Speaker 1: September sixth, nineteen eighty nine, my dad dies very unexpectedly.
Speaker 1: He was only fifty nine years old, and I thought
Speaker 1: I'd have decades with him. He was a blue collar
Speaker 1: worker and a wonderful tender man and father who struggled
Speaker 1: pretty hard throughout his life. After my mom died, he
Speaker 1: worked two jobs sixty hour weeks. This is before the
Speaker 1: days of daycare, before fast food, and he learned to cook.
Speaker 1: He took care of my sister Carol in May and
Speaker 1: did a heroic job. And that's not an exaggeration. I
Speaker 1: was never able to come out of my shell.
Speaker 2: With my dad.
Speaker 1: And engage with him the way he did with me.
Speaker 1: I was just too damaged by my mom's death. But
Speaker 1: I was there for him when he died. I hung
Speaker 1: in their tight and I didn't look away. It crushed me,
Speaker 1: and my first time of coming out into the world
Speaker 1: again was a couple months later when Sport magazine wanted
Speaker 1: me to be their representative at the third Leonard Durand
Speaker 1: Fight in Las Vegas. Muhammad was going to be there.
Speaker 1: Both Muhammad and Lani had told me so, and the
Speaker 1: largest reason I wanted to be at that fight is
Speaker 1: to hang with Mohammed, which I hadn't done in months
Speaker 1: and months. I'd get to Vegas two days for the fight.
Speaker 1: I unpacked my suitcase in the hotel room and then
Speaker 1: open the curtains and cool. There's this hawk sitting out there.
Speaker 1: That's a promising sign. The next morning, when I get
Speaker 1: out of bed, I look out the window and the
Speaker 1: hawk is still there, unmoving, dead. You know, here in
Speaker 1: Vegas we'll even find a radio station that's remotely listenable.
Speaker 1: Wayne Newton, Gosh, Barry Manilow, all that Vegacy stuff. But
Speaker 1: then I stumbled across one's playing a Van Morris in
Speaker 1: tune I haven't heard before. I forgot that love existed,
Speaker 1: and I did. When the song ends, I have to
Speaker 1: admit I feel a little better. I walk over to
Speaker 1: the Mirage Hotel, which is hosting the fight, and the
Speaker 1: very first person I've read into is Lani Ali. I
Speaker 1: spots her standing outside an elevator and I go up
Speaker 1: to her and she says, Davy, which is what she
Speaker 1: called me. Mohammed will want to see you. Why don't
Speaker 1: you come up to the suite. Mohammed's in the room,
Speaker 1: standing there staring out the window, turns around and sees me,
Speaker 1: my man, which he always called me, and gives me
Speaker 1: a big hug. We're standing there looking out the window
Speaker 1: and he says, this big hotel, this town, don't none
Speaker 1: of it mean nothing. It's all only dust. He turns
Speaker 1: to me and he says, how you do it? And
Speaker 1: I say, I'm okay, but my dad died. He looks
Speaker 1: at me, is empathetically, as if it was his own father.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about, as if I'm very close family, which
Speaker 1: is something I wanted somehow and something that I needed,
Speaker 1: the recognition from Muhammad that my father had indeed passed,
Speaker 1: and that that meant owe so much to me. Lannie says,
Speaker 1: my father just died too, and she tears up. Lonnie
Speaker 1: excuses herself from the room, and Mohammad opens his briefcase
Speaker 1: which he always kept with him, and he shows me
Speaker 1: this famous painting of Jesus. He says, I always take
Speaker 1: this with me. This is with me everywhere I go
Speaker 1: because it reminds me how did some colored boxer from Louisville,
Speaker 1: Kentucky become famous as this man? And I'm feeling kind
Speaker 1: of bad for Mohamed when he says that. Mohammed and
Speaker 1: I go down to the main lobby of the mirage.
Speaker 1: The elevator reaches the ground floor. The doors open, but
Speaker 1: then suddenly Ali makes this huge clucking sound. Then I
Speaker 1: hear somebody repeat it from the distance. It's almost like
Speaker 1: an echo. Ali and I step out of the elevator
Speaker 1: and there's Howard Ali. He repeats the sound again and
Speaker 1: kind of chuckles, and Howard does it straight back at him,
Speaker 1: and he says, watch how people react. Howard pulls out
Speaker 1: a chair and finds the table. Mohammad sits down. Within seconds,
Speaker 1: there's one hundred people around him. Within minutes, there's five hundred,
Speaker 1: within ten minutes a thousand. Mohammad sits at the table
Speaker 1: and starts signing autographs on Muslim tracks he has with him.
Speaker 3: Chama God, where are you from?
Speaker 4: Hey?
Speaker 3: Jom'sone over here, gree where are you from?
Speaker 4: Where you from?
Speaker 1: Pakistan?
Speaker 2: Just lies your.
Speaker 1: People come up to him and tell stories about how
Speaker 1: they'd met him thirty years before, and Ali always pretends
Speaker 1: to remember. I say to Howard, is it like this everywhere?
Speaker 1: He says, everywhere, everywhere in the world, all the time.
Speaker 1: Two hundred thousand people came to see him last year
Speaker 1: in Jakarta.
Speaker 4: I was waiting on Muhammed to come because he obviously
Speaker 4: told me that he's coming to ways aware of it,
Speaker 4: and we let it out to the public and the
Speaker 4: street where we lived is just that the whole town
Speaker 4: come to a standstill. There must have been thousands. It
Speaker 4: wasn't a couple of hundred. It was thousands that the
Speaker 4: police had to call in the army to help with
Speaker 4: crowd control.
Speaker 1: That's Tyrone Monahan, author of Paddy Monahan The Rough Diamond.
Speaker 1: His lifelong friendship with Muhammad through his dad is at
Speaker 1: least as deep and profound as my own.
Speaker 4: There was no trouble or nothing, but they had to
Speaker 4: call him in in the house and the chanting outside Ali, Ali, Ali,
Speaker 4: It's happened quite a few times.
