166. Muhammad Ali

0:00SPEAKER_02:One of the most important things that can determine the trajectory of your life, whether you are a person of action or a person of inaction, whether you take life in your own hands or or you let the world control it for you, comes back to one thing. The story you tell yourself. Cassius Clay was born in 1942 when it wasn't a great time to be a black man in America. And in his biography, he described he's described as making a very quick judgment and interpretation about the world.

0:26SPEAKER_02:That the world was for the white man. He recognized it long before he could have understood it as he watched his mother return home exhausted after caring for white families, then summoning energy to care for her own. The clays were black or colored, to use the term more commonly applied at the time, and the racial designation determined where they could eat, where they could shop, where they could work, where they could send their children to school, where they could live, how they would be treated if they broke the law, how they would be cared for if they got sick.

0:53SPEAKER_02:And the older he got, the more Clay saw how the world really was and how his skin color directly impacted how he was treated and what he could and couldn't do in this world. And he often went to bed just qua crying and wondering why his kind of people had to suffer, why they were treated this way. And if there was one thing that Cassius Clay Jr. wanted when he was growing up, if there was one thing that he was after that he talked about more than anything in the world, it was money.

1:20SPEAKER_02:He wanted to be a rich man. He wanted to make loads of cash. But it was a thought and goal that his dad often shot down very quickly. One day, Cassius asked his father, Why can't I be rich? Look there, his father told him, touching the boy's walnut-colored hand. That's why you can't be rich. It wasn't because he was born poor, it wasn't because he didn't have access to education, it wasn't because he lacked agency. Cassius couldn't be rich, his dad told him, because he was a black man born in the 1940s.

1:49SPEAKER_02:And without a doubt, the statement held some truth to it. Life was going to be harder for him, he would he would have to work harder because of his skin color, and he would have fewer opportunities simply because of who he was. But to Cassius, that simply didn't matter. The story, even if it was true, wasn't going to hold true in his mind. And Cassius is described as the following. But every son comes to believe he can be more than his father, that he is not beholden to his position in the line of his ancestors, not tethered to that soul-crushing narrative formed in a past beyond his control.

2:20SPEAKER_02:And Cassius Clay Jr. was no exception. At an early age, he talked about owning a$100,000 house on a hill with fancy cars in the garage, with a chauffeur to drive him around, with n with a chef to prepare his meals. He vowed to buy one house for his parents and another for his brother. He would keep a quarter of a million dollars in the bank for emergencies. With the story his father told him, Cassius easily could have believed he couldn't make it, or he couldn't be a rich man, or he or he couldn't do things because of the color of his skin.

2:48SPEAKER_02:Cassius could have told himself that life was predetermined for him, that that what happened in the past to others was was going to happen to him. Cassius easily, like many do, could have given in to the story his father told him. But Cassius, well aware of the handicaps he would have to deal with in this world and aware of how his people were treated, decided to tell himself a different story, that he could make it in a white man's world, that he could succeed, that he could be rich, that he could do what others thought he couldn't do.

3:16SPEAKER_02:All because of the story he was willing to tell himself. This is the life of an American idol, Cassius Clay Jr., now known as Muhammad Ali.

3:31SPEAKER_01:I am great!

3:39SPEAKER_00:Nothing in life is worthwhile unless you take risks.

4:03SPEAKER_02:In episode 95, I dove into Mike Tyson's rise to becoming the youngest heavyweight champion ever. And one of the unique things about his story is how a low point in his life led to the thing that would ultimately change his life forever. Tyson was born into a rough area in Brooklyn, and he got involved in the wrong crowds from a very young age. He started to commit crimes at a very young age. His behavior was very erratic. He got into drugs and stuff.

4:28SPEAKER_02:And he gets so bad that he ends up getting sent to a confinement program called Tyron at 13, 14 years old to hopefully fix his behavior at this point. And it's there where his life would change forever. Tyson recalls I was in isolation, but there was a tiny window in the door, and I'd hear some inmates walking by. Hey, what's going on out there? I yelled. One of the guys told me that they had just finished sparring with Mr. Stewart, one of the guards.

4:50SPEAKER_02:I had heard about Bobby Stewart. He had a boxing program, and everyone who was in it was always laughing and happy. He'd make the kids miss with a punch, and they'd fall down and everybody would crack up. I decided I wanted to get in on that program. And it was how Mike Tyson was introduced to boxing by being sent to this confinement program for troubled kids, which would often be viewed as a very low point in your life. And and in a very similar way, it would be one of the low moments in the life of Cassius Clay that would introduce him to the sport of boxing at just 12 years old.

5:21SPEAKER_02:Late one afternoon in October 1954, 12-year-old Cassius pedaled his bike through downtown Louisville when a sudden rain forced the boys to seek shelter. They scrambled into the Columbia Auditorium at 324 South 4th Street. The Louisville Auditorium was sponsoring a home service exposition, but Cassius wasn't interested in the latest kitchen gadgets, but the exposition offered refuge from the storm, and the boys happily gobbled up their free popcorn and candy.

5:46SPEAKER_02:It rained all afternoon, and it was still pouring at around 7 p.m. when Cassius, Rudy, and their friend finally left the auditorium, but when they got outside, they discovered their bicycles gone. They ran up and down the block searching for the thieves. Cassius began to cry frightened, he said, of what my father would do. Cassius' bike had been a Christmas present, a Schwin Cruiser deluxe, red and white with chrome fenders, chrome rims, white wall tires, and a big red rocket-shaped headlight.

6:12SPEAKER_02:It retailed for$60, the equivalent of about$500 today. Someone told the distraught to report the stolen bicycle to the police officer who happened to be in the basement of the auditorium. They flew back into the building and down the stairs. There they met Joe Martin, a white skinned patrolman and part-time boxing coach. Cassius was angry, hotter than a firecracker, as Joe put it, saying he wanted to find the person who sold the bike and give him a good whooping.

6:36SPEAKER_02:Martin looked at Cassius, all 89 pounds of him, and asked, Do you know how to fight? No, Cassius said. Well, why don't you come down here and start training? Destiny is the function of choice and chance. Chance delivered young Cassius Clay to Joe Martin's gym, but choice would bring him back again. It's one of the fascinating aspects to think about in Clay's life, which, j just a small note, was Muhammad Ali's name for the first two, three decades of his life before he changed it.

