UPS AND DOWNS
Next week it will be 26 years since Matthew Saad Muhammad last fought professionally. By then he was barely recognisable to the swashbuckling light-heavyweight ruler that came before. Here, Tris Dixon – who befriended Saad during his chaotic and painful r
Matthew Saad Muhammad’s astonishing career and sad decline
THERE WAS A STAGGER IN HIS STEPS, SCAR TISSUE ON HIS EYELIDS, HIS NOSTRILS HAD BEEN BATTERED FLAT”
IWOULDN’T claim to know Matthew Saad Muhammad.
He was one of the great lightheavyweight champions. His family abandoned him on the streets of Philadelphia when he was an infant, dumped by relatives who could not afford to look after him. He went from rags to riches, back to rags and it was during the latter stage when we spent time together.
For six years, from the summer of 2000, we were in regular contact. Then my visits to the US East Coast slowed and he became more difficult to pin down on the phone as mobile phones were either cut off or lost and I was left to check in with mutual friends.
One Sunday in May 2014 I received word from the USA that he had died. He was just 59 and we had not spoken for a couple of years. It was upsetting though not very surprising.
The ravages of one of the toughest careers in boxing history had long since taken their toll. His speech had become difficult to understand. His memory was fading. He walked slowly. There was a stagger in his steps. Ledges of scar tissue smothered his eyelids, his nostrils had been battered flat. He looked the way you hope old fighters will not look – with the exception of a flashy, beaming smile he managed to occasionally muster. The first time I saw it was when we met. We were looking at plaques on the walls of the International Boxing Hall of Fame museum in upstate New York and nodded at one another. He asked where I was from. About that time, the late promoter Mickey Duff bowled over to greet Matthew. Saad, of course, had spanked a few Duff fighters, including John Conteh and Lottie Mwale. They joked about it and, all of a sudden, for no particular reason, I was included in the conversation and in a photo with the two Hall of Famers [see over page]. Saad and I spent a lot of time together that weekend. I was in America to learn how to box from some of the sport’s better trainers and Matthew, who’d coached some solid contenders in the late 1990s, said he would welcome me to Atlantic City. A few months later I was there and he was as good as his word. Not only that, but he had friends of his allow me to stay with them for several weeks at a time. Don’t get me wrong; the places were not fancy. It was the first time I could claim to have lived in a ghetto. After a while, Matthew asked if I would be interested in writing his life story. His was such an incredible tale
HE WAS LAUGHING, BUT IT WAS LIKE A KID WANTING TO BE LOVED. THERE WAS A VOID IN HIS LIFE THAT YOU COULD SEE IN HIS EYES”
it was a wonder it had never made the silver screen and made him into a millionaire again.
He was born Maxwell Antonio Loach but did not know his name when he had been ditched. He was found wondering the streets, crying, by a police officer and was surrendered to nuns in an orphanage. They named him Matthew Franklin.
The abandonment, the subsequent fight for his identity in the ring and the swashbuckling light-heavyweight fights that saw him rack up eight thrilling world title defences became the stuff of legend. Then came the almost inevitable and equally intense decline.
I set about writing the book. I interviewed him for hours and made daily trips on the Amtrak from Atlantic City to Philadelphia to devour all of the build-ups and reports on his contests from the old newspapers.
I buried myself in the library in Philadelphia for days at a time, immersed in the old sport sections of the Inquirer, the Daily News and the now defunct Evening Bulletin.
I devoured everything I could find, searching through reels of the old newspapers. I found all of the fights. I photocopied all of the clippings. Then I would return to Atlantic City and we would talk about those epic nights, about those glorious days when Matthew was king.
We were sat in bleak, grim apartments discussing his days on top of the world while the casinos where he used to headline flickered in the distance. Back in England, and with Youtube not the monster it is now, I ordered all of the VHS tapes I could find, from dealers in Australia, both sides of the USA and around Europe. Yet the Matthew I knew was not the same man I watched plying such a thrilling but vicious trade.
The smile remained, but no longer was he riding the crest of life’s wave. He was lost in the surf. He was not the warrior fight fans fondly referred to as the most exciting of all time. He certainly was not wealthy.
Philly promoter Russell Peltz remembered Saad coming up and recalled meeting him before his pro debut.
“Nice kid,” Peltz said. “He trained at the Juniper Gym in South Philly where Nick Belfiore was his head trainer and Nick ran the gym.” Early in his career, Saad upset Olympic champion Mate Parlov and they shared a draw in the return a few months later. Matthew had been a significant underdog. After that he became an attraction in Philly.
“I first met Matthew when he was a preliminary fighter just coming up,” Nigel Collins, who covered Matthew’s bouts on the Philadelphia beat, began. “I was friendly with him right from the beginning and covered all of his career. He was handsome and he had a physical appeal, he was always
smiling, he liked to laugh a lot and gave the impression that mostly he was having a good time. But you could see in his eyes something different. It was like a kid wanting to be loved, something like that. There was a void in his life that you could see in his eyes.”
