FROM ALI TO PACQUIAO, MURAD MUHAMMAD IN HIS OWN WORDS PT. 4: THE PRISON, THE NETWORK AND THE FLAME

By Percy Crawford | February 03, 2010

"People don't know this, everybody thinks that Don King or Bob Arum brought live boxing to HBO. It was little me; little me from the projects, little me with a great idea and little me who thought about the fighters. So I went in there and told them I had a fight that I wanted to put on behind the prison walls and they said, 'What prison walls?' I say, 'Rahway State Prison.'...the lawyer of NBC, we all became very close because we were doing about 8 fights a year and then CBS and Richard Teal and all the executives at CBS were very happy with me and of course Seth, who won best program of the year for coming behind the walls, was tickled to death and that was the beginning of HBO and I," stated promoter Murad Muhammad as he recalled his early experiences in boxing and how he, with the help of HBO, produced the first professional boxing show behind prison walls. Don't miss this behind-the-scenes look into the history of the sport as Murad himself tells his story in his own words. From Muhammad Ali to Manny Pacquiao, he has worked alongside some of the biggest names in boxing and you don't want to miss more of his extremely revealing tales. Check it out

When I saw that Rahway State Prison was about to be burned down to the ground, I went to the Governor and convinced him that I can help rehabilitate Rahway State Prison and that I could take the tough guys and put handcuffs on them without putting handcuffs on them; I could give them something to do. I would feed them, I would clothe them and I would put money into the Victim Program. There was no money in the program. They had a Victim's Program, but no money. I would bring taxes to the state and give Corrections Officer's double time and a half because they didn't want to come back on Saturdays and Sundays.

I want to break from that for a second to say this. This situation of Percy calling me reminds me of when I was a youngster protecting Muhammad Ali. We came from a fight and he was tired and he wanted to go to sleep, so he told me, "Don't let nobody in." And when Ali goes to sleep, he takes all of his clothes off. He don't get in the bed with anything. He don't wear pajamas. So I'm sitting by the door and there is a knock on the door and I open the door. It was an African American. I didn't recognize him of course; he wasn't one of the big writers. He was a small writer. He says, "I don't have a major publication, but I do write for a column and I would like to interview Muhammad." Well, I said, "I apologize, but he's tired and he doesn't want to be disturbed." Muhammad says, "Get out of the way. Let him in." After he told me not to let nobody in, he heard me talking to this gentleman and he heard the voice and heard it was an African American and he talked to him for almost an hour or two, like he was the biggest writer in the world, and that taught me something. You never forget where you come from and sometimes, the insignificant one could be the one that could tell the truth about things. That's what Muhammad taught me, so when Percy called me and he was so consistent, and when my girl Jackie said, "He's an African American with a nice website and he writes on his own," I said, "Well that's my man! I will talk to him." We get thousands of request a day from people all over the world who want to talk to me and it's good to know that, but I just felt that I wasn't going to say anything and I'm not a man that is lost for words. I just wanted to say that that's why Percy got this interview and I'm going to give him something special that needs to be told in this business.

So back to me going to Rahway Prison. I went to Governor Burns in the state of New Jersey and I asked Governor Burns to give me exclusivity and he said, "That's unheard of." I said, "Well, I won't do what I promised you if you don't give me exclusivity. In my business, once they realize you got something, then here they all come and I don't need the two giants [Bob Arum and Don King] to be competing with." So I went behind the prison walls because I felt that I would be protected behind the prison walls because it was something that they were not doing. My theme was would you pay to go to jail? People were paying me to come behind prison walls and watch a fighter that I met behind the walls named James Scott. James Scott was a professional athlete and used to be trained by Angelo Dundee. He was pretty much undefeated in his career, but he was from New Jersey and they locked him up for double murder. He got a hung jury, but they kept him for violation of parole and that's what he was really kept in the prison for. I didn't know him; it was just an idea that I wanted to bring boxing behind the prison walls. Like 3 years before I came, Rahway was almost burned down and they had this big riot. You can go back and see the history.