Speaker 1: Whether you work in a rice patty in Indonesia or
Speaker 1: sleep in a hut in Zimbabwe, Muhammad Ali is known
Speaker 1: and revered everywhere. Reflecting on that now all these decades
Speaker 1: since Ali and I became friends a marvel again. How
Speaker 1: his Parkinson's allowed him to become an ailing family member
Speaker 1: to the world. In the nineteen nineties, Ali became an
Speaker 1: ambassador of worldwide good will and he traveled more than
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty days of each year. Huge crowds
Speaker 1: turned out to greet him wherever he went, tens of thousands,
Speaker 1: sometimes even hundreds of thousands of people. One day he
Speaker 1: was in China, the next to New York, the third
Speaker 1: in London, and then on to La Man That blew
Speaker 1: me away. I was young, fit and healthy, and could
Speaker 1: not come close to keeping up with him personally as
Speaker 1: I grappled with marriage problems and trying to get my
Speaker 1: writing out into the world. He taught me the relativity
Speaker 1: of struggle through yet another life saving effort, Episode six,
Speaker 1: The People's champ. I never thought of myself as doing
Speaker 1: a profile of Muhammad for GQ or Sports Illustrated or
Speaker 1: The New York Times. I'm just hanging with my friend.
Speaker 1: But then the experience is so powerful in my own life,
Speaker 1: and I'm seeing things about him that at the time
Speaker 1: no one else is writing about. Missus Clay called me
Speaker 1: and said, it's beautiful. It's beautiful. She says, it's awful long,
Speaker 1: but it is the best thing ever about the family,
Speaker 1: and that meant something to me. A guy named Lee Eisenberg,
Speaker 1: who was the editor in chief at Esquire, didn't want
Speaker 1: to run the story, and David Hershey, my editor, came
Speaker 1: to him and said, this is one of the most
Speaker 1: beautiful pieces I've ever read. And Eisenberg said, well, that's
Speaker 1: not the way I see it. He said, I thought
Speaker 1: that this guy was a lot closer, that he'd known
Speaker 1: Ali for years and years, and he said, that's the
Speaker 1: piece I want. So eventually Esquire killed it, but nobody
Speaker 1: got back with me and told me that they're not
Speaker 1: going to run the story. I'm sitting and waiting ninety days,
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty days, whatever it was.
Speaker 4: David Hershey.
Speaker 1: Then I finally get hold of David Hershey and he
Speaker 1: says Lee has decided not to use it. He said,
Speaker 1: I think he's wrong, but he decided not to use it.
Speaker 1: I'll be sure you get your kill fee. I didn't
Speaker 1: even know what a kill fee was, and I'm expecting
Speaker 1: twenty five hundred bucks and launched in the best magazine,
Speaker 1: to my mind in the country. Instead, I'm getting four
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy five dollars. Months later, I end up
Speaker 1: selling it to the Louisville Courier Journal for four hundred
Speaker 1: bucks and I still hadn't been paid that four seventy five.
Speaker 1: By the time it ran and money got tight. I
Speaker 1: mean it got real tight, Lee Eisenberg. He wanted me
Speaker 1: to be the standard reporter. I've never come from that place. Mohammed,
Speaker 1: he's my inspiration, he's my hero, he's my muse. But
Speaker 1: basically he's just my friend. That's another problem classically schooled
Speaker 1: journalist has had with me. Ain't one of them, and
Speaker 1: I'm not coming from their place. They think I was
Speaker 1: violating Mohammed in some way. It's something that I had
Speaker 1: to consider in all ways. In every moment, I used
Speaker 1: him as the barometer for that. I used his reactions
Speaker 1: more than Lonnie's. I would use Mohammad's reactions for what
Speaker 1: he felt. When My Dinner with Ali was published, Mohammed
Speaker 1: called me beautiful, beautiful, he said, and I know everything's okay,
Speaker 1: that I'm doing the right thing anyway. That's all I
Speaker 1: have to say about that. August nineteen ninety, I'm back
Speaker 1: in Louisville selling our house. Finally. Limb's given up for
Speaker 1: paint and paint brushes, for a steady job and a cubicle.
Speaker 1: But I've got to hang with the dream of becoming
Speaker 1: an artist because she's taken that job. Now we'll get
Speaker 1: a little relief from our bills. As I'm getting ready
Speaker 1: to leave town, I decided to go by missus Clay's
Speaker 1: and say hello to her. I knock on the door
Speaker 1: and who opens it but Mohammed Ali. My man. He says,
Speaker 1: come on in. He looks great. He's lost about forty
Speaker 1: pounds and I compliment him. He says, I'm training for
Speaker 1: a spiritual battle. We have lunch, and while we're eating,
Speaker 1: the phone rings. He picks it up and he's on
Speaker 1: for a long time for Muhammed. About fifteen minutes. I
Speaker 1: hear the deep voice on the other end, and when
Speaker 1: he hangs up, he says, they got something I want
Speaker 1: to ask you. People want me to go to Iraq,
Speaker 1: stand between two big armies, get ready to fight. Say
Speaker 1: I'm Muhammad Ali. Don't fight? Do you think I should
Speaker 1: do it? I hesitate. I don't know what to say
Speaker 1: to that. Months later, I switch on the TV and
Speaker 1: guess what. There's Mohammed. He's in a rock. He's negotiating
Speaker 1: with Saddam Hussein to get hostages released, but the New
Speaker 1: York Times is slamming him, saying he's doing it to
Speaker 1: get media attention. And that he risked being in a
Speaker 1: rocky propaganda puppet. The White House slams him too. Of course,
Speaker 1: the White House doesn't want him doing that. They want
Speaker 1: the oil. That's what all of this is about. They
Speaker 1: want a war. Once again, Muhammad finds himself at loggerheads
Speaker 1: with the United States government, and again he carries on
Speaker 1: despite the blowback, doing what he believes is the right
Speaker 1: thing to do. Muhammad Ali, the Conscientious Objector, brings home
Speaker 1: fifteen American hostages to their families.
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty seven. When Ali was stripped of the
Speaker 2: heavyweight championship for refusing to be inducted into the military,
Speaker 2: it was a polarizing event all over the world. You
Speaker 2: were either for Ali or against Ali. Well, one young
Speaker 2: man born in Northern Ireland stood firmly behind Mohammed and
Speaker 2: started a campaign to get his boxing license reinstated. Of
Speaker 2: Baron knuckle fighter Paddy Monaghan circulated the petition that gained
Speaker 2: over twenty two thousand signatures and later wrote President Richard
Speaker 2: Nixon to plead Ali's case. It was Paddy who first
Speaker 2: called Ali the People's Champion. What resulted was a friendship
Speaker 2: between Patty and Mohammad that lasted until Ali's death in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen. Patty's son Tyrone, joins us now from England.
