Dundee also made sure Choko stayed on his toes during the five years he spent working on The Future of Boxing.
“Angelo would call me once a month to make sure I was making shit happen,” Choko recalls. “‘Are you hustling?’ he’d say.”
Dundee, who reveled in a good pre-fight media circus, would no doubt have enjoyed the glamour and class of Choko’s “Rumble at the Ritz.” At the opening media reception, there was champagne, an open bar, and endless trays of beef tartar. There was Sugar Ray himself, working the room with style and grace, along with Jake “Raging Bull” LaMotta, Leon Spinks, and Joe “Fair but Firm” Cortez. As the legends mingled with the media, they signed autographs, posed with closed fists, and hammed it up in interviews like the good old days.
For the main event, a red carpet led to the opulent Oval Room at the Ritz, where Montreal’s wealthy elite were wined and dined by local celebrity chefs. There were photo ops with the boxers, an auction of lucrative boxing memorabilia, and a boxing ring at the centre of it all, where fights took place and speeches were given. And there was Leon Spinks, stunned to tears when presented with a replacement Olympic gold medal by Sugar Ray.
Both Leonard and Spinks had won gold at the 1976 Montreal Olympics (in different weight classes), and Spinks’ heart was broken a few years’ back when his gold medal was stolen from his former home in Columbus, Nebraska.
Beyond the evening’s glitz and jubilance, however, there is stark reality that boxing has fallen on hard times, challenged as it is by the rise of mixed martial arts, the absence of household names, the growing awareness of post-concussion syndrome, and the shift from cable TV to pay-per-view, where only boxing enthusiasts pay attention.
But if Choko’s glamorous book launch were his own personal statement on the future of boxing, the message to the boxing world is that the future depends on creating a media buzz, trumpeting the stars of the sport, and perhaps stealing a little of the limelight back from mixed martial arts.
Of course, what the boxing world really needs is a new face – a new Ali, a new Sugar Ray, a new Mike Tyson. Someone to seize the spotlight and captivate not just boxing fans, but the general public. While we wait for the next media-savvy superstar to emerge, the “Rumble at the Ritz” was an extravagant reminder that hype, style, and grandeur can go a long way to drumming up public interest.
As it happens, putting on a show for the media and the public is a lesson Choko gleaned from Dundee, who became Choko’s link to the boxing elite.
“He would help me get interviews,” Choko recalls. “He would say to me, ‘Who do you wanna meet next?’ So I’d say, you know, Foreman! And he’d say, ‘OK, no problem.’ Eight days later, I’m at George Foreman’s house. Or Jake LaMotta’s.”
Of course, for any boxing aficionado, Muhammad Ali trumps all else, and meeting Ali was part of the inspiration that drove Choko to embark on his boxing odyssey.
“In my mind,” Choko admits, “I know that when I started this book, one part was to educate myself about boxing, but the other part was to meet Muhammad Ali.”
At one point during the five years Choko spent interviewing boxers and writing his book, Dundee asked him what he wanted to know from Ali.
“I told Angelo: ‘Well, he’s said it all. There’s books. There’s movies. But he’s never answered, ‘What’s the future of boxing?’ And his answer, which is in the book, is this: ‘The future of boxing is me making a comeback to the ring.’ And when you read it, you know it comes straight from his mouth.”
Ali’s beautifully enigmatic quip, however, didn’t come from a one-on-one interview, and so in early 2012, after four years of working on his book, Choko had yet to meet Ali, even though Dundee had been working on setting something up.
“Angelo kept telling me, ‘I promise you: you’re gonna meet (Ali).”
“At some point, (Angelo) says, ‘You’re gonna come with us to Muhammad’s 70th birthday.’ His birthday is in January, but they were doing something special at the MGM February 2. But then Angelo dies the day before the celebration. I still have my ticket to go to Las Vegas for Ali’s 70th birthday.”
“And when he dies, Angelo’s family calls me late at night, and I’m crying. I’m shocked. And I say to (Mark Grisner, Dundee’s personal assistant), ‘Who do I hear in the background?’ Oh, that’s Jimmy, Angelo’s son, talking to Sugar Ray Leonard. And I said, ‘Why the hell are you on the phone with me, then?’ Call George Foreman! You know? But he says, ‘No Alex, Angelo really loved you.’ And I start crying even more. Then they invite me to the funeral.”
“So I arrive at the funeral in Canastota, Florida, and it’s a big place – national guards and American flags, eight media trucks and so on. And they want me to go talk outside. So the mayor speaks, and then I’m next, to talk about Angelo in front of eight cameras, with journalists all around. So I just said, ‘Angelo always said it doesn’t cost anything to be nice,’ which is true. So I said that and then went inside.”
“A little bit later, I’m back outside and I hear a buzz, and I know it’s Muhammad making his entrance into the funeral. And people are flocking to him, very respectful, but just awe-struck. He’s sitting in his wheelchair and his wife is there. So Angelo’s family comes to me and they say, ‘Do you wanna meet Muhammad?’”
“So I go, and all I could say was, ‘It’s an honour to meet you. My condolences. We lost a dear friend.’ And he smiled. You know, the medication he takes (for Parkinson’s disease) makes him very rigid so he doesn’t shake. But his mind is all there. And he smiled. And I swear to you, I have never been looked at, in the eyes, the way this man looked me in the eyes. So I turned around after shaking his hand, and I’m like, ‘That’s it! He smiled. He looked at me and he smiled.’”
“At that point, I had no idea where I was. But for some reason, surrounded by guards and media and mourners, I went straight to the coffin. And Angelo always cracked jokes. So I touched the coffin and I go, ‘Angelo, you always promised me I would meet Muhammad, but you didn’t have to go to this extent. You can please come back now.’”
“True story. And I miss him. Everyone does.”
by Geoff Lansdell