Matthew lost a controversial split decision to Eddie Gregory (in a meeting of future Muhammads, Eddie Mustafa Muhammad) and captured the NABF title in a gruesome rocks and boulders war with Indiana southpaw Marvin Johnson, whom he stopped in the 12th round of a seesaw tussle.
“I covered the first fight with Johnson, which was absolutely unreal,” Collins enthused of that ruthless 1977 classic. “I thought several times that they both might die. You sometimes get scared for a fighter when you think things are going wrong, but never have I covered a fight where I thought both might die.”
A slew of grippingly violent defences followed against the likes of Billy Douglas (Buster’s father), Richie Kates and Yaqui Lopez. Then he stopped Johnson in eight for the WBC title in the Indianapolis slugger’s hometown.
“I remember going out to Indianapolis when he won the title and he was just really happy,” added Collins. “Then he did what Muhammad Ali did, he changed his name, converted to Islam and became Matthew Saad Muhammad. And in a way that’s when things began to get a little out of hand. He spent money on things he shouldn’t and I remember once doing a story when he had 13 people working for him when he was training for a fight. But he was a very friendly, likeable guy. A little more sensitive that you might assume, the only place he was a terror was in the ring or in the gym when he was sparring. He wasn’t a bully. He wasn’t a grouch. He was so macho, so violent in the ring, so giving of himself but he was spending money on all kinds of c**p that was completely unnecessary.” Peltz added: “I do remember being at his beautiful home in Jenkintown after he won the titles and every room in the house was decorated by a different high-end Philadelphia-area designer. Everyone took him for a ride. He had a beautiful star-lit wife who left him once the money disappeared.”
For two years, from 1979 to 1981, Matthew’s miraculous story was front-page news. He searched for his family and for his true identity, offering a reward for anyone who could help him understand what had happened to him as a child. And for those two years he fended off challenges from Conteh (twice), Yaqui Lopez (in a rematch), Vonzell Johnson, Murray Sutherland and others. He often rallied from the brink to preserve his world title.
He controversially survived horrible cuts above his eyes to defeat Conteh in their first bout. In a historic eighth round, Lopez teed off on him with around 30 or more unanswered punches, only for Saad to roar back and stop him in the 14th. Lanky Johnson ran up an unlikely lead against Matthew, who came on late and stopped the Ohio man. Sutherland split Saad’s bottom lip in half and he fought through the blood to stop the Scot late. The script was on repeat. It made Matthew must see-tv. Survive a fight-ending scare, live on the edge, somehow win.
“You couldn’t ever hardly quite believe your eyes,” said Collins. “Even though you’d seen him do the same thing many times before it seemed like a fresh miracle every time. Eventually it ended against [Dwight Muhammad] Qawi but until then each fight you’d think, ‘Oh my God, is this the one?’ because he always pulled it out. Of course that’s not going to last a long time, yet I think he enjoyed those kind of fights as he could really box. A lot of great fighters have wars like that now and then but every fight after a while was just the same way. It didn’t matter if it was a mid-range opponent or a really good opponent.”
Collins always felt the motivation to fight through disaster each time came from his childhood.
“Being abandoned as a child and bouncing around foster homes, that was a double edge sword in that it drove him to endure those fights but it was going to ruin him physically.”
It did. The miracles ran out against Qawi. Some people mistakenly call the Saad-qawi fights epics. They weren’t. Matthew was a shell and the “Camden Buzzsaw” carved through him, certainly the second time.
“It was sad,” Collins reminisced. “I was at both fights and it was obvious then that was it; he was one of those guys that did go overnight – most likely because of his fighting style.”
For Matthew, the glory, the money, the wins, the titles... It all went. Yet tragically he fought from that rematch defeat in 1982 all the way through to March in 1992. He became a ‘name’ to have on a prospect’s record, pimping his brand and reputation. He lost more than he won. He absorbed some brutal beatings and while his few remaining fans prayed for those trademark fightbacks he had used them all up. There was nothing left to give. He won just one of his final nine fights and even wound up on an MMA freakshow in Japan.
EVERYONE TOOK HIM FOR A RIDE. HE HAD A BEAUTIFUL STAR-LIT WIFE WHO LEFT HIM ONCE THE MONEY DISAPPEARED”
Clearly unprepared and unaware of what was going on, he wore boxing gloves, was promptly kicked to the floor and choked out in a matter of seconds. Because of his story and the drama of his fights, there was on-off talk of a book, a film, a Hollywood blockbuster.
“There were times when there was hope for him to have a good post-boxing career but nothing ever stuck, as it doesn’t with most of these guys,” Collins lamented.
As the decline set in the debts mounted. The house was sold and the ‘friends’ could not be found.
“But he fought on way too long and the people around him had no consideration for his health and welfare,” said Peltz. “He sold all his trophies and belts and robes to pay bills.”
