Sideline Sid Sports correspondent & historian www.sunlive.co.nz

The adage that truth is stranger than fiction could well be applied to the Muhammad Ali visit to New Zealand in 1979.

Muhammad Ali's visit to New Zealand was engineered in part by one of the one of the biggest fraudsters in United States history.

To find the origins of the Ali trip, one must go back to the Heretaunga Boxing Club run by my late friend Alan Scaife.

The legendary Hutt Valley boxing trainer had a stable of the best amateur boxers in the country in the 1970's and 1980's.

The 1976 Montreal New Zealand Olympic boxing coach, trained a myriad of New Zealand champions that included multiple Jameson Belt winners in David and Ron Jackson, 10 time New Zealand senior champion Bill Byrne, the Ioane brothers and son Grant.

In 1978, Scaife took a New Zealand Invitation boxing team to the United States.

A newspaper story of the squads fundraising caught the eye of one Harold Smith. Smith had persuaded Ali to lend his name to an organisation that became the Muhammad Ali Sports Club, which began to sponsor track meets and boxing tournaments.

The Kiwis were invited to fight a Muhammad Ali amateur boxing team in Pennsylvania, all expenses paid.

While there, Scaife suggested that the team return the visit and bring Ali to New Zealand.

A staggering suggestion - to bring the man who had regained the world heavyweight title for the third time, when he defeated Leon Spinks, just five months before arriving in New Zealand

The FBI eventually discovered that Harold Smith (real name – Eugene Ross Fields) had embezzled some $21 million dollars from Wells Fargo Bank in California, making it one of the largest cases of bank fraud in America.

Another of my friends in New Zealand Boxing, historian Dave Cameron, wrote that the Muhammad Ali boxing exhibition on the 8th February 1979, was the most expensive promotion (of the time) in the countries sports and entertainment history.

The visit was arranged by promoter Russell Clarke, with the climax a sparring exhibition between Ali and former WBA heavyweight champion Jimmy Ellis and two time Ali opponent Joe Bugner, at Western Springs in Auckland.

In the build-up to the Muhammad Ali entrance into a New Zealand ring, a Muhammad Ali Sports Club team had squared off with a New Zealand Invitation side selected and trained by Alan Scaife.

The prices of the day befitted the celebrity status of Muhammad Ali, ranging from $75 deluxe ringside, including the Ali celebrity dinner the previous night, through to nine dollars for general admission.

A press report stated 'The the Muhammad Ali circus lacked a real punch when it hit Auckland last night. While Ali the world's greatest boxer may not have been in the ring at Western Springs, Ali the showman surely was”.

'For more than three hours hours the crowd of 10,000 had sat in an increasing state of anticipation waiting for the big moment of the appearance of the world heavyweight champion in the ring.

'And then, from out of the darkness he came. As he walked to the ring the crowd stood and cheered. It was all vintage Ali stuff even though the tension of the ‘Thriller in Manila' was lacking.

'Later Ali began to box, ‘Box – Sting like a bee' came cries of encouragement from the crowd”

'It was all low-key at first, time for only a couple of Ali shuffles, a few jabs and even a couple of pauses to smile at yet another wisecrack from the crowd. Ali the entertainer was in full stride and no more so than when he danced around the ring chasing the referee and jabbing in the air."

The Ali Western Springs boxing show will be long remembered by those who attended, with no bigger world sporting name coming to our country, until Tiger Woods played in the New Zealand Open in 2002.