Speaker 2: Bar knuckle fighting. Not only was your dad good at it,
Speaker 2: he was a world champion. He was Yeah, talk about
Speaker 2: that underground aspect of it, that your dad had this
Speaker 2: note of writing and very few people knew about it. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, back in the day it was illegal. It's not
Speaker 4: like today where it's mainstream. And it's nice to see
Speaker 4: it a mainstream and these young fellas now getting out
Speaker 4: there and making a name for himself. But back in
Speaker 4: the day, if he was caught doing bernacles fighting, you'd
Speaker 4: be panned up, you'd be put in prison. And the
Speaker 4: thing is where my dad's manager, Tommy Hurd, he had
Speaker 4: a venue called the Barn, and when you're good enough,
Speaker 4: he'd allow you to fight in the Barn. Now, the
Speaker 4: Barn was a notorious place and let's just say people
Speaker 4: didn't make their money from being missed a nice guy,
Speaker 4: you know, so because there's a lot of gambling and
Speaker 4: betting going on in there, and they had lookouts on
Speaker 4: the country lanes for police coming and everything had to
Speaker 4: be kept quiet. When the time my dad won the
Speaker 4: world title, I was only a child and my sister Claire,
Speaker 4: we was wanting to tell the whole world, Wow, my
Speaker 4: dad's world champion, you know, because you see him coming
Speaker 4: home with the broken knuckles and the cut cut eyes
Speaker 4: and the broken noses and all that stuff. And when
Speaker 4: he achieved his goal with becoming the world champion, we
Speaker 4: just want to tell everybody, but we couldn't had he
Speaker 4: had his world title belt and it was kept wrapped
Speaker 4: up in a white towel underneath the bed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, your dad grew up in a tough neighborhood, tough
Speaker 2: kid even before they met. Muhammed Ali played a role
Speaker 2: in your dad's childhood.
Speaker 4: My dad dad dyslexia. He left Ireland and came over
Speaker 4: to England when he was five or six years of
Speaker 4: age and he was known as a problem child. He
Speaker 4: was sent to help the school caretaker. He's missing classes
Speaker 4: and things like that. He'd be out there digging cold
Speaker 4: the heat up the school keep everybody warm. He couldn't read,
Speaker 4: found it hard to write, so when he left school
Speaker 4: about fifteen sixteen years of age. My grandma, even when
Speaker 4: he was a child, he used to get in the
Speaker 4: boxing news, to weekly paper used to come out over
Speaker 4: here in England. My Grandma would be reading page to
Speaker 4: page and the photographs and telling them who the photographs are.
Speaker 4: This was a turning point for my dad seeing Cassius
Speaker 4: Clay back in the day on the pictures and my
Speaker 4: nan reading about Cassius Clay. My dad knew this man
Speaker 4: was amazing and he wanted to learn how to read
Speaker 4: and write so he can read about Muhammad himself. So
Speaker 4: my grandma started him off with the book with big
Speaker 4: writing on and she was teaching them how to read.
Speaker 4: I think about seventeen eighteen. He always thought that books
Speaker 4: started off with the once upon a time and ended
Speaker 4: with happy ever after. You know, Muhammad Ali gave my
Speaker 4: dad the inspiration to learn how to read and write,
Speaker 4: and my dad writing a book himself. He couldn't thank
Speaker 4: the likes of Muhammad Ali wanting him to learn how
Speaker 4: to read and write. Later on, when they stripped Mohammad
Speaker 4: off title, my dad thought they've taken my college away.
Speaker 4: My dad looked upon him as Muhammad as his college
Speaker 4: of knowledge. So when they stuck my father's college out
Speaker 4: of the way, he stripp Mhammad off his title, he
Speaker 4: thought he had to do something about it.
Speaker 2: So your dad starts the petition he's supporting Ali being
Speaker 2: reinstated to boxing, and they finally meet. How did that
Speaker 2: come about.
Speaker 4: My dad's friend came around and said that Herbert Muhammad
Speaker 4: is coming into London, so my dad thought, oh, I
Speaker 4: must go and meet this fella. So at that time
Speaker 4: where my dad was doing the petition, he had twenty
Speaker 4: and twenty four signatures at the end of three and
Speaker 4: a half years of doing that, but he had a
Speaker 4: load of fan mail. At the same time, my dad
Speaker 4: started the very first Muhammad Ali fan club. So he
Speaker 4: took these couple of the sacks of the fan mail
Speaker 4: up to Herbert Mhammad and Herbert couldn't believe what was
Speaker 4: going on is he took my dad's address, names and
Speaker 4: phone number, and a couple of weeks later, my dad
Speaker 4: gets a call from Muhammad Ali himself and Muhammad says, Paddy,
Speaker 4: I'm coming over to the Royal Lancaster Hotel. I want
Speaker 4: to meet you. So then when they met the Royal
Speaker 4: Lancaster Hotel, my dad thought it was going to be
Speaker 4: like a shaking the hand, a tap on the back,
Speaker 4: or thank you, Patty for everything you've done for me.
Speaker 4: That's great, and my dad would have been happy with that.
Speaker 4: Who wouldn't be? But no, it went a lot more
Speaker 4: than that. Muhammad booked my dad a room next to
Speaker 4: his room in the hotel where he was touring London
Speaker 4: at that time. My dad was with him side by
Speaker 4: side for about near enough a week, four or five days,
Speaker 4: when then they went up north and a little bit
Speaker 4: of a trip round the North and they've struck up
Speaker 4: a great friendship and Mohammed all the way through this,
Speaker 4: like fifty years of friendship. Mohammed never forgot what my
Speaker 4: dad done for him.
Speaker 2: There's always been a special bond with the people in
Speaker 2: Ireland with aur We what's that all about?
Speaker 4: I think majority of people knew Muhammad was different in
Speaker 4: each in every way. He was the under dog. What
Speaker 4: the authority has done for him. Most of Americans back
Speaker 4: in the day, they turned their back on Muhammed like that.
