Muhammad Ali was a big fan of Vancouver

Longtime Vancouver Sun photographer Ralph Bower, now retired, remembers fondly his first encounter with Muhammad Ali, when the legendary heavyweight arrived at Vancouver International Airport in May 1972 to prepare for his Vancouver bout with Canadian champion George Chuvalo.

“I was told by (my editor) to go out and get a picture, but I was told not to get a head shot, that ‘we want something better than that’,” Bower recalled. “So I got there and I’m quite worried about it, and he’s being interviewed. I said ‘my sports editor said he doesn’t want a head shot of you, he wants a good picture’. So he glared at me and I thought he was going to tell me to buzz off.

“Then he reaches up on the wall and grabs the fire axe mounted on the wall. He took it out of the socket and aimed it at me and said ‘There’s your picture. And I’m going to cut trees in the park to get in shape’. He pointed it at me just to make it dramatic.

“I brought it back to the paper and they made it into a full-page picture.

“That’s how smart he was. He had the big mouth, but he knew what to say.”

Ali, 74, died Friday at a Phoenix-area hospital where he was being treated for respiratory complications.

Bower, who met Ali three times during the Vancouver bout — once at the airport, again during the post-fight interview, and a few days earlier when both Ali and Chuvalo showed up at a North Vancouver gym for a workout.

“He talked to a youngster when he was getting his gloves taped,” said Bower of Ali at the North Vancouver gym. “The little guy said to him ‘I want to meet you sir, you’re my idol.’ He said to the kid, ‘oh, you’re going to be a prize fighter someday are you?’ The little kid said yes. And he said ‘you’d better not come up against me because I’m the Greatest’.”

Bower recalls Ali as having a terrific sense of humour. “He was always a funny guy, always had a funny answer.

“He was such a great athlete and a nice looking guy, everything. In my eyes, he was one of the greatest all-time boxers. I met Joe Louis and a few of the others, but Ali was something special.

“He said (in the post-fight interview) that he hit Chuvalo so hard he felt he was hitting concrete. He said he was the toughest guy he ever fought. He (Chuvalo) wouldn’t go down. He lasted the 15 rounds. Ali was pounding him, pounding him, and he kept coming back. I’ll never forget that (fight). Nope.”

Bower also recalls Ali being impressed with Vancouver, especially Stanley Park. “He said how lovely Stanley Park was, and that it would be a great place to train.

“I think he was the greatest professional athlete ever to come to Vancouver. And he was for everybody. He’d try to help the newspaper guys out and he’d come down to earth with them. It was a tribute just to meet him.”

Former Vancouver Sun sports writer Archie McDonald was also at the 1972 fight, where he wrote an article about the bout for the Sun.

He recalls Ali “toying” with Chuvalo.

“Chuvalo wasn’t much of a fighter,” said McDonald. “He was a punching bag, really. But Ali was a marvellous boxer. For a big guy, he could have been an outstanding athlete in any sport. He probably could have been an NBA basketball star. He was big, well coordinated, and could have done anything.”

And the 1972 fight? “Ali toyed with Chuvalo, because he could move so well. His famous line ‘float like a butterfly, sting like a bee’? That was poetry, but it was true. Chuvalo was a plodding, tough guy. They were totally opposite in terms of talent.”

But perhaps McDonald’s favourite memory of Ali was years later when Ali showed up in Vancouver on a mission of sorts.

“He wanted to know why there weren’t any black saints in the churches. He said that everywhere you go all the angels are white (and) that there has to be black angels.”

At that time, McDonald met Ali in a downtown hotel and showed up to find him performing magic tricks in the lobby for children, who adored him.

“He had a multicoloured hanky and he’d put something in it and make it disappear. It was pretty rudimentary magic, but the kids were just attracted to him. He just loved the kids. He was like a big kid himself as I recall. He was full of fun.”

I interviewed him as best I could and it was OK, but he wasn’t making any sense. I can’t remember the details.”

In a 2014 article about boxing in British Columbia written by former Vancouver Sun reporter Yvonne Zacharias, Dale Walters, a bronze medallist at the 1984 Olympics, talked about meeting Ali as a scrawny 10-year-old at the Pacific Coliseum when Ali fought Chuvalo.

Walters, who was fighting a friend on the undercard, was taken to Ali’s dressing room, which was packed, before the fight.

“I just sort of got pushed through these people toward Muhammad Ali,” recalled Walters. “He grabbed me and picked me up and put me on his knee. He stuck his fist underneath my chin and he says, ‘What’s yo name, boy? What’s yo name?’ ” Walters, who was shaking in his boots, replied in a tremulous voice, “It’s Dale.”

“Are you going to be the next champ? Are you going to be the next champion of the world, boy?” “I-I-I think so.” “You might be the next champion of the world, but you’ll never be as pretty as me.”

Everybody in the room laughed. It was vintage Ali.

bmorton@postmedia.com