Warrior by Tris Dixon

Author:Tris Dixon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pitch Publishing
Published: 2022-10-21T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

I KNEW I WAS GOING TO FIND THEM

IT WAS love at first sight. A couple of weeks before the win over Lottie Mwale, Matthew Saad Muhammad and Mustafa Ameen were outside the MAPS gym when two girls pulled up to use the facilities.

One was Jeanita, Muhammad Ali’s au pair, and she was with a friend, Michelle LeViege, who was from Anchorage, Alaska. They lived about 20 minutes from the gym.

‘Matthew had the world at his feet and he was immediately smitten,’ said Mustafa Ameen, of the day his friend set eyes on his future wife, Michelle. ‘When Cupid hit him with Michelle, it was one of those once-in-a-lifetime things – like you see in the movies – where a guy is just smitten. Michelle was young, beautiful, very good looking, really something. [She was] twenty-something, Miss Black World, she has a wonderful personality, I can’t deny.’

‘His smile. That was what made me go out with him,’ Michelle remembered some 40 years on about their first meeting. ‘The person that introduced me to him said, “I want you to meet this guy” and I said, “I don’t want to meet no boxer; he’s going to be ugly and stinky!”’

Michelle didn’t follow boxing. She supported the Lakers and preferred watching figure skating and gymnastics. But she went to the gym, and then she saw Matthew.

‘He’s handsome,’ she thought. ‘And he was just so sweet, and he said, “I’d like to take you to dinner and get to know you …” And then the smile. And you know they say one nibble and you’re hooked? That was it. I kind of knew he liked me but I was smitten, too, and I was mad because I didn’t want to be.’

After only a day or two, she came round to see Matthew at his place.

‘He said nothing happened,’ Ameen added. ‘I chewed him out; he could depend on me to be honest with him. We were maybe eight or nine days from the fight and we came from an era where the fighters strongly believed in no sex before the fight, so it was the camp’s job to keep the fighter from temptation. Matthew was single at the time. He had a bunch of children and everywhere we went there was opportunity, but this was the first time he was just smitten.’

It wasn’t long before Matthew was confiding in friends saying he wanted to get engaged to and marry Michelle.

‘Pump the brakes,’ said one voice in the camp.

‘Not so fast. She’s a gold-digger like the rest of them,’ said another.

But Matthew was in love, and so was Michelle.

The team went up to Alaska and stayed at the home of her parents, Sam and Catherine.

‘I liked Michelle,’ said Tony Green. ‘Michelle had good intentions – but Matthew had a lot of girlfriends, man.’

Matthew took Paul Trace with him on one visit to Anchorage. There was a parade for Matthew and Trace did some portraits of the couple. But, on the flight, the showman in Matthew surfaced.

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