Speaker 4: The war in Ireland between the Catholics and Protestant In Britain,
Speaker 4: I'm a Catholic. We was like the underdog all the time.
Speaker 4: So we know what it's like to be the underdog
Speaker 4: and it's not nice. Muhammad was just something special, something different.
Speaker 4: He's like the plug going to the socket. And the
Speaker 4: light's going on.
Speaker 2: Muhammad invited your dad to work his corner for a
Speaker 2: couple of fights Kentucky, most notably the rematch with Joe
Speaker 2: Frasier in nineteen seventy four. Just he just took him
Speaker 2: and held him close.
Speaker 4: He never asked for nothing, and he's always there to give.
Speaker 4: Mohammad like that. He was also in the corner for
Speaker 4: the Al Blue Lewis fight. Now, did you know the
Speaker 4: Al Blue Lewis fight nearly didn't happen? Did you know that?
Speaker 2: I know it was in Ireland, but I didn't know
Speaker 2: it almost didn't happen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it nearly didn't happen. Irish officials asked who's going
Speaker 4: to be in the corner, and my hams, I want
Speaker 4: Paddy in my corner. And because my dad didn't have
Speaker 4: a license, they wasn't going to allow my dad to
Speaker 4: be in the corner. And Mohammad turned around and he said,
Speaker 4: no Paddy, no fight, and the officials got it. Paddy
Speaker 4: had to be in the corner. So my dad had
Speaker 4: a one day license to be in Mohammed's corner and
Speaker 4: I still got that license today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how do you describe their relationship?
Speaker 4: That's a good question. When you see them in the
Speaker 4: room together, it was electric. The energy in the room.
Speaker 4: It was like there was bouncing off of each other,
Speaker 4: having the banner, having the crack. It was electric. And
Speaker 4: the only way I can say their relationship was beautiful,
Speaker 4: absolutely beautiful. My dad he was a straight fella. If
Speaker 4: he liked you, you know about it. If you didn't
Speaker 4: like you, you'd know about it, as simple as that.
Speaker 4: Everybody in the town here, you know a lot of people,
Speaker 4: they loved him, you know, they loved him where he
Speaker 4: brought Mohammad to the town, and Muhammad made this town famous.
Speaker 4: And to this day people still talk about his visits.
Speaker 4: It's like when my dad be away with Mahmmad and
Speaker 4: coming back ten stories and saying, like, you know, they
Speaker 4: call each other brother. But when you're actually in the room,
Speaker 4: like I said, and you hear my dad, Muhammad and
Speaker 4: Dad hugging each other, I love you, my brother, I
Speaker 4: mean that was like wow, you know.
Speaker 2: Wow, talk about those visits.
Speaker 4: He was waiting on Muhammad to come because he obviously
Speaker 4: told me Dad he's coming, so way is aware of it,
Speaker 4: and we led it out to the public and the
Speaker 4: street where we lived is just that the whole town
Speaker 4: come to a standstill. Lives so many people there that
Speaker 4: the police had a called him the army to help
Speaker 4: with crowd control. There was no trouble or nothing, but
Speaker 4: they had to call him in. So the whole street
Speaker 4: was absolutely there must have been thousands. It wasn't a
Speaker 4: couple of hundred, it was thousands, and like I said,
Speaker 4: it blocked the whole town off. It's happened quite a
Speaker 4: few times. Mohammad was in the house and the chanting
Speaker 4: outside of the fans outside Ali Ali Ahi through the window.
Speaker 4: We didn't have double glazing windows at the time. There
Speaker 4: was just normal wooden windows and we had normal wooden
Speaker 4: door and we had six panes of glass in the door,
Speaker 4: no double glazing, so you could hear everything. And the
Speaker 4: chance was going A mom says, I just got to
Speaker 4: go and see my fans. My dad says Tom. He says,
Speaker 4: get the door and I'll put my hand on the door.
Speaker 4: And I'm not lying yet. As I put my hand
Speaker 4: on the door to open it, at the door was
Speaker 4: vibrating with Ali. Every time there was an alley, the
Speaker 4: door was vibrating, The windows were vibrating. You could see
Speaker 4: them vibrate. The door. I had my hand on the
Speaker 4: door and it was it was still out there, vibrating
Speaker 4: like you know, and my dad says, get ready for
Speaker 4: a boy, because what do you mean, Dad, He says,
Speaker 4: you'll see. I opened the door and he was a
Speaker 4: big bound of thunder just coming in through the door,
Speaker 4: like just come in all the same time talk about
Speaker 4: going goose pimply. It was absolutely amazing. But my dad
Speaker 4: stepped out of the door, Mohammed stepped out of the door,
Speaker 4: and I stayed behind. And the chance Ali Ai talk
Speaker 4: about beatle mania, this was Ali Mania and it was
Speaker 4: absolutely phenomenal. And as soon as Mohammad held up his hand,
Speaker 4: the crowd went quiet and he started talking to them.
Speaker 4: You can imagine thousands of people chanting Ali, Ali, Ali,
Speaker 4: and then the next thing, the hand goes up and
Speaker 4: you could hear a pin drop. It's absolutely unbelievable. August
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty three. I just won the Home Counties Championship.
Speaker 4: Was a well to wait and my father used to
Speaker 4: have me sparring with heavyweights. So I'll go in, get
Speaker 4: in and out very very quick, hopefully without getting hit,
Speaker 4: knowing that if I get hit, it's gonna hurt So
Speaker 4: Muhammad was there and the car pulled up outside the
Speaker 4: house and straight away he looked at me and he
Speaker 4: goes me and him just started a shadow sparring in
Speaker 4: the front gardens. Oh it is amazing, absolutely fantastic. After
Speaker 4: that there we went into the house and the crack
Speaker 4: in the band or is that ing? My dad and
Speaker 4: him their private talk as well, and then he says
Speaker 4: to me, he says, trone John Doe some sparring.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, I.
Speaker 4: Suggest fleaz Mohammed. So Howard went to the car and
Speaker 4: brought back a pair of white boxing gloves. But the
Speaker 4: only pair of white gloves I've ever seen before was
Speaker 4: my dad's training fighter called George Sutton, cracking cracking box
Speaker 4: of beautiful boxer. He was seeing his white boxing gloves.
