Press and UPI) attended the banquet and there were undoubtedly a smattering of scribes from papers in New Jersey and Connecticut.

Back then, the event’s organizer Nat Fleischer, sports editor of the New York Telegram and the driving force behind The Ring magazine, had little choice but to limit the journalistic component of the gathering to writers in the New York metropolitan area. There wasn’t a ballroom big enough to accommodate a good-sized response if he had extended the welcome to every boxing writer in North America.

The keynote speaker at the inaugural dinner was New York’s charismatic Jazz Age mayor James J. “Jimmy” Walker, architect of the transformative Walker Law of 1920 which ushered in a new era of boxing in the Empire State with a template that would guide reformers in many other jurisdictions.

Prizefighting was then associated with hooligans. In his speech, Mayor Walker promised to rid the sport of their ilk. “Boxing, as you know, is closest to my heart,” said hizzoner. “So I tell you the police force is behind you against those who would besmirch or injure boxing. Rowdyism doesn’t belong in this town or in your game.” (In 1945, Walker would be the recipient of the Edward J. Neil Memorial Award given for meritorious service to the sport. The oldest of the BWAA awards, the previous recipients were all active or former boxers. The award, no longer issued under that title, was named for an Associated Press sportswriter and war correspondent who died from shrapnel wounds covering the Spanish Civil War.)

Another speaker was well-traveled sportswriter Wilbur Wood, then affiliated with the Brooklyn Citizen. He told the assembly that the aim of the organization was two-fold: to help defend the game against its detractors and to promote harmony among the various factions.

Of course, the 1926 dinner wouldn’t have been as well-attended without the entertainment. According to press dispatches, Broadway stars and performers from some of the city’s top nightclubs would be there to regale the attendees. Among the names bandied about were vaudeville superstars Sophie Tucker and Jimmy Durante, the latter of whom would appear with his trio, Durante, (Lou) Clayton, and (Eddie) Jackson.

There was a contraction of New York newspapers during the Great Depression. Although empirical evidence is lacking, the inaugural boxing writers dinner was likely the largest of its kind. Fifteen years later, in 1941, the event drew “more than 200” according to a news report. There was no mention of entertainment.

In 1950, for the first time, the annual dinner was opened to the public. For $25, a civilian could get a meal and mingle with some of his favorite fighters. Sugar Ray Robinson was the Edward J. Neil Award winner that year, honored for his ring exploits and for donating his purse from the Charlie Fusari fight to the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund.

There was no formal announcement when the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York was re-christened the Boxing Writers Association of America, but by the late 1940s reporters were referencing the annual event as simply the boxing writers dinner. By then, it had become traditional to hold the annual affair in January, a practice discontinued after 1971.

The winnowing of New York’s newspaper herd plus competing banquets in other parts of the country forced Nat Fleischer’s baby to adapt. And more adaptations will be necessary in the immediate future as the future of the BWAA, as it currently exists, is threatened by new technologies. If the forthcoming BWAA dinner (April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in mid-Manhattan) were restricted to wordsmiths from the traditional print media, the gathering would be too small to cover the nut and the congregants would be drawn disproportionately from the geriatric class.

Some of those adaptations have already started. Last year, Las Vegas resident Sean Zittel, a recent UNLV graduate, had the distinction of becoming the first videographer welcomed into the BWAA. With more and more people getting their news from sound bites, rather than the written word, the videographer serves an important function.

The reporters who conducted interviews with pen and paper have gone the way of the dodo bird and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A taped interview for a “talkie” has more integrity than a story culled from a paper and pen interview because it is unfiltered. Many years ago, some reporters, after interviewing the great Joe Louis, put words in his mouth that made him seem like a dullard, words consistent with the Sambo stereotype. In other instances, the language of some athletes was reconstructed to the point where the reader would think the athlete had a second job as an English professor.

The content created by videographers is free from that bias. More of them will inevitably join the BWAA and similar organizations in the future.

Photo: Nat Fleischer is flanked by Sugar Ray Robinson and Tony Zale at the 1947 boxing writers dinner.

