Muhammad Ali the greatest outside ring as well as in

Shortly after 2pm on Monday, January 19th, 1981, a 21-year-old African-American named Joe climbed the fire escape of a building on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. Upon reaching the ninth floor, he eased himself out onto the ledge and shouted that he intended to take his own life. The police were quickly called, and, as this man in a hooded sweatshirt and jeans started to roar in military jargon about the Viet-Cong coming to get him, the commotion drew a crowd onto the streets below.

The first cops to answer the 911 call tried their best to reason with him but soon realised more professional help was needed. A psychologist was drafted in. To no avail. A police chaplain spoke to him at length but made little progress. Joe remained balancing precariously on the ledge for so long that some onlookers on the sidewalk could be heard laughing and joking about his plight, intermittently shouting up at him,”Jump! Jump!”

This was the scene when Howard Bingham, photographer and Muhammad Ali's best friend, happened along. He watched the drama play out for a bit then approached an officer and offered to call Ali (who lived nearby) to come over to try to coax this distraught character in from the edge.

Bingham had travelled the world with the boxer and witnessed his extraordinary impact on men, women and children of every creed in every situation. Surely it was worth a shot. The policeman in charge thought not.

“I went back to my car and called Ali anyway,” said Bingham. “I told Ali there was a guy up here on a building about a mile from his house and maybe he could get through.”

Celebrity involvement

Minutes later, Ali’s Rolls Royce came trundling the wrong way up the street, lights flashing. Initially, the officers were not thrilled by the fighter’s arrival. In Hollywood, the last thing they wanted was to encourage celebrity involvement in trying to save potential suicides.

Unsurprisingly, their first move was to refuse to allow Ali into the building. Then matters on high took a turn for the worse.

"He [Joe] said he was definitely going to jump and actually came close to jumping," said sergeant Bruce Hagerty. "We decided to give Muhammad a chance at talking to the man."

Once he reached the ninth floor, Ali opened a window just yards from where the man was perched and stuck out the most famous head in the world.

“It’s really you!” shouted Joe.

It was really him, immaculately turned out in a suit and tie, and about to do what Ali had always done best – connect with somebody in that wonderful way he had about him. He learned quickly the individual was depressed because he couldn’t find a job and had issues with his parents. After chatting from the nearby window, Ali asked if he could move to the fire escape to make it easier to talk. For the first time all day, Joe agreed to allow someone into his immediate vicinity.

“The police thought he had a gun,” said Ali. “Nobody would go near him. I told him I’m coming out and don’t shoot me. He said, ‘I won’t shoot you, I don’t even have a gun.’”

The conversation continued with Ali now standing in the fire escape almost close enough to touch his new friend who remained, in every way, on the brink.

“I’m no good,” said Joe. “I’m no good.”

“You’re my brother,” said Ali. “I love you and I wouldn’t lie to you. You got to listen. I want you to come home with me, meet some friends of mine.”

“Why do you worry about me?” asked Joe. “I’m a nobody.”

“You ain’t a nobody!” said Ali, so moved by the plight of the troubled young man that he started to cry.

Grim finality

After offering to help him find a job and to intercede with his parents on his behalf, Ali also warned him the step he was trying to take had a grim finality to it.

“If you jump,” he warned, “you’re going to hell because there’s no way to repent.”

More than once, journalists watching from below were certain the episode would end badly. But, after just under half an hour, Joe fell sobbing into Ali’s embrace and the pair of them walked back into the building together.

The three-time heavyweight champion was recently hospitalised with pneumonia and turns 73 this Saturday. We don’t know how long more he is going to be around.

We do know, however, that we will always have his canon of remarkable stories, and as a testament to the powers of Ali in his pomp, here was a magnificent cameo.

When all else failed, he came to the rescue, leading even the staid CBS Evening News to compare him to a "superhero" that night.

Larry Holmes might have brutally exposed his physical decline in a ring in Las Vegas just three months earlier but this was evidence that his charisma, personality and magnetism remained undiminished.

“Joe knows my address,” said Ali later. “I’ve told people to bring him to me when they let him go. I’ll help him. He knows he’s got a home, my home.”

In a bizarre postscript, Joe tried and failed to take his own life again just three months later. When the police were taking him away on that occasion, he blamed the pressure of the publicity that arose from Ali saving his life.