Cruel Ali With All The Skills

From the fifth round to the end of the fight Clay moved in close. He had remained well away from Terrell before this, gauging the length of the left. After he had marked the outer limits of the long jab, he moved up so that Terrell's left time and again missed his face by only an inch or so. Then Clay began to plant himself, hitting with the flat-footed power that had disposed of Cleveland Williams . The hard, rapid-fire punches occasionally jarred Terrell's hands apart so that Clay was able to finish off a flurry with a left or right uppercut between Terrell's hands.

In the sixth round he stabbed Terrell through these openings with sharp left hands, but there was no visible damage, and Terrell fought back.

But early in the seventh, now fighting as close to Terrell as he pleased and almost ignoring the threat of the left hand, Clay slammed a series of punches against the side of Terrell's head, and Terrell momentarily opened his guard. When he did, Clay lifted him with a short, immensely powerful right uppercut that caught him flush. The punch opened a deep, bloody gash over Terrell's right eye. Terrell staggered crabwise across the ring, where he splayed out on the ropes. Clay waited and then hit him in the face again, this time with a violent left hook.

Terrell was dazed and floundering, but he retained enough of his senses to bring his hands up once more to protect his head. Perhaps too eager now, Clay wasted himself with a fruitless, wild bombardment that bounced harmlessly off Terrell's gloves. Bleeding heavily, Terrell almost unbelievably survived. He regained his composure so well that he finished the round with a strong rally of his own in which he managed to hit Clay with a good right hand.

For the next eight rounds, however, the question in this fight was whether Terrell would be able to avoid being knocked out. The offensive spurt at the end of the seventh was the last truly aggressive move he made. For the rest of the fight he seemed groggily, grimly determined to accept whatever punishment Ali administered, and he fought back only in curious, desperate bursts that were oddly sad to watch.

Muhammad Ali recognized this as surely as Terrell must have, and he showed clearly the cruel streak that has recently become a dominant factor in his character. After the seventh round he knew that he could not lose the fight. He taunted Terrell throughout the eighth round by coming well within the range of the now almost useless left hand and yelling, "What's my name! What's my name!" The question stemmed from Terrell's refusal to recognize the Muslim name that had been given to Clay by his leader, Elijah Muhammad . Each time the question was followed by a tattoo of lefts and rights to Terrell's head. At the end of the eighth, as the bleeding and beaten Terrell plodded hopelessly after him, Clay stopped, glanced at the clock and yelled, "Uncle Tom."

Then Clay punished Terrell ruthlessly. It might have been well to have stopped the fight as no contest—and many in the crowd, wincing at the flow of blood, were yelling for it to be stopped, but it went on remorselessly. Terrell shuffled forward hopelessly, peering mistily through his upraised hands while Clay baited him, moving just beyond his reach and hitting him.

At the beginning of the 10th round Clay stood in front of Terrell and tapped himself gently on the jaw as though he were promising Terrell that this is where the blow would land to knock the WBA champion out. Despite the terrible" punishment, Cassius never managed to fulfill the prediction.

By the 12th round Dundee was yelling at Clay, "Finish him! Finish him!" And Sam Solomon , the round, gray-haired Negro who trains Terrell, was yelling at his fighter, "Hit him! Hit him! You got nothing to lose now!" He certainly did not. But just as certainly Terrell had nothing left with which to go after Clay. Only some dim determination to finish kept him on his feet.

Between the 13th and 14th rounds Harry Kessler , the referee, leaned over and called for a doctor to examine Terrell's right eye. A bald-headed man in a red coat climbed to the apron of the ring and leaned part way through the ropes for a quick glance at the cut and then climbed down again. Kessler called down to a friend at ringside. "It isn't a bad cut," he said.