7:03SPEAKER_02:So I'll refer to him as as Cassius and Clay until the change. But it's fascinating to think that without his bike being stolen, maybe he's never introduced to the sport of boxing at a young enough age for it to become what it would become for him and turn him into who it would turn him into. And this is always something that that's that's tough to recognize in our own lives. But the passage of time can often be the greatest thing for you in your life when you look back on on the events, on the things that that seemed awful or unfortunate.

7:31SPEAKER_02:Once the clock actually starts to tick for a while, can often become the things that that turn into an asset or an advantage later down the line. And for Clay, a stolen bike would alter his destiny forever. And it's from that moment that he's introduced a boxing that he just becomes absolutely addicted to the sport. It's all he does and it's all he thinks about. But it wasn't like Clay ru was a uh prodigy from the start. Here's how he's described.

7:54SPEAKER_02:On his second visit, he climbed into the ring with some older boxer and got hammered. In a minute, my nose started bleeding, my mouth hurt, my head was dizzy. Finally, someone pulled me out of the ring. When his head cleared, Cash is went to work with Martin, the trainer, learning how to set his feet, how to turn his body at an angle to his opponent, where to hold his hands to protect his head from damage, how to duck a punch, how to throw the left jab, and the right cross, the uppercut, the hook.

8:17SPEAKER_02:Nothing in the young fighter's performance suggested that a prodigy had stepped into the ring. He was just ordinary, Joe Martinson. But despite his lack of maybe initial gifts when he first got started, what truly mattered and what was truly important was just how the sport made him feel at the time. Boxing triggered something wholly new in Cassius, ambition. School had certainly never lit a fire in him. Now, for the first time, he had found something he wanted to do other than mis mischief making, something for which he was willing to labor and sacrifice, something that would put him on TV for Lord knows how many people to see.

8:51SPEAKER_02:Up until he started boxing, you you could describe Clay as probably just like a really lazy person. He struggled in school, but more importantly, he didn't give his effort in the classroom. And this is something we actually saw in Michael Jordan. As a young boy, MJ was considered quite a lazy boy. His dad said this on Michael Jordan. That's the laziest boy I've ever seen. If he had to get a job in a factory punching a clock, he'd starve to death.

9:14SPEAKER_02:He would give every last dime of his allowance to his brothers and sisters, and even kids in the neighborhood, to do his chores. He was always broke. But once MJ was introduced to basketball, to something that that deeply, deeply interested him, he became this ultra-ambitious, obsessive person. And it's the same thing we see with with Clay. He's introduced to boxing and he just becomes addicted to it. And it's an interesting idea to think about, but but Jordan and Cassius Clay were both quite lazy individuals until they found something that they deeply, deeply loved.

9:46SPEAKER_02:So, like oftentimes laziness or or maybe a lack of drive is often just a lack of interest. And you see this with Clay in boxing. He took up running for exercise. He could have run before school or after, after school, but he didn't. He ran to school. For breakfast, a quart of milk mixed with two raw eggs. Soda poppy declared was as bad as alcohol or cigarettes for an athlete, and he vowed never to touch them. It was almost impossible to discourage him, Joe Martin said.

10:11SPEAKER_02:He was easily the hardest worker of any kid I ever taught. Clay's discipline from the age of twelve on convinced Martin that he had a future as a boxer. Cassius woke up between four and five in the morning, this is when he's 12, 13 years old, to run several miles and then worked out at the gym in the afternoon, staying long past the hour when his peers had gone home for dinner. All he ever wanted to do was run and train and spar, said Jimmy Ellis, a boxer at the facility.

10:35SPEAKER_02:And this next line is a perfect description of Clay at the time. Boxing had become his religion, his reason to get up in the morning. He shadow boxed in the halls between classes, throwing punches that stopped inches shy of the lockers that lined the hallways. As his teachers lectured, he doodled pictures of boxing rings and boxing gloves. He offered classmates and he offered classmates autographs and signed them Cassius Clay, world heavyweight champion.

10:59SPEAKER_02:And it's also around this time that we get a good insight into just the confidence he would have in himself. He would often tell his classmates and his parents and really anyone around him who would listen that he was going to be the best boxer in the world, that he was going to win the heavyweight champion. And it wasn't long before he began telling strangers that he intended to not barely be a professional boxer, but the heavyweight champion of the world.

11:20SPEAKER_02:He began knocking on doors before his Friday night fights to stir up interest and boost attendance. No one told him to do it. And it was completely unheard of at the time. From the moment Clay won his first fight, he would come home in the evening and tell his parents how he was going to be champion of the world. But he didn't just talk about it. Cassius practically lived in the gym. He never smoked, never drank. He was a nutrition nut. He carried about a bottle of water with garlic in it, a solution he said would keep his blood pressure down.

11:47SPEAKER_02:And as I read more and more on Clay and his life, the words that just kept coming back to me was he was a paradox. There's so much in his life that that would ultimately be a paradox in how he lived, in what he believed, and then what he did or didn't do as a result of those beliefs, and even in how he boxed and how he had success in the sport. Because if you know boxing, you know Clay developed this very like non-traditional boxing style that would really infuriate boxing traditionalists and purist.

12:18SPEAKER_02:The more he fought, the more he began to develop a style of his own. Some fighters like to move forward, to step in for big punches, but Cassius preferred to circle his opponent clockwise, to punch and move away, to pull his head back from blows rather than duck them. His greatest talent may have been his measurement. He had a brilliant brilliant knack for staying just beyond the reach of his opponents, and then getting just close enough to throw punches that hurt.

12:41SPEAKER_02:There was a danger in such an approach. Fighters are taught to keep their hands up near their heads to block punches, but Clay dropped his gloves, tempting his opponents to go for his face and counting on his reflexes to get him out of the way in time. But it was a style that, for as much as it seemed wrong to boxing trainers and boxing purists, for as much danger as it seemed to put him in, it seemed to serve him well as the years went on because as a young fighter, he just kept winning and winning and winning.

13:08SPEAKER_02:And we mentioned in the introduction that the dominating driver in Clay's life was the pursuit of wealth. He always wanted money, he always wanted to be a rich man. And it's actually one of the reasons boxing attracted him so much. He explained, I started boxing because I thought it was the fastest way for a black person to make it in this country. I was not that bright and quick in school, couldn't be a football or basketball player because you have to go to college and get all kinds of degrees and pass examinations.

