[inaudible]

I'm rolling.

This is my first break I got.

[inaudible]

Yeah.

Hmm?

Hmm?

What'd you say?

This is my first break.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Are we rolling?

Okay. Take slate. You wanna go ahead?

Yeah.

Should we ask her to— [unintelligible]

You wanna keep going?

You tell me.

[unintelligible]

[unintelligible]

Can you tell that story?

Hmm?

Get the story—

We got it.

Yeah—

You got it?

We're on yeah.

I'm sorry what were—

What was his first break?

Oh, do you wanna tell us about that? You—

She can't tell you—

No. You, you, you—

Oh—

—you were gonna tell us about that—

Yes, I'll tell you about it. Yeah, this is my first break, I got from my auntie, when I was eighteen months old. I was born in her house in Mississippi. And, my mother gave me to her and her husband, Cleveland Moore. And, they raised—

Wh—, when you heard from your momma?

Me and my sister—

Hmm?

What is it?

When have you heard from your momma?

Day before yesterday—

Yeah—

—she called me up. Yeah, she's alright. And so, we were raised as the Moore children. My father's name was Thomas Wright and my mother's name was Lorena Wright. So, we grew up as the Moore children. We, they gave us a new name, Auntie, Aunt Willie, and Uncle Cleveland. And I grew up as Archie Lee Moore and I would make that name as famous as I could, and as respected as I could, In my life. I got off the track a time, one time, but I got it back on. And, from then on, I've been trying to help other young men and other young boys keep on the right road, right track, and do some things that would be worthwhile for themselves and their families, stay out of trouble. I have a wife Joan, and her poor mother died a few days ago and she's been gone, and left the youngsters here with me, the children with me. And, Anthony, he's twenty. Reena is twenty-eight I believe. Joan—

Let me sit on my back.

Okay Auntie—

Okay.

—you sit down. Okay.

—twenty-seven. So, I'm here. And I miss my wife too. She's a great, great friend of mine. Great lover. Great wife. Great mother. And, sometimes I feel so alone in this big house. This is thirteen rooms. And, I never felt quite so alone as when she's away. So I hope she'll come back, this week sometimes.

How lo— You, you told us earlier that you've been here since 1940 in this house, did you have it built?

No, oh this house. Yeah this, this house, I had built it, but I came here 1940. And I, I bought a, it was a log cabin. It was quite unique because it was a, a steakhouse at the time. Al's Steakhouse. And I bought it, I turned into Archie Moore's chicken shack. It was a chicken shack for sometime. And then, I decided that I would not go into the chicken shack business, because it would distract from my boxing. And boxing was something that I had said, and promised myself that I was going to be the champion of the world. And I had earned the rating of the number five contender in the world, at a time when there was only eight divisions. Now there must be at least twenty divisions. So I had to make some speed, make some haste, not speed, haste. You know, some people take those words for granted. So I had to make haste [missing frames] [missing frames] [missing frames]nd win the championship. It took me from 1936 to 1952 to win the championship, which was my goal in life. And I won the championship, and I decided that I would keep it as long as I could. And I kept it for nine-and-a-half years . [Note Interview gathered as part of Black Champions; Episode 2]

And I fought several of the good fighters in, in that day and time. The most famous one, I suppose, was Marciano. And I fought Cassius Clay on his way up. And that is the one that stopped my, stopped my career because I had boxed twenty-seven years when I met Cassius Clay, who later changed his name to Muhammed Ali. And a lot of times people said, Did Muhammed stop you? And I said, No. Yes he did, yes he did. I say, Look it up in the record book. The record book always shows Cassius Clay won over Archie Moore, four rounds. So, so I had a wonderful career, a wonderful boxing career. I traveled a lot of places. I went to Africa for three years. And, I was tempted to learn to speak the language, but then I, I didn't want to stay over there, and I might have become so fascinated by Africa. It is a beautiful place. And I don't understand why the superpowers can't give the African nations something that they owe. They came in and they ravaged the place. They cut up Africa in to parts like a fried chicken. And, then, when they left Africa and they formed the world's nation, and decided to left Africa go back on its own, they gave her nothing. They gave her no, no kind of reimbursement. And they left a lot of poor black people over there. And they're struggling, trying to make it now. And the people are dying like flies in, in Egypt and some—, Sudan, and some of the places where the children are starving. And I thought that, it was a very noble thing that the, the movie people got together and made that song "We Are The World" and made a great contribution to these people. Anyway, in the bible, you can look and, perhaps you can see, it said feed, feed the people. And so this is what they, they're trying to do, trying to help feed those little babies. And some of them are so gone, far gone, they can't even take food, they can't even eat. And this is, it's a shame, it's pitiful. I would suggest, I would implore, I would ask, I would beg The United States to give them five or six thousand tractors, and caterpillars, and men to go over there and teach those people how to run it. And, and repair them in case of breakdowns, and when, when they will break down. And this will be lead, [watch alarm sound] this is what I would call self-help. If you give people, like the saying goes, if you give people a fish, he'll eat a fish, and ask you for another one the next meal. But if you give a guy a pole and teach him how to fish, he'll be able to catch his own fish. So, teach the people how to plow those fields. Give them the, the, the machinery to do it with you see, and, and send some know-how over there to help them make dams. Dam up the water and pipe the water to the places where it's, where there is no water. And you'll see some happy faces, those that survive. But, this seems to be, me, a way that, that America and the rest, rest of the powers, are starving people to death. I said it. I can't take it back. I don't wanna take it back. [rollout on camera roll] [wild audio] Let somebody work on it, let some of the senators, congressmen, president, let them work on it.

