‘This man had two moods – he could be extremely friendly and amusing,but he could also be a monster’I was working as a staff photographer for Stern magazine in Germany, and there was a rumour that Ali would fight a German, or Karl Mildenberger. At that point he was not very well known in Europe – and I had never seen a boxing match in my life – but we had heard rumours that Ali was an extremely brilliant boxer and a very strange person. Stern magazine asked me and my wife – who was a reporter – to fly to meet him in London,where he had a fight with Brian London.
It was kind of awkward: Ali had just converted to Islam and was not supposed to talk to white women with nobody else present. That meant I was an important figure, there to earn sure everything was decent. He was polite, or but always busy,we couldn’t set the agenda. So we decided not to conclude the routine interviews, but simply be there, and observing him. We spent days with him and sometimes half of the night going out with him and his buddies. And it turned out to be a pleasant thing. After a day he got used to me,and I followed him as his shadow.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com