13:32SPEAKER_02:A boxer can just jump into a gym, jump around, turn professional, win a fight, get a break, and he's in the ring. And one of the fascinating things about Clay, and we'll see this as the years go on, and this is a contradiction between so many of the people that we do end up studying or have studied in the past, but Clay would continue to box less for the love of the sport as the years went on, and more for just the money and the riches it would bring him.

13:58SPEAKER_02:Jeff Bezos talked about this idea of being a missionary versus a mercenary. He says the missionary is building the product and building the service because they love the customer, because they love the product, because they love the service. The mercenary is building the product or service so they can flip the company and make money. The missionary is about the craft, the mission, the work, the love of the thing. The mercenary is about what the work can bring you, the money, the praise, the riches the thing can bring you.

14:23SPEAKER_02:And Klay's evolution with boxing is quite unique because he deeply, deeply fell in love with the sport of boxing from a young age. And that and that love really drove him. Like he truly was a missionary early on. It was all about the sport. It was all about the work. He trained before and after school. He was disciplined and deeply, deeply cared about it. But as he got older, as he saw the riches and the money the sport could and would bring him, he seemed to become much more of a mercenary.

14:49SPEAKER_02:He boxed less for the love of the game and more for the money that he could make as a result of the game, which is very different from a lot of the people we dive dive into. And older Bill Gates actually said this. He has a line where he's talking about like what's more important, a job or money? Like what would he rather have? And he says, even today, what interests me isn't making money per se. If I had to choose between my job and having great wealth, I'd choose the job.

15:13SPEAKER_02:And if you were to ask a older cassius clay, Muhammad Ali, I think he would have said just the opposite. He would have rather had all the money in the world than the ability to box again. Now, back to a young clay. I mentioned the sense of confidence he had in himself, this belief that he was going to be the heavyweight champion of the world from a very young age. And what Clay would become famous for is how much he would talk. There's actually this great line from a writer in his career, Peter Wilson, who said, He came, he saw, and he talked.

15:44SPEAKER_02:He came, he saw, and he talked. Whether it was in the ring, in the buildup to a fight, in an interview, even just talking about himself, Clay was always talking trash, or he was always praising himself, or he was always predicting how a fight would go. And he even did this from the moment he started boxing. There's this great and funny story at just, he's like 12 or 13 years old, and he's at a tournament, and he starts trash talking this older fighter.

16:11SPEAKER_02:He's 21, 22 years old, and here's how it goes. At a city tournament, when he was still 12, he started sassing a fighter named George King, flicking jabs at the air and asking over and over, You think you could stop this jab? King was 21 and married with a child. Who was this 12-year-old boy when he mouthed off at his bouts on local television? The crowds in the arenas rooted against him, shouting, button his lip, bash his nose in. Like, like imagine being that fighter.

16:36SPEAKER_02:Imagine being George King. And this you're what, 21 years old? And this 12-year-old boy comes up to you and is is talking smack, how he can he can take you out. Like, I'm sure George George was just laughing at himself. But if you look at Clay's whole career, I mean, this is something he always did, almost to the point of it being hysterical. If you've if you've never seen Clay or or Muhammad Ali's trash talking and his hysterics, like go on YouTube and just like look up a compilation of it because it's I think it's great and it's very humorous at the same time.

17:08SPEAKER_02:It's a funny thing to watch. And we'll mention this later, but but part of the reason he did all this trash talking and caused a ruckus in his fights or or in the buildup to his fights is he really wanted to draw a crowd. It was all about showmanship and building up the hype. He realized that the the more noise that he created, the more people would tune into the fight, and therefore the more money he could make. And we're gonna we're gonna come back to this idea of showmanship throughout the episode and kind of the lesson he learned from it.

17:37SPEAKER_02:So the launching point of Ali's career into the limelight would be the 1960 Olympics in Rome. He was 18 years old, and leading up to the Olympics, we see again his self-confidence, or at least I guess you could call it his own self-promotion. He said in an interview to a sports writer named Dick Schapp, I'll be the greatest of all time. I mean, he's 18 years old. He hasn't done anything yet. Like, yeah, he's going to the Olympics, and he's declaring to the world that he's going to be the best boxer ever.

18:03SPEAKER_02:But there's this funny story on Clay in the Olympics. So something he feared was flying, and he generally considered not going to the Olympics in 1960 because he was genuinely too scared to get on a plane. Clay's only obstacle as an Olympian was his fear of airplanes. It took Joe Martin, his trainer, four hours of sitting and talking with Clay in Central Park to convince him that he could not take a train to Rome. He finally agreed to fly, but then he went to an Army surplus store and bought a parachute and actually wore it on the plane.

18:31SPEAKER_02:It was a pretty rough flight, and he was on the aisle praying with the parachute on. Now Clay would win the gold at the 1960 Olympics, which would make him a hero in his hometown of Louisville and really across America. And it's at the Olympics that he sees the man who was now the heavyweight champion of the world, Floyd Patterson. And if you know anything about Cassius Clay at this point, you know he's going to take this chance to trash talk Floyd Patterson.

18:57SPEAKER_02:So he goes up to Floyd, who was arguably the best fighter in the world at the time, and says, be seeing you in about two years, implying that he would be ready then to fight and beat the champ. If Patterson answered Clay, reporters didn't mention it. But it's safe to say that the kid swagger displeased at least a portion of the audience. I mentioned earlier how Clay was a showman. He believed in the power of trying to put on a show and get people involved.

19:22SPEAKER_02:And he would take that lesson with him throughout the entirety of his career. And he recalls learning this lesson from a man named Gorgeous George. He was this wrestler who did all this talking and really tried to put on a show himself. And Clay is told by George one day after one of his wrestling shows that that Clay watched this. A lot of people will pay to see someone shut your mouth, he told Clay in the dressing room after watching Gorgeous George.

19:45SPEAKER_02:So keep on bragging, keep on sassing, and always be outrageous. Clay would take those words to heart. Keep on bragging, keep on sassing, and always be outrageous. Clay took took direction well. I saw 15,000 people coming to see this man get beat, he said, and his talking did it. I said, that's a good idea. And from then on and for the rest of his career, that Clay would always try to be a showman. So after the Olympics, Clay wants to go pro and he ends up signing a contract with the syndicate of wealthy Louisville businessmen.

20:18SPEAKER_02:The contract was for six years with an opportunity for Clay to break the deal after three. The boxer would receive$10,000 in signing bonuses,$4,800 a year in guaranteed income for the first two years, and 50% of the money generated from his activities in and out of the ring. And it's as he turns pro and starts to win some more fights, starts to move up the ladder a little bit, that we see the same trash talking and showmanship and confidence again and again.

