John McGlothlinJim Brown once decided to become a boxer and challenge Ali for his title. Lucky for Jim, he changed his mind.
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Jim Brown considers boxing, and fighting Ali in 1965
After the great Browns running Back retired in 1965, the 29 year old was restless for new adventures. Brown, a genuine athletic freak, decided boxing would be his new pastime. Brown, like Chamberlain would after him, also decided why start at the bottom? What not go straight to the top and take Ali’s title?
Ali certainly cured Jim Brown of that stupid notion.
Chris Mannix told the story in Sports Illustrated in 2012, about how Jim Brown hatched the idea that he could prove his superiority as an athlete and make a boatload of money at the same time. So he approached Bob Arum, the boxing promoter Brown himself had introduced to Muhammad Ali. Brown was in the early stages of finding Hollywood stardom, but was enamored with the idea of dominating a second sport. Arum, who privately thought the idea was idiotic, but out of gratitude for Brown’s introducing Ali to him, decided he owed it to Brown to approach Ali with Brown’s wish to fight him and take over boxing:
““So I went to talk to Ali,” Arum told Mannix. “He says, ‘Jim wants to do what? Bring him here.’ So I took him to Hyde Park in London, where Ali used to run. Ali said, ‘Jimmy, here’s what we’re going to do: You hit me as hard as you can. So Brown starts swinging and swinging, and he can’t hit him. He’s swinging wildly and not even coming close. This goes on for, like, 30 seconds. Then Ali hits him with this quick one-two to his face. Jimmy just stops and says, ‘Okay, I get the point.’ ”.”
Jim Brown once wanted to fight Muhammad Ali, and it was a very dumb idea
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Brown dropped his idea of becoming a boxer, but the humiliation he got in being slapped around so easily by Ali poisoned any friendship between the two men.
Of course later Brown would encourage Wilt Chamberlain to fight Ali – since Jim liked neither of them, and knew how it would go with a non-boxer challenging the greatest living heavyweight, he thought it was a win/win.
Brown would also deny in later years that he ever considered boxing – but there were just too many witnesses to what happened. Brown is known to be a bit of a prickly personality (that is a nice way to put it) and being humiliated did not sit well with a man who regarded himself so highly.