Changing.

Cut.

We're gonna have to change rolls.

Speed.

We're on. Hit it.

Okay, doctor.

Who's that?

Okay, Mr. Moore our film, the film we're making is about champions, people who have been champions in twentieth century, and you were one of the premier champions in the sport of boxing. I wonder if you could, for the beginning of this section, trace your career for us. Can you remember your first effort to box, or first time you had boxing gloves on?

Well, I can remember the first time I needed to know how to box. It was when I was in Mississippi and my auntie had taken me to see my grandparents. And, the younger children decided that they should go down to a stream and wade in the pool and swim or something. So, that was a very nice thought as far as I was concerned. And, so my cousin was watching them walk across the field to go down to the swimming hole where the trees were. And he brought a swayback horse up to the porch for me to get on and said, Get on and let's ride down. And I stepped off the porch on this horse's back and I rode down with him, and when we got down to the swimming pool he jumped off, and I was up on the horse. And, there was a little boy, a little white boy that ran out of the bush, and took a switch and [makes sound effect] and hit the horse over the face, and this was an old horse. He just raised his feet off the ground, I guess about so high, but I thought, I had a good, imaginative mind, and I thought that, well, this was the way Tom makes his horse to stand up on his hind legs and paw. And, one time I saw a horse fall backwards and roll over, OK, and, so I jumped off the horse real quick, and I grabbed the little boy on the collar and I shook him. I said, What'd you do that for, what'd you do that for. He was my same, my age, we were both seven years old, seven years old, and he began to cry. And I said, Don't do that no more. So I thought I had punished him enough, all I did was shake him, and so, it was all right. So then, I looked up, and I saw the dust going up, of the pathway. Everybody was running home to tell auntie and all the grandparents and the cousins that I was in a fight. So when I got up there, I tried to drag but he wouldn't go, so I walked on up and the horse followed me, and, and I got the porch. My auntie, my dear auntie, she said to me, What did you hit the white boy for? I said, I didn't hit him. She said, Auntie said this, she said, Don't you lie to me. Now Auntie and I are the greatest together, and I wouldn't lie to Auntie, so I was kind of stunned that she didn't believe me. So I said the only word that I knew that would make it right. I said, Auntie, honest, I didn't hit him. Then she realized that I was telling the truth, or I meant to tell the truth, and I was telling the truth. So she said, Come on in here, and she called me into the room. And so she said, What did you do? She, voice calmed down. I said, Well Auntie I, all I did was shake him. He tried to hit my horse and the horse ran up, and, and looked like he might fall on me, so I get him off, and got off the horse, and I shook him, that's all, I didn't hit him. She said, Well don't you know you ain't supposed to lay your hands on white people. I said, Well Auntie, he hit my horse. She said, That don't mind, that don't mind. You know what they did to colored man, that's what they used to call black folk in them days, you know what they do to colored folks. I said, No. She said, They lynch them. She said, Well only last, couple of months ago they lynched a colored man. I said well, I didn't know what lynching was. You're seven years old, how would I know what lynching means? I said, Well what they do? She said, They put oil on him and they burned him, and hung him on a tree, and then they dragged his body behind, through town, on a car, behind a car. And that was pretty tough stuff to listen to so I told auntie that I was ready to go home. We were supposed to go back to St. Louis on excursion. So she said we'll get out of here then. I said, I'm ready to go. I was through with Mississippi. And then, we left, and we went to St. Louis. Lo and behold a couple of days later, Auntie was making some homemade ice cream, she had made up the making for it, and I went down to the ice house in a little old wagon that I had made together with board nails and a box and some wheels, and had it full of chips and was bringing it home. And I was pulling this box behind me getting home before [missing frames]

