What’s My Name / Muhammad Ali: The Moment

I’ve watched a lot of documentaries about Muhammad Ali over the years and viewed a lot of additional film footage that wasn’t incorporated in them. The images tend to blur. But there’s one moment in What’s My Name / Muhammad Ali (the two-part HBO documentary that premieres on May 14) that stands out in my mind.

Ali and Ernie Terrell are being interviewed by Howard Cosell six weeks before their heavyweight championship bout in Houston.

“I thought Ali and I had a relationship as friends,” Terrell told me years ago. “When you’re a fighter coming up, you deal with lots of people, and for me Ali was one of them. In 1962, we sparred together in Miami. In fact, for about a week, we shared a room. I was getting ready to fight Herb Siler, and he was on the same card against Don Warner. Both of us won, and afterward I was getting ready to take a plane home to Chicago. He had this big red Cadillac and offered to drive me as far as Louisville, where I stayed overnight at his parents’ house until I could catch a bus to Chicago in the morning.”

But that was then. Four years later, Ali’s world had changed.

 “The way the name thing started,” Terrell told me, “I didn’t consciously decide to call him ‘Clay.’ What happened was, when we signed to fight, the promoter told us, ‘You’ll both have to be in Houston two weeks ahead of time and complete your training there to help the promotion.’ He asked me, ‘Is that all right with you, Ernie?’ And I said, ‘It’s all right with me if it’s all right with Clay.’ I wasn’t trying to insult him. He’d been Cassius Clay to me all the time before when I knew him. I didn’t mean no harm. But when I saw that calling him ‘Clay’ bugged him, I kept it going. To me, it was just part of building up the promotion.”

To Ali, it wasn’t “part of building up the promotion.”

The exchange of words between Ali and Terrell in What’s My Name / Muhammad Ali starts shortly before the fifty-minute mark of Part One. It’s fascinating because of the anger – even rage – visible in Muhammad’s face and body language. Ali was known to voice angry words in those days. This was something more.

“I’d like to say something right here,” Terrell said. “Cassius Clay has –”

“Why do you want to say ‘Cassius Clay’?” Ali interrupted. “Why do you got to be the one of all people, who’s colored, to keep saying ‘Cassius Clay’?”

Things escalated from there.

Ali wasn’t playing.

Ali: “You’re making it really hard on yourself now. Why don’t you keep the thing in the sport angle? Why don’t you call me my name, man?”

Terrell: “Well, what’s your name? You told me your name was Cassius Clay a few years ago.”

Ali: “My name is Muhammad Ali, and you will announce it right there in the center of the ring after the fight if you don’t do it now.”

Terrell: “For the benefit of this broadcast; him, all right?”

Ali: “You’re acting just like an old Uncle Tom. I’m going to punish you.”

Now Terrell was angry and stepped forward into Ali’s space. That sort of thing didn’t happen when fighters were interviewed years ago.

Terrell: “Wait a minute. Let me say something. You ain’t got” –

Ali: “Back off of me.”

Terrell: “Don’t call me no Uncle Tom, man.”

Ali:  “That’s what you are, an Uncle Tom.”

Terrell: “Why you gonna call me an Uncle Tom?”

Ali: “You heard me. Back off of me. Uncle Tom.”

At that point, Ali gave Terrell a two handed shove and the fighters had to be separated. For real.

The HBO documentary then moves to Ali and Terrell in the center of the ring with referee Harry Kessler giving them their final pre-fight instructions. Ali wasn’t one for staredowns. But he gives Terrell one here, and not for purposes of intimidation or show. His anger is bubbling near the surface. This time, he’s the one who leans forward into Terrell’s space. Both fighters decline Kessler’s instruction to shake hands. Instead, Terrell reaches out with his left glove and pushes Ali away.

The bout that followed was ugly and brutal. In the early rounds, Terrell suffered a fractured bone under his left eye and swelling of the left retina. From the eighth round on, he was virtually helpless. From that point on, Ali taunted him mercilessly.

“Uncle Tom! What’s my name! Uncle Tom! What’s my name!”

“By the fourteenth round,” Tex Maule wrote in Sports Illustrated, “Terrell could no longer control his tormented body. Instead of reacting normally to a feint, he flinched instinctively with his whole being, and when he ventured to lead with his left, his recovery into a protective crouch was exaggerated and somehow pitiful. It was a wonderful demonstration of boxing skill and a barbarous display of cruelty.”

Jerry Izenberg, who was at ringside that night, later told me, “’What’s my name!’ It wasn’t a question. It was a demand. Ali was determined to make Terrell say it, and the fight was absolutely horrible. If Ali was an evil person, that’s the kind of person he would have been all the time. Somebody really pushed the wrong button that night because it was a side of him so out of character that, to this day, I find it hard to believe it was him. It was evil. Ali went out there to make it painful and embarrassing and humiliating for Ernie Terrell. It was a vicious ugly horrible fight.”

What’s My Name / Muhammad Ali captures the antecedents of that moment.

Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – Protect Yourself at all Times– was published by the University of Arkansas Press. In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism.

Check out more boxing news on video at The Boxing Channel

To comment on this story in The Fight Forum CLICK HERE