Speaker 4: I'm like, wow, lovely, So I gets my gloves on him.
Speaker 4: At the back guarden, we had probably about twelve by
Speaker 4: twelve flooring, and Mohammad says, there's no rounds. There's no rounds.
Speaker 4: He says, whoever loses this fight, he said in his
Speaker 4: points to we had an old beat up dustbin, metal
Speaker 4: dustin with a rubber top on it, and it was
Speaker 4: in it in August. It was a good summer's day
Speaker 4: in August. And this garbage can it's stunk. You can
Speaker 4: imagine the heat, isn't it. It's sunk hand eye for
Speaker 4: I'm not going to sit on that, you know. So
Speaker 4: Mohammad is given at the large one with his Louisville lip.
Speaker 4: What he's going to do to me? You sucker, you sucker,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna beat you.
Speaker 3: Wait, no shape, two years out of training. Im on
Speaker 3: vomba Jim, I'm the greats lord Tam the grades long.
Speaker 5: Term three tim cham in no condition.
Speaker 4: Woman, man, this is nineteen eighty three when Mohammad was retired.
Speaker 4: I'm used to sparring with heavyweights. I was a weal
Speaker 4: toweight used to sparring with heavyweights. So Mohammad is trying
Speaker 4: to pit me out, calling me sucker and all that stuff.
Speaker 4: What he's going to do to me?
Speaker 2: Where you put some more? Where you'll put some morning.
Speaker 4: And come on, Mohamma, let's get it home. Let me
Speaker 4: tell you something. Even though he's taking easy on me,
Speaker 4: his jabs alls I could feel was right on my forehead.
Speaker 4: And nineteen eighty three he's retired. I could not see
Speaker 4: his jabs move and I'm used to sparring with heavyweight.
Speaker 4: I could not see his jabs move, and he's popping
Speaker 4: his jabs out of bam bam bam, hitting my forehead
Speaker 4: and I thought, wow, for that split second, I'm thinking,
Speaker 4: if this is Muhammad Ali, now, what have you been
Speaker 4: like in his prime against his other heavyweights? No wonder?
Speaker 4: He battled them with his speed. Me and him's moving
Speaker 4: around there and he's talking to me all the way
Speaker 4: through it. Come on, what are you gonna do now, sucker?
Speaker 4: What are you gonna do to me? I'm going to
Speaker 4: get you now, madam. I caught him with a body
Speaker 4: punch right now. I think I think he was being
Speaker 4: kind to me. I think he felt sorry for me.
Speaker 4: He probably thought I got to let this fella get
Speaker 4: one in. So I caught him to the body and
Speaker 4: that was it. His eyes wide open, like you know how,
Speaker 4: he opened his eyes and he's coming back at me
Speaker 4: even more now. And then I start going into the
Speaker 4: cross guard and he says, Paddy, what you're teaching this guy?
Speaker 4: What are you teaching him? He's doing a norton. He's
Speaker 4: doing a Norton, and my dad's laughing. He said, come on, sucker,
Speaker 4: I'm coming for you. Now I'm having I'm coming for you.
Speaker 2: Let's have it.
Speaker 4: Let's have it. And then all of a sudden, he
Speaker 4: threw his arms up in the air. He said, I
Speaker 4: don't believe it. I don't believe it. I just got
Speaker 4: beat Paron. You're the new champion. You're the greatest, and
Speaker 4: you just beat the greatest. Now you're the greatest. Hahmmad
Speaker 4: went over and sat on that garbage can. He sat
Speaker 4: on it. It's stunk. I went over to him. My
Speaker 4: dad went over to it, and I went over to it,
Speaker 4: and he gave me a big hope. He said, Tyrons,
Speaker 4: I love sparring you. You're good. Since then, I have
Speaker 4: three daughters, three beautiful daughters, Megan Ella and Kerry Anne,
Speaker 4: and being present at their berths. Nothing can take that away.
Speaker 4: But the next best thing that happened in my life
Speaker 4: was sparring Mhammad Ali that day. And I still think
Speaker 4: of it now as if it just happened yesterday or today.
Speaker 4: He gave me the most amazing moment of my life.
Speaker 4: He really did, and it's a memory. I got photographs
Speaker 4: in the drawer. People say, oh, you should have them
Speaker 4: up on the wall. Well, you know I've got them
Speaker 4: lying in the drawer, but the memories are more so
Speaker 4: in my mind and in my heart. You made me
Speaker 4: feel good about myself and that that is something magic
Speaker 4: that Muhammad had about him, what he could do for
Speaker 4: other people. I've seen it so many times.
Speaker 2: That's a gift from your dad.
Speaker 4: Thank you very very much for saying that. If it
Speaker 4: wasn't for my father, I would never have met Mohammad.
Speaker 4: I would never had the chance to meet him. Oh,
Speaker 4: my lovely thoughts.
Speaker 3: There's a young there's a young man here tonight. I
Speaker 3: have to introduce. He's my number one fan in England,
Speaker 3: mister Patty money and come here, Paddy, come on, come
Speaker 3: on here. Well you tell these people a word or two, Patty,
Speaker 3: I say something now and memories.
Speaker 4: It's all thanks to my daddy for what he'd done
Speaker 4: for Mohammed and Muhammad acknowledging out there and striking up
Speaker 4: with friendship with each other.
Speaker 5: There's only one thing I can say to you. All
Speaker 5: world heavyweight champions may come and go, but in Muhammad
Speaker 5: Ali's case, this will never be so, because forever he
Speaker 5: will always be the people's champion. To you and to me,
Speaker 5: thank you.
Speaker 2: As Muhammad got older, did you still come to visit?
Speaker 4: My dad noticed a shaking Muhammad's hand after the third
Speaker 4: Ken Norton fight, a little slight shape. But that's when
Speaker 4: my dad noticed something wasn't right with Muhammad in nineteen
Speaker 4: seventy six. Muhammad visited us many times in the late
Speaker 4: nineteen eighties, in the early nineteen nineties, ninety ninety one,
Speaker 4: ninety two, and ninety three. He was with us. His
Speaker 4: speech was a slurred but his mind was as active
Speaker 4: as yours and mine and anyone else in that room
Speaker 4: put together. He was very, very with it. There's obviously
Speaker 4: times where you can see him slowing down a little bit,
Speaker 4: but it didn't matter. He was Muhammad Ali. I think
Speaker 4: it bothered other people more than it did Muhammad himself.
