Shadow Boxing

Muhammad Ali Fought 50 men. Only one disappeared. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to the cost of these dreams. From Right Thompson,
a podcast about sports stories from My Heart Media, Graphic
Audio and Goat Rodeo. This episode is shadow Boxing. So
Mohammad Ali probably one of the most important figures of

(00:30):
the twentieth century, not just sports but human beings. We
are still today writing books about him, documentaries about him.
Just about anyone who's ever crossed paths with Muhammad Ali
is discussed about. It can literally be the one defining
thing about you. Right, I met Mohammad Ali, I fought

(00:50):
Muhammad Ali, I worked with Mohammad Ali. Interactions with him
sustains a lifetime of stories. So, Muhammad Ali fought fifty people,
and of the fifty people he fought, they're not great
just because their boxers. They're now great because their boxers
who fought Muhammad Ali. So we know a lot about

(01:10):
those fifty men who fought Muhammad Ali. You know, many
people may not realize, but the life of a boxer
is not exactly a happy story for most people who
are not Muhammed Ali. You know, just to list off
a few of the men, Alejandro Lavrante died from injuries
he got in a fight Sunny Banks did the same
as well. Jerry Corey got dementia and died broke. Jimmy

(01:32):
Allis also suffered from dementia. George Schavala lost three of
his sons to heroin overdoses, and his wife killed herself
after the second son overdosed. Oscar Bonavena was shot through
the heart with a high powered rifle outside of a
Reno brothel. Rudy Lovers became an alcoholic and joined a carnival.
Buster Mathews Great of five and fifty pounds and died
of a heart attack at age fifty two. Cleveland Williams

(01:53):
was killed in a hit and run or fully died
mysteriously in a motel swimming pool, and Sunny Liston died
of a drug overdose in Las Vegas. As sad as
all these stories are, we know what happened to these men.
The base level of human dignity is existing, and so
what would that mean if you were one of those
people who fought Mohammed Ali and you vanished. This next

(02:18):
story is about right trying to answer that question. This
shadow boxing. I got a phone call at my desk
at the Kansas City Star and it was this guy.
He was a car salesman from New Hampshire, and he said,
I have been collecting the autographs of all fifty men
who fought Mohammad Ali, and I have gone to extraordinary

(02:41):
links to find some of them. I've gotten passports from
nuns and all sorts of weird official documents, and I
have gone through this crazy journey and I have arrived
on forty nine and there's one autograph missing, and it
is Jimmy Robinson. And I can't find him. And the

(03:02):
only bio I have of him says that he was
born in Kansas City. So I'm calling the newspaper in
Kansas City. I started looking for the guy, you know.
I mean, I did property records, I did all sorts
of deep dives. The fight against Alive was in Miami,
and the last time anyone had ever seen him was
in Miami. And so, you know, every couple of months

(03:26):
when I worked for the newspaper, I would spend a
couple of days on it, you know, maybe a day maybe,
you know. And I left the Kansas City Star and
I started working for ESPN, and every now and then
I just sort of make a call or two. And
then one day I had an epiphany that I write
about in the story. I think, Um, I was like,

(03:48):
I'm just doing this all wrong. I'm looking for him
in my world, and this is someone who lived and
didn't leave a paper trail. So I went down to Miami.
I set up a three oh five phone number, and
I made these flyers and I had that picture. The

(04:11):
search began six years ago with a phone call. The
man on the other end is named Stephen Singer, a
New Hampshire car salesman who collects things in his spare time.
Most of all, he collects all things from Mohammad Ali.
He tells me a story about a boxer who disappeared,
starting by explaining his latest mission, collecting the signatures of

(04:35):
all fifty men who fought Ali. The first thirty five
or so came easy. Singer just got a professional autograph
collector to help. Then the pro came to a dead end,
and Singer decided to continue on his own. One by one,
he found them. Some took months until finally one fighter remained,

(04:57):
Jim Robinson, who fought Mohammed Ali in Miami Beach on
February the seventh, nineteen sixty one. Robinson was a ghost.
He had no known date of birth, no known full name,
no known family, no ties, no anything, no public records

(05:18):
linking him to a time or to a place. In
a way, Jim Robinson didn't even begin to exist until
someone realized he was missing in the exhaustively well chronicled
life of Muhammad Ali. Singer had stumbled into the one hole,
a man who had shared a moment in time and
space with one of the most famous human beings ever,

(05:41):
only to vanish. Jim Robinson's name appears maybe a dozen
times in print. The night of the fight, he ran
into the Miami Beach Convention Hall carrying an old army
bag full of his gear. Jimmy seemed harried. He was
allowed fast minute replacement used to fighting for pocket change.