He did autograph signings for pittance. In 1998 he enjoyed a rare day in the sun when he was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame at the first time of asking. But then his health began to fracture.
Those wars were catching up with him. It wasn’t just that he was ‘shot’ when he fought Qawi, but however many concussions he had suffered and however damaged his brain was, everything was coming back to haunt him. He took work as a roofer when he could get it.
One hot summer’s afternoon, we went to a café a few blocks back from the Atlantic City Boardwalk for a late breakfast. Before we ordered I told Matthew I didn’t have money to pay for our ham, grits and eggs knowing he wouldn’t either. He assured me it would be okay. When it came time to leave, the elderly gentleman behind the counter winked and said, ‘See you next time, Champ.’ Matthew’s name, those wild brawls, it was still currency to those who knew, who appreciated what he had done.
But he was not cherished everywhere and at times boxing would roll its shoulder, forgetting his valiant efforts.
In September 2001 Saad drove he and I to Madison Square Garden to watch Bernard Hopkins, his Philly brother, stop Felix Trinidad. I am not sure whether I was more surprised that we had made it with him driving or that the borrowed rickety Cadillac with the flat tyres had somehow survived the journey to New York.
Saad tried to use his name to get in, but I ended up buying us seats in the nosebleeds. Before the main event, they called out all of the champions who had been invited ringside to receive their acclaim. No one knew Saad was there. Despite Matthew being overjoyed for Hopkins, it was a somber drive back to Atlantic City.
Often we would stay in the shabby high-rise apartment of a mutual friend whom Matthew had introduced me to. Willie was in his sixties, had poor health and interested in local politics. He hated what Atlantic City had become. After all, he lived in one of the worst sections of it.
But Willie was a nice guy. We would stay up late, playing cards or talking about the city, sometimes about Saad’s career. One evening one of Matthew’s fights came up on Willie’s flickering black and white TV on a sporting classics channel and we watched his second tear-up with Lopez.
Saad and I would then decide who would get the ropey single bed under the window and who would sleep rounded like a pretzel on the sofa in the same room. He took me to a few of the friends’ apartments where he would stay and from day to day he would move around, not wanting to burden anyone for long periods.
In the late 2000s it became common knowledge that he was homeless. Rock bottom followed a few years later when he wound up living in a homeless shelter. I was surprised so few people said anything about his deteriorating health. I had grown to know and understand him but often found it hard to make out what he was saying through slurred speech. Only those in denial could not see it, perhaps blinded by their love of what he had given in the ring. Collins was not oblivious to it. “I knew it [the wars] was going to catch up with him. What I didn’t know was it would catch up with him after he’d stopped fighting. I thought it would catch up with him like it did when he fought Qawi, you know, he’d lose it, he’d get the shit beat out of him and that would be it – the whole miracle run would be over. I didn’t think of the whole long-term effects.” By around 2005 my visits to Atlantic City dwindled. We would speak two or three times a year. I think 2006 was the last time I actually saw him. At a point when there was a break in our conversation he stopped, looked at me and waved me in close. “Look at this,” he whispered proudly. He had been issued a new driver’s licence. The name on the card was Maxwell Antonio Loach, the name he had been given at birth but the name that fell off the grid when he had been abandoned. He’d had nothing when that was his name the first time round. Now he had nothing at a time when he was either choosing or having to use it again. Matthew Franklin and Matthew Saad Muhammad were dead. On May 25, 2014, Maxwell Antonio Loach sadly followed. He had become a spokesperson for some homeless charities near the end but had never been able to get back on track. For a while, Matthew rested in an unmarked grave in Ivy Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia. John Disanto, of Phillyboxinghistory.com began to raise funds online to buy a gravestone. He needed $5,000. Within a year more than $6,000 had come in and Matthew could be remembered and visited. Matthew Saad Muhammad – Miracle Matthew, June 16, 1954-May 25, 2014
was engraved on the black stone, which also had a picture of Saad with the WBC belt draped over his shoulder. They say the cause of Matthew’s death was uncertain. He was only 59. There had been a diagnosis of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. The illness damages motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord, causing havoc with the neuromuscular system. But boxing had surely played its part. Whatever the experts wanted to call it, it was accentuated by those bloody battles and the years of abuse he suffered as a cash cow trying to resurrect memories of the past.
“[He was] one of the most exciting fighters in any division of all-time,” surmised Peltz. “Never ducked anyone.”
Collins agreed. “I think he should be remembered as one of the most exciting fighters of all time, for a brief period. Saad, for four or five years, was practically unbeatable. And the thrills and excitement that he generated are almost unparalleled in boxing for fighting at that level. I think that’s how he should be remembered. There was nobody like this guy and probably never will be again.”
I never met that Matthew. I never met the Saad Muhammad who had flickered on VHS cassettes so dramatically before me. I did not meet the warrior his opponents respected, the crowdpleaser the writers adored or the prizefighter so many bled dry. Yet it felt like I really knew him. And he was a good man. He was my friend.