Jerardi: Just three young 'zealots' at Deer Lake, hanging with Ali

WE GOT THERE early, so early that our car was the first one in the dirt parking lot, across the road from the Deer Lake camp whose entrance was guarded by huge boulders with legendary boxers' names painted on them. We walked past the rocks in front of Coretta's Kitchen when the man we came to see emerged from his cabin at the end of a clearing. It was the three of us - my friend Rick Landers and I had left Baltimore for Wilmington, where we picked up college classmate Caesar Alsop - and Muhammad Ali.

It was the summer of 1974, a few months before Ali would head to Zaire in what many thought a fool's errand, a longshot chance to take back his heavyweight title by beating unbeaten champion George Foreman.

Ali wanted to know where we were from, what we were doing there so early. He started dancing around, throwing fake punches my way. When I ducked back in a very poor imitation of Ali eluding a punch, he knew exactly what I was, what we all were. We were true Ali zealots. We believed. We always believed.

Ali invited us into the kitchen as his breakfast was cooking. The screen blinked on with film of Foreman destroying Ken Norton, Ali's commentary explaining what Norton did wrong and how his game plan would be dramatically different.

It was surreal, us getting an audience with the world's most famous athlete, Ali acting as if we were long-lost friends. It was such a different time, when nobody had handlers, when even the biggest stars weren't protected, when three guys could just appear and, moments later, be hanging with Ali.

We watched him spar a few rounds later in the day in the log cabin gym, Ali strangely lying on the ropes and letting his sparring partners hammer him mercilessly in the midsection. Whatever could that mean?

We pointed the car back down the endless hill on the mountain to the highway that would take us back home. Rick remains a friend to this day. A decade later, Caesar would be instrumental in my getting a job at the Daily News. Two decades later, Caesar, then the DN sports editor, died on the day Smarty Jones ran in the Belmont Stakes. My first thought that night was our trip to Deer Lake. We had talked about it often.

A few weeks after that first trip, I went back to Deer Lake with another Baltimore friend, Mike Marlow, who preceded me in the newspaper business and also ended up at the Daily News. Same sparring session, same abuse of Ali's stomach by those sparring partners. What exactly was Ali thinking?

After he finished training, Ali retreated to his locker room for a rubdown. I calmly walked back and stuck out an old program from an Ali fight. I had forgotten to ask him for an autograph on the previous trip. He asked my name, made it out to me and signed the program. It is the only autograph I ever wanted, the only autograph I ever got.

That fall, Rick and I, along with a few of my high school friends, congregated at the Baltimore Civic Center to watch the closed-circuit fight from Africa. What I remember most about the days before the fight was that just about everybody thought Ali not only was going to lose, but also might get hurt very badly.

The pre-suspension Ali, the one who made Sonny Liston quit on his stool in 1964, was unbeatable. Think Floyd Mayweather at 6-3, 215 pounds. He was too fast, too smart and so incredibly confident. He rarely got touched, much less hit hard. There was not another fighter who ever lived who would have had any chance to beat that Ali. See Cleveland Williams tape for the best evidence.

The post-suspension Ali was vulnerable. He had lost much of his speed. He got hit, often hard. His hands were still fast. He was still smart. I didn't know how or why, but I believed.

In the first round, Ali retreated to the ropes, leaned back on them and let Foreman pound his ribs. Rick was about to cry. The whole place was petrified. Nobody was rooting for Foreman, but it looked as if Ali would get slaughtered.

Then, in the last few seconds of the round, he emerged from the ropes, hit Foreman with several sharp combinations and snapped the champ's head back. sweat flying in all directions.

The bell rang. I turned to Rick and said, "This fight is over."

The name had not been coined yet, but now I knew what I had been watching at Deer Lake - "Rope a Dope."

Ali no longer had the speed to get away from Foreman, so he was going to let the big man throw punch after punch in every round before reminding him at the end of the rounds that he was fresher, sharper and never going to get tired.

From that first round on, I knew it was just a matter of when old George, his punches slowing down with each passing minute, was going down and staying down. It was a perfect combination that sent Foreman crashing to the canvas. Rick was a bit sadistic. He wanted Foreman to get up, so Ali could punish him, as the boxing commissions had punished Ali when they took his license and championship away. I knew George wasn't getting up.

Ten years after beating the unbeatable Sonny Liston with his speed and incredible athletic gifts, Ali had knocked out the unbeatable George Foreman with his speed and his heart.

The Deer Lake visits linger still. I remember them as if they were yesterday, just as I remember the fight, the night justice was done and Ali was the champ again, forever young in my mind, the greatest of all time.

@DickJerardi