(06:03):
The guy who was supposed to box that night, Willie Gillot,
didn't show Ilie biographer's figure. Glot got scared with good reason,
so Jim Robinson got the call. Even though I Lee
outweighed him by sixteen and a half pounds. Robinson came
out fast, throwing wild punches which Alie only dodged, waiting

(06:24):
for his opening. About a minute into the fight, he
saw his chance. The shots to the head put Robinson down.
He struggled to stand, but the referee counted to nine
then stopped the fight. It had lasted nine seconds. Three
years later, Alie beat Sunny Liston, also in Miami, to

(06:45):
become champion Get Up, and the next night, a few
miles up the road in the tiny auditorium, Robin and
lost to a journeyman named Jack Gilbert. Robinson was already
fading away. Boxing record show he kept fighting, losing more

(07:11):
often than he won, finally stopping in ninety. There's only
been one sighting since nineteen seventy nine, when a photographer's
shooting pictures for Sports Illustrated went to find Ali's earliest opponents.
Michael Brennan located jim Robinson, who people in Miami called
Sweet Jimmy. He lived off veterans benefits. He claimed he

(07:37):
was born around nine. He claimed he was wrongfully convicted
of armed robbery. In one of the photographs, Jimmy's wearing
a visor that throws a shadow across his eyes, and
another a deep scar runs along his left cheekbone. In
one he leans up against the wall of a wind Dixie,
and in another he walks down the railroad tracks the

(07:58):
skyline of Miami rising behind him. He never smiles. Sweet
Jimmy smelled of booze and camels cigarettes. Brennan, the Sports
Illustrated photographer, remembers the last time he saw it. He
was in the morning on the railroad tracks, and he
slipped the old Fighter twenty bucks. Sweet Jimmy turned and

(08:18):
walked off, negotiating the cross ties. He never looked back.
Tell Clay, I ain't doing too good, he said. We
all live parallel lives on paper. Long after we're gone,
the details of our existence will remain part of the
public record. They will be all that's known about us.

(08:42):
That's what made Sweet Jimmy's disappearance strange. It's hard to disappear.
Search engines record everything, our arrest, the amount we paid
for our house, the times we've defaulted on a credit
card or paid our taxes late. The invasiveness can be scary,
but also strangely reassured. Someday, through these strings of ones

(09:02):
and zeros, people will know we were here. It's impossible
not to leave a trail. Finding Jimmy I was sure
would take a day to tops. That was six years ago.
Everywhere I turned, I found pain and loss, A procession
of wasted lives, people who never fought Muhammad Ali and

(09:24):
thus won't ever have someone come looking for them. Two
seven people have died in Miami since nine eighty and
never been identified. Any one of them could be sweet.
Jimmy James Robinson, born in nineteen nine, was shot a

(09:45):
few blocks from the pool Hall in night four, his
murderer yelling, I told you I was gonna kill me.
A black son of a bit. James Robinson died of
a gunshot to the head in Overtown in two thousand seven,
most likely a suicide, but he turned out to be
just fifty four. Jimmy Robinson was beaten to death under

(10:05):
an overpass near the pool Hall in He had an
old arrest for being in a park after hours. His
only address was the Camellia's House, a local homeless shelter.
His day of birth made him too young to have
fought Ali. In nineteen sixty one, the Miami Medical Examiner's
Office said, I ran hundreds of searches through every imaginable database,

(10:37):
called every Miami boxing authority who's still alive. Dundee Ali's
former trainer helped by going through his wealth of boxing sources.
The v A struck out, as did the Military records
center in the Social Security Office. Current and former law
enforcement officers tried to help. The Police Union sent Sweet
Jimmy's photo to old beat cops. The county and city

