Ali: ‘Lennon wanted my bloody shorts from the Cooper fight to raise money for peace’

ON their first ever trip to America, The Beatles came down to Florida to watch me train for my fight against Sonny Liston.

Half the hip section of Miami followed these four young guys, in sloppy clothes with their white T-shirts and long hair, into the gym.

The Beatles asked me if I was sure I’d whip Liston. I told them: “He falls in eight.”

All four got into the ring and we sparred around and they pretended they were boxers.

They stretched out on the canvas like they had been knocked out and posed for a picture with me standing over them. The caption read: “Cassius smashes Beatles”.

We kept up with each other after that and the last I heard from John Lennon was the day he wanted to auction off my bloody boxing shorts – the ones I had worn in the Henry Cooper fight.

I had given them as a souvenir to Michael Abdul Malik, a black militant from Trinidad, who had exchanged them for all the hair on Lennon’s and his wife Yoko’s heads.

The hair and the bloody trunks were auctioned off to raise money to fight for world peace.

I never knew how much my trunks were bought for but Lennon said he was glad to see Henry Cooper’s blood used for a good cause.

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