Before he became a larger-than-life, cultural icon the Baby Boom generation embraced with as much or more fervor as The Beatles, Muhammad Ali was a scrawny, scrappy — and, obviously — talented teenager whose promising career got a big boost here in Toledo.
In 1959, at the tender age of 17, Mr. Ali — then known as Cassius Clay — won five light heavyweight division fights in the national Amateur Athletic Union tournament at the Toledo Sports Arena and was named the event’s outstanding boxer.
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In 1960, he repeated that feat by winning another five bouts in his weight class and again being named the AAU’s outstanding boxer. The 1960 AAU tournament was moved to the University of Toledo’s Memorial Field House because the Toledo Sports Arena was hosting a bowling tournament, according to Tom Falvey, a former amateur fighter and former Toledo Golden Gloves president.
Those championships were in addition to many others the soon-to-be-famous teenager from Louisville had won as an amateur in Golden Gloves and other boxing organizations before turning pro after winning a gold medal at the 1960 Olympics in Rome in the light heavyweight division. Cassius Clay was co-captain of that USA Olympic boxing team with Toledo born-and-raised boxing hero Wilbert James “Skeeter” McClure, who won a gold medal in the light middleweight division.
“Clay was very popular here,” Mr. Falvey, a 1954 DeVilbiss High School graduate, said.
He was one of several people interviewed Saturday who said Mr. Ali — far from his brazen, over-the-top cockiness and trash-talking style that eventually earned him the nickname “The Louisville Lip” — was actually a well-mannered teen when he fought during those two AAU tournaments in Toledo.
“He was a gentleman all the way,” Mr. Falvey said. “He was the nicest guy.”
Like Mr. McClure, Mr. Ali was first trained by a police officer who gave a lot of time helping kids get off the street with boxing.
Mr. McClure was trained by the late Ramon “Buddy” Carr, a former Toledo police officer, while Cassius Clay was first trained by Lt. Joe Martin of the Louisville Police Department. Mr. Ali’s success as a professional came from his long association with one of the greatest professional trainers of all time, Angelo Dundee.
Mr. Carr, who died in March, told The Blade in a 2013 interview that Cassius Clay occasionally trained in Toledo as a youth when he wasn’t training in his hometown of Louisville.
Mr. Carr, a 1967 inductee of the Greater Toledo Athletic Hall of Fame, was a coach of an AAU team that went to Europe with Mr. Ali in 1963.
Mr. Carr also said he used to think of Skeeter McClure like a son.
Mr. McClure, 78, amassed a 24-8-1 record as a pro. But whereas Mr. Ali’s success came in athletics and as a world figure on issues such as the Vietnam War and civil rights, Mr. McClure blossomed in academia.
A one-time boxing commissioner, Mr. McClure taught psychology for years at Northeastern University in Boston and at Bentley College in Waltham, Mass., while also maintaining a private practice. He earned his masters and doctoral degrees from Wayne State University after receiving his bachelor’s degree at UT.
Though his life took a much different direction than Mr. Ali’s, Mr. McClure now also finds himself battling a debilitating condition. It’s not Parkinson’s disease, which Mr. Ali was diagnosed with in 1984, but dementia following two strokes in September, 2014, and another in February, 2015, according to Mr. McClure’s younger brother, Jerry McClure, 76, of Gaines, Mich., 20 miles west of Flint.
In an interview with The Blade, Jerry McClure — who boxed with Mr. Ali as an amateur — spoke about his affection for him and how his older brother admired him.
He said he was “sad and glad” to learn of Mr. Ali’s passing.
“Sad that he had to go out the way he went out, but glad that he made his mark on the world,” Jerry McClure said.
He said he and his brother, Skeeter, got their love for boxing from their father, Wilbert Jessie McClure, who tried out for the 1936 Olympics and boxed as a professional under a fake name, Billy Thompson, to keep his parents from finding out. Their father also once was on the same fight card in Detroit as Joe Louis.
Jerry McClure said he knew there was something special about Mr. Ali when he saw him defeat a boxer named Freddie “Preacher” Lewis at the 1960 Olympic trials in San Francisco.
That was one of Mr. Ali’s closest outcomes. Both fighters hit the canvas. Mr. Ali got the nod to fight in the Olympics because of a controversial split decision that may have gone in his favor in part because of his personality, Jerry McClure said.
Mr. Lewis said in a newspaper interview years later he was initially upset, but eventually accepted it as “God’s plan” for him to become an ordained minister.
The following year, Jerry McClure squared up against Mr. Lewis for a U.S. Air Force championship fight and lost.
Skeeter McClure, who has come back to Toledo several times to give speeches, remained friends with Mr. Ali.
In 1994, he arranged to have Mr. Ali come out to his house near Boston. During that visit, Mount Ida College presented Mr. Ali with an honorary doctorate of humanities degree.
Skeeter McClure was honored to have made a big impression on Mr. Ali.
In a 2012 story, he said the former Cassius Clay told him he “liked the way I boxed.”
He said back then that Mr. Ali’s cockiness “was a put-on.”
“He was a great marketer of himself and he was a good young man,” Skeeter McClure said at the time.
He jokingly recalled during that 2012 interview that the 18-year-old Cassius Clay was so afraid of flying in 1960 that he had to be talked into getting on the plane for Rome.
“If God wanted us to fly, he would give us wings,” the youngster kept saying, according to the book Rome 1960, by David Maraniss.
But Skeeter McClure wasn’t the only Toledo-raised fighter who made a big impression on Mr. Ali.
During the 1972 Olympic trials, the Rev. Louis Self said Mr. Ali saw him fight.
