Don't Judge Too Quickly - of Muhammad Ali as Told by Coach Walpole

Okay, this I’d like to call “Don’t judge people harshly until you've seen them in different circumstances.”

In the 60s, I went to play baseball at Penn State and I hurt my arm. I became good friends with one of the trainers there, a guy named Eddie Yewlinsky. I found out a number of years later that the 1972 Olympic boxing team was going to appear — the trials for those boxers were going to be held at West Point and broadcast on Wide World of Sports. The announcers hadn’t been mentioned in the article, but I was anxious to go. I knew it would be a really hot ticket.

Anyway, I was reading the paper with my friend and he said, “Listen, I’d like to go to that,” and he goes, “Maybe you’ll be on television. We can see it together.” I said, “Yeah.”

As I'm reading the paper, I see that the trainer for the team is Eddie Yewlinsky. I knew him, but I didn’t know if he’d even remember me. So, I called West Point, got in touch with him, and said, “Eddie, I don’t know if you remember me, but you used to treat me.”

He said, “Of course I remember you! We had a good rapport.”

I said, “Listen, could you do me a favor? I see you’re training the Olympic team.”

He said, “Yeah.”

I asked, “Can you get me two tickets?”

He said, “Sure. But remember, it’s going to be 20% civilians and 80% military — generals, privates, everything that West Point is known for.”

So, I said okay. We go up there on the day of the fight — me and my friend Frankie — and we find out two days before the fight that Muhammad Ali, still known then as Cassius Clay, was going to be one of the announcers, along with Howard Cosell.

Now at that time in history, Ali was vilified and hated by 90% of the nation because he didn’t want to get drafted due to his new religion which forbade it. He said, “I have nothing against the Viet Cong. I don’t see why I should be asked to kill those people. I have nothing against them. My religion doesn’t prompt me to do anything like that.” S,o he refused to be inducted, and much of the country saw that as un-American.

When he came in with Cosell, half the audience clapped lightly, the majority booed, and some did nothing. It was not a good reception — he really wasn’t welcome there.

He was up there with Cosell for the first fight. Between fights, they showed racing coverage on Wide World of Sports. During one of those breaks, Ali came down near where my friend Frankie and I were standing, along with a number of other people. It was quiet. The producer came out and started giving Cosell direction for the final fight, using gestures. While that was going on, Ali was goofing around — grabbing Cosell’s wig and lifting it up on the left side, then the right.

Cosell said, “Muhammad, please stop.”

The audience started laughing and warming up to him. Cosell went back to the ring, but Ali stayed there — in his black tuxedo, looking as handsome as ever. The floor was basically sawdust — this was before polyurethane floors. It felt like one of those old gyms.

People started lining up to meet him. My friend and I were about sixth in line. The first few were military officers. They handed him their programs and said, “Mr. Clay, can you sign my program?”

He would sign it and say every time, “No, thank you very much. I appreciate what you do for this country.”

Same thing — every time:
“Thank you very much. I appreciate what you do for this country.”

Then, about two people before me, a high-ranking general came up with his grandson, who was maybe four or five years old. The general was holding him in his right arm to keep him out of the sawdust. He handed Clay the program. Ali signed it, handed it back, and the general says, “Thank you very much.” 

And Ali says, “No, thank you very much.”

Then, with that, he turned away from the general, gently grabbed the grandson’s hand, turned him slightly toward himself while still in the general’s arms — and punched himself right in the face.

He fell to the ground in his beautiful tuxedo, into the sawdust, yelling:

“Please don’t hit me anymore! Please don’t hit me anymore! General, call him off! Call him off! I’ve never been hit like that before!”

He finally got to his feet, and the general looked at him and said, “Oh my God. Thank you so much.”

And Ali replied, “No, thank you so much for all that you do for everybody.”

That moment gave us — me and everyone there — a completely different impression of who he really was.

That was our impression and he diffused the entire group of people that we were with. He gave me a completely different impression of who he was because I had seen it for the first time in those circumstances, the circumstance that no one was really used to seeing him in.

You had always seen him over the years bad-mouthing the opponent and so on and you know, belittling his opponents and making mockery of his opponents. And he said in later years he did that because when he was young, he'd go to pro-wrestling matches and they had a guy named Gorgeous George and everybody booed him because his father said, “He likes this.”

And he goes, “Dad, why does he like it?”

He says, “Because he draws people that want to see him lose.”

People that are despised, people want to see them lose.

And he says and that's what he did. He became a character that people couldn't like. Because it drew it would draw people that would pay more tickets, more people at his fight and it was basically promoting himself. And as he got older, he regretted some of the things he said, particularly to Joe Frazier. But we saw a different side of him that night and it was a refreshing side and I'm really glad I was able to see him in that in that situation.