(10:59):
col K detectives searched. They found no Jay Robinson's who
are African American in the right age. The Florida Department
of Corrections said it had never had custody of a Jimmy,
jim or James Robinson who fit the description. Finally, I
began to realize I was looking for Jimmy all wrong.
I was looking for him in the way I would

(11:20):
look for myself. It was pointless to look for Sweet
Jimmy in my world. I had to go search in his.
The first stop is in Miami Beach, at the Fountain
Blue Hotel. The man I've come to see stands ready
to grab my luggage, an old bell hop whose name

(11:42):
tag reads Levi. That's my guy, Levi Forte, an old
boxer who fought Sweet Jimmy. He's been at the Fountain
Blue for forty four years. And the tourist whose bags
he carries have no idea that he once stood in
the ring with champions. I showed Leave by the photograph.
He studies, the drooping chin, delicate eyelashes, the wild beard.

(12:06):
That's him, he says. I haven't seen that guy, and
I don't know when. The last time, he says, was
about thirty years ago, and both men were passing the
famous Fifth Street. Jim Leave. I thought Jimmy would turn
and go up the stairs. When he didn't leave, I
stopped him. Are you Jimmy Robinson, he asked. Jimmy seemed

(12:26):
surprised and pleased. You know me. You fought the man Leave,
I said, And that's the last time Leave. I saw
it hit the hotel. The tourists pile out of their cars.
As I stepped back into mine. Before I can put
it in the drive, I hear a knock on the glass.
Leavi fills my window. He's got a story one he

(12:49):
needs to tell me before I'm gone forever. Don't forget,
he said. I was the first guy to go ten
rounds with George Foreman. December nineteen. My next stop is Overtown.

(13:12):
You can feel the world changing as you turn off
this cane boulevard. Each street bleaker than the one before.
Buildings give way to board it up, facades giving way
to empty lots. People walk towards my car when I
stop at traffic lights. Minor laws and small courtesies don't
apply here. A copet advised me to run the red lights.

(13:34):
People huddle beneath the overpasses, drug lookouts in white T shirts.
I'm warily from corners and rooftops. It didn't always feel
like this in the sixties, when Sweet Jimmy fought Ali.
Black only hotels and nightclubs filled each block. The best
musicians in the world who could play but never stay

(13:55):
on Miami Beach save their best and wildest sets for overtown.
Everybody came booked by the promoter, Clyde Killings, Sam Cooke,
Aretha Franklin, count Basie B. B. King, John Lee Hooker,
Everybody that time and place is as lost as Sweet Jimmy.
Driving through the streets a finger A stack of homemade posters.

(14:18):
I brought each with Sweet Jimmy's photo and a local
three oh five phone number. I explained that ESPN is
looking for this man, but I don't include his name.
I taped them up around the neighborhood, and I dropped
them off at all the restaurants, shops, and liquor stores.
I emailed them to the secretaries at the local churches
because nobody sees or gossips more. If Sweet Jimmy is alive,

(14:42):
he's probably in Overtown. Finding a focal point is both
satisfying and heartbreaking. All this time, Singer and I didn't
know where to look for Jimmy, who never knew anyone
was looking. It's like he was shipwrecked. Three days after
I returned home from my first trip to Miami, my

(15:04):
phone starts ringing. The first caller, Melvin Eaton claims I've
been knowing old sweet Jimmy for years. He says the
last time he saw Jimmy was five or six years ago,
and that Jimmy never stopped reminding people he fought Muhammad Ali.
He'd shadow box and brag. That's all he talked about.
Melvin tells me that is all he talked about. I'm

(15:27):
the one who fought AILI, and I'm the one who
should have been the greatest. This call points me to
the door of Jimmy's world, and I go back to Miami.
As I'm sitting in the medical examiner's office waiting to
read the files of a few dead James Robinson's. A
private investigator suggests checking Camillia House. It sits on the

(15:48):
edge of Overtown, a gateway Miami, has ninety four people
living on the street, and almost all of them end
up here at one time or another. I walk up
to the front desk holding my flyer. I'm looking for someone,
I tell the lady manning the door. Her name is Patricia.
As she studies the photo, sadness darkens her face, as

(16:11):
though a cloud is passing overhead. She slumps. Every day,
unwanted people come through that door, and now finally someone
has come for one of them, and it might be
too late. I never forget a face. She says. He's homeless.

