Boxing fans can pick up each new book by Tris Dixon with confidence that it will be a good read. Warrior, Dixon’s biography of Mathew Saad Muhammad (Pitch Publishing), continues this tradition.
Maxwell Antonio Loach (the boxer’s original name) was born in 1954 and abandoned at the age of 4 on Benjamin Franklin Avenue in Philadelphia. After he was found, he was taken to a Catholic orphanage. When asked his name, all he could answer was “Maa, Maa.” So the nuns named him Matthew with Franklin (the street where he was found) added as his surname.
Matthew found acceptance on the street and served time in a juvenile detention facility. Eventually, he turned to boxing, which gave him hope and aspiration. As Dixon notes, he never had before. At the age of nineteen, he turned pro. He’s adorable, interesting, and handsome with a marketable origin story.
And he can fight.
Matthew has an unshakable will to win. His battles are described as explosive, brutal, barbaric, grueling, bloody, bloody, and enchanting. They are all that and more. Think Arturo Gatti and multiply the image to a larger number.
Tom Cushman’s Philadelphia Daily News called Matthew’s battles “Matthew Franklin’s special battles.” Nigel Collins (later editor of Rings) called his return to ring fights a “spectacular revival”. It’s not uncommon for both Matthew and his opponent to arrive at the hospital after a fight.
At that time, the light weight division was very deep and Matthew was very difficult to deal with. During a nine-and-a-half-month span that began when he was 21, he pitted future champions Mate Parlov (twice), Marvin Camel (twice) and Eddie Gregory (later known as the Eddie Mustafa Muhammad). He then fought Marvin Johnson, Yaqui Lopez, John Conteh, and Dwight Braxton (later known as Dwight Muhammad Qawi) each twice in addition to dealing with the likes of Richie Kates and Jerry Martin.
“Seven to eight weeks after the most brutal fight you can imagine,” recalls promoter Russell Peltz, “he fought another monstrous fighter. Two months later, he came back again.”
Decades after fighting Matthew, Marvin Johnson looks back on their first ring fight and admits, “I still have a headache talking about that fight. I can still hear the bell and see the darkness.”
In 1979, after defeating Johnson in his second encounter for the World Boxing Council’s 175-pound belt, Matthew changed his name from Matthew Franklin to Matthew Saad Muhammad. He is living the American dream. But over time, the dream turns into a sad boxing stereotype.
Bernard Hopkins later said of Matthew: “Too difficult for his sake. “Didn’t avoid any punches. Do not try. People have mixed hearts with minds. I’m not saying he doesn’t have a brain, but his IQ of sweet science is set to only one station.
In keeping with the tradition of gym fights in Philadelphia, Matthew trains just as much as he does when he fights. That adds to the damage he takes.
And as Dixon writes, “He has a heavy-duty entourage with a light-heavy salary.”
“I just gave it away,” Matthew said of his money. “I am friends with everyone. But for them to be around, I guess I have to give them some money. And that’s it. I gave money to people I thought needed it and it ran out.”
Matthew bought a house and was ripped off the cost of furnishing it. There’s a piano he can’t play and a pool he doesn’t use because he can’t swim. The people he trusts to pay his taxes do not.
In 1981, Matthew’s biological family emerged. After matching background checks, he accepted them. Soon they joined the stream of people taking money from him.
“They wanted everything,” Michelle LeViege (Matthew’s wife at the time) told Dixon. “Can you buy me a car? Can you pay my rent? And Matthew faltered a little. Painful. I remember him saying, ‘I wish I never found them.’”
“They were more concerned with what they could get from Matthew than a family reunion,” added photographer Paul Trace (a friend of Matthew’s).
Meanwhile, Matthew thinks that, in the ring, he will always be able to fight through any adversity. Dixon writes: “The miracles will run out at some point. “It’s just, Matthew seems to have an endless supply.”
“Sometime” came when Matthew battled Braxton, who thrashed him twice and stopped him twice after declaring, “I bet his face will be worn out before My hand can do it. . . He’s drawn to Superman’s legend.”
In the end, Matthew lost everything. “It was a horror show,” Dixon recounts. “When one thing disappears, everything disappears. Skills, strength, resistance to punches, titles, house, family, friends, wealth. The fight caught up with him. Miracles have come at a great price.”
Matthew began to stammer. His balance is very poor. But he continued to fight. It was a sad sight. He fought until the age of 38. In his last 22 games, he set a record of 8-13-1 and was knocked down seven times. In Dixon’s words, he was “used as dog meat by world-class fighters” and also lost to the lesser.
“I don’t think he has a firm grip on reality,” said Bernard Fernandez of Philadelphia Daily News Written. “How he misses himself, and he just doesn’t want to see who he is. Watch him fight. There’s nothing there.”
Adding injury to the insult, in 1987, Matthew was hired as a workout partner at Kronk Gym. “The problem,” Dixon noted, “Matthew is just a sturdy old heavy bag for the Kronk team.”
During the last years of his life, Matthew drifted from city to city. His whereabouts during most of that time are difficult to trace, although it is known that he was sometimes in Philadelphia and sometimes in New Jersey. He took a job in the construction industry as a roofer and occasionally trained warriors. He often relies on the kindness of his friends to survive. He will sit on a friend’s sofa for a while and when the welcome becomes sparse, he moves on to another friend. In 2010, he entered a homeless shelter in North Philadelphia, a twenty-minute drive from the comfortable home he used to live in.
In March 2014, Matthew was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. He died of a stroke two months later at the age of 59. The death, Dixon wrote, “rescued him from a slump that was even worse than he had been through.”
Dixon is a good writer. Warrior goes beyond the standard boxing bio in painting a vivid portrait of Matthew as a boxer, Matthew as a person and the boxing industry as a whole.
The book begins with a touching re-enactment of the abandonment of four-year-old Maxwell Antonio Loach from the perspective of a four-year-old. Get an insight into Matthew’s ill-fated marriage to Michelle LeViege. (Who caught in the text is a good woman). Some of Dixon’s battle descriptions were so compelling that I paused my reading to watch parts of the battle on YouTube.
And one last note. . . Dixon met Matthew in 2001. They became friends and Tris vowed to write her story. But there’s a problem. “Back then,” Dixon recalls, “Matthew and I both had a hard time. Publishers don’t want an unknown author to write about a forgotten warrior. Neither of us can help each other with anything but friendship.”
Two decades later, Tris’ promise to his friend has been admirably fulfilled.