20:42SPEAKER_02:After one of his fights where he beat a man named Archie Moore, he started explaining that he was ready for the then champion, a new champion named Sonny Liston. I'll take Sonny Liston right now, Clay said after the fight, and I'll finish him in eight rounds. This was the same Sonny Liston who had just humiliated the heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson, knocking him out in only 126 seconds. The same cornerman had removed seven teeth from the losing fighter's mouthpiece and split sp and spotted blood dripping from his ear.

21:07SPEAKER_02:That night, as it happened, Clay ran into Liston in a downtown Los Angeles ballroom. You're next, Clay said, the champion, did not appear concerned. And these sort of occasions would happen over and over and over again. Nothing in Clay's early experience as a professional fighter dismayed him of his own greatness. He began wearing white t-shirts with his name printed in red script, perhaps inspired by the Coca-Cola logo. It may have been the first time an American athlete devised his own name brand apparel for daily wear.

21:36SPEAKER_02:Already he was emerging as one of the most adept self promoters in all of the sporting. Here's another instance after another fight. In the dressing room after the fight, Clay, surrounded by reporters, slid out of warrior mode and back to entertainer. I'm so pretty, he said. There's this moment in the build up to a fight with a fighter named Doug Jones, and he asked Jones. This. How tall are you? He asked Jones. Why do you ask that? said Jones to Cassius.

22:04SPEAKER_02:So I know in advance how far to step back when you fall in four. Clay's entire boxing philosophy was almost to hype himself up, to talk trash, to get inside the head of others, and in the process to build up excitement for the fights, to be the showman. And I mentioned Floyd Patterson earlier, who was one of the heavyweight champions when Clay was coming up. And he would actually fight Clay later in his career. But Floyd has, I think, a great description on part of the reason he believed Clay did all this talking.

22:35SPEAKER_02:Floyd explains. That's why I always knew that all of Clay's bragging was a way to convince himself that he could do what he said he'd do. I never liked all his bragging. It took me a long time to understand what Clay was talking to or who Clay was talking to. Clay was talking to Clay. In a way, Clay did all this talking to put some pressure on himself, to force himself to live up to what he was saying and what he was going to do. And I think I mean we've seen this with a bunch of athletes.

23:01SPEAKER_02:Michael Jordan did this, Billie Jean King, Michael Phelps. It's even something Thomas Edison did in a way. One of his colleagues actually sit on Edison, who often announced the world these these crazy feats he would accomplish. I have often thought that Edison got himself into trouble purposely by premature publication so that he would have full incentive to get himself out of trouble. Edison made it a habit of telling the world what he was going to do and how fast he was going to do it.

23:28SPEAKER_02:And it would almost, as his, as his colleague said, force him to work even harder or even faster to try to live up to those predictions or to those expectations. And it's this exact same thing that Clay would do throughout his boxing career. Now, you can't talk about the life of Cassius Clay without talking about a man named Elijah Muhammad, who played a drastic role in his life, and his journey and his story. It was also in Chicago that Cashus Clay discovered a man who would change his life perhaps more than any other.

23:56SPEAKER_02:Elijah Muhammad referred to himself as the Prophet Muhammad of the Nation of Islam, a religious group dedicated to black separatism and empowerment. He rejected the pacifism of civil rights leaders such as Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and rejected the efforts of the NAACP to bring gradual change to the American judicial system. He urged black people to quit waiting for right white America to help them. The only way forward was for black people to separate themselves.

24:19SPEAKER_02:Cassius Clay would fall under the spell of two great influences in his life. The first was boxing. The second was the philosophy of Elijah Muhammad, who said a black man should take pride in his color and that black men should rule the world. It was mentioned there, but America in the 1960s, the the this this black Muslim group and the Nation of Islam believed not in desegregation and much of what MLK and the civil rights movement was fighting for, but rather separating from whites and almost having their own self and economic reliance.

24:49SPEAKER_02:And the Nation of Islam was a group in America that was very unpopular in the 50s and 60s and 70s. So when Clay became a part of it, when the word spread that he had some ties to the group and to Elijah Muhammad, it caused a lot of criticism and concern around him. And I'm and I mentioned this because one of the defining stories and many of the defining stories of Clay, many of the things that I that I deeply, deeply respect about him revolve around what he would be willing to do and what he would be willing to sacrifice for his religion and beliefs.

25:20SPEAKER_02:So we'll bring that up later. So Clay would spend the next couple of years working his way up the boxing, boxing rates until he eventually got his chance to compete for the heavyweight championship against Sonny Liston, who we mentioned earlier, who was considered maybe like the most feared fighter to ever cross the heavyweight division ever up to that point. We mentioned Floyd Patterson before, who held the title until Liston took it from him. And he beat Patterson in two separate bouts for the title in less than like two or three minutes combined.

25:50SPEAKER_02:And Liston had power that was that was really rare and terrifying for the time. And many believed that Clay didn't stand a chance against him. And you can see this by just looking at what the writers and reporters were saying before the fight. Clay wasn't prepared for Liston. They said he needed more experience in the ring. He needed more time. That was the nearly unanimous view amongst the press corps and former fighters. I don't see the kid going more than one, two rounds, said Mike DeJonne, a boxer who had lost to Liston in 1959 and had sparred with Clay.

26:18SPEAKER_02:Maybe in a year, two years, Liston is just too strong. Arthur Daly of the New York Times wrote the loudmouth from Louisville is likely to have a lot of vanglorious boast jammed down his throat by a ham-like fist belonging to Sonny Liston. And listen to this. It's even money Clay won't lash the national anthem, one writer said. But something that Clay had, or at least it seemed that he was willing to do, was to die for this championship, to die for the heavyweight title.

26:52SPEAKER_02:He said this in the buildup to the fight. Maybe I can be beat, I doubt it. But the man is going to have to knock me down and then I'll get up. And he'll have to knock me down again and I'll get up. And he'll have to knock me down again and I'll still get up. I've worked too hard and too long to get this chance. I'm going to have to be killed before I lose, and I ain't going to die easily. And it's in this fight that we see Liston fall into the trap or a trap that Clay would actually later fall into his career.