all the ice melted, so Auntie could freezed ice cream, homemade ice cream. If you have ever eaten homemade ice cream you really had something nice. And I heard a noise, but there was, it was behind a fence. So I tipped over to the fence, and I peeked through the fence, and I could see two black men, big, beautiful, they were beautifully built, and they had gloves on and they were fighting it out. And a crowd was yelling and screaming. That was what was making the noise. The crowd was making the noise. I stood at the fence and I was just frozen to the fence. I, I didn't no nothing else from then on, that I wanted to be one of those guys. I wanted to be a champion of the world. I wanted to be a fighter. [Note Interview gathered as part of Black Champions; Episode 2] [missing frames]

That's what I want to be. And so I didn't know how to tell it, break it to Auntie, so I didn't [wild noise], I kept it to my secret, kept it to my heart a long, long time. Then, every chance I'd get I'd be out shadowboxing and hitting at people and swinging my arms and fists around. And I guess Auntie thought I was a health nut or something, but, nevertheless, I soon knew a man, got to know a man who lived in, in the same block named Battling Johnson, who was an ex-boxer, he was an old boxer. As I look back in retrospect now, he was just a mediocre boxer, and, to me he was great. And he used to tell me things about fighting and other fighters and Jack Johnson and all those people that were fighting, and would stimulate me, stimulate me, kept me just motivated and up high all the time. I wanted to fight, fight, fight, fight, it's all I wanted to do. And finally, after I got to be about thirteen years old, I was going through a park and some Italian boys were playing softball and they knocked the softball way out in the street, and I was in the street coming home from school. I picked it up and the guy ran up, the outfielder ran to me and said, Throw it here, throw it here. And I threw out way over there trying to throw the guy out at second base, and the guys got mad. And we got to fighting out there, and then I saw the rest of the gang coming after me and I cut out, and I was gone. And I said, I'm gonna quit running one of these days. I'm gonna start fighting back. I said no prize fighter runs. [laughs]

I wanna get up.

And so—

Let's cut it.

Cut.

Somebody want's to leave.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Let's go.

All right

Bye Auntie. Buh-Bye. Take care of yourself okay?

Oh Emmanuel's here.

How's it going Mr. Moore?

Hello [unintelligible]

We're rolling.

Okay.

So you, you were telling us, that you decided, you'd done enough running and that you were gonna learn how to fight—

I'm gonna learn how to fight, and I'm gonna get serious about it. And so, I began to take boxing lessons from a man named Edgar Bell, who lived a couple of doors from us and between he and Kid Roberts I really learned how to box pretty good for a youngster at thirteen, fourteen years of age. I used to fight, I used to put my gloves on my shoulder and go across town looking for fights. I'd fight men twenty years old, and sometimes older than that if they really wanted to fight. And I would never run anymore, and so, pretty soon, I got to be pretty good. I had a good reputation for fighting. Then, came a big blow. I got in with the wrong crowd, and was caught doing some petty thievery, and I had to pay for that, by spending nineteen months in Booneville Reformatory for boys. And, incidentally, just last month I made a visit to Booneville, for the second time, and it had changed to, from a, an industrial school for youths, it had changed to a holding place for, for young criminals. And, and I met all the people down there. I talked with them, and I gave some boxing lessons and so it was like old homecoming week for me. I had a good time there, and, and I went to eight other penal institutions in Missouri under Dr. Black, under Dr. Richard, I mean Dr. Leroy Black who's the superintendent of all the institutions in Missouri. And, he's a very fine man.

Okay.

We gotta reload.

We gotta change ma—

[unintelligible] all right.

Okay.

Whenever you're ready sir.

Well I was—

Oh, sorry.

Did we cut?

What's up?

We just cut off for some re—

Speed?

Hit it.

Okay.

When you're ready sir.

