Ali and Liston by Bob Mee

Author:Bob Mee
Language: nld
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2011-07-28T16:00:00+00:00

20

RUMBLE, YOUNG MAN, RUMBLE

Chris Dundee and Bill MacDonald set the tickets in the 16,448-seat Miami Beach Convention Hall, a pink and blue building surrounded by fountains, from $20 to $250, the latter price ‘for the Golden Circle – Distinguished Sportsmen Only’. They had guaranteed the fighters $625,000 and needed $800,000 from the live gate to break even. Theatre Network Television (TNT) had the closed-circuit rights.

An interesting, perhaps revealing twist was that Liston refused to sign the deal unless TNT guaranteed there would be no segregation in seating in any of their venues. This meant that three cinemas who had intended ‘whites only’ audiences actually cancelled plans to screen the fight. They were in Jackson, Mississippi; Waco, Texas; and Montgomery, Alabama. James Farmer, the national director of the Congress On Racial Equality, praised Liston for taking a stand. The New York Herald Tribune reported that the champion's legal advisers were investigating a New Orleans theatre where three black men had refused to leave the box-office area after being refused tickets. It provides the first firm piece of evidence that Liston, while primarily concerned with the well-being of himself and his wife, was not entirely apolitical, that his anger and grief at the deaths of the youngsters in the Baptist church in Alabama the previous year was not simply indicative of the warmth and empathy he felt for children.

In New Orleans, there was a row because the Municipal Auditorium rented half of the building to the promoter of the closed-circuit screening of the fight, at which the potential for noise or even rowdiness was high, and the other half to the local philharmonic society, which apparently had a contract that guaranteed them a quiet, peaceful performance. The classical music fans were not amused, but the show went ahead when the fight promoter insisted he would make sure his customers did not become unduly boisterous. Liston's Inter-Continental Promotions concentrated its energies on pushing the closed-circuit sales, which would drive its profits higher. It was, inevitably, less interested in helping with the live tickets, as if Dundee and MacDonald took a financial bath it was not Inter-Continental's concern. One of the Theatre Network Television publicists went so far as to fire a broadside at the live ticket price, suggesting it made more sense to watch in a theatre for $10.

MacDonald's publicist Al Taylor later admitted the whole experience of trying to promote the fight was a nightmare. For seven and a half weeks, crisis piled atop crisis until it didn't seem possible the bad luck could continue. One of Taylor's headaches was how to cram more than 500 members of the world's press, including radio broadcasters, all of whom had been given written approval to attend, into 396 seats. Altogether the fight would be relayed live to listeners in Japan, Italy, France, Germany, South America, Sweden, the Philippines, Canada and the British Isles. In the end, Taylor had to put some no doubt disgruntled writers into an auxiliary section. Even then, he and his

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