Nov. 12, 1964 - There will be honey and traps for the Bear, said Muhammad Ali today, but a man who is pretty and fast has to look ahead — to lettuce and carrots for the Rabbit and a bucket and mop for the Washerwoman.
The Bear is Sonny Liston, who Ali says will drop in the first round next Monday at the Boston Garden. Floyd Patterson is the Rabbit, the next to go after the Bear, and then will come George Chuvalo, whose windmill style of punching reminds the champion of a woman at a scrubbing board.
The nicknames were not quite so impressive as the 22‐year‐old heavyweight champion himself, bigger and seemingly faster than he was in Miami Beach earlier this year when he was preparing for his first bout with Liston. In two rounds with Harvey (Cody) Jones (left), a vintage sparmate, Ali moved with speed and assurance, rocking the 215‐pound Detroit boxer with quick combinations to the head, dancing lightly away from his jabs, and spinning off the ropes with an apparently careless attitude toward protecting his stomach.
Ali has been training in an annex to the Boston Arena, in the once posh Back Bay section of town. The annex, which seats several hundred, is used for wrestling once a week.
Surrounded by a moving buttress of Boston Muslims, Ali arrived a few minutes after 2 p.m. and worked out for an hour. Among his attendants was Stepin Fetchit, who wore a rubber skull cap, battered fedora, and white turtleneck sweater; and Bundini, the assistant trainer whose light T-shirt is emblazoned with the refrain, “Float Like A Butterfly, Sting Like A Bee.”
The crowd, quiet and attentive, seemed pleased by Ali’s spirited workout. The Muslims ushered them out abruptly when Ali, now showered and dressed, held his daily news conference. The champion, flanked by Fetchit and Bundini, expressed pleasure at reports of Liston’s excellent physical condition.
“He’ll have no excuses,” said Ali.
Then Fetchit, the 72-year‐old movie comedian, started to shout. He had been called an Uncle Tom, he said, and “Uncle Tom was not an inferior Negro. He was a white man’s child. His real name was MacPherson and he lived near Harriet Beecher Stowe. Tom was the first of the Negro social reformers and integrationists. The inferior Negro was called Sambo.”
While interviewers shifted uncomfortably, Ali shouted, “What’s the matter? Write it down! Your pencils paralyzed?” Bundini laughed.
“Nobody,” screamed Fetchit, shifting gears, “asks Liston if he’s a Communist.”
“Is Liston a Communist?” someone asked.
“I don’t know,” said Fetchit.
Ali stepped in then. Looking up from sipping tea from a paper container, he said that most of the people around Liston “looked like gangsters,” and the Muslims around Ali, their eyes scanning the crowd, nodded.
“And this fight is just a stepping stone to the Rabbit, to Patterson,” said Ali.
“Thank you, champ, thank you, champ,” chanted a Muslim, as if he were ending a Presidential news conference. And with that, the Muslims started herding the interviewers out, forming a protective pocket for the champion to slip into.
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