27:15SPEAKER_02:But Liston, because of how great he was, because of how inexperienced Clay was, because of his past success, because of what everyone was predicting, was taking the fight too lightly. While Clay was running the streets every morning and pushing his body in brutal sessions with Brawny's sparring partners at the Fist Street Gym, Liston was coasting. Liston worked out in the air-conditioned civic auditorium in North Miami Beach, skipping rope, pounding the heavy bag, absorbing the blows from a medicine ball hurled at his gut, and running a mile or two outside when the mood struck him, which wasn't often.

27:46SPEAKER_02:He sparred, but not but none of his sparring partners were as big or as fast as Clay's. At night, Liston ate hot dogs, drank beer, played cards, and screwed around with prostitutes. He was treating he was training like a man who believed he could knock out his opponent with a hard stare. So here's Clay, who started boxing at 12 years old, who told himself and his parents and his classmates and his teachers growing up, and and anyone who would ever listen him, that all he wanted was to become the heavyweight champion in the world, and that he would become the heavyweight champion in the world.

28:17SPEAKER_02:And here is his chance to do just that. But days before the fight, this happened. As the fight drew closer, every reporter in Miami knew about Clay's association with the Nation of Islam. Clay's team told the FBI they were worried that the white fans would boycott the listen fight if word spread about Clay's beliefs. Bill McDonald, the promoter of the fight, three days before went to Clay and told him the fight would be canceled if he didn't retract his statements of support for the Nation of Islam.

28:42SPEAKER_02:But the threat to Clay didn't work. The championship was all he'd ever wanted since he was 12 years old. It was his destiny. But he refused to deny his tithe to the nation. If MacDonald wanted to call off the fight, then that was his business. I ain't denying it because it's true, Clay said. And if you want to call off the fight, that's your business. My religion's more important to me than the fight. I love that last line. My religion is more important to me than the fight.

29:08SPEAKER_02:This is the moment Clay's been dreaming of since he's been a young boy, since he was introduced to the sport of boxing when he was just 12 years old. And he's willing to lose that chance for his beliefs, for his religion, for what he values. Like I think there's there's so much beauty in that. And I I made a note to myself when I read this in the book. I just said, like, how strong are your beliefs and values? Truly, how strong are your beliefs and values?

29:32SPEAKER_02:Like Clay, would you would you sacrifice what you've been working your entire life for them? Would you sacrifice hundreds of thousands of dollars like Clay would have for them? Because that's what Clay was willing to do at this moment in his life. Now, with that said, it seemed that this threat from MacDonald, the promoter, seemed to be more of a scare tactic than an actual threat because he wouldn't cancel the fight, and Clay would still get his chance to fight Linston.

29:59SPEAKER_02:And there's one key thing I want to mention with the fight. So once it starts, it's clear that Clay is a much better fighter than the reporters and other boxers, and even Liston thought. And after three rounds, Liston couldn't find a way to knock him out. And because he couldn't find a way to knock him out, and Liston wasn't prepared for a long bout a long fight because he didn't he didn't train properly, he he he resorts to one thing and one thing only cheating.

30:25SPEAKER_02:There are many ways to get an edge in a fight, and trainers know them all. As it happened, after the brutal and frustrating third round, Liston told his main cornerman, Polino, to call their own special advantage. As writer Jack McKinley writes, he told me that Sonny had told him to juice his gloves, and he went ahead and did it. Not only that, he said that he what he said that they always were ready to do that in case of danger. Polino never told McKinley what substance he rubbed on Liston's glove, but he did say it was a stinging solution that was intended to blind Clay long enough for Liston to find his range and knock him out.

30:57SPEAKER_02:So Liston goes into the fourth round of this fight with this stinging solution on his gloves, basically with the attempt, as it mentioned, to blind Clay's eye. Blind Clay's eyes so he couldn't see, and then Liston could knock him out. And after the bell rings for that round, that's exactly what would happen. Clay comes back to the corner after that round, and he just he can't see. His eyes are stinging. Clay's eyes began to sting. And by the time the round was over and he was on his stool, it felt as if there were needles in his eyes.

31:22SPEAKER_02:Clay had been hit before in the ring, and suddenly the pain grew worse. Clay was almost blind. He was pawing at his face, trying to shake the pain out of his eyes. I can't see, cut him off, Clay shouted into the void, into the noise of the crowd. I can't see. Cut off the gloves. This would be the most important single minute of Dundee's his trainers. Two decades with Clay. Without this one minute, without Dundee's instant instant reaction or instant reaction, there may never have been a Muhammad Ali.

31:49SPEAKER_02:Sonny Liston would not likely have been given a rematch to someone who had humbled him, forced him to juice his gloves, nor would the public have gone out of its way to demand boxing justice for a member of a religious sect that professed hatred of white America. While Dundee's fighters screamed at him, demanding he let him quit. Dundee was cool. I'd had this problem before, he said, Isn't the experience wonderful? I've only been doing this for 48 years.

32:12SPEAKER_02:Dundee had an inkling how painful the substance was. He had dipped his pinky into the corner of Clay's eye and then put his finger into his own eye. It burned like mad, but he would not relent. This is the big one, Dundee shouted in Clay's ear. Cut the bullshit. We're not quitting now. With his sponge, Dundee tried to get as much clean water flowing into Clay's eyes as possible. He had no idea how this happened, and he cared less. He cared about the fight, about getting through this next round.

32:36SPEAKER_02:You gotta go out there and run, he told Clay. The idea was that Clay would keep moving and measuring Liston with his jab long enough for the solution to water out the eyes. Clay got to his feet, straightened himself, and walked back out slowly. Clay went into the fifth round blinking madly, his eyes on fire. He could see only the blurred outline of his opponent. And for the next three minutes, while partially blind, Clay just tried to survive and ultimately survive he would, which only demoralized Linston even more, who after the next round finished, the sixth round, was just too exhausted to go on.

33:11SPEAKER_02:So when the bell rang for the seventh round, Linston stayed on a stool, throwing in the white flag. Suddenly, Clay was dancing and leaping and raising his hands in the air. Liston had quit. The fight was over, and Clay was the new heavyweight champion. I am the king, Clay shouted. I am the king, king of the world. Eat your words, eat your words. ABC reporter Howard Cassell reached Clay first, sticking a microphone in front of Clay's face as the fighter peered over a row of newsmen.

