Ali Fans Get a Whiff of The Champ (With Purchase)

“Muhammad Ali. The man. The legend. The cologne.”

This is what I’m hearing on the car radio.

“The essence of a winner,” it says.

I think this has got to be a joke. An MTV promo. A bit from Live at the Improv.

I’ve been around boxers. Nobody in his or her right mind would bottle their essence.

I keep listening. This is for real. The Champ himself is going to be at May Co. department stores throughout Southern California, signing autographs “with purchase.”

I figure I should check this out, Thursday at noon at South Coast Plaza. I’m afraid I might be the only one there. I pull into the parking lot five minutes early.

What I see is a line from the May Co. men’s fragrance department snaking out the door, all the way to the corner. Hundreds of people--men, women, children and infants--have been waiting for Ali since the store opened at 10 a.m.

These people have made lots of purchases. (After shave: $17.50. Cologne: $28.50 small, $38.00 large). They have brought many things, several of them rather strange, to be signed. They are patient. They are happy.

A white limo zips by. The crowd goes nuts. Then The Champ is ushered inside.

A plainclothes security guard asks one man near the front of the line: “Excuse me, sir. Did you make a purchase today?”

“I made two purchases,” the man says.

Joe Kasper, a car salesman from Huntington Beach, has brought a fresh baseball to be signed. This is Joe’s thing. He has 150 signed baseballs at home. Richard Nixon, Oliver North, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, George Bush--all of them have signed Joe’s baseballs.

“I even have one of Wade Boggs and Margo Adams on the same ball, after they broke up,” Joe says. “What I did is have Wade sign it first. Then later, I turned it around and had Margo sign it. She didn’t even look.”

Ara Akoubian, 11 years old, is the first to step up to the man himself. This is an unbelievable coincidence, Ara tells me.

Just last week he did an oral report on The Champ in his sixth-grade class in Anaheim Hills, before he knew about The Man, The Legend, The Cologne.

Ara gives me an encore. He assumes the champion stance. He lowers his chin. He puts gravel in his voice.

“Hi, my name’s Muhammad Ali,” he says. “I fly like a butterfly, sting like a bee. There ain’t no other fighter like me.”

Ali, 48 years old, retired from the ring since 1980, is sitting behind a table, an armed bodyguard standing on either side. He is wearing a very dark suit and a very red tie. He isn’t saying much, although he is smiling a lot. His voice is barely above a whisper. He is shaking hands and kissing women and babies.

He is signing color glossies (free with purchase) very, very slowly, with quivering hands. Nobody is talking too much about the quivering. That wouldn’t be nice. They are noticing, however. They love this guy.

J. Arthur Worth, president of Crystal Fragrances in New York, is the brains behind all this hype. The cologne, he says, was his idea and Ali has gone along just fine.

“Ali is the most well-known person in the world today,” Worth says. “We wanted to do something, so we came upon the idea of a cologne. It’s a clean product. Because of his religious beliefs, he couldn’t promote any alcoholic beverages, or underwear, or anything too sexually explicit. . . . You know, Michael Jordan is doing underwear now.”

J. Arthur Worth says that the crowds have been like this one--huge and adoring--pretty much down the line.

They started the promotion in August of last year in Detroit. It was the Midwest after that and then on down into the Deep South. This week’s tour of Southern California is the first stab at the West.

“We were in Mississippi, at the store, and Gov. Ray Mabus calls,” Worth tells me. “He says that he’d like to see us. I told Ali, ‘We’re in Mississippi. I don’t see how we can refuse the governor.’ So he sent for us and entertained us like royalty. He told us how great the cologne was, in his opinion.”

The line inching toward Ali, meanwhile, seems interminable. Nobody has been waiting less than two hours, most at least an hour beyond that.

No one is complaining, except for one guy who has failed to make a purchase. He is removed.

Finally, I make my way toward Ali. He tells me that it’s Allah--”that’s A-l-l-a-h”--who makes him so popular, although the cologne is pretty good too.

“I don’t wear anybody else’s,” he says. Before the essence of The Greatest made its way to the market, however, Ali confides that he used to splash on Calvin Klein’s.

J. Arthur Worth says that I should join The Champ and his entourage for lunch. I decline. It’s already 2 o’clock, and the end of the line is still nowhere in sight.

In any case, I figure this may not be my last chance for a whiff of The Champ. Worth says that the cologne is just the start.

“Rope a Dope” soap is one of the clean Muhammad Ali products that we can look forward to next.