The first time I met Muhammad Ali

Bernie Yuman

Friday, Feb. 17, 2012 | 2 a.m.

Editor’s note: Bernie Yuman, Las Vegas entertainment management executive, has been a member of Muhammad Ali’s inner circle for decades. The following essay, written by Yuman, appeared in the 2003 book “Greatest of All Time: A Tribute to Muhammad Ali,” an exhaustive, 792-page biography described by one reviewer as “a monument on paper.”

The first time I met Muhammad Ali …

I was 13 years old. I was training to play Pop Warner football, running on a golf course at 5:30 in the morning. He ran up next to me. At that time, there was no Internet. There was no communication network. I knew very little about anything in life. I didn’t know that he was Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. All I knew was when he ran past me and looked out the corner of his eye, as only he could do, his charisma and personality swept over me. When we laid down on the grass to rest, I introduced myself. It was a peculiar thing for me when my father saw me drive to the low-income housing that we lived in on the back of a motor scooter with a black man in 1962. When my father asked, “Who is that man?” I explained that I had learned his name was Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., and he had won a gold medal in the Olympics in Rome; that he was a fighter who wanted to be heavyweight champion of the world; and that he was fighting a four-round fight at the Miami Beach Auditorium on Wednesday night and had invited us to come.

I went to the Fifth Street Gym every day. Nobody paid attention to me but Muhammad Ali — no trainers, none of the members of the entourage. The only person who paid any attention to me whenever I showed up was Ali. He kept me by his side, treated me like family. Certainly it was peculiar to everyone other than him and me that a black man and a young Jewish kid kind of adopted each other. For him and me, it was natural. Trust and love from the beginning. As the days, weeks, months and years progressed, the trust and love only grew.

At one point years later, Ali wrote a commencement speech that he delivered at Harvard University. When he recited the speech to me, it was a tough analysis and rendition of friendship — how if you are a person’s friend, you would hide that person’s faults, not from others, but from yourself, that you would hold your life cheap for your friend; dying would be an automatic action for your friend, and, looking in my eyes, he closed by saying I can place my life in your hands and turn my back, for you are my true friend. He made me cry.

As years went by and we continued to express our friendship in phone calls and one-on-one conversations, we made each other cry. The bond never had a weak link. It was impenetrable by any outsider — black or white. I was introduced in a prayer meeting to Malcolm X as someone who could pass as a black man and that my heart was as African-American as his. We were always there for each other … happy times and sad times. He would show up at the hospital for the birth of my children. I would call for no other reason than to talk. We had an uncanny connection.

I was walking out of Caesars Palace one day, and as I reached the door to exit, I heard my name on a page as I literally stepped my right foot outside the hotel. I turned, picked up the phone, and, of course, it was him. He took me all over the world, wouldn’t get in a limousine in crowds of tens of thousands of people unless he put me in first. From the first moment to this, I knew that so blessed is his presence, so inspiring is his glance.

My life is what it is only because of his influence, his dignity and his integrity. Most people would give up their heart and their soul to become the heavyweight champion of the world; he gave up the heavyweight championship of the world to keep his heart and his soul. He taught me to have the courage of my convictions and certainly developed my character and helped mold me as a man.

In November of 1999, he asked me to be his manager. I was touched. I was humbled. I was inspired. I said yes. Any day I woke up after that day in January of 2000 and expressed the words, “My name is Bernie Yuman, and I am the manager of Muhammad Ali,” it was perhaps the best moment of my lifetime. Any time I could represent him and close a deal on his behalf, I was overwhelmed with joy, for “deserve” is an important word, and nobody deserves more than Muhammad Ali, for he is not the greatest fighter of all time, but he is the greatest human being with the most kindness, sincerity, love and empathy that has ever come in contact with me.