Speaker 2: Ali left a part of his spirit with you after
Speaker 2: he visited you.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I've gone goose pimpley you saying that it
Speaker 4: wasn't just a one visit. It was on every Visitah,
Speaker 4: Muhammad was the light in the darkest room. For you've
Speaker 4: met him yourself. You know what he's like. You know
Speaker 4: where I'm coming from when I say that he would
Speaker 4: be the light in the darkest room, and the charisma
Speaker 4: and the life he brought into our home when he
Speaker 4: was with us, and the joy, the laughter he brought
Speaker 4: my sisters and my mum or my grandma and my
Speaker 4: dad and the people I was there. It was just
Speaker 4: absolutely electrifying. And when he left to go to London
Speaker 4: wherever he had to go to, it was like it
Speaker 4: really was as if he left part of his spirit
Speaker 4: behind for us. I know a lot of people might
Speaker 4: think I'm crazy talking like out there, but that's the
Speaker 4: nearest world and say I'm getting I'm getting well and
Speaker 4: nearful of bit now. It was just amazing.
Speaker 2: What part of you do you think you picked up
Speaker 2: from Ali?
Speaker 4: There's lots of things.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 4: One of the things that I can say is believe
Speaker 4: in yourself, and that goes a lot a long way
Speaker 4: for a lot of people, especially with anybody with their
Speaker 4: mental health issues, because they could have went through some
Speaker 4: terrible trauma in their life. Another way, I respect, I'm
Speaker 4: respect it each in every way. But how he would
Speaker 4: try to bring peace, peace into people's lives and the world.
Speaker 4: If only these politicians today could be quarter of the
Speaker 4: man Muhammad Ali was, there'd be peace in this world today.
Speaker 4: Muhammad ad. He was tough. He had a jaw of granite,
Speaker 4: and he was a tough tough man. And look how
Speaker 4: soft and gently he was with children, How soft and
Speaker 4: gently he would he go around the hospitals. My dad
Speaker 4: would be with him going around the hospitals when they
Speaker 4: were there. He was a couple of days before the
Speaker 4: al b Lewis fight in Dublin. He was going around
Speaker 4: the hospital picking up the children and wiping their dribbles
Speaker 4: from their mouth. He kissed every child every he'd pick
Speaker 4: them up if they if they were bed ridden, he'd
Speaker 4: what their mouth if they're dribbling, and he'd bend over
Speaker 4: and kissed every child. He's a big tough guy, but
Speaker 4: what a heart, What a soft heart. Isn't the title
Speaker 4: the perfect title, The People's Champion, that's the perfect title.
Speaker 2: Was Elvis gave him a nice road with that on
Speaker 2: the back, with that sequence the world that Elvis gave me.
Speaker 4: My dad was with Muhammad at one time and Elvis
Speaker 4: was on tour. But Muhammad had his number, and the
Speaker 4: dad knew that my dad was an Elvis Presley fan,
Speaker 4: so he phoned Elvis up. My dad got talking to Elvis,
Speaker 4: chatting with Elvis, on the phone, and Elvis could not
Speaker 4: apologize enough to my dad. Elvis Presley wrote, the People's Champion. Now,
Speaker 4: that is what my dad named Muhammad. And when Elvis
Speaker 4: saw the People's choice on the back Elvis, the floor
Speaker 4: could have opened up and swallowed Elvis. It was the
Speaker 4: people's Champion, not the people's choice, and that's why he
Speaker 4: apologized to my father.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and nine, Muhammad came to Ireland.
Speaker 4: Mohammed was Iris. He said to me one day, I
Speaker 4: can't remember how old it was. In our front room.
Speaker 4: He leaned over and he said, Torone, do you know
Speaker 4: why I'm so good at boxing? I said, no, Mohammed,
Speaker 4: I don't know why. He said, because I'm Irish. They're
Speaker 4: fighting Irish.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and nine, he travels to Ireland to
Speaker 2: visit that ancestral home of Ennis, where his mother's family
Speaker 2: was originally from, and you spent time with him.
Speaker 4: The day before we knew he was going to meet
Speaker 4: Muhammad again. Then a man called John Ramsey came real
Speaker 4: nice fella yea, and he took my dad and me
Speaker 4: and my middle daughter, called Ella up into Muhammad's room.
Speaker 4: Now the Muhammad Ali who we knew the big frame,
Speaker 4: big shoulders on him and now seeing him just frail, Yeah,
Speaker 4: it was sad. So Lonnie says, Muhammed, Paddy's here, Paddy
Speaker 4: and Monahan, and then she said a couple of times,
Speaker 4: Muhammed Paddy, Monahan's here. And he looked. He just looked
Speaker 4: up like that there and a big grin. Oh, it's beautiful.
Speaker 4: He had a smile on him like a Chesha cat.
Speaker 4: And I was standing by his side and he was
Speaker 4: trying to get up out of the chair. So I
Speaker 4: helped him up out of the chair and he walked
Speaker 4: over to my father and that both of them, they
Speaker 4: just hugged. They just hugged, you know, it is lovely.
Speaker 4: And then all the words were wrapped up in that hug.
Speaker 4: And then he sat down, and my father was standing
Speaker 4: up beside me. My daughter was opposite Mohammad, just a
Speaker 4: couple of feet away, and I was with her, and
Speaker 4: he looked, he looked at me, and he kept looking
Speaker 4: at Ella, my daughter. Lonnie says, Tyrone, be careful. You
Speaker 4: know what Mohammad's like. He's got a roveno for a young, young,
Speaker 4: beautiful lady. So I looked at my hamm and I
Speaker 4: went oh went out there to Mohammed. I made the
Speaker 4: fist at my Hammed and he looked at me and
Speaker 4: he gave me the fist back with that biting his
Speaker 4: lip and he looks at me. He says, Tarne, is
Speaker 4: this your daughter? I says yes, Mohammed he said it
Speaker 4: can't be. She's too beautiful to be your daughter. So
Speaker 4: he caught Della over and Ellis said said, okay, Daddy,
Speaker 4: course on the way you go. So she sat with
Speaker 4: him and he hugged her and gave her a kiss,
Speaker 4: and she sat on the floor with her arm on
Speaker 4: his knee and they were sabbing a little chat. Then
Speaker 4: she came back over to me and my dad. Muhammad
Speaker 4: was chatting away for a wee bit, and then time
Speaker 4: was getting on and we can see that man was
Speaker 4: getting tired. So my dad said, Lonnie, I think we
Speaker 4: should go now, and the lonnie said we'll come back
Speaker 4: tomorrow morning. But we didn't go back the following morning.
