Ten years after the Rumble in the Jungle, boxing super fan Russ Routledge invited a bunch of mates round to watch the fight on video.
Halfway through his private screening of the most famous bout in history, Routledge’s nostalgic film show was interrupted by a trans-Atlantic phone call.
On the line was none other than Muhammad Ali himself, inviting Routledge to go and spend a few days at his Los Angeles mansion, where Sylvester Stallone shot Rocky III.
And so it came to pass that Routledge found himself being driven around Hollywood by Ali, stopping off for burgers at a well-known fast food joint off Sunset Boulevard.
Would you like fries with your three-time world heavyweight champion? Have a nice day.
Routledge could hardly believe his luck. Here was a telephone engineer from Tyneside, riding shotgun around town in a flash Stutz Bearcat, shooting the breeze and dodging the traffic with the greatest of all times.
As a 16-year-old, he had stayed up all night to watch Ali’s momentous destruction of George Foreman at a Newcastle cinema’s closed circuit screening of the fight.
Rumble in the Jungle: Best pictures
Three years later, when Ali made a surprise visit to the north-east to have his marriage blessed at a local mosque, Routledge had greeted him with a verse from the Greatest’s own genre of poetry.
“I welcome you here to my town, You have come here with no furious frown,
"Plus your heavyweight crown, Oh great one, enjoy your stay, We will all enjoy this memorable day, God Save the Queen and Allah save the King, Because you are the king of all the rings.”
Routledge, now 56, subsequently wrote dozens of letters to Ali, often receiving hand-written replies to his fan mail.
Ali never forgot the young poet at Grainger Park Boxing Club, culminating in the phone call which changed Routledge’s life.
He said: “I had a pirate video recording of the fight and I invited a lot of people round to watch it.
“In the middle of the fifth round - it was a cracking fight - the phone went, so I sent my mother to answer it.
“She came rushing into the living room saying, ‘Come quick, it’s Muhammad Ali on the phone for you’ - and I thought she was winding me up.
“But he had thought there was something special about my letters, so he rang me up, and I couldn’t believe it.
“I told him, ‘I’m watching you now - your fight with George Foreman - and he said, ‘Who won?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, I haven’t seen the ending yet’ and he laughed out loud.”
Within days, Routledge was being picked up by limousine from Los Angeles airport and shuttled straight to the champ’s front room for a guided tour of his seven-bedroom mansion.
Routledge even tried on the WBC heavyweight championship belt for size, and when Ali returned to Britain in 1986 for Frank Bruno’s title fight with Tim Witherspoon, he insisted on sharing a suite with his biggest fan when the hotel was fully-booked.
Ali’s enduring friendship with the fan who greeted him in rhyming verse on Tyneside is featured in a new documentary, I Am Ali, which premieres in London tomorrow night.
Muhammad Ali: Life in pictures
Routledge is due to accompany Ali’s daughter, Hana, on the red carpet before the film is released nationwide.
It features rare footage (some of it shot by Routledge) and tape recordings, including one of Ali’s young daughter May May pleading with him not to make a comeback against Larry Holmes, which will break your heart.
But the lighter moments include Ali (then Cassius Clay) being asked why he wore a giant crown into the ring before his first fight with Henry Cooper in 1963.
“You already have a Queen here in England,” replies Ali. “So I am the king.”
Only the king, eh? Some of us have got you down as the most important American, black or white, of all times, champ.