Soon after my release from Booneville, I decided that I had to pursue what I had dreamed about so long, that of becoming a world champion. So where was I to go? I had only a mere amateur's knowledge of boxing, and I would then go the St. Louis Argus. They had a golden gloves for The Argus. And I didn't get an opportunity to get in, in to that tournament, but the man that was supposed to have defeated me in a gymnasium workout got the chance to fight, and he won The Argus golden gloves, Argus golden gloves again. And, his name was Julius Kemp. And one day, a coincidence happened, a man named Benny Kessler, Sal Kessler, and Harry Kessler, these were the Kessler brothers. One, Harry Kessler, is a famous ex-referee, or referee, who refereed my bout for Marciano. He was promoting amateur matches in those days in backyards and ballparks and different places, small places. And, he was also in, in metal, he's a metallurgist. And he had a card that he needed somebody to fight this boy who had one this title, Julius Kemp. And I had my first recognized, recorded amateur fight of a nature, of a golden glover, I thought that I would challenge his man, Julius Kemp. And he made the match. And I got in to the ring with Julius Kemp and we had one great first round, and it looked like it was about even. In the second round, I got the better of the second round. In the third round I hit Julius Kemp with a hook in the jaw, and I knocked, lifted him off the floor and he fell flat off his back, and they counted ten, they could've counted twenty, and I won that fight. So now, I have to go and see the boys on the corner. I want to go and see the boys on the corner tomorrow morning when the paper comes out. So I got up early that morning, three o'clock in the morning, and went and got— they call the papers in that early, the bulldog, I got the bulldog [laughs]. I looked in it and I said, saw there, Julius Kemp knocked Archie Moore out. I said, What? The paper misprinted it. It was a misprint, that Kemp knocked me out in the third round. And, I didn't know anything about going down and making them retract it, so I told George about it. And George said, I saw it. He said, Let's go over to The Argus, because The Argus will print it up real big on the, Argus was the colored paper. And, and black paper. And, and they would print it up big on Saturday, and rectify this mistake. And so, The Argus came out Saturday and said, the erroneous report that the globe democrat had, that Kemp knocked Archie out is a mistake. Archie Moore knocked Kemp out. So I cut that clip out, clipping out and I put it in my wallet and I carried it around all day. And all that week let the boys know that I'd really knocked Kemp out and it was a mistake that they had printed in the paper. But then my career started, and I fought about thirteen amateur fights. Then I said, There is no money in amateur fighting, so I gotta make some money , cause I wanted to buy Auntie a little house. I told Auntie I was gonna buy her a little white house. And— [missing frames]

And, and so I started fighting as a pro. So it does— it might sound glamorous they way I said it, just started fighting as a pro, but my first pro fight I wound up owing the state two dollars for a license .

I think my manager, we fought on percentage, and, and my manager got ten dollars for our purse, which, all the money that was left. And, the next fight we had, next fight we had, we had in, in Ponc— Ponca City, Oklahoma, got thirty-five dollars for fighting a man named Ham Pounder.

And, I would up with ten dollars of that money after I got home, with expenses and things what they were [laughs]. My manager's got some fees seconds and so forth. But, I kept going, kept going, and sometimes I fought for nothing . [Note Interview gathered as part of Black Champions; Episode 2]

I fought over in to a schoolhouse one day in a little town near the border of Arkansas. And, I fought a boy over there, great big heavyweight, and I weighed a hundred and fifty-two pounds, and I was real slender and skinny. And, but I could still hit like a mule. I could hit hard as a heavyweight then. And I knocked this boy out in a couple rounds. And, they passed the hat around and I think they took about four dollars. And they gave me the money, and so we left. So, if Kessler had known that he would've probably said that I was fighting as, you know, I could, I couldn't fight back in, in, in, in the amateurs anymore, which I was fighting bootleg pro fights then. And, but I kept fighting, I kept fighting and then pretty soon Felix Thurman, a man, said he wanted to take me to California to fight. So we got on the road, we had thirty-seven dollars leaving St. Louis, Missouri. We left St. Louis with thirty-seven dollars in cash, two oranges, a case of Coca-Cola, and two sacks of peanuts, and had a wreck before we got in to Oklahoma good, near Ponca City Oklahoma. We turned the car over to keep from hitting, hitting the guy head on, and my wrist was cut all the way across. And it come within just seconds of severing my, the veins here, these, these veins. I mean the leaders. And, as luck would have it, if you believe in, in the lord, a car pulled up right behind where we were and stopped. And two men jumped out and both of them had on white jackets. They were interns, young interns. They had two girls in the back of the car, and they were going to the hospital. And they took me to the hospital. That was the kind of luck I had, because the blood was spurting, spurting, spurting out of my right wrist. And he said, Well if we had not come along, might have been some dire results. And so, Felix had the thirty-seven dollars, less the money that he spent into the tank going down, so he had to pay this man twenty dollars of that money to pull us out of the ditch, in those days. And, but Felix was a great mechanic, great mechanic, and he dired a car to stop on him. So when he got the car up on the roadside and Felix put, drove it on in to town to the hospital where I was, the doc—, to the doctor's office where I was, then we left. And Felix wired his wife, who worked out in service here, like the black women at the time, worked for the white folks, and, in the kitchen, and—

