Elevator Ride With Muhammad Ali; Waiting For Baggage With Jerry Springer

When I was out in Chicago for Search Engine Strategies last week, the rumor was going around that Muhammad Ali was in the same hotel as the show. Indeed he was, as I ended up sharing an elevator ride with The Greatest.

I’d already had a celebrity near miss when Jesse Jackson came by the bar where a bunch of our our attendees were relaxing after the show. Brandy Shapiro-Babin over at WebmasterRadio FM had caught up with him there and was over the moon for getting him to do a promo for her podcasting station.

That wasn’t too difficult, as it turned out, since Brandy’s mother apparently did physical training for boxers and knew Jackson from when he’d attended fights. Brandy was her “little girl” that Jackson remembered.

Anyway, Brandy told me that Muhammad Ali was also around the Chicago Hilton. The next day, when I headed up to my hotel room to pack and leave, there we were waiting for the same elevator.

I was probably about eight years old when Ali was at the height of his fame. Everyone knew him and thought of him as the greatest boxer of all time. He was the original sports superstar to me and many of my friends — and heck, I wasn’t even into sports.

Fair to say, I never envisioned sharing an elevator ride with a legend. And I wanted to say something to him, even something short to say what a icon he’d been to me as a kid and continued to be as I got older and learned more about him and all he’d been through.

Instead, I said nothing. Ali, of course, suffers from Parkinson’s Disease. In the elevator, accompanied by one handler, he simply looked tired as he stood looking down and supporting himself with a walking frame. I wasn’t certain if anything I said would have registered, though reading later today from what his daughter said recently, it probably would have. Still, I thought the best way to show respect was to say nothing.

Encountering Jerry Springer after that was almost anti-climatic. Waiting to go through immigration at London Heathrow, he was one person in front of me. I probably wouldn’t have noticed except after he was cleared, the immigration clerk said to the rest of us waiting, “That’s Jerry Springer!”

After I was cleared, I ended up at the same luggage carousel as Springer. Traveling on his own, he headed off briefly to grab his own luggage trolley and then came back to where we were all waiting. My luggage came within seconds after that, so I was off.

If I’d been there longer, I’d have asked for an autograph. Nope, not for me but for Scottie Claiborne, who coined the term Springer Forum Marketing a few weeks ago. It would have been perfect for her. Sorry, Scottie — maybe next time