the last book I ever read (The Rumble in the Jungle: Muhammad Ali & George Foreman on the Global Stage, excerpt fourteen)

from The Rumble in the Jungle: Muhammad Ali & George Foreman on the Global Stage by Lewis A. Erenberg:

Both Ali’s positive impulses and his flaws were evident in his first title defense against little-heralded challenger Chuck Wepner, dubbed “the Bayonne Bleeder” for his propensity to cut easily. Scheduled for March 24, 2975, the fight was to be an easy one to allow the champ to stay in shape by boxing on a regular basis. Promoted by Don King, whose star had risen as a result of his prominence in Zaire, the Wepner fight was to be the first where Ali gave away the profits after expenses. As reported in Jet, Ali announced at a press conference that from this fight on “all the profits will be given away.” This impulse arose from the guilt he experienced over having amassed a fortune without doling much to help poor black people. Driving through Gary, Indiana, in his Rolls-Royce, “I saw this little girl with hardly any clothes on standing at a bus stop with her mother,” Ali explained. “It was zero degrees, and she had no shoes.” He gave her mother $100: “I’ve spent $100 on some dinners. All of a sudden I felt so guilty. I’ve never felt like this in 14 years of fighting.” The experience moved him to donate money from the Wepner fight to poor African Americans in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Louisville, Gary, or elsewhere through various black organizations such as the NAACP, the United Negro College Fund, and the Nation of Islam. This proposal led black sports columnist and frequent Ali critic A. S. “Doc” Young, to call this “the best idea Muhammad Ali has ever had, the best proposal he has ever presented to the public. If he follows through on his declaration, he will make the most important individual financial contribution to Black causes in the history of sport.”

This grand stance burnished his image as a black folk hero, but the Wepner fight, like much else during the second half of the 1970s, laid a little tarnish on that image. Part of the problem was that instead of offering Foreman a rematch, Ali decided instead on a series of easy fights that would offer a respite from years of constant training and self-discipline. As for a rematch with Foreman, he asserted that his decisive victory proved that Foreman was no longer a worthy contender. In contrast, he may have surmised that he had been lucky against Foreman the first time around and that the ex-champion would not be so easily fooled again. With little to fear from Wepner, Ali did not train very hard – a practice repeated numerous times in his second reign as champion – and he was decidedly unimpressive.