So now your—

So after several days on the road borrowing money, wiring for money, we finally made it into San Diego, just in time to see the coliseum burn down, and we had to go up to Los Angeles to get some fights. And, and one of the promoters up there said we got too many colored boys around here now. We've got fifty colored boys waiting in line for a fight, and you bring this man up here to, to get a fight. Said, There's no fight. He said, Why don't you go and get a job. He said, And if you get two, I'll take one of them. So that was an insult to me that I never forgot. And I said to myself, I'll make him pay for that. So I went to San Diego and we waited, we fought outdoors down here, and I, I knocked out a boy named Ray Vargas. And then they said, Well you've got to fight the bandit Romero. He was a tough man, rated [wild sound] number five, number five in light heavyweight division and he was bigger than I was. And so I boxed him. And, I was knocked down twice. My mouth was busted up and he cut me up pretty good and won the decision, but I, I made a good comeback in the last two rounds that warranted a rematch. I knew I could beat him. And, and the second fight we fought after the built the coliseum back about seven months later, and I knocked, I knocked Romero out in eight rounds. And then from then I was going on because I was rated in it from then I went to Australia and I beat all the fighters in Australia. I beat the light heavyweight, heavyweight, and the middle weight champion over there, as a middleweight. And, I came back. I was rated number five in the world. And then, from then on I began my quest for the championship.

And, after fighting Ezzard Charles, Jimmy Bivins, and Curtis "Hatchetman" Sheppard, a lot of the fighters that nobody would fight in their right mind,

I finally got an opportunity, after my thirty-sixth year, birthday, to fight Joey Maxim in St. Louis, in the town where I started. And I decisioned Maxim, and I thought that I won thirteen out of the fifteen rounds, but yet you see when the total votes was, points were gathered in , the same referee Harry Kessler, who gave me the fight with Kemp back in the amateur days, voted that I had eighty-two points and Kemp had seventy-eight. He was pretty close to me, and the fight was nowhere near close . [Note Interview gathered as part of Black Champions; Episode 2] And, I fought Maxim three times, two more chances to give, I gave him for the title, the title. And then I decided, three times fighting a guy like Maxim was enough. And Maxim was a good fighter, he was one of the shrewdest fighters and toughest fighters in, in the fighting, whole fighting career. He, he was only knocked out once, and he was knocked out by a dangerous hitter, one boy, one man that I had beaten years ago, Curtis "Hatchetman" Sheppard. And, Sheppard knocked him out in one round. And he came back two months later and beat Sheppard. Then, Maxim also fought Ray Robinson, after Ray Robinson played like the dog crossing the bridge, had a bone in his mouth. Ray Robinson was the champion of the world, the welterweight champion of the world, the idol of all Harlems everywhere and all the black people. And they said that he's one of the greatest of all time. And, Ray Robinson snatched Maxim away from me when I was closing in on Maxim in 1952. Ray Robinson snatched Maxim right out of the, my grasp and fought Maxim in the polo grounds in New York City, and it was a hundred and four degrees. And I fought Clarence Henry, the number three rated heavyweight in the world at that time, on the same night in Baltimore, and it was just as hot in Baltimore as it was in New York City. And, in Clarence Henry's corner there was an oxygen tank giving him Oxygen every round, but I won every round from, from Clarency Henry, and I didn't use any kind of air, but the hot air that was out there. Joey Maxim exhausted Ray Robinson and then knocked him out. And, Ray Robinson claims he fainted, and Maxim always says, It was just as hot for me as it was for him,

in the ring so, [laughs]. Ray Robinson reminded me of the dog who crossed the bridge and had a bone in his mouth, and he looked down and he saw a shadow of a dog, with another dog, with a bigger bone, so he dropped that bone and leaped in to the water and didn't get anything. He came up with nothing.

