“Look at that,” Ali, now shouting, remarks as he watches the two small figures pummeling each other on the screen. It is as if he has turned the clock back to 1971, when he was 29. Very worried.”Ī few days before, Ali had shaved the mustache that, together with a facial softening resulting from no exercise and too many sweets, had prematurely made him look middle-aged. I asked myself: Can I do it? Can I make myself fast enough to beat this man? I was worried. In the living room, asleep on a sofa near the Terrible Table, is Luis Sarria, the silent Cuban who directs Ali’s calisthenics and rubs him down.Īs he watches the Holmes-Weaver fight, Ali speaks, at first softly: “When I was 256 pounds of fat and all out of shape and watching this film, I was worried. In the kitchen, Lana Shabazz yawns as she sets about preparing Ali’s breakfast: scrambled eggs, whole wheat toast and two large carafes of fruit juice. and Ali, after a six-mile run alone across the Dunes Golf Course that began at 3:30, sits in the drawn-curtain half-light of his bedroom and watches a videotape replay of Holmes knocking out Mike Weaver-now the WBA champion-last year at Madison Square Garden. Cassius Clay: The Man, the Muslim, the Mystery.And in better physical and mental condition than at any time since he battled George Foreman in Zaire in 1974. 2, when Ali meets Larry Holmes, the undefeated WBC heavyweight champion, in the specially erected $800,000 outdoor stadium at Caesars, one irrefutable fact will stand out: Ali, grossly out of shape only a few months ago, will be in better physical condition than at any time since he fought Joe Frazier in Manila in 1975. On it he has torn down and rebuilt the body that had become so bloated during the past 25 months. The table is Ali’s rack, his Iron Maiden. The table, a three-by-seven-foot instrument of torture, like much of the decor in the suite, is a glaring orange, and it is on its shiny vinyl surface that Muhammad Ali, at the age of 38, will win-or lose-in his bid for an unprecedented fourth world heavyweight championship. The Terrible Table stands on shining aluminum legs that dig deep into the thick carpeting of Suite 301 of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. This story originally appeared in the Sept.
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