(16:31):
Is he alive? I asked, She shakes her head. She
doesn't know. A few blocks away is what's left of
Clyde Killing's old club. The pool hall was boarded up.
Crime took over the avenue. As the years passed, fire

(16:51):
and the wrecking Ball cleared out. The rest of the block.
Over town surrounds the empty pool hall, split north and
south by in east and west by. The concrete canopy
is a daily reminder of what the neighborhood used to
be what it's become and why. Building the Interstates in

(17:14):
the late sixties forced thousands of people from their homes
and destroyed a vibrant business district and further cut them
off from the rest of Miami. Population declined from forty
thousand to where it is today, just more than ten
A new kind of economy rules the neighborhoods Now. A
beer two might buy you a bath. Penicillina or tetracycline

(17:37):
might buy you a place to sleep for a night.
It's a dumping ground for attics, pedophiles, and the insane.
In the shadow of a booming downtown, people live in
visible lives. Near the corner of Northwest Third Avenue in
eleven Street, I talked to a group of people gathered
beneath under the overpass. They talk about sweet Jimmy, who

(17:59):
they haven't seen in a while, and how people down
here just vanish. They're waiting. They're waiting for the next hit,
the next drink, the next meal. They're waiting for the
next green mattress at the Camellia House for someone to
come save them, for their body to end up at
the morgue with a tag that reads remains Comma unknown,

(18:23):
waiting for the cops to tell them they can't stay
here any longer. They're waiting for tomorrow, which will be
exactly like today. It takes a while, but eventually I
make a bunch of friends in Overtown and their help
opens up the neighborhood. I learned there were two groups

(18:43):
of old timers who live here. There are those who
held down jobs, and then they're the hustlers. Both groups
knew Jimmy, but as the years passed, he seemed to
spend less and less time with people who kept a
foot in the real world. Irby McKnight, a local organizer
who has helped and me look, moved into the neighborhood
the year Jimmy quit fighting. When I first met him,

(19:05):
he tells me he used to be loud and obnoxious,
but he was well dressed. I would say, where did
this man get these old clothes from? And people would say,
that's sweet Jimmy. Oh, you don't know him. He was
a boxer and he fought Muhammad Ali. I learned about
the people searching with me. In the beginning, I wondered

(19:26):
why they were doing it. I thought about that a lot,
especially when I left them in Overtown every day to
go back to my fancy hotel. And finally, I think
I understand. As long as they helped me. Look, they're
part of my world and not of his. As long
as they help, they exist to me. More people called

(19:50):
after seeing the flyers, and they painted a better picture.
Jimmy always carried a deck of cards and dealt a
mean three card monty. He laughed at his own oaks
when no one else did. He shadow box when the
fellows would yell out, sweet Jimmy. The years passed and
more of his teeth fell out. He wasn't in the
best of shape. Then he drank heavily. Now even those

(20:14):
who knew him can't remember where he was from. He
talked a lot about his family, and his friends say
he didn't forget about home. This picture of Jimmy is
the saddest, Not some historical footnote, but Jimmy the man
making it as best as he could, a man who
thought about his family and missed his home. I learned

(20:35):
that Clyde Killings and a few others who made money
off of Jimmy's fighting, would watch over him. Sometimes they'd
cash his check then they give him an allowance because
he liked to gamble and he didn't care. They said.
When he got into a game, he didn't care about tomorrow.
Then I find out one last thing. Sweet Jimmy was
a disabled vet, and people who knew him said he

(20:57):
got checks from the army every month. The stories go
on as long as you care to listen, and they
mirror one another mostly though the few contradictions make it
impossible to know what's fact and what's a cocktail of
real memory. In decades of street life, I keep asking
whether anyone actually saw him leave, or saw his dead body,

(21:18):
or went to a funeral. Nobody did. It's comforting to
those here to imagine him packing up and moving away,
because the alternative is horrifying that he died unnoticed, surrounded
by people who used to be as friends. A lot
of people remember him, but they just can't remember the
last time they saw him. Watching someone be forgotten is

