In 1963 Muhammad Ali paid a fleeting visit to Nottingham, not to fight but to watch.
For local man Michael Hall it was an opportunity not to be missed, writes Nigel Kirk .
His presence of mind in getting the signature of 21-year-old Cassius Clay, as he was known at the time, looks set to result in £500 to £1,000 when the autograph is sold at Mellors & Kirk in a specialist auction of historic documents and rare books in May.
Already by then a global celebrity, Cassius Clay flew into Heathrow on May 24, 1963, to prepare for one of the most important boxing matches of his career, that with Henry Cooper before an audience of 35,000 at Wembley Stadium on June 18.
He visited Nottingham to attend the British title fight between middleweight champion George Aldridge and challenger, Irish born Michael Leahy, at the former Ice Stadium on May 28.
It was an amazing match in which Leahy took only 1 minute 45 seconds to land a knockout blow on Aldridge.
Cassius Clay, along with Sugar Ray Robinson and Randy Turpin - who were also there that night - all jumped into the boxing ring to embrace the victorious new champion.
Michael Hall was also a spectator and remembers every detail of that momentous night.
Boxing News featured Cassius Clay on its front page four days earlier, and made much of his popular moniker ‘The Lip’.
Although he was to beat Henry Cooper - as he had predicted in the fifth round - the Londoner proved not to be the “bum” which he had been described by his opponent.
Such comments did not endear him to patriotic British fans and at Nottingham he was loudly booed when he turned up at the ice stadium.
As he slipped out afterwards, Michael went in pursuit and eventually caught up with him, becoming one of very few that night to obtain an autograph. Luckily he had bought a programme and it was that that Cassius Clay signed in pencil.
Collectors are especially wary of the great boxer’s signature because his is one of the most faked of all sporting celebrities. That is why having been obtained in person there can be no cause for concern about the authenticity of this autograph.
Few would argue that Cassius Clay or Muhammad Ali tops the list of the most famous boxers and arguably, sporting personalities of all time.
He was also an extraordinarily significant cultural icon, inspiring and controversial in equal measure; a man who discarded what he described as his ‘slave’ name when he went through a spiritual awakening.
Those who were immersed in the sport of boxing were spellbound by his almost graceful agility in the ring.
Even people who couldn’t have cared less were at first aghast at the insults he hurled at opponents as often as he landed punches and then dazzled by the literally hundreds of sound bites he uttered, many of which are fast becoming immortal as similes and metaphors still heard in everyday conversations.
How can one forget for example, “It’s hard to be humble when you’re as great as I am”, “Float like a butterfly sting like a bee…” or “I am the greatest…” The list is endless.
Never before or since – although other boxers often tried to imitate this aspect of ‘The Greatest’ – has a sporting legend been so adept at self-promotion. With many of his remarks was a political undertone.
Ultimately a flawed and somewhat tragic figure especially in later life, he was, nevertheless, a true champion of the oppressed who did his best as he saw it, to change perceptions and overcome some of the bigotry that he had faced as a youngster. Despite his outstanding record in the ring, I think this will be his enduring legacy.
Muhammad Ali made a second and final brief visit to Nottingham in 1992 when hundreds of people queued for hours to buy a signed copy of his autobiography at Dillon’s bookshop.
Had I been one of them I would have asked him to write my favourite of his sayings: “Don’t count the days; make the days count.”
FIND OF THE WEEK
Before the establishment of county fire brigades in cities and larger towns, those that could afford to insured their house.
Each insurance company maintained its own tiny private fire brigade with the most primitive equipment which would, eventually, attend to a burning building. That is, provided the building displayed a ‘Fire Mark’ in some prominent place on the façade.
Attempts at extinguishing the fire would still be made if the building was insured by a rival company because it could be re-charged. For everyone else, no fire mark meant no fire-fighting, other than by the hapless occupiers, their families and friends.
This lead fire mark is that of one of the earliest London insurance firms the ‘Hand-in-Hand’, a mutual company founded by a group of businessmen in ‘Tom’s Coffee House’ in 1696 and financed by what is quaintly termed ‘amicable contributions.’
The 17th century coffee houses – familiar to diarist Samuel Pepys – was the venue of choice for such meetings, a strikingly modern concept 300 years before Starbucks or Costa.
This fire mark, which is about 20cm high would, like all of the many different company designs, have originally been brightly painted and gilded so as to stand out as much as possible.
They were attractive features of the 18 century street scene and have been collected for well over 100 years. They remain popular with collectors today and this example will be sold by Mellors & Kirk on 8 March. The estimate is £100-£200.
