From: Gregory Brown Sent: Sunday, June 5, 2016 7:31 AM To: undisclosed-recipients: Subject: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.. 6/05/2016 DEAR FRIEND The Greatest [image: Inline image 11 Muhammad Ali stands over fallen challenger Sonny Liston after dropping him with a short hard right to the jaw on May 25, 1965, in Lewiston, Maine. Like friends and fans around the world I was extremely sadden when on Friday night my cell phone begin to blow up with text messages from friends telling me that my old friend 'Muhammad Ali *had just died. As someone who had been a fan since his winning a gold medal at the *1960 Rome Olympics*, so much so that my father took me to my first live fight in March 1963 when a young 'Cassius Clay* defeated *Doug Jones' in a ten-round decision after being knocked down several times to my chagrin at the legendary '(Mecca of Boxing)* •Madison Square Garden* that *Ring Magazine* selected as its =80 *Fight of the Year" in 1963. Prior to that my hero did a cameo role in o=e of my favorite feature films of all time, •'Requiem for a Heavyweight =80,• starring Anthony Quinn, Jackie Gleason and Mickey Rooney in 1962. I first met my hero whom at the time my father and others called •"=he Louisville Lip",' during a promotion of one of his two spoken words=albums at a record store on a 125 Street in Harlem in 1964. And I only started to get to know him when I helped my old friend John Daily along with the R&B singer Lloyd Price put together the close circuit television deal for the "Rumble in the Jungle" fight in 1974 when he defeated the then heavyweight champion George Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire. But it was through my friendship with Jeremiah Shabazz (from the Nation of Islam) that I entered into Muhammad Afi's inner-circle orbit of friends. And although I =as able to get Muhammad Ali to support Philadelphia International Records' =9CClean Up The Ghetto" *campaign in the last 1970s, our relationship was ce=ented when