Fight Night True Story: What Really Happened During The Muhammad Ali Fight In 1970

Peacock's new crime thriller Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist tells a shocking but true-to-life story of the 1970 heist that occurred in Atlanta on the heels of Muhammad Ali's comeback fight against Jerry Quarry. The series is inspired by iHeart Radio's similarly titled true-crime podcast and dramatized to depict the half-century-old criminal case from what series creator Shaye Ogbanna calls "a character perspective," according to TODAY. Ogbanna unites Fight Night's star-studded cast with a well-crafted script to bring the show's characters to life - and thus far, his conceptualization of the catastrophe has proven to be a hit with viewers.

The series released its first three episodes on September 5 to a very positive critical reception, as indicated by Fight Night's current Rotten Tomatoes score. Bestowing the series with an impressive 93% approval rating, top RT critics generally agree that Fight Night has the right combination of talent and story to entertain. Yet, as captivating as Ogbonna's vision has come to be, underneath the creative liberties taken to craft Fight Night into a successful limited series is a plot and a fascinating series of events rooted in real-life American history.

Fight Night Is Based On A Real Heist That Took Place During Muhammad Ali's Return To Boxing In 1970

The Heist Took Advantage Of Ali's Comeback Fight Against Jerry Quarry

The events behind Fight Night's story transpired amid Muhammad Ali's historic return to boxing in 1970. As a result of refusing to be drafted into the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War in 1966, Ali was stripped of the boxing title he earned prior and effectively banned from the sport. Per Forbes, twenty-two states refused to grant Ali a boxing license, which forced him into a hiatus that spanned three years. It wasn't until 1970, when Georgia State Senator Leroy Johnson issued Ali a boxing license and hosted his comeback, that the legendary fighter returned to the ring.

Marred with controversy and weighed down by the racist ideals of the era, Ali fought Jerry Quarry, who was dubbed the "Great White Hope" and one of the best heavyweights in the world at the time. The professional and social stakes of the Ali/Quarry match-up naturally drew significant media attention, compelling crowds from all walks of life to either listen in on or attend the October 26 affair. For a group of robbers, the spectacle provided the perfect opportunity to concoct and carry out a heist on an unsuspecting party that gathered in the aftermath of the landmark event.

The Million Dollar Heist Happened During Chicken Man's Afterparty

Chicken Man's Guests Were Met With An Unwelcome Surprise

Ali won the match against Quarry by technical knockout, prompting his supporters to continue the momentous night with celebration. Hours after the fight, nearly 200 partygoers, including high-profile personalities and well-known gangsters like Frank Moten (via People), flocked to Gordon "Chicken Man" Williams' private residence in Atlanta for what was intended to be a "lavish, Vegas-esque, blowout bash." Instead, the celebration turned out to be a hot spot for calculated robbers, who crashed the party masked and armed with sawed-off shotguns. The masked men had cased the place days prior, making their attack swift and their victims particularly vulnerable.

With the upper hand, the suspects corralled the party-goers into Williams' basement, forced them to undress, and robbed them of their money and belongings. Reportedly, the heist "went on for hours" as guests continued to trickle in throughout the night. By the end of it all, the basement was crowded with "half-naked victims [that] were stacked like cordwood on top of each other," and the masked men made off with what was later determined to be at least $1 million in stolen valuables. Despite the high-pressure situation, no shots were fired during the heist.

Who Was Responsible For Fight Night's 1970 Heist

A Georgia Grand Jury Indicted Three Men

Initially, Williams (Kevin Hart), an established hustler with a lengthy criminal record, was suspected of masterminding the heist. Police believed Williams orchestrated the heist as a set-up to raise funds to settle his outstanding debts. The fact that his property housed the scene of the crime made him seem all the more guilty. However, two days after the robbery, officials pronounced that Williams was allegedly murdered at the hands of mob men in a contract killing, consequently leaving them and the world with nothing but speculation about his involvement in the heist.

Further complicating the case, most partygoers were reluctant to come forward to the police, and only five victims out of the nearly two hundred who attended Chicken Man's party filed official complaints. Ultimately, police officials found culprits in three men, who were charged with the crime accordingly. On November 18, 1970, McKinley Rogers Jr. (Sinqua Walls), James Henry Hall, and Houston J. Hammond were each indicted on six counts of armed robbery by a Fulton County grand jury.

J.D. Hudson's Role In The Fight Night Heist Explained

Detective Lieutenant J.D. Hudson Was Assigned To The Case

As depicted in the Fight Night series, J.D. Hudson, portrayed by the MCU's Don Cheadle, was a very important man in Atlanta on October 26 and the days that followed. Creative Loafing confirms that Hudson helped guard Ali the night he fought Quarry. The Atlanta alternative newspaper also confirms that after the heist went down, Police Chief Herbert Jenkins (Jayson Warner Smith) assigned Hudson to the case. Allegedly, Jenkins assumed the victims of the heist remained tight-lipped because "the initial investigators were white." As a result, Jenkins let Hudson take point.

Thus began Hudson's hunt for the person or persons involved in concocting the heist. Unlike the popular consensus, though, Hudson formed doubts about Chicken Man's participation in the robbery, and he would later go on record to admit:

I knew he wasn’t dumb enough to pull a stunt like that. This was a man who ran a million-dollar operation from a pay phone on a street corner. He was smart. He could’ve run IBM or Coke. There’s no way he would’ve risked all that to pay somebody off. This was pulled off by a bunch of young thugs who were trying to knock over a party, and when they got there and saw how big it was, they improvised.

Hudson admitted this sentiment to Jeff Keating, the creator of the Fight Night podcast on which the series is based, in 2004. At that time, Keating had arranged a meetup with Hudson and the notorious Chicken Man himself, who shockingly survived the entire ordeal despite the widespread assumption that he'd been murdered.

What Happened To Chicken Man & The Fight Night Robbers

Chicken Man Survived The Ordeal, But The Robbers Faced A Different Fate

Hudson and Keating initially met to speak about the case in 2002, when the former unexpectedly revealed that Williams was alive and a reverend of Salem Baptist Church. Two years later, the duo invited Williams into the fold to voice his perspective on the robbery. Williams doubled down on his innocence during the meetup, and when asked why the press reported him dead, he replied, "I don't know where they got that one...but I've been here in Atlanta the whole time." While he survived the crosshairs of the law and the criminal underworld, Williams passed away in December 2014.

The indicted robbers faced very different fates. The police took Hammond into custody, while Rogers and Hall were gunned down in what the New York Police believed to be retribution killings. Their deaths occurred just six months after the heist. Hudson was quoted by the New York Times to have said, "...it was just a question of who caught up with them first — the police or the victims. It appears the victims got there first.” As for the detective at the center of Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist, Hudson died in 2009 at the age of 82.