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Muhammad Ali and Howard Cosell, a love story

 
Muhammad Ali jokes with ABC’s Howard Cosell and Cosell’s toupee before the start of the 1972 Olympic boxing trials in West Point, N.Y.  The men from different backgrounds formed a bond of friendship and respect.
Muhammad Ali jokes with ABC’s Howard Cosell and Cosell’s toupee before the start of the 1972 Olympic boxing trials in West Point, N.Y. The men from different backgrounds formed a bond of friendship and respect.
Published June 5, 2016

They were a 1960s power couple, two hypertalkative showmen: Muhammad Ali, the African-American boxer born with a slave name, and Howard Cosell, the Jewish Brooklyn lawyer who found his calling in sportscasting.

Ali, who died Friday at 74, recited doggerel, danced in the ring, taunted his opponents and converted to Islam. And, as he told us, he was pretty. Cosell was homely, with an adenoidal voice and a collection of toupees. But at his best, he could call a boxing match with dramatic brio, articulate complex issues and, as he often said, "tell it like it is."

ABC Sports, Cosell's employer, carried a lot of Ali's fights, so Cosell was at ringside, inside the ring interviewing Ali and his opponents after fights, or in the network's studio interviewing Ali. Their camaraderie produced an entertaining union of spirited opposites and a well-suited black-white pairing for the times.

One man, Ali, understood racism; the other, Cosell, experienced anti-Semitism. And neither could stop talking.

Ali and Cosell seemed inseparable: teasing and challenging each other, and mock-sparring in suits and ties. Ali often threatened to strip off Cosell's toupee du jour, and in their jokey back-and-forth, each man said the other would have been nothing without him.

"Every time you open your mouth, you should be arrested for air pollution," Ali once told Cosell, who responded, "You would still be in impoverished anonymity in this country if I hadn't made you."

Beneath the stagecraft of their relationship was Cosell's support of Ali, whether by no longer calling him Cassius Clay when others persisted or by excoriating the New York State Athletic Commission for stripping him of his heavyweight title in 1967 after he refused induction into the Army.

Longtime ABC producer Dennis Lewin witnessed many Ali-Cosell encounters. "They had genuine respect for their mutual talents and what they could do for each other," he said.