BUMPING INTO MUHAMMAD ALI IN THE ELEVATOR OF THE KUALA LUMPUR HILTON, JUNE, 1975.
By Mansor Puteh
Legendary three-time world heavyweight champion,
Muhammad Ali, formerly Cassius Clay, would be buried in Knoxville ,
Tennessee in America
And here is a personal tribute I have written on
him, a person who many around the world had the opportunity to know but not so
many who had the opportunity to personally get into contact with many years ago.
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How would anyone feel if he
walks into an elevator and find Muhammad Ali in it, together with his younger
brother, Rahman Ali and the boxer's trainers, Angelo Dundee and Budini Brown?
I was truly amazed and shocked
to find myself in such a company in an elevator which could not take more than
eight persons. So it was quite tight and i was standing beside Muhammad Ali who
i noticed to be not so tall or big compared to the photos of him that I had
seen.
I had gone to the then Kuala
Lumpur Hilton at Jalan Sultan Ismail in Kuala Lumpur, with actor Mustapha
Maarof when I was doing my practical training at Gaya Filem sdn. bhd. and one
day Mustapha asked me to accompany him to the filming of an advertisement at
The Paddock which is the topmost floor of the hotel without realizing that the
ordinary outing could be an experience i could never forget.
Muhammad Ali and the others
then stopped and got off at the floor where their suites were just a floor
below The Paddock.
I was studying at the School of Mass Communications
As I was majoring in
advertising and wanted to pursue my master's degree in film directing I had
asked the head of the school then Puan Marina Samad to be sent to a film
company.
But there was a communication
breakdown and i found myself being sent to another company.
I went to see Puan Marina as
she was affectionally called by all the students at the school at the school and
said that I would rather be sent to a film company. She then made a call and
the next day I went to Gaya Filem at Jalan Ceylon
in Kuala Lumpur
I suspected she might have
called then L Krishnan to ask if she could send a student to undergo practical
training at his film company and without any reservations, accepted him.
I met L Krishnan’s son, Prem
who was so accommodative and supportive and asked that I be placed at the
different departments in their film company for a week each, which he thought
could give me the right exposure on the film production process.
I was lucky that Puan Marina
had sent me to Gaya Filem instead of to another film company, or I would definitely
not be in the same elevator with Muhammad Ali in June, 1975 when he came to the
country to box British heavyweight boxer Joe Bugner at Stadium Merdeka,
forty-one years ago, and could only write about it after his death.
I also got to speak with
Rahman Ali on the phone later and he asked me to come to see him at the hotel,
but somehow I was unable to do that.
Unfortunately it was not at a
time of the selfies or I would have taken many shots of them.
Again once you bump into
someone of Muhammad Ali’s stature in an elevator you do not know what to do and
just have to wait for him to strike a conversation if he so desires.
But in my case, he did not
seem to be eager to do that and I guessed he and his brother and friends had
gone down to the restaurant to have lunch, before returning to their suites at
the hotel when Mustapha Maarof and I got there.
I met Mustapha much later but
he did not remember the incident or had mentioned or written about it. In fact,
he did not even remember who I was despite the fact that I had also entered the
film industry.
I only got to communicate with
him personally and by phone much later and few years before he died.
I am sure even if I were to
raise the matter concerning the practical training I did at Gaya Filem when he
was working there before he set up his own outfit, he might not remember it as
that happened a long time ago.
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I felt sad to look at Muhammad
Ali from a far distance at the sight of him after he was diagnosed as suffering
from Parkinson’s disease which he never recovered from until he died on 4 June,
2016 at the age of seventy-four years at the hospital in Arizona
But I had communicated with
his staff at the Ali Center in Knoxville , Tennessee where he was born, and where I thought of
making a visit when I am back in America
Unfortunately, the last time I
was in the country in April, 2014, I had neglected to do that. So I will make
sure I will go there to check the place out when I am back in America
And I heard that West 33rd Street Manhattan in New York City Muhammad Ali Way
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