Ernie Terrell

[laughs] Cassius Clay.

[laughs] Th- th- that was his birth certificate name, and it was in 1967 when he was getting ready to fight Ernie Terrell, and tensions were high even before the fight.

The reason tensions were high is because Ernie Terrell refused to call him Muhammad Ali.

You can watch the interview.

In the middle of the interview, as he continued to call him Cassius Clay, all of a sudden Muhammad Ali got mad in the middle of the interview and said, "Hey, man, why won't you call me by my name?" And Ernie Terrell said, "You were Cassius Clay when I met you, so that's what I'm gonna call you." And Muhammad Ali said, "Either you will say my name right now, or you will say my name when I punish you in the ring." And that is exactly what he did.

He punished him in the ring.

Y'all, it was not even a fair fight.

It started off fair, but all of a sudden Muhammad Ali started doing what he did, and by the eighth round, y'all, it was practically over.

[laughs] And, and this, we're all looking at the lyrics here.

Uh, so just to share with you, when you look at that doubled bridge, the first line of each version of it is, "Say my name," which is clearly a reference to Muhammad Ali's 1967 fight with Ernie Terrell-

Oh, [laughs] yeah.

Oh, right

At one point in the 1960s, they told you that they would have picked as their fighter of the year, the guy who won not just a title fight, but a heavyweight unification match.

Both Ernie Terrell and Muhammad Ali had a share of the title entering the fight.

Now this is the fight where Ali is upset because Ernie Terrell keeps calling him Cassius Clay in the pre-fight.

Right, so you know what happened.

You have a dominant performance by Ali.

George Chiavolo was never knocked down, not once in 93 professional fights and the men who had hit him.

Guys like Muhammad Ali, George Frazier, Joe Frazier, rather, George Foreman, Floyd Patterson, Ernie Terrell, Jerry Quarry.

There were fights that he lost.

There were fights that were stopped.

It's a what's my name speech.

And it was something he got from Muhammad Ali when he fought Ernie Terrell.

Ernie Terrell was calling him Cassius Clay.

During their fight, Ali kept going, what's my name? And he'd pound him in the face or hit him in the stomach.

Oh, what's my name? And it went 15 rounds.

And by the 14th round, according to Ali, Ernie Terrell was going, your name is Muhammad Ali.

And it's Jack's way of... telling the team, you know, pound him into submission, and they'll learn your name.

And I'm going to get him to tell you the genesis of that story and why he's done it with the Ravens.

You know what struck me, Stephen, the first time I had a chance to, to talk with George several times over the years, uh, not since probably 25 years ago.

There was an event, a DVD that was released, told us the whole Ernie Terrell story.

Mm-hmm.

The fight was supposed to be, it was Terrell and Ali in Montreal.

I, I asked him, "What's the last thing you said to your son today when you left the car?" He said, "I didn't say anything profound." And I said, "Okay, how about the night before?" He said, nothing profound again, but I did speak to the team, and I was like, "Oh, okay.

Uh, I didn't know that." And, uh, he said, "Yeah, John asked me to do it." And basically the message I wanted to send to them, he used the Muhammad Ali story, the, uh, sort of famous fight against Ernie Terrell in 1967 when, uh, Terrell would not say his name, his- the name Muhammad Ali.

He would only say his birth name, and Ali made him pay a price for that in that fight.

So, uh, Jack Harbaugh used that story to tell the players, like, you have to earn your respect, and you have to make them know your name, because the Giants going into that game, obviously 25 games under 500 the last three years, and this was an opportunity for them to send a message to the Cowboys and everybody else that we need to be respected.

Uh, I mentioned earlier that, uh, we're gonna get a little deeper into, uh, George Chuvalo who died over the weekend at the age of 89, longtime Canadian heavyweight champ.

He was supposed to fight, um, the Ernie Terrell-Muhammad Ali fight in '66 that was scheduled for Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

Chuvalo jumped in with 17 days notice.

I mentioned earlier there's a bit of a backstory to that, and it involves this city, and I got a chance over the years to talk to George a few times, including on, uh, this particular episode, uh, Boxing and the Mob.