So here I come saying that I can bring law and order in the prison without telling the inmates that they had to do this and that. I knew the only ones that caused all of this were the ones that really didn't want an education, but they were physical. They used their physical ability to be destructive. So I had a good plan and the plan allowed them to take their children off of welfare; the plan allowed them to pay for their medicals and legal representation and to be able to get anything that could help them and their craft. They couldn't buy TV's and things to be able to rule the other inmates, but they could buy things that would help them in their crafts. So we drew up all of these laws and regulations, however, I had the Governor and Superintendent and all of the Wardens in the institution to sign off. I had the Attorney General, so I had very strong exclusivity; never done before and never done afterwards.

So I went to the movies; I enjoy going to the movies. It inspires me and I can see a movie different than most people can see it. There was a movie that represented Walter Cronkite. The movie was called "Network." He used to say, "Put your head outside the window. Hell no, I'm not taking this anymore." Something along those lines and that was the movie Walter Cronkite thought he saw an angel and the angel told him to tell the people the truth. So he used to come on the TV network with his pajamas on and tell people, "Hell no, we ain't taking this anymore." They had big ratings and one day, Walter saw another angel in his office and he told him he was wrong for telling people that. So Walter Cronkite decided that he would go and tell the people that he was wrong and not to listen to him and the ratings dropped. They decided they needed to come up with something to boost the ratings back up, so when I saw these two Caucasians go down into the Black Panther Party, they portrayed the Black Panthers at that time, and they went down to the Black Panther party and offered them cash to kill Walter Cronkite. I said, "My God, this is something." Sure enough they built this big production behind him with lights and cameras and sound and the curtain went up and Walter is sitting there telling the people, "Don't listen to me anymore. You don't have to stick your head outside of the window." Then four men in the front row seats dressed in all black jumped up and shot him down with machine guns and I sat up in my seat and I'm saying, "Whoa, what are they portraying here?" In the back room where the guy answers the phone, the ratings and the red lights were jumping. They were jumping up and down and they shouted, "We got it; the ratings are going up." That's when it clicked in my head that the TV people are not in the boxing business, they are not in the baseball business or the football business. They are in the ratings business. Anything that brings them ratings, you got it.

So I ran over to New York and found a Jewish firm named Big Fights, Bill Cayton and Jim Jacobs, and I said, "My name is Murad Muhammad. I'm a boxing promoter and I have something that I believe is unique and I need you guys to help me." They said, "Well Murad, we don't promote or manage. We own fight films." I said, "That's correct." They said, "Well, what could we do for you?" I said, "Well, you could take me into the network." They said, "Well Murad, if you have a great idea, you could go on your own." I said, "Nah, I want to go from the top. I can't take my idea to a little guy. I gotta take it to a man on top with creativity because I can bring them ratings." So I caught their attention. I said, "Listen I will give you a percentage of me if you will take me into the network, introduce me to the man and then guide me 'cause I don't know what to ask for. I don't want to ask for too much money and they tell me I'm out of my mind and I don't want to ask for too little money and then I walk out and say they just beat me." So they thought about it and agreed, so we signed a deal. They told me to come on and said we were going to go to Time Warner and HBO and I was going to meet a gentleman named Seth Abraham. So I walked in and shook Seth's hand and told him that I had live boxing and he said, "Well Murad, we don't do live boxing." People don't know this, everybody thinks that Don King or Bob Arum brought live boxing to HBO. It was little me; little me from the projects, little me with a great idea and little me who thought about the fighters. So I went in there and told them I had a fight that I wanted to put on behind the prison walls and they said, "What prison walls?" I say, "Rahway State Prison." They said, "Rahway State Prison? That was almost burned to the ground. Rahway State Prison where men lost their life? Rahway State Prison where they sodomized the Warden? Rahway State Prison where all of the rapists and murderers are? The maximum security prison? You can take us behind those walls?" I said, "Yes, I can take you behind those walls." They said, "Alright, for a boxing match, who you got?" I said, "I got James Scott." They asked who I was going to put him in against. They said, "Which contender?" I say, "I will let you know that if you take my deal." They agreed to take my deal and asked how much did I want? I asked how much would they pay? They said, "$26,500." I said, "Deal!" I told them done deal and we shook on it.

