I met and interviewed Muhammad Ali before one of his biggest fights.

It was about a week before the so-called “Fight of the Century” in 1971 at Madison Square Garden in New York between Ali and Joe Frazier.

I was doing an article on the finances and promotion of the fight for The Wall Street Journal where I worked.

I visited Ali at his training camp in Miami Beach. Spectators watched Ali dance around his sparring partner and yell: “Frazier, Frazier, Frazier! Come on Frazier!” Ali faked a knockdown, chattered with the crowd, was interviewed for a radio station in Bogota Columbia, and took a call from a reporter in South Africa.

Ali loved the publicity and told me he knew it sold tickets. “I even love the bad write-ups,” he said. Critical columnists “don’t know how valuable they are to me,” he added. He understood marketing. “Why do you think this fight is so big?” he asked me. “Frazier never wrote any poems. He never did any shuffles.”

Relaxing on a rubdown table he said he had no regrets about refusing to serve in the Army during the Vietnam War and his resulting draft evasion conviction and pending appeal as a conscientious objector. “It’s something you do if you really believe in it,” he remarked. He said he would go to jail peacefully if needed.

I was amazed at how straightforward Ali was in the interview; no jokes, no jumping around from topic to topic and no reciting poetry. It seemed a normal interview. But all of a sudden, Ali jumped up from the rubdown table and switched to a little impromptu poetry.

“Better far from all I see

To die fighting to be free.

What more fitting end could be?”

After that I couldn’t get him to focus again on my questions. His trainer Angelo Dundee seemed to give me a knowing look. Ali apparently could only focus on a topic for so long and then his mind flitted elsewhere. Ali then put on a shirt and pants, signed a few autographs and sped off in a Cadillac. Cameras of tourists clicked, and one motorist who was straining to see the famous fighter instead smashed into the car in front of him at a red light.

Frazier, training in Philadelphia, was from another mold. “I like to do things quietly my own way,” he said.

It was all about money, of course. Ali and Frazier were each guaranteed a flat fee of $2.5 million. The promoters had visions of raking in $30 million.

I also covered the fight itself. Ali bobbed, weaved, danced, jabbed and played to the crowd. Frank Sinatra photographed the contest for Life magazine, artist LeRoy Neiman painted the fighters and actor Burt Lancaster was the color commentator for a closed-circuit broadcast.

Frazier won with a unanimous decision. Ali later beat Frazier in two other fights.

I never saw Ali again in person, but was mesmerized by his career. Ali called himself “the greatest” in boxing history. Some dispute that. I always regarded him as not only the best boxer but the greatest athlete of all time. I was sorry to see him suffer through all those years of Parkinsonism.

As for Frazier, I ran into him once at a Las Vegas computer industry convention greeting attendees and signing autographs. I got his autograph on his picture in a program. I still have it in a box somewhere, only one I ever got from anyone in a lifetime of journalism. I wish now I had one of Ali to go with it.

He was The Champ.

Les Gapay is a retired journalist living in the Palm Springs, Calif., area. He previously worked at the Daily Inter Lake and Missoulian, among other papers.