Mr Ali the singer, masseur & boxer telling this morning of giving his namesake Muhammad Ali a rub-down prior to the Bugner fight in KL. Somehow the episode came up in the brief hello. Some months later it was learned both fighters in fact had received a week’s massaging in the lead up to the bout, $6k earned either side.
1974, during the Presidency of Datuk Harun.
A year or two previously when Mr Hussein Ali had reprised some of his hits of bygone days at one of the Labu Labi tables, he had demonstrated the strength of his thumbs. Should it come to roughhouse of any kind, a physical altercation, an opponent would have his eye poked out in a trice by Mr Ali. Much strength remaining in the gnarled old hands he had held up, oversized for a man of that stature.
A glassy-looking eye staring out too from Mr A’s head. Had he been a victim somewhere along the line?
Back at the introductory conversation his own sporting career had not been mentioned.
Hussein Ali bin Ismail on the name-card, chief expertise the Tony Bennett and Tom Jones repertoire, together with the old Malay favourites, of course. Twenty-seven albums had been recorded, some now lost or misplaced.
Someone, some notable in the fight game, had recommended him for the bout. A master of the craft, boxer in his own right, familiar with the local scene—you couldn’t do better for prepping the two heavyweights.
Into his early-80s a drinker now, sleeping rough at the market, unwilling to impose on family, most likely. Genial and talkative.
After hearing of the role with the great champion, Mr Huss Ali presented as the perfect recipient for one's own Ali story. The language barrier would not prove insuperable.
Hearing the preamble, the man had immediately wanted to give up his chair for something of that kind.
No, no. Lord, no, Mr A. Please.
Crouching close for the telling. It was a busy night at the kopi shop and much background noise.
Thirty-five or so years ago, the great butterfly & bee was still World Champion. Post-Frazier it must have been. Jets into Melbourne, Australie, the man. The reason for the visit forgotten.
Putting up at the Hilton Hotel, set beside the Fitzroy Gardens. Melbourne’s Conrad Hilton, in the days when there was no other hotel of that class in the town.
One night during that Melbourne stay of Mohammed Ali’s, early evening, the famous boxer hails a cab down on the street.
One person. One person only, mark you, Mr Huss. Underlined, in the way the communal-minded Malays often did in their own narratives. Keeping solo was out of the ordinary for this folk.
Rides out alone to the badlands of Melbourne town the champion boxer, to where the orang asli lived. The local orang asli; the native people; original inhabitants. Aboriginals. Hitam colour. (Some Malays were positively black.)
As the name suggested, together with some blade-like features, pint-sized Mr Ali here owned an Arab ancestry. Far from hitam, black himself, and not entirely an orang asli in the Malay world either, strictly speaking, Mr. Hussein. (Sometimes the Malays complained about the airs the Arabs gave themselves.)
More than adequate English. The greater part in Mr A’s case had perhaps been learned on the road, developing his craft. Plenty of the old, dark Malay (former) tough guys were in his circle; the upright, conventional Malays often gave men like Mr Huss Ali a wide berth.
Dangerous corner of Melbourne here concerned where the Aboriginals, the First Peoples, congregated. Living rough many in those days. Shadowy laneways, strewn broken glass, outbreaks of violence on the streets. This corner where Mohd Ali went One person, solo, that evening back in the day.
Gertrude Street, Fitzroy. The Australie orang puti—the white-fellas in Melbourne—were pretty careful themselves about entering that quarter of Fitzroy back then. (In the ‘60s & ‘70s the street was in fact shared with the Yugoslav immigrants. Restoran Jugoslavia. Makedonia. The Roy Roy at the other end on Brunswick corner was later run for a number of years by Montenegrins. In those days the bad boy Yugos could be found in the parks & tram shelters sharing plonk with the Blakfellas.)
Come over from his penthouse at the Hilton, big man in a fine, pressed suit, walking tall down the hill on Gertrude, toward Smith Street corner, where the tram turned for Preston.
Finery of that sort swanning through that quarter in those days had never been seen previously. Not in Gertrude nor anywhere near.
A raised hand to show the height of the big man. Which of course was unnecessary for Mr Hussein, seated in his chair watching and listening, captivated. For the proper unfolding of the tale, however, the height was necessary.
You know how tall, Mr Huss... Orang asli black people like him. Like the Heavyweight Champion of the World.
In fact there had been a bantamweight World Champion Australian Aboriginal ten years before, not long after the younger Modh Ali, Cassius Clay at that point, was beginning to make his own mark.
He go see this orang for himself, Mr A. Somebody tell him where can find. Many orang this time in Melbourne NEVER SEE ANY BLACK MAN. You know.
People hear; quick come. On street. Many, many come. On footpath Muhammad Ali cannot move. Cannot. Cornered like he never in the ring. Hands up. Many, many hands, Mr Huss. Forest of hands; jungle of arms.
Thrusting upward in order that Mr Ali could picture better. Up, up.
Muhammad Ali pass hands to people every side. Clapping hands. Holding hands.
One hand. Another. Another. Many, many. Reaching, stretching, everyone touch this black man like them. One person. No police. No bodyguard; nothing, Mr Huss. (In subsequent news reports many years later a huge bodyguard that put the boxer himself in the shade was said to have been present. Somehow lost in the scrum.)
…Not just great fighter, Muhammad Ali, Mr Huss. Great heart also have. Big like kuda; horse.
Likely Mr Ali understood thoroughbreds & horse racing. There was a track out on the west of the island, where races were run at night. Mr A was pretty much jockey size.
A little bang on the rib-cage underlining the pulsing ticker within.
That Mr Hussein too had been a boxer came as a great surprise. Not a “killer,” no. Mr. Hussein bristled at that suggestion. Man making a living, rather.
Started at seven years of age. Germ weight.
G-E-R-M, like in hospital, Mr Huss Ali explained, spelling out the word when we ran into difficulty.
Some kind of official weight category in the Tropics during Mr Hus A.’s amateur days, staged at Badminton Hall, not far from where we regularly found ourselves at the Labu Labi tables. Later when he turned professional the fights were held at Happy World, where they later built old Kallang Airport.
Big heart in Mr Hussein’s chest too, the former Germ-weight added at the end of the Melbourne story. An answering knock echoing on his side of the table. (Typical Arab, unwilling to be denied.)
One could have guessed that heart straight off from the songs, even in the croaking, hoarse voice. Many of the Malays had numerous Tom Jones & Engelbert by heart. Their English was bolstered by such lyrics.
The man kept a Quarto note-book on the parapet wall of the market beside the stairway on the Geylang Serai corner. Mr Hussein's friend Mr Joe slept the other side of the wall in a broken office chair, beside his supermarket trolley. Wild years last time. It was known Mr Joe had taken a number of turns inside; unknown the case for Mr Huss. By the looks the pair had been in together, adjoining cells fair chance.
Geylang Serai, Singapore 2011-24
NB. King Charles on a recent visit to Australia (October 2024) was heckled in the Federal Parliament by Senator Lidia Thorpe, who on the evening of Ali’s visit to Melbourne here described had been carried as a baby in her mother’s arms.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c79n20r750po
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/jun/15/when-muhammad-ali-visited-fitzroy