Speaker 4: Before they left, once again, they gave each other that hug.
Speaker 4: We left the hotel room and we as we walked out,
Speaker 4: I looked at my dad and I could just see
Speaker 4: the tears filling my dad's eyes. He said, we're never
Speaker 4: going to meet again. I said, you can see him tomorrow.
Speaker 4: Donnie said to come around tomorrow and said, no, we're
Speaker 4: not going to meet it again. He knew that was
Speaker 4: the last hug. So it was very, very touching. And
Speaker 4: then John Ramsey knocked on the door and he explained
Speaker 4: that they're going to Ennis tomorrow the following day and
Speaker 4: he'd like us to come. Lonnie asked us if we
Speaker 4: would like to come. So my dad was over the
Speaker 4: moon with that there, but unfortunately I was running a
Speaker 4: gymnasium at the time in the North of Ireland and
Speaker 4: I had to get back. We didn't go to Ennis.
Speaker 2: What's the most memorable thing Muhammed ever said to.
Speaker 4: You, Oh, God, you're asking me a question there. No,
Speaker 4: I don't know. There's so much, but I'll tell you
Speaker 4: a very touching thing that he'd done. My grandma and
Speaker 4: my daddy. They were very very close. I was very
Speaker 4: close to my grandma. She's like, we're best friend. So
Speaker 4: when her pass and when God called her, it was
Speaker 4: hard for us. All she was suffering for two years.
Speaker 4: But in one way we're glad that she's not suffering anymore.
Speaker 4: But it's still it's still hitching and my dad was
Speaker 4: going down. He wasn't going outside the house, and he
Speaker 4: was really on the down and he's depressed. My mother
Speaker 4: phoned Mohammed and I told him about what's going on.
Speaker 4: My grandma passed away in May. In June, there was
Speaker 4: a knock at the door and behold it was Mohammed.
Speaker 4: My dad had no idea. Yeah, just after my name
Speaker 4: was buried. He come on into the house and my dad,
Speaker 4: where he's so down and so low. He lifted my
Speaker 4: dad's spirit. He lifted all of our spirits up. It
Speaker 4: was a sad time for us all, but especially for
Speaker 4: my father. I don't know what it is, that magic touch.
Speaker 4: He just puts something into you, brings you back up again,
Speaker 4: gets you off your knees and onto your feet again.
Speaker 4: Need done that to my dad, But at the lowest
Speaker 4: time in my dad's life, he come over to see
Speaker 4: my dad. I'll never forget that. I pray for Muhammad
Speaker 4: every morning. I pray for him, every night. I pray
Speaker 4: for him. I pray for my dad, I pray for
Speaker 4: I pray for a lot of people. He's on my
Speaker 4: mind when I wake up in the morning, He's on
Speaker 4: my mind when I go to bed at night. Also,
Speaker 4: I run thehammad Adi group on social media, so Muhammad
Speaker 4: is always there with me. He's with me all the time.
Speaker 4: There's not a day that goes by. I don't think
Speaker 4: about the visits and the stories.
Speaker 2: You mentioned that he gave you a lot of autographs
Speaker 2: over the years and are a gift to you in
Speaker 2: a different way.
Speaker 4: Now, Well, my father would never take anything off of Muhammed.
Speaker 4: And one time when my dad came back from visiting Mhammad,
Speaker 4: when he opened up a suitcase, just when when Mum
Speaker 4: was unpacking the suitcase, come across an envelope stashed with
Speaker 4: Muhammed Ali all crafts. And one time when I was
Speaker 4: going through a very bad time in my life and
Speaker 4: I was taking my mum's dogs out for a walk
Speaker 4: and I was praying. I was praying for my heart.
Speaker 4: I was fighting for quite a few years in court,
Speaker 4: but I couldn't afford his sister. This last time, I
Speaker 4: needed a slicter and a barrister and that was a
Speaker 4: lot of money. And I'm walking around the field with
Speaker 4: the dogs and I'm thinking, how am I going to go?
Speaker 4: I had six weeks to get the pants together. Come
Speaker 4: in taking the dogs for a walk. I come in
Speaker 4: and sat down. I thought about, hold on a minute.
Speaker 4: I've got all these Muhammad allia able crafts. And I
Speaker 4: remember my dad when he was alive, God Rest the soul,
Speaker 4: he'd say to me. I said, Dad, what are you
Speaker 4: going to do all of those Muhammad ali all crafts.
Speaker 4: He says to me, I'm going to save them for
Speaker 4: a rainy day. Well, I thought, well, the rain's hitting
Speaker 4: me hard because it's not going to get any more
Speaker 4: harder than what it is right here and right now.
Speaker 4: So I said to me Mom, I said, Mom, he's
Speaker 4: ma'am and Addie Outcrass's good squad, bad him. I said,
Speaker 4: do you mind if I sell them so I can
Speaker 4: get the money together for so I'd get a lawyer
Speaker 4: for Kerry and says, oh, please do Toland, do what
Speaker 4: you got to do. So I did. I had some
Speaker 4: going back from nineteen seventy six up to nineteen eighteen nine,
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety two, nineteen ninety three ones, autographs. I've even
Speaker 4: got some castious Clay ones, but I didn't sell them
Speaker 4: when and I've got the Casti Clary apparently in the
Speaker 4: nineteen sixty the same year he won the Olympic medal. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I was raffling out on the social media and I
Speaker 4: managed to get the money together. I was. I was
Speaker 4: eight hundred pound short. But a very good friend of
Speaker 4: mine she phoned me. He says, how are you getting
Speaker 4: on getting the money? I says, I'm eight hundred pound short.
Speaker 4: She's not not know more you're not, so I'll give
Speaker 4: you a leend of it. So she gave me a
Speaker 4: lender out there and I paid her back within a week.
