Muhammad Ali vs Lamar Clark

Venue: Miami Beach Auditorium, Florida. 19th April, 1961.

Clay’s return to Louisville did not appear to be a straightforward one. Lemar Clark was a cut above anyone clay had been in the ring with before, with exception of the sparring session with Ingemar Johansson.

He came to fight with a quite astonishing record of 45 knockout wins in a row, albeit against opponents of variable quality. Nonetheless, they’d still needed hitting and Clark was rough and tough and a handful for anyone. Or at least, he should have been. Clay simply destroyed him.

Cassius Clay vs Lamar Clark, 19th April, 1961.

Back in the same ring where he’d outpointed Tunney Hunsaker on his debut, clay raised the stakes for himself: for the very first time, he predicted the round in which he would win the fight.

Angelo Dundee had no doubt the trick would work as a psychological tool, and it concentrated clays mind wonderfully. Nothing delighted him more than living up to his own hype. Ferdie Pacheco told the writer David Remnick: “the more confident the became, the more his natural ebullience took over. Everything was such fun to him. Maybe it wouldn’t have been as much fun if someone had knocked him lopsided, but no one did.”

Shortly into the second round, clay broke Clark’s nose with a stiff straight right hand and within a minute or so had put Clark on the floor twice. The referee stepped in to spare Clark as he visited the mat once more and clay had made his first fight prediction come true.

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