(21:41):
like watching them die, And the more people forget, the
more it's like he never existed at all. He used
to tell some story, they say, but I wasn't really listening.
In those final years, he got quiet, an outsider even here.
He always said he could have beaten Alie, but he'd
got in the way of a punch. It turns out

(22:10):
the most important thing in the search isn't a database
or contacts or cops. It's hope. And overtown is methodical
and its assault on hope, just as it is unforgiving
and its ability to chip away at reality. Sometimes people
are lost for big reasons. Sometimes they're lost because of
a typo. I am in the Miami Library reading through

(22:36):
old issues of the African American newspaper when I see
an item that mentions the name of the man originally
scheduled to fight Ali on February seventh, Ninette, Willie go Loot.
I immediately know why I've been unable to find him.
The white papers and all the later books and magazine
articles misspelled his name. The next afternoon, I'm sitting under

(23:04):
his cardboard. Is Willie, who has just lost a leg
to surgery, holds court with his neighbors. He's beloved. They
call him Big Willie. I really want to believe that.
Somewhere in America right now, in a similar fashion, Sweet
Jimmy is telling neighbors about the night he fought Muhammed Ali,

(23:24):
seeing what Jimmy's life could have been makes me mourn
for him. It makes him seem both closer and further
away than ever before. I'll be seventy five, Willie says,
and still get me some of that under yonda he grins,
and his audience falls out. After some small talk, I
finally get to ask the question, what happened that night? Money,

(23:47):
he tells me. Promoter Chris Dundee, Angelo's brother, offered Ali
eight hundred and offered Willie only three hundred. He told
them where to stick it. What did you do instead,
I asked, He smiles wistfully, remembering an army Duffel bag
full of bootleg whiskey. I got drunk, he said. Looking back,

(24:10):
he's got a lot of regrets. I believe I could
have had a shot at the championship, but I didn't
have the sense I have now. If I'd have had
that sense, I'd have let that booze alone and went
out there and had a shot at the championship. But
that's all in the past. Now the triumphs are more modest.
The folks in the neighborhood want to throw him a
barbecue for a Labor Day on Sunday, one asks. Every

(24:34):
day is Sunday with me, he says. At the Miami
Police Station, Detective Andy Erastogi helps me run Robinson's name
through the system. While sitting there waiting, I filled them
in on the search. After multiple searches, Andy finds nothing.
Finally I get to the conclusion, sweet Jimmy's not here.

(24:57):
I got a feeling, Andy says, gonna find him at
the Medical Examiner's office. In the beginning, I wanted to
sit across from Jimmy and have him tell me about
his life. Now, near the end, I just want to
find a body. It's time to meet Sandy Boyd. We've
spoken on the phone many times. She's the cold case

(25:20):
detective of the Medical Examiner's office. Her office is terraced
in files. These are the people who died alone, who
died with nothing in their pockets, who died in horrible fires,
or in dark waters, or in one terrifying instance, both.
Scratching out remains comma unknown and writing in a name

(25:43):
is her greatest triumph. One day, I'm going to solve
all these cases, she says. Little by little, day by day,
these cases are going to get solved. Sandy figures there's
only been one unidentified African American body in the right
age range that's been found since the pool hall closed.
The body was found floating in the Miami River, and

(26:05):
it's still downstairs waiting on a name. She takes me
through the doors to another building and opens the door
to the decomposed autopsy room, and the smell of death
almost knocks me down. There are rows of metal shells
with cardboard boxes. These are all unidentified, she says, most

(26:26):
contained full skeletons. One is from nineteen fifty seven. She
opens a box. I can show you the guy from
the river, Sandy says. She digs out the file and
hands me a polaroid. The body is shrouded in blue,
so only the face is visible. His eyes are closed
and his nose looks as if it's been broken. But

(26:47):
he doesn't have a scar, which means it's not Jimmy.
He's not here. Instead of getting closer to finding Jimmy,
I'm getting further and further away. I ask everyone the
question where did he go? Everyone has a different answer.
I think Missouri. He might be in Clearwater St. Pete.

