The Draft: Ali Up

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He certainly knows how to fight. For all his fistic prowess, however, Muhammad Ali, né Cassius Clay, has twice been TKO'd by U.S. Army intelligence tests. Last week the Army pulled him off the floor. In line with recently lowered standards for draftees, Louisville Selective Service Board 47 announced that the heavyweight-boxing champ and other candidates previously classified 1-Y are now eligible for military service and likely candidates for the March call-up. Said Board Chairman J. Allen Sherman: "Clay's 24 years old and single, so that puts him right up there."

As usual, Clay came up swinging. For once he had no epic poem—Callook! Callay! The 1-A Clay?—to mark the occasion. Instead, claiming that he had been reclassified in reprisal for his membership in the Black Muslims, the champ protested: "Why are they so anxious to pay me $80 a month—me, who in two fights pay for six new jet planes. I pay the salaries of at least 200,000 men a year. I'm fighting for the Government every day. Last year I gave the Government $6,000,000." In fact, Clay, who paid about $338,000 in federal income taxes on fight earnings of $451,000 last year, could hardly keep a B-52 in tires—though he could certainly help do so as an Air Force ground-crewman. Besides, he complained, "I can't understand why they picked me without testing me to see if I'm wiser or worser."

Cass will certainly be worser for cash if he has to cancel a title bout with Ernie Terrell in Chicago on March 29. While Chicago promoters continued to push fight tickets, Clay hastily dispatched three lawyers to look into the possibilities of an appeal. Meanwhile, it occurred to the champ after all these years that he "might be a conscientious objector."