A recognized authority on the history of prizefighting and the history of American sports gambling, TSS editor-in-chief Arne K. Lang is the author of five books including “Prizefighting: An American History,” released by McFarland in 2008 and re-released in a paperback edition in 2020.

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Gabriela Fundora KOs Marilyn Badillo and Perez Upsets Conwell in Oceanside

Published

4 days ago

April 20, 2025

David A. Avila

Gabriela-Fundora-KOs-Marilyn-Badillo-and-Perez-Upsets-Conwell-in-Oceanside

It was just a numbers game for Gabriela Fundora and despite Mexico’s Marilyn Badillo’s elusive tactics it took the champion one punch to end the fight and retain her undisputed flyweight world title by knockout on Saturday.

Will it be her last flyweight defense?

Though Fundora (16-0, 8 KOs) fired dozens of misses, a single punch found Badillo (19-1-1, 3 KOs) and ended her undefeated career and first attempt at a world title at the Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, California.

Fundora, however, proves unbeatable at flyweight.

The champion entered the arena as the headliner for the Golden Boy Promotion show and stepped through the ropes with every physical advantage possible, including power.

Mexico’s Badillo was a midget compared to Fundora but proved to be as elusive as a butterfly in a menagerie for the first six rounds. As the six-inch taller Fundora connected on one punch for every dozen thrown, that single punch was a deadly reminder.

Badillo tried ducking low and slipping to the left while countering with slashing uppercuts, she found little success. She did find the body a solid target but the blows proved to be useless. And when Badillo clinched, that proved more erroneous as Fundora belted her rapidly during the tie-ups.

“She was kind of doing her ducking thing,” said Fundora describing Badillo’s defensive tactics. “I just put the pressure on. It was just like a train. We didn’t give her that break.”

The Mexican fighter tried valiantly with various maneuvers. None proved even slightly successful. Fundora remained poised and under control as she stalked the challenger.

In the seventh round Badillo seemed to take a stand and try to slug it out with Fundora. She quickly was lit up by rapid left crosses and down she went at 1:44 of the seventh round. The Mexican fighter’s corner wisely waved off the fight and referee Rudy Barragan stopped the fight and held the dazed Badillo upright.

Once again Fundora remained champion by knockout. The only question now is will she move up to super flyweight or bantamweight to challenge the bigger girls.

Perez Beats Conwell.

Mexico’s Jorge “Chino” Perez (33-4, 26 KOs) upset Charles Conwell (21-1, 15 KOs) to win by split decision after 12 rounds in their super welterweight showdown.

It was a match that paired two hard-hitting fighters whose ledgers brimmed with knockouts, but neither was able to score a knockdown against each other.

Neither fighter moved backward. It was full steam ahead with Conwell proving successful to the body and head with left hooks and Perez connecting with rights to the head and body. It was difficult to differentiate the winner.

Though Conwell seemed to be the superior defensive fighter and more accurate, two judges preferred Perez’s busier style. They gave the fight to Perez by 115-113 scores with the dissenter favoring Conwell by the same margin.

It was Conwell’s first pro loss. Maybe it will open doors for more opportunities.

Other Bouts

Tristan Kalkreuth (15-1) managed to pass a serious heat check by unanimous decision against former contender Felix Valera (24-8) after a 10-round back-and-forth heavyweight fight.

It was very close.

Kalkreuth is one of those fighters that possess all the physical tools including youth and size but never seems to be able to show it. Once again he edged past another foe but at least this time he faced an experienced fighter in Valera.

Valera had his moments especially in the middle of the 10-round fight but slowed down during the last three rounds.

One major asset for Kalkreuth was his chin. He got caught but still motored past the clever Valera. After 10 rounds two judges saw it 99-91 and one other judge 97-93 all for Kalkreuth.

Highly-rated prospect Ruslan Abdullaev (2-0) blasted past dangerous Jino Rodrigo (13- 5-2) in an eight round super lightweight fight. He nearly stopped the very tough Rodrigo in the last two rounds and won by unanimous decision.

Abdullaev is trained by Joel and Antonio Diaz in Indio.

Bakersfield prospect Joel Iriarte (7-0, 7 KOs) needed only 1:44 to knock out Puerto Rico’s Marcos Jimenez (25-12) in a welterweight bout.

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