(27:09):
His brother took him to Tampa. They say they took
him to Louisiana, and he died in Louisiana and New Orleans.
He's everywhere, He's nowhere, he's both. On my final Sunday
morning in Miami, I show up for my shift volunteering

(27:30):
at the Camilla's House kitchen, and I see a familiar face.
His name is Shelley, and he's eighty. I missed Jimmy,
he says. And we sit there and talk for an
hour and a half. He tells me his story again.
He tells me about the last time he ever saw
sweet Jimmy. They were sitting in the pool hall. Shelley says,

(27:51):
he's probably the only person who saw Jimmy leave Miami.
He saw him getting the car, he tells me. Everybody
knew Jimmy left town Shell, he said, but he was
the only one who was there. When he got in
the car. He shook Shelley's hand, told him he would
see him when he came back. Shelley never saw him again.
He points up at the perfect blue sky. I'll see him,

(28:14):
he says, six years after he first called me. Stephen
Singer leads me back through his office until we're standing
in front of what he calls the Masterpiece. Two large
frames six ft across containing a collage of photos, programs,

(28:37):
ticket stubs, and of course, forty nine signatures. There's an
engraved plaque Jimmy Robinson whereabouts, unknown autograph missing. Stephen's no
longer searching for Jimmy. It's easy to believe the journey
of Sweet Jimmy is unique. It's not. Singer's collection as

(28:58):
a reminder of how a boxing life often goes completely
off track. Even finding Sweet Jimmy isn't starting to provide
any answers about his life. He might not remember if
he ever fought at all. Many old fighters in their
lives stripped of their memories. Even Aili paid a price
for his fame, just as the men who fought him

(29:20):
paid a price for their brush with it. Nothing is free.
Confronting the wreckage reminds me of an old magazine story
written by Davis Miller. There's a haunting moment when things
were turning bad. Aili stands at the window of his
suite on the twenty four floor of the Mirage Hotel
in Las Vegas. His once booming voice comes out as

(29:42):
a whisper. Look at this place, he says, this big hotel,
this town, it's dust, all dust. Don't none of it
mean nothing, It's only dust. A fighter jet lands at
an air Force base out in the desert. Ali watches
it through the glass. The lights on the strip so
bright it seems like they'll burn forever. Go up in

(30:05):
an airplane, he says, go high enough, and it's like
we don't even exist. I was so disappointed, because, like,
I really thought I was gonna find him, and I
really felt close a couple of times. And then when

(30:26):
the story ran, I was certain that somebody was gonna
email me and be like, I know where Chimmy is.
I was all ready to go right part two, and
I got one email from somebody who said they thought
they'd seen him, but it couldn't have been. I mean,
I checked. I think if the story has some sort

(30:50):
of accumulating power, it is this is this seemingly bizarre,
one off story of this impossible disappearance that could never happen,
that when you get to the end, you realize, not
only is it not rare, it is almost universal for
this world, and in many ways was preordained that he

(31:16):
was broken long before he stepped into the ring. And
you know, in that way it becomes a story about boxing.
It's real life. You don't find Jimmy, you never find him.
I mean, that's you know. One of the reasons I
think that my stories never get optioned is that they
never have clean endings. And in fact, I don't like

(31:40):
ending so much as I like leading the reader out
of a world, gently by their arm, with the understanding
that whatever was going on while you were in that
world will continue unabated after you leave. Like I don't
like to take people off the stage as much as
I like to escort the audience out of the building,

(32:03):
because the play is always going. The story is eternal,
and all you're doing, and the telling of it is
taking someone by the hand, slipping into it, and then
staying for a while, looking around and slipping out of it.
The Cost of These Dreams is from I Heart Media,

(32:25):
Graphic Audio, and Right Thompson. This series is produced by
Goat Rodeo in and Right and Megan Nadolski are the
lead producers. This episode is part of the eight part
series The Cost of These Dreams. Find other episodes wherever
you get your podcasts. If you want to dive in
deeper to write. Thompson's the cost of these dreams. Access

(32:47):
the full audio book wherever you get your audio books.
Discover other works by Right Thompson, including his latest book,
Pappy Land, wherever books are sold from The Goat Rodeo team.
Production assistants from a Back Inside l Isabel Kirby McGowan,
Hamsashi Too, Maxwell Johnston and Kara Shillen. Music by Ian N.

(33:09):
Right Our Deep Thanks to Right Thompson, Caitlin Riley and
John Weiss. Thanks for listening.