Ali and George

By Randal Hill
Guest Columnist

“Gorgeous George” was born George Raymond Wagner in 1915. He grew up in a tough Houston neighborhood, where he learned to wrestle at the local YMCA and soon established himself as a freestyle champion.

He later became a self-promoting professional wrestler and the sport’s first superstar villain. After growing his blond hair long and dyeing it platinum, Wagner began calling himself Gorgeous George. And that was just the beginning.

The savvy showman also started making entrances that could be labeled bona fide spectacles. Amid catcalls and jeers from the sellout crowds, George, bathed in a purple spotlight, would stroll slowly down the aisle in a red velvet gown on a red carpet amid the booming strains of “Pomp and Circumstance.”

Once inside the ropes, his valet would spray a scented mist around the ring. After loudly proclaiming his greatness to the people there, George would then usually proceed to vanquish each challenger.

In the late 1940s, in the early days of television, he helped bring professional wrestling — with all its well-rehearsed antics — into America’s living rooms. By the 1950s, George was the best-known wrestler in the world, raking in over $100,000 a year (when the hourly federal minimum wage was $1) and becoming one of the highest paid athletes of his time.

One day in June 1961, at a Las Vegas radio station, he met a rising young boxer from Kentucky named Cassius Clay. Each was there to give an interview to promote an upcoming event in their respective fields at the nearby Convention Center.

Clay went first, calmly and politely answering questions about his future opponent, a Hawaiian named “Duke” Sabedong.

Things changed when George, who was there to wrestle “Classy” Freddie Blassie, took the mic. Asked what Gorgeous George would do if he lost to his opponent, the aging showman thundered, “I’d crawl across the ring and cut my hair off! But that’s not going to happen, because I am the greatest wrestler in the world!”

After the interviews, the 46-year-old George gave the 19-year-old Clay some sage advice: “Boxing, wrestling, it’s all a show. A lot of people will pay to see someone shut your mouth. So keep on bragging, keep on sassing, and always be outrageous!”

Cassius took the words to heart. As the Louisville Lip, he began boasting that he was the greatest boxer ever. (Like George in his prime, he had the skills to back up those boasts.) Clay would also offer such witticisms as “I should be a postage stamp. That’s the only way I’ll ever get licked!”

George’s star eventually dimmed, and on the day after Christmas 1963, he died anonymously at 48 of a heart attack. Two months later, on Feb. 25, 1964, Clay, at age 22 a 7-to-1 underdog, defeated heavyweight boxing champ Sonny Liston. That night, Cassius — soon to become Muhammad Ali — echoed the words of the man who had changed his future and bellowed to the ringside press, “Eat your words! I am the greatest!”

And, truly, he was.