On the November day in 2005 when Muhammad Ali returned to Louisville with typical fanfare for the dedication of the centre bearing his name, attendees came upon his younger brother Rahaman outside the event. Wearing a pork pie hat, a black leather jacket and frayed black pants betraying a man who’d perhaps seen better days, he was wandering around the plaza abutting the Ohio River. Now and then, he stopped to introduce himself to perfect strangers with the line: “I’m Muhammad Ali’s brother.” His opening gambit since forever, his calling card in history.
The two men once shared a bedroom in the small house at 3302 Grand Avenue, just 6km down the road. During the day, they played cowboys and Indians and at night the elder sibling tormented the younger by using a piece of string to make the curtains dance, convincing the gullible child there was a ghost in the house. Known as Cassius and Rudolph Clay back then, there were just 18 months between them.
As teens, they used to square off for impromptu bouts in the backyard of Tucker’s grocery store. One combatant grew up to become the most famous athlete of the 20th century, the other pieced together a pro boxing ledger of 10 wins, three losses and one draw, before settling for a bit part touring the world in his brother’s rollicking Broadway show of a life.
“He quit boxing to become a full-time hanger on,” wrote American sportswriter Dick Schaap in 1975. “In Ali’s army of hangers-on, Rahaman is the only related by blood and no one is more faithful to the champion. When Muhammad spars, Rahaman leans on the ropes and leads the cheers. When Muhammad clowns, Rahaman slaps his thighs and leads the laughter. And when Muhammad preaches, Rahaman slips almost into a trance and leads the worshippers, ‘That’s right, you’re right, that’s right…right…right.’ The night his brother knocked out George Foreman to regain the heavyweight championship of the world, Rahaman Ali cried."
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Often an effective sparring partner for the champ, the younger Ali died on August 1st, aged 82. The more comprehensive obituaries came laced with sad stories of how he was often subjected to random acts of meanness by his brother. Unnecessary put-downs in front of reporters. Snarky reminders of his status as the lesser. In the mid-seventies, Muhammad helpfully told journalists he paid his brother an annual salary of $50,000 to work as his chauffeur, quipping: “That’s not bad for jivin’ and drivin’.”
Worse still was the time he got cut off from the three-time heavyweight champion’s largesse later in life. Rahaman Ali ended up living for a time in government housing on a Louisville street named Muhammad Ali Boulevard.
The relationship wasn’t always dysfunctional. An hour before he fought Joe Frazier at Madison Square in the Fight of the Century, when he might perhaps have been focusing on that contest, Ali stole out of his dressing room and stood in a back corridor watching aghast as Rahaman suffered a shock defeat to Dangerous Dan McAlinden, the Newry-born heavyweight. Another night, he turned up at The Auditorium in Milwaukee to cheerlead Rahaman’s second-round stoppage of Larry Beilfuss, only for his presence at ringside to impress the crowd far more than anything his brother unleashed in the ring.
When Ali arrived in Dublin to fight Al ‘Blue’ Lewis at Croke Park in July, 1972, Rahaman was, as always, by his side. He was often on his back shoulder in photographs. As Elgy Gillespie, then a cub reporter with this newspaper, hung around Oppermann’s Hotel in Kilternan trying to snag an interview with the main man, she struck up a friendship with Odessa Clay that yielded an introduction to her younger son. “May you receive all the wonderful blessings of goodness that life has to offer you,” wrote Rahaman in a note to the journalist before delivering her a stern lecture on the evils of smoking.
“Rahaman was very strict about his beliefs and he talked to me for a long time about religion,” said Gillespie. “I think he was under the impression that he was making great headway converting me to Islam because I was drinking it all in and listening. Some of the other members of the Nation of Islam were strict in one way and then they were ludicrously licentious in other ways. I felt it hadn’t dawned on them that you can’t be a strict Muslim and retain an entourage of five prostitutes. They hadn’t really gotten the concept clearly.”
The two Alis were sharing a room at Opperman’s and as promised, he eventually got Gillespie the interview she needed. After Lonnie, Ali’s fourth wife, took stern hold of his admittedly chaotic financial affairs and cut off much of her husband’s sprawling entourage in the late 1980s, Rahaman lost his beloved gig as one of his brother’s keepers. With a resume of his own that included stints as an appliance salesman, boxing trainer and restaurateur, he was remembered in Louisville – especially at the Baptist Church to which he had returned later in life – for his charity work helping others, a task he remained committed to up until his death.
“You cannot live in the shadow of Muhammad Ali,” said boxing manager Angelo Dundee of Rahaman one time. “That’s something you never want to do. How could this poor boy survive? That’s a big shadow. A big, long shadow.”
The biggest.
