muscles”—was eager to approach deep waters. Trainer Angelo Dundee knew superior talent could get a person by in some fields, but not boxing, not even for a specimen like Ali.
There was much to learn on the arduous road ahead.
The purpose of boxing is to inflict damage with your fists while avoiding strikes in return. During a career in prizefighting that’s nearly impossible. Boxers are expected to be stout because almost all of them get caught. The game ones respond to trouble and fight on. The great ones do that then win.
For Ali’s doubters it boiled down to, yeah, sure, the fancy-footed dancer’s talent was obvious, but what kind of fighter was he really?
New York matchmaker Teddy Brenner lived up to his reputation by testing Ali’s doggedness in the boxer’s Garden debut, and Sonny Banks, a twenty-one-year-old converted southpaw puncher from Detroit, got the nod. Midway through the opening round, Banks snapped off a left hook that put Ali on the canvas and turned the Miami-based Dundee from tan to pale. Ali, a 5-to-1 favorite, needed only the count of two to regroup, shake off the cobwebs, and get to his feet.
“That was my first time knocked down as a professional,” Ali told the press on a twelve-degree February night in Manhattan. “I had to get up to take care of things after that because it was rather embarrassing, me on the floor. As you know, I think that I’m the greatest and I’m not supposed to be on the floor, so I had to get up and put him on out, in four as I predicted.”
Suckered by the illusion of landing a second money punch, a fight finisher, Banks became a predictable headhunter with that left hook. As he crumbled under Ali’s angular fighting and incessant, buzzing jab, Banks, penned Liebling, “was like a man trying to fight off wasps with a shovel.”
Unsure of Ali’s recuperative powers until Banks touched his charge’s off button, Dundee was encouraged to see the type of pugilist he was dealing with. Critics, meanwhile, had new information to critique regarding the quality of Ali’s chin.
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