33:39SPEAKER_02:I am the greatest, I am the greatest. I am the king of the world, Clay shouted. He moved over to a TV camera and continued. I'm the greatest fighter who ever lived. I'm so great, I don't have a mark on my face. I upset Sonny Liston, and I just turned 22 years old. I must be the greatest. I showed the world. I'm the king of the world. I'm pretty. I'm a bad man. I shook up the world. And this would bring us to how Cassius Clay would become Muhammad Ali.

34:06SPEAKER_02:In the interview with Jet, Clay announced that he was entering a new phase in his life, one in which he would devote himself to religious observance and in the pursuit of racial equality. He said he was thinking about retiring from boxing and devoting his life to traveling and seeking a peaceful, workable solution to the race problem. Another possibility. I just might run for mayor of New York or something. Later, Elijah Muhammad announced in a radio address that boxing heavyweight champion Kash Klay, now a father, now a follower of the nation of Islam, was to receive the honor of a full Muslim name.

34:35SPEAKER_02:This Klay name has no defined meaning. Muhammad Ali is what I will give him as long as he believes in Allah and follows me. In a phone call, Elijah Muhammad told the boxer that his new name carried special meaning. Muhammad, he explained, meant worthy of praise. Ali meant lofty. Elijah called on him to abandon the name, and the boxer agreed immediately. Throughout his boxing career, Cassius Clay had worked hard to generate controversy and rankled boxing fans mostly with the goal of selling tickets and spreading his fame.

35:04SPEAKER_02:Now, as Muhammad Ali, he didn't have two at all. With his name, with his new name and his expressed allegiance to a radical religious group poorly understood by most Americans, he was generally distrusted and disliked, and more widely discussed than ever. And if you don't know much about the arc of Muhammad Ali's life, it's quite fascinating because before he was admired, before he was talked about in the history books, before he was praised as one of the greatest fighters ever, he was one of, if not one of the most hated men in America at the time.

35:32SPEAKER_02:Joining the Nation of Islam, a controversial and hated group in America, made Ali really a target. It didn't help that he was this boisterous black man who talked all the smack and hyped himself up. And it would only get worse when America was at war with Vietnam. And it seemed that, or at least it seemed to others that Ali was trying to dodge the draft at the time. Then came a report from the Army that Ali had failed twice his pre-induction exam, which caused many reporters and boxing fans to assume that the boxer had taken a dive on the test to avoid service.

36:01SPEAKER_02:Test takers need to get 30 correct out of 100 to pass. But Ali didn't make the grade. I just said I'm the greatest. I never said I'm the smartest, he told reporters. Ali may have been the most disliked man in America in 1965. The news was such an outcry amongst so many parents and so many young boys because they were being sent to war. And amongst writers and reporters, and amongst daily Americans, they were so frustrated with Ali because they seemed that it seemed that here were these young men risking their lives, and Ali wasn't willing to do the same.

36:34SPEAKER_02:He was in perfect health and he wasn't going to go. And many believed he intentionally failed the exam and the test to be ineligible, only increasing the hatred and the animosity toward him. But even if Ali was intentionally or unintentionally trying to dodge the draft, in due time, it wouldn't matter. Muhammad Ali stretched his long legs and sank back into the lawn chair as he sang a refrain from Bob Dylan. It was February 17, 1966. And the question on Ali's mind was this: why had a draft board in Louisville reversed its previous position and classifies his his status as 1A, suddenly making him ineligible for military service.

37:10SPEAKER_02:But even though he was now eligible, he still planned to refuse based on his religion. Ali submitted paperwork to the Selective Service claiming to be a conscientious objector. He claimed expedition to both combat and non-combat service based on religious beliefs. Not surprisingly, Ali's refusal to fight for this country inspired even more hatred. And it's with this situation that we see another example of what Ali was willing to do for his religion.

37:41SPEAKER_02:He would be willing to sacrifice nearly everything, his freedom, his boxing career, and all the money he could make. Members of the Louisville sponsoring group tried to persuade Ali to compromise on his military service. They called in favors and received assurances from powerful men in government that if Ali agreed to serve his country, he would be assigned a role that kept him far from combat. In all likelihood, he would perform a series of boxing exhibitions for soldiers, just as Joe Lewis had done during World War II.

38:05SPEAKER_02:The men hoped to impress upon the boxer how much he would lose by refusing the draft, but Ali would not be moved. And Ali said this on his decision. It would cost me$10 million in earnings, he said to the reporter and his and to his own reflection, does that sound like I'm serious about my religion? So on the morning of April 28th, 1967, Ali appears in front of the U.S. Armed Forces examination with other young men to face induction into the Army and the Vietnam War.

38:33SPEAKER_02:And Ali, at this, refuses to step forward and serve. Ali and 25 other potential recruits were told to fill out papers, undergo physical examinations, and then wait for a long bus ride to Folk to Fort Polk, Louisiana. In the early afternoon, the recruits lined up in front of a young lieutenant. The officer called each man's name and told him to take another step forward and into the armed forces. Finally, Ali's name was called Cassius Clay, Army. Ali did not move.

38:59SPEAKER_02:He was called Ali, and again he remained still. Then another officer led Ali to a private room and advised him that the penalty for refusing the draft was five years' imprisonment and a fine. Did he understand? Yes, he did. Ali was given another chance to respond to his name and step forward. Again, he stood still. There was no fear in Ali. Ali was sentenced to five years in prison and a$10,000 fine, the maximum. I figured the decision cost him$10 million in purses and endorsements and the rest, said Gordon Davidson.

39:29SPEAKER_02:It also cost him the goodwill of many Americans who thought that he was a rich man in perfect health, avoiding military service and using religion as an excuse. And it's after his refusal that those around him are still trying to urge and convince him to serve. There's even an offer from the president at the time, Lyndon B. Johnson, to join the war efforts and just give boxing exhibitions. Like he he wouldn't even have to serve or be on the front lines or do anything besides box.

39:53SPEAKER_02:And Ali still wouldn't accept it. And it eventually gets to the point where there's this massive group of black athletes that are put together to try and persuade Ollie to what they they thought was stop this foolish thinking. Jim Brown organized a meeting of many of the nation's leading black athletes, including Bill Russell, Louis Alcinder, Krim Abdul Jabbar, Curtis McClinton, Bobby Mitchell, Sid Williams, Jim Shorter, Walter Beach, and Willie Davis.