So they were wondering who I was going to get and I had saw a guy named Eddie Gregory "Flame" [Eddie Mustafa Muhammad], #1 contender, and I went to see Eddie Gregory and his manager Joe. He said, "Son, we getting ready to fight Victor Galindez for the 3rd time." I said, "Well how much you being paid?" He said, "They giving us $25,000." I told them I would give them $25,000. They said, "Hold on! Wait a minute! You're going to give us $25,000 to fight onwhat's that channel?" I said, "HBO." They go, "Okay, so you're going to give us $25,000 to fight on HBO," which was not a household name. And they said, "You're going to give us that kind of money to fight a kid that hasn't fought in 4 years?" I told them that he had a couple of fights behind the walls, but it wasn't no big fights. He said, "But you going to give us $25,000?" I told him yeah I was going to give them $25,000. They didn't want it to interfere with them fighting for the title, so I asked when they were fighting for the title so I can do it 4 months in advance and asked them was that enough time. They said, "Sure." So I told them I would put the fight on 4 months before they fought for the title. They told me I had a deal. So I ran back and announced to the world that James Scott, the inmate, is going to fight Eddie Gregory for 12 rounds of boxing. They said, "12 rounds?" I said, "Yes, this is an elimination." Remember, back then, 15 rounds were the championship and 12 was elimination, so I let everyone know that I was going to put this fight on and sell it to the world. They took the fight and they came in from all over because HBO gave me their press people and man, they flocked in that prison. We could only hold 500 people in the prison, but it was 500 people standing and I put closed circuit in all of the halls and had top security on the top side of the prison so the inmates would not tear the prison up. I had James Brown singing the National Anthem. I was standing behind "Soul Brother #1" because he didn't know the lyrics. I had to give him the lyrics while he was singing it. He kept telling me he didn't know the lyrics. I told him to just sing and I'm telling him the lyrics from behind the wall. So it went off, "Live from Rahway State Prison, Murad Muhammad, for the first time on TV presents the #1 WBA contender Eddie Gregory versus James Scott of Rahway State Prison." And the fight went on and my God, James Scott literally beat the hell out of Eddie Gregory and I liked Eddie Gregory because he was tough. He wouldn't fall, but he was taking a whooping. He kept trying to come back and kept trying to come back all the way until the last bell and we won. So when we won, I became a phenom. All of a sudden, CBS and NBC all started calling me. Bill Cayton realized they had signed the most successful original deal that had never been done in the history of this business and they became consultants for Murad Muhammad. We visited all of the Presidents and today, I have an excellent reputation with every executive that you could name in this business. Bob Uecker and I used to just shake hands on deals, but he wouldn't come behind the prison walls because Howard Cosell wouldn't allow him to come to the prison. He said he would never commentate a prisoner, so ABC wouldn't come, but Uecker and I started doing other fights. But NBC and Dr. Ferdie Pacheco, the President of NBC, the lawyer of NBC, we all became very close because we were doing about 8 fights a year and then CBS and Richard Teal and all the executives at CBS were very happy with me and of course Seth, who won best program of the year for coming behind the walls, was tickled to death and that was the beginning of HBO and I!

BE SURE TO CHECK BACK FOR PART 5 AS MUHAMMAD TALKS MORE ABOUT HIS EARLY YEARS AS A PROMOTER

CLICK HERE FOR PART 1 OF THIS EXCLUSIVE

CLICK HERE FOR PART 2 OF THIS EXCLUSIVE

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