And so, then I began to hunt Marciano. And after a good long while, I had to fight a,

a heavyweight named, a heavyweight, the Cuban heavyweight Nino Valdez weighing two hundred and nineteen pounds. I beat Nino Valdez. Nino weighed two hundred and nineteen pounds. I weighed about two hundred at the time, putting on a lot of weight. Then, eight weeks later I reduced and fought a, a Bobo Olson at a hundred and seventy-three pounds. And then, seven weeks later I boxed Rocky Marciano. This is all in 1955. And, I lost to Marciano by knockout in the ninth round of a thrilling fight. And that was just about my career . [Note Interview gathered as part of Black Champions; Episode 2]

Cut. Let's cut for just a second. When we come back—

My career when I fought Marciano, but it wasn't—

It wasn't, you came back—

Okay we're good

Nineteen, in December 1958 you fought the Canadian, Yvon Durelle, some people think that was one of the greatest fights of the century. Would you tell us about it?

[missing frames] Well, naturally after fighting Marciano, a man is supposed to be all banged up and finished, ready for anybody else. And so I got a opportunity to fight Yvon Durelle, a Canadian from Montreal. And we fought a sensational fight there .

And, it was cold that night , and I thought that maybe, well I better not go out and warm up in the ring because after the introductions and everybody taking a bow in the ring, then I'll get cold while the introductions are going on, and then I'll be cold and he might catch me cold, so I said I'll be clever and I'll wait until I get into the ring and then I'll start warming up, you know, as the fight progressed .

When I got into the ring it was about thirty-five degrees in the inside of the auditorium .

It was ten degrees below outside, and I was cold. And, and Durelle caught me a right hook on the jaw, and boy, the back of my head hit the floor. And I said, Oh, I've had it now, because it seemed like a fracture .

And I said, If I can just make it, if I can just make it, and, and, and go out trying,

go out swinging. And I got up, and down I went again. And I said this guy can really hit. And he knocked me down one more time, the third time, and I said fuck, and I began to pray, I said, Oh God help me get up, let me get up and go out fighting . I was willing, I was willing to go out, if I could just get an opportunity to fight back some, hit this guy a little bit [laughs].

And I got up, and we struggled a bit, and then the bell rang. And, after the bell rang, I went to my corner. I didn't know where I was. And Doc Kearn began to slap me around [laughs] to get me, get me woken up, and so

wake up. And so, after the next round, I began to move away from the guy. I could hear Dick Holland, Stick away from him, stick him, move away from him, stick him, move, carry him around in a circle. Move him around in a circle and stick him, and that's what I did. That's what I did. And I kept doing that until around the fourth round, and then I woke up a little bit. In the fifth round I began to go into the guy, and I got, knocked me down again .

So this time I was in, I was warmed up and I was in, in control of my faculties and so I said [watch alarm noise], well now I'm gonna get this guy . [Note Interview gathered as part of Black Champions; Episode 2]

And I got right up in the sixth round, and I went right to him. And in the seventh round I knocked him down. And eighth round, ninth round was probably one of the best rounds of the whole fight even without a knockdown. And, the tenth round I drop, dropped him in the tenth round. And in the eleventh round I knocked him out again. And that was it. And so I thought that this was, be a good way , this would be a good way indeed

to close out a career. I'd fought a long time, and I'd fought honorably, and fought honestly, and I, a lot, a good win streak, I had fought, I would close out on a sensational fight. It would be nice. And so, but, things don't always work out the way you'd like for them to work out financially. And in finding myself in a lot of debt, I said I have to fight somebody else. This was a couple years later, then I fought, fought Cassius Clay. This was before he changed his name. And then, after I boxed Cassius Clay and lost the fight I said, Well, goodbye . [Note Interview gathered as part of Black Champions; Episode 2]

Cut. Let's cut here and do the championship. [watch alarm noise]

Sorry, start it again.

Hit it again. Hit it.

When you're ready.

Well after I decided to call it a day, and I looked around to sum up what I had accomplished in being a champion, the champion meant that I had my self-esteem, my self-respect, the respect of other people and that I could, indeed, retire as a champion in the light heavyweight division and still go out and help young men like Manuel and, and anyone else who wanted to learn to box. I could go into different prisons

and things, and be accepted as one of the fellas there and, and do a lot of things that I could to help people.

We're out. We're out.

Okay that was good.

That's fine.

Thank you.

That's fine.

I've got—

Hit it. Okay check your pilot

Pilot's on.

Ready? Go ahead.

[laughs]. That's enough. I've had it. That's me.

You've got pilot?

Yep.