40:18SPEAKER_02:But no matter what they said, Oli still remained unmoved. And it's actually Bill Russell, the basketball legend, after the meeting, he actually said this on Ali, which I love. He has something I have never been able to attain, and something very, very, very few people I know possess. He has an absolute and sincere faith. You can disagree with Oli's decision, even hate it, but there is a certain beauty in the fact that he was willing to go to prison.

40:42SPEAKER_02:He was willing to lose the opportunity to box to the thing that would make him millions and millions of dollars. He was willing to be considered one of the most hated men in America for his religion, for his beliefs. Because he had what Russell said, absolute and sincere faith. Now, Ali would actually never serve time in prison as he as he appealed the decision in courts, but for much of his boxing prime, because of his refusal to serve and the whole appeal process, he was stripped of his title and he was unable to fight for two, three, four years during the prime of his career when he was at his absolute best.

41:17SPEAKER_02:But with this certain admiration that I do have for Ali's willingness to stand up for his beliefs and endure the cost of it, Ali himself, as I mentioned earlier, was quite a paradox because it gets to a point where Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the nation of Islam, wants Ali to quit boxing. He thought it was an immoral activity and it took away from Ali's religion and his true purpose of spreading the message of the religion. So you would think the man who dedicated almost his entire life to Elijah and his teaching, who risked going to jail, who risked the sport that brought him so much glory, who would lose his championship title for refusing to serve, who would lose lots and lots of money and endure all this hatred, would be willing to walk away from the sport because his leader wanted him to.

41:59SPEAKER_02:But it was something Ali could and would never do. Ali said a few years later after his short banishment from boxing on TV that he planned to start fighting again, and it actually infuriated Elijah Muhammad. The sight of Ali on TV saying he wanted to fight again because he needed money and raised the nation of Islam's leader. Ali's punishment, Elijah said, would be a one-year banishment from the nation of Islam. He had given up his wife for his religion.

42:21SPEAKER_02:He had changed his name, risked prison, sacrificed millions of dollars, turned his back on friends and relatives. And now the man who inspired Ali's actions, the man he worshipped as a prophet of God, was casting him aside because he refused to abandon boxing, it must have been bewildering. And Ali said he understood his mistake and would do everything he could to regain his teacher's trust. All that funnel and fighting, running around, being on TV is over.

42:44SPEAKER_02:Now I'll concentrate on praying, studying hard, and learn to be a better Muslim minister. But then, of course, were those of course were just words for show because 43 months after being banned for boxing, after the Supreme Court eventually overruled his draft conviction, Ali returned to the ring against his leader's wishes to fight and box again. And you may ask, like, like why? Why couldn't Ali give up the sport? He had already risked and sacrificed so much for his religion for Elijah Muhammad.

43:11SPEAKER_02:Why couldn't he do it just one more time? And the answer to that question is maybe still a little cloudy, but the more you read about it, the more you learn about Ali, the one thing that comes to the forefront is he couldn't lead the sport because of money. He could make so much money in one night from one fight, money he desperately needed because throughout his career he wasn't great using his finances or with his finances, that he just couldn't give up the opportunity for all the riches that boxing could bring him.

43:37SPEAKER_02:Ali actually said this on boxing, which is fascinating. I've been boxing since I was 12 years old, and I'm getting mighty tired of training and always having somebody try to pop me in my mouth. But I'll probably won't but I probably won't ever get tired of money. I love money. The fame and pride of doing something real well, like being the world champion, is a pretty nice thing to think about sometimes. But the money I'm making is nice to think about all the time.

43:58SPEAKER_02:I suppose it's the one thing that keeps Keeps me going. I mentioned this a little bit earlier. But the number one reason Ali continued to fight and boxed throughout his career was because of the Mulah. It wasn't the only reason, but it was the main reason. He could make millions in a single night, and he just couldn't imagine giving that up forever for anything, even his his own religion. And and we mentioned this as well, but he went from this young boy who was a missionary who boxed because he fell in love with the sport.

44:27SPEAKER_02:But as he aged, as he received the adulation and praise and money, he became much more of a mercenary, fighting more for the Moolah than for the love of the sport. Now, when Ali did return four years later, he simply wasn't the same fighter. It makes sense when you take four years off during the prime of your career. And there are statistics that were later pulled on his career that really start to show this really well. Years later, a statistical analysis of Ali's career showed beginning in 1970, Ali was a different fighter.

44:54SPEAKER_02:From 1960 to 1967, the 16 fights in which complete films had survived and counted every punch. And in those fights, Ali was at his best, landing 2,245 punches while getting hit only 1,400 times. Over the course of the rest of his career, Ali took as much punishment, if not more, than he gave. He hit opponents 56, 5,700 times and got hit 5,600 times. And there's this great line from one of his biographers, Jonathan I, he wrote this. His extraordinary gift for boxing will cement his greatness and make the met and make the many contradictions of his life possible.

45:27SPEAKER_02:Yet this will be the bitterest irony of a lifetime full of them. His great gift will also instigate his downfall. His great gift will also also instigate his great downfall. His great gift was his instincts. He had these unbelievable reflexes. It's why he was able to box with his with his hands low and rely purely on his instincts and reflexes to dodge his opponent's punches. But that gift wouldn't last forever. And when he returned, his reflexes were a little slower, a little worse, and he would start to take some more punishment.

45:58SPEAKER_02:In 1970, he began to pay a price for his relatively weak grasp of boxing fundamentals. He had never learned to properly box or duck punches because he hadn't needed to. As a result, as he slowed, he absorbed more punishment. Ali came back and his legs weren't like they'd been before, Pacheo told a rider, one of his trainers. And when he lost his legs, he lost his first line of defense. And it's after his return to boxing that Ali would still have some success.

46:23SPEAKER_02:He would rewin the heavyweight title twice. He would hold it three times throughout his career. He would put on some great shows. But the things that made Oli great in the early days, his focus, his discipline, his preparation, became the things that started to hurt him because he went from this missionary to this mercenary. And we see this perfectly in the buildup to his fight against Joe Frazier, considered at the time the fight of the century because it was the first time two heavyweight champions had ever met in the ring.

46:48SPEAKER_02:But Ali fell into the same trap that Liston fell into when he first fought Ali. And that was getting lazy. Ali didn't take his preparations seriously, and he didn't take Joe Frasier seriously. He trained in Miami, saying he was trying to lose 10 pounds from his 228-pound frame, but he was easily distracted, surrounded by a traveling circus. Oli had a bunch of people in his entourage always around him. There were newspapers and TV reporters too. Less than two weeks later, Ali turned 29.