“He predicted I would be a sleeper in the Olympics,” according to Reverend Self, senior preacher at Majestic Praise Ministries Church of God in Christ on Richards Road.
Reverend Self lost a controversial split decision in quarterfinal bout to Hungary’s Sotos Andreas at the Munich games.
He called Mr. Ali’s passing “a devastating loss.”
“Muhammad was inspirational,” Revered Self said. “He motivates you. He motivates you into thinking you can’t lose.”
He said Mr. Ali “had a lion’s heart” and “made you feel like he was a warrior.”
“I can truly say he never stopped giving of his life and time,” Reverend Self said. “He championed a lot of causes.”
Reverend Self said he didn’t always agree with Mr. Ali’s views, but admired him for being a man of conviction.
“Whatever he stood for, he stood for it,” he said.
He described Mr. Ali as “the beacon and the light that everyone looked to.”
“Honestly, it’s like a part of my heart just dropped,” Reverend Self said. “I felt like I lost a friend even though I didn’t know him personally.”
Toledo City Councilman Larry Sykes, a state amateur boxing champion in the early 1970s, said Mr. Ali was his idol - one of several people who made a difference in his life and likely kept him away from a life of crime.
In 2010, during the second annual Lucas County Children Services Fatherhood Summit in downtown Toledo, Mr. Sykes broke down crying several times when he recalled how much differently his life could have turned out.
His mother gave him away. He never knew his father. Instead of becoming one of the Toledo area's most visible financial officers, he was a long shot at becoming the community leader he is today, someone who - in addition to city council - also has served on governing boards of Metroparks of the Toledo Area, the Lucas Metropolitan Housing Authority, Toledo Public Schools, and Lucas County Children Services.
"People say I'm a success," Mr. Sykes said at that 2010 event. "Ladies and gentlemen, I submit to you, I was blessed. Had it not been for other folks looking out for me, Larry would have been dead or in jail or on drugs or maybe robbing one of you now."
He told The Blade on Saturday that boxing helped redirect him and that his admiration for Mr. Ali kept him clean and focused.
Mr. Sykes, who fought as a heavyweight, said he emulated Mr. Ali down to the color of his boxing shoes and silk shorts.
“I was told I boxed like Muhammad,” he said. “He was very instrumental in my boxing days. You didn't smoke or drink. You just ran.”
Mr. Sykes got an Olympic tryout in Cincinnati, but lost to future heavyweight champion Larry Holmes.
“We had a very strong boxing team here,” he said.
Mr. Sykes said he recalls meeting Mr. Ali selling cologne in Toledo in the 1980s, after his retirement.
Newspaper clippings also show one of the many trips Mr. Ali made to Toledo included one in 1980 in which he campaigned for then-President Jimmy Carter.
“Muhammad was one everyone aspired to be,” Mr. Sykes said.
He said he still has the image of Mr. Ali lighting the Olympic flame during Opening Ceremonies of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, a tender moment in history witnessed by 3.5 billion television viewers as the former gold medalist fought off the effects of his deepening Parkinson’s disease.
“The greatest thing that's happening now - even in his death - is he has galvanized people and brought them together,” Mr. Sykes said. “He was phenomenal. He was one of a kind...He divided the world and brought it back together.”
Toledo Police Officer Rob Britt was long associated with and formerly ran the city’s Police Athletic League that encourages at-risk youth to take up boxing or other sports.
He said Mr. Ali was the standard that other champions after him were held against.”
“He never fell from grace,” Officer Britt said. “He was the role model that all of our coaches tried to direct kids to.”
Officer Britt said Mr. Ali’s passing is the latest of many cultural icons - from David Bowie to Prince - who have died over the past year.
“It was another blow to our entire culture,” he said.
Two of Mr. Ali’s younger fans, Ruth Leonard and Julian Mack, both of Toledo, remembered the boxing great as they walked around the Old West End Festival on Saturday.
Ms. Leonard said several passersby stopped to comment on her t-shirt, emblazoned with Ali’s famous quote “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,” which she donned it in honor of his death.
“He stood up in the face of adversity, every single time. He was just like a pioneer for the African American community, standing up against the Vietnam War, an amazing boxer,” said Ms. Leonard, a music teacher and graduate student at Bowling Green State University.
She recalled visiting the museum dedicated to the athlete and “realizing how big of a man he was.”
“It wasn’t just boxing, he was just a great human being, and now he’s gone,” she said.
Mr. Mack, a leader of the local Black Lives Matter movement, praised Mr. Ali for taking unpopular stances and drew a parallel to work community activists are doing still.
“The swagger, the swagger was like no one,” Mr. Mack said, of Mr. Ali. “Because he had like the popularity of [Michael] Jordan, the consciousness of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and the courage, of -- I don’t know -- I can’t even think of anybody with courage like that.”
Mr. Ali leaves an inspirational legacy, a call to continue to carry his torch, they said.
“Today’s athletes they hide behind their sport. They don’t speak out against anything, they don’t stand for anything. They’re not bigger than their area,” Ms. Leonard said. “I think maybe his passing will hopefully usher in that next generation of athletes who realize the impact that they have and the importance of what they say.”
The Islamic Center of Greater Toledo is holding a special funeral prayer “for the soul of the legendary Muhammad Ali” at 1:35 p.m. today. All are welcome.
Blade Staff Writer Vanessa McCray contributed to this story.
Contact Tom Henry at: thenry@theblade.com, 419-724-6079, or via Twitter @ecowriterohio.
First Published June 5, 2016, 4:00 a.m.
