They won’t be sending flowers to his funeral.
Via CBC:
In 1983 Muhammad Ali climbed the stage of a packed sports complex in Rouyn-Noranda, a small Quebec town that is a seven-hour drive northwest of Montreal.
Few could believe the champ had chosen this remote mining town, of all places, to visit. They gathered eagerly, expecting to hear Ali talk of his storied boxing career.
Earlier that year, two representatives from the Championnats sportifs québécois, now known as the Quebec Games, travelled all the way to Beverly Hills to convince Ali to visit Rouyn-Noranda.
It was a long shot, but then so was Ali when he first faced Sonny Liston.
Martin Guérin — the director of a 2010 documentary, Voir Ali, that chronicles the visit — said the two Quebecers approached Ali at his home in California.
“There were people from Playboy, athletes, tons of people,” Guérin told Radio-Canada. “Against all odds the triple champion accepted their proposal.”
He added that Ali agreed to spend 48 hours in Rouyn-Noranda for far less than the “$300,000, $400,000 or even $1 million” that was his standard appearance fee at the time.
The Greatest in Rouyn-Noranda
When Ali arrived in the town of about 28,000 people in mid-June he took the time to tour their hydroelectric project and meet with local figures.
On June 14, the local sports complex was jammed with people who had paid $50 per ticket to hear Ali speak.
But they didn’t hear anecdotes or stories of Ali’s journey to becoming one of the world’s greatest athletes. This overwhelmingly francophone and Roman Catholic town heard about Islam instead.
“We wanted him to talk about his boxing career, of his great moments as a boxer,” said Jean-Paul Charlebois, one of the organizers who travelled to Ali’s California home and convinced him to make the trip.
That was the deal they made with Ali’s agent: a talk about boxing. The stage at the Rouyn-Noranda arena was even made to look like a boxing ring.
“But he decided that night, with his entourage, to be the black preacher,” Charlebois said. “It was a speech focused on religion and there were a lot of references to racism, but nothing about boxing. There was absolutely nothing about boxing.”
To make matters worse, the charity event ended up losing money.