Speaker 4: I sold another ADDI want and paid her back. So
Speaker 4: Muhammad was helping me even in his past, and he
Speaker 4: was still helping because without Muhammad doing that there to
Speaker 4: give him the autcrafts, I wouldn't have got that money.
Speaker 4: He's there in my heart, you know.
Speaker 2: Working on a book to tell the story of your
Speaker 2: dad in his time with Muhammad.
Speaker 4: Thanks for mentioning that. The book's going to be called
Speaker 4: Paddy Monhan The Rough Diamond. The rough Diamond is what
Speaker 4: my father is called when he's doing the bare knuckle fighting.
Speaker 4: It's not a Muhammad Ali story. It's a Paddy Monahan's
Speaker 4: story about him coming over from Ireland over to England,
Speaker 4: the prejudism that he had to endure, and how he
Speaker 4: getting into the bare knuckle fighting, how the love from
Speaker 4: Samuel Quark and other people, Ernie Danks and Tommy hurd
Speaker 4: Ian Woodley helping my dad to get where he had
Speaker 4: to get to, and then Muhammad Ali coming into my
Speaker 4: father's life. I believe everybody knows that Muhammad Ali story's
Speaker 4: done inside out, back to front. Everybody knows it. But
Speaker 4: now I'm writing about Muhammadaddy where he comes into my
Speaker 4: father's life and their friendship they've got. This is stories
Speaker 4: that people don't know about. One time my dad phoned
Speaker 4: Mohammed and he said he's doing a painting of Muhammed Muhammad.
Speaker 4: He said, make sure you get my pretty side. And
Speaker 4: if you said to my dad, when you get the
Speaker 4: painting done, take a photograph of it and send me
Speaker 4: the photograph. We didn't have a camera at the time,
Speaker 4: so we went to next door neighbor and remember the
Speaker 4: polaroid cameras, Yeah, you got one who was there, took
Speaker 4: the polaroid off the picture and send it over to Muhammad.
Speaker 4: If you phoned my dad up and he said, Padi,
Speaker 4: I love the painting or want you to do something,
Speaker 4: he says, okay, Mahamad, what do you want me do?
Speaker 4: He said, I want you to get some prints done.
Speaker 4: Someone said how many? He told my dad to get
Speaker 4: aid and fifty prints and then one hundred and fifty
Speaker 4: five artist proofs. So my dad done that, took them
Speaker 4: over to America. There was in Barren Springs at the time,
Speaker 4: and Muhammed and my dad signed each and every one
Speaker 4: of them, and Mohammed said, Paddy, there for you, So
Speaker 4: you go and sell them, make some money. My dad
Speaker 4: go especially in Baron Springs where he had Mohammeddad orders memorabilia.
Speaker 4: You say, Paddy, he said, take what you want. My
Speaker 4: Dad says, I'm not going to take nothing. Mhammed he said,
Speaker 4: take everything. He said I can't. He said, why can't, Paddy?
Speaker 4: He said that I want you to take something. He said, Mohammed,
Speaker 4: what I've got? Only a few people has got it
Speaker 4: and you can't buy it. And he says, what's that?
Speaker 4: He says, your friendship. So that says it all, doesn't it.
Speaker 4: My dad didn't take any of the memobilia, but the
Speaker 4: time before, Mohammed gave him a few bits and pieces
Speaker 4: like a boot and the glove and that stuff. It
Speaker 4: was great how he would get my dad to do
Speaker 4: the paint and get Princeton off the painting to sell,
Speaker 4: because that's his way of saying, yeah, Paddy, I gave
Speaker 4: you a little bit there. Saxon was a notorious It
Speaker 4: was a rougher area, but good people, you know, very
Speaker 4: very good people, and the neighbors they appreciated what my
Speaker 4: dad done. Bringing Mohammad over. Muhammed gave my dad a
Speaker 4: walking stick, he committed. He had a black walking stick
Speaker 4: and ebony walking stick. My Dad like yours, that's lovely,
Speaker 4: and Howard had one and he said, well, I've got
Speaker 4: you this stick here too, and he took off of
Speaker 4: Howard and gave it to my dad. And apparently it
Speaker 4: was the walking stick that a president of Mabotu his
Speaker 4: son gave this other stick to Muhammad. It's not like
Speaker 4: a big fancy stick, but still another nice walking stick,
Speaker 4: and he gave it to my father.
Speaker 2: Do you still have it?
Speaker 1: I have.
Speaker 2: He's the sort of guy he didn't give a damn
Speaker 2: about anything, and he knew a lot was saying, who
Speaker 2: both are saying?
Speaker 4: My Dad and Muhammed they never judged a man by
Speaker 4: the color of his skin or the clothes that they wear.
Speaker 4: That's what I like about the pair of them.
Speaker 1: In our next episode, Muhammad loses the greatest love of
Speaker 1: his life, while my life continues to shape shift in
Speaker 1: surprising ways. Also we speak with the young Luivillion, whose
Speaker 1: future sure through happenstance, was molded by his time with Ali.
Speaker 6: And he looked at me and he smiled, and his
Speaker 6: eyes got big, and he reached out his hand like
Speaker 6: I got a gift for you. And I wrapped my
Speaker 6: hand around his hand, and he looked like he didn't
Speaker 6: have any strength left in his body. But when he
Speaker 6: grabbed my hand, I felt a rush of energy. He
Speaker 6: was giving me pieces of his spirit.
Speaker 1: The Tao of Muhammad Ali is produced by Imagine Audio
Speaker 1: for iHeart Podcast and hosted by me Davis Miller. My
Speaker 1: co host is Craig Mortally, Carl Welker, Mark Bouch, Nathan Kloke,
Speaker 1: Davis Miller and Derek Jennings are the executive producers. Produced
Speaker 1: by Craig Mortally, sound design and mixing by Juan Borda,
Speaker 1: music by DJ Sparr and introducing Isaac Miller. Additional music
Speaker 1: is provided by Opera Louisiana's twenty twenty three production of
Speaker 1: Approaching Ali and also Luminescence track Nuage. Visit luminescentmusic dot
Speaker 1: com to check out more from the band. If you
Speaker 1: enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate and review The
Speaker 1: daw of Muhammad Ali on Apple Podcast or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcast