Big Cat was one of the most splendidly proportioned and hardest hitting heavyweight contenders of the fifties and sixties?
Wherever Cleveland (Big Cat) Williams went, some form of violence seemed to accompany him. This was perfectly logical to some degree, since Cleveland was one of the most splendidly proportioned and hardest hitting heavyweight contenders of the fifties and sixties. It is impossible to knock another man on his backside, as Williams frequently did, without being violent about it.
However, his private life ? if ever it could be called that ? was equally full of thunderous incident. For example, there was the domestic incident of the meat cleaver. Williams was always something of an eccentric and quite possibly something more. He once pulled out of a fight in England after claiming to hear voices that came to him through the air. Quite a few serial killers have had the same problem over the years.
But the voices were mild stuff compared to the meat cleaver. In July 1959, Cleveland got into quite an argument with his girlfriend and all his weight and muscle couldn?t quell her fighting spirit. So he started swinging at her with a meat cleaver and put her in the hospital with head and shoulder wounds.
His faithful girl refused to file charges and the meat cleaver went to the local police station in Houston for safe keeping. But curious Cleveland couldn?t let the matter rest. Taking a break from his roadwork, he called in at the station to ask if he could have the cleaver back. Thinking on his feet ? with no great lateral movement ? he explained that his girlfriend had rushed at him with the cleaver and that he had disarmed her and punished her with her own weapon. Well, one does, doesn?t one?
His girlfriend, Cleve explained to the patient policeman at the desk, was rather fond of the cleaver and wanted it back. The policeman, probably through tiredness and a sense of disbelief, gave Cleve the cleaver.
Peak
Cleveland Williams, it should be remembered, was a top flight heavyweight fighter in his prime, constantly rated among the world?s top ten, although never good enough to scale the world championship peak. Along with Zora Folley and Eddie Machen, Williams complemented a trio of perennial contenders who could never cross the line in the big matches that mattered.
Nevertheless, in a 20-year career that stretched from 1952 to 1972, Cleveland compiled an admirable record of 78 wins in 92 fights (58 knockouts) against 13 defeats and a draw. He posted wins over Amelio Agramonte, John Holman, Dick Richardson, Wayne Bethea, Alex Miteff, Ernie Terrell, Billy Daniels and Roger Rischer and fought a draw with Eddie Machen.
Yet Williams is probably best remembered for his valiant and violent losing efforts, notably his two titanic slugfests with Sonny Liston. What battles they were! Short and explosive and full of top quality feinting and punching. At Miami Beach in April 1959, Sonny stopped Cleveland in three rounds. Eleven months later in Houston, Liston got his man in the second. That was Liston at his very best and he should have got his title shot against Floyd Patterson a good two or three years before he did
Nine years later, in the fall of 1969 when Williams was over the hill and trying to recapture some of his old magic, he seemed to stumble into a time warp and revisit the Liston fights against another hungry contender in former Marine, Mac Foster. In September of that year, Mac stopped Cleve in the fifth round in Fresno. In November the two men locked horns in another thriller and Foster knocked out Williams in the third at Houston.
That third round of the return match was rated the fifth best round of the year by The Ring magazine and described as ??. a thrill-packed session which began with Williams rushing out of his corner and attacking with a crisp left hook at close range. A sharp right hand buckled Foster?s knees. It seemed as if the Big Cat had regained his old power and was showing young Foster how it ought to be done.
?But Mac fought back with a vengeance. They slugged it out with lefts and rights, with Williams seemingly having an edge in the furious exchange. Foster shot a vicious left hook to the Big Cat?s jaw which floored him. After Cleve arose, another hook sent him back to the canvas. A few moments later, Foster landed a tremendous left hook to Williams? jaw, then crashed a right and it was all over. Williams fell heavily to the floor.?
Courage
Whatever his faults, however he might have behaved outside the ring, Cleveland Williams was undoubtedly a man of courage. He had to battle for his very life in 1964 and overcame formidable odds to win through. On the night of November 29th that year, Cleveland?s car was stopped by a highway patrolman near Houston. Williams was told he was speeding, but what happened next will never truly be known. Apparently Williams remonstrated with the patrolman, whose .357 Magnum went off in the ensuing struggle between the two men.
The powerful bullet traveled across Williams? intestines and came to rest against his right hip. Over the next seven months he underwent four operations for damage to his colon and had his injured right kidney removed. The bullet had also broken his right hip and caused some paralysis in his muscles.
Cleveland?s magnificent physique of 220 lbs. shriveled as he lost 60 lbs. in weight. Yet Williams survived, even though his surgeon, Don Quast, said: ?It is a miracle that he is not in braces.?
Williams gradually regained his weight and strength by working on the ranch of his manager, Hugh Benbow. When the Big Cat made his comeback to the ring on February 8, 1966, he received a 10-minute ovation from his hometown fans. It was described by the Houston Post as the greatest ovation ever paid to one man in Houston athletics.
It was a ?Rocky? moment and Williams had to get a shot at the world title. He did, but he probably shouldn?t have done. Three plodding wins over Mel Turnbow, Sonny Moore and Tod Herring were insufficient preparation for the lithe and athletic Muhammad Ali, who was nearing his peak as a thoroughbred world champion. On November 14,1966, at the Houston Astrodome in Texas, Ali was a deadly serious competitor who came to fight and fought with an almost ethereal beauty.
Even though Williams was no longer the fighter he used to be, Ali?s faultless performance that night is regarded by many as his most technically perfect. Fast, beautifully conditioned, moving and jinking all the time, he punched with tremendous authority and pinpoint accuracy as he glided in and out and pot-shotted the statuesque, stage-struck Big Cat virtually at will. Cleveland could barely lay a glove on Ali and was knocked down four times before the fight was stopped in the third round. The morbidly appealing spectacle was rightly described by many ringside reporters as a massacre. Yet it was also strangely beautiful, as balletic as it was ballistic.
Shellshocked and bleeding, Cleveland?s misery wasn?t yet complete. As he was questioned by reporters in mid-ring, the overhead microphone was lowered a little too fast and clunked him on his already sore noggin.
Outside the ring, Williams? distraught wife, highly striking in a tight pink dress, sobbed tears and said, ?He went down fighting. I don?t care what you say. He went down fighting.?
Now isn?t that sweet? Mrs. Williams was standing by her man in the grand tradition of the old Tammy Wynette song. Did Cleve give her a hug and a kiss and say, ?Aw, thanks, honey.?? No such luck. ?Shut up,? he told his missus, ?shut up.?
We don?t know if Mrs. Williams was the girlfriend who allegedly owned the meat cleaver back in the aforementioned day. Nor do we know if she and her man had a bloody fight when they got home that night.