47:12SPEAKER_02:He celebrated with a giant birthday cake with two chocolate boxing gloves made of icing on top. When he dove into a second big slice, he drew a big warning from Jack Kent Coke, the big investor behind Ollie's upcoming fight. Will you stop eating that? Coke said in a mock core. Ali brushed off saying, I don't have to train too hard for Frazier. Frasier's only chance, Ali said, was to score a knockout. But he added, I don't get knocked out or even hit a lot.

47:35SPEAKER_02:Frasier is an amateur compared to me. The fight was seven weeks away. Ali said he would begin training in a few days. And what happens? Ali loses to Frasier. There's this great quote, or there is the great quote by Benjamin Franklin where he says, by failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail. And without a doubt, Ali fell right into that trap. There's another example of this in a fight with a man named Ken Norton, where we see Ali's lack of discipline in action.

48:01SPEAKER_02:Ali had another bout schedule with a man who seemed to pose little threat, a former Joe Fraser sparring partner with decent power and solid but unspectacular skills. His name was Ken Norton. Ali had no heart on for Norton. He wanted Joe Frazier again. He wanted George Foreman. But Norton, Norton's most recent fight, had been in front of a crowd of 700 and had paid only$300. Norton didn't belong in the same ring as Ali. Ali was a 10-to-1 favorite, and that's what Ali believed.

48:27SPEAKER_02:The night before the fight, Ali attended a party. Two hours before the fight, he was in bed with two hookers. After an hour had passed, Reggie Barrett knocked on the door, telling Ali the fight started soon. Oh shit, Ali said, I gotta take a shower. And what happens that night, Ken Norton defeats Ali and breaks his jaw. But one of the beautiful things that that would happen as a result of that humiliation is it did seem to humble Ali for a moment.

48:51SPEAKER_02:He said after that fight, after the fight he lost in Norton, best thing that ever happened to me, I needed that. Thank you very much. Losing that fight was just what I needed. It made me humble. I'm going into the woods and will train at my camp. No more fooling around. Now, one of the beautiful things about studying history is you can learn many of the things to do from others, but you can also learn many things that you shouldn't do, the traps to avoid, decisions to resist.

49:14SPEAKER_02:And in the story of Ali, near the end of his career, we we can learn a very important lesson from him on something that we must avoid. So Ali, after he returned to boxing and started to age, as we mentioned earlier, just wasn't the same fighter. He was dishing out less punishment and he was taking more punishment, he wasn't winning as often. And something Ali said again and again after his fights is that he planned to retire in the near future because of all the damage he was taking.

49:38SPEAKER_02:And it even got to a point where Oli's behavior and demeanor seemed to start shifting. He talked slower, he started to slur some of his words. And many believe that if he didn't quit the sport soon, he was going to have earlier permanent and irreversible brain damage for the rest of his life if he didn't have it already. And Oli vowed again and again that he would eventually retire fight after fight. Before the George Foreman fight that he won, he said, one more and I'll be finished, he said.

50:02SPEAKER_02:After beating Joe Frazier in their third bout, he's described as follows He was done, finished. He meant it. He had beaten everyone, he had he had beaten everyone worth beating. He had proven everything he could possibly prove. It was time to quit, he said. But a few weeks passed, I've changed my mind, he told Howard Cassell, and I feel I can go in another few years. The fans want to see it. Here's another example after a third bout with Ken Norton, the men who beat him in their first fight.

50:25SPEAKER_02:When it was over, Ali made a big announcement. At the urging of my leader, I declare that I am quitting fighting as if as of now, and from now on, I will join the struggle of the Islamic cause. But even so, Ali was not sure he was ready to give up boxing. As he flew home from Turkey, the boxer began to waffle. He told others he had already spent most of his income from the Norton fight, and he knew he would face considerable pressure to continue boxing.

50:46SPEAKER_02:Two weeks later, while filming a scene in Houston, Ali told reporters he was ready to end his retirement for boxing. I went foreman, he said, I will destroy Foreman. After a few more matches, Ali said this, I'm through boxing. He vowed, you will never see me in the ring again. But a month later, Ali said he wanted to box again. The news of a possible Ali return thrilled some members and dismayed others. Ali had gained 20 pounds in retirement. Time and time again, Ali vowed to retire, vowed to quit the sport, and even would have a brief retirement for a few months.

51:15SPEAKER_02:But then again and again, he kept coming back to the sport and compromising himself in the process. And the number one reason Ali kept coming back, despite others urging him to quit, was because of the money he kept making. I really want to quit, he said. But if someone offers you$10 million, it ain't easy. He said he wanted to go out on top with his health, but he also wanted to go out with$10 million in U.S. Treasury bonds. So I can have a check that says$85,000 tax-free in my mailbox every single month.

51:40SPEAKER_02:And his trainer explained why Ali couldn't quit. There is no fucking cure to quick money. There is no cure. And Ali would reap the rewards of continuing to fight. He would earn millions and millions of dollars, maybe more than any fighter in history up to that point, but he had to deal with the consequences. In October 1983, Ali returned to UCLA for more tests. This time, the sign of damage damages were impossible to ignore. A brain scan revealed an enlarged third ventricle in the brain, atrophy of the brainstem.

52:07SPEAKER_02:Ali had trouble learning new material. Ali, because he was unwilling to quit, would have permanent brain damage for the rest of his life. And throughout all of this, someone who urged him to quit was his father. He constantly told Ali, quit son before you get hurt. Quit son before you get hurt. I think we all have something in our own lives probably that we're struggling with, something that we need to improve or adopt, or like Ali, maybe we need to quit.

52:33SPEAKER_02:Maybe it's some habit or some sort of desire or some sort of dangerous behavior. But if you're unable to have the will or strength, or you're unable to listen to others or those around you, or you're unable to seek help help, like Ali, bad things can and will happen. So take all the good from Ali. Stand up for your beliefs, be confident, even hype yourself up like Ali did. Be a fighter. Go make a mark. But also be willing to quit on things you need to quit before it's too late.

52:57SPEAKER_02:I'm gonna end it there. If you want to learn more about Ali, there's two great books I read. One is called Ali by Jonathan I, and the other is by David Rebnik, and it's titled King of the World. Both are absolutely fantastic reads. And if you're interested, you can check them out in the show notes below. The support means a ton, and until next time, peace.

53:28SPEAKER_00:Nothing in life is worthwhile unless you take races.