Ali's camp now a bed and breakfast
ESPN SportsZone news services
DEER LAKE, Pa. -- What was once Muhammad Ali's home away
from home can now be yours.
Ali's Deer Lake training camp, where he prepared for his fights
with Joe Frazier and George Foreman, has been turned into a bed and
breakfast by the man who once taught the former champion karate.
George Dillman, along with his wife Kim, purchased the nearly
six-acre parcel Ali called "Fighter's Heaven" in July 1997, 17 years
after Ali first offered to sell it to him.
At the time, Dillman didn't have the money to buy. When the
former champion put the property up for sale this time, Ali agreed
to sell it to Dillman for the same price he was asking for back
then -- $100,000 -- a price well below today's market value.
"He is a genuine person," said Dillman, who also paid closing
costs for both sides. "He made good on an offer he extended 17
years ago."
A quarter mile up a steep, twisting country road, the camp sits
perched on ridge overlooking the Poconos, about a 1½-hour drive
northwest of Philadelphia.
Ali began developing the site in 1972, and he trained here until
his final fight against Trevor Berbick in 1981.
At first glance, it has the look of a frontier compound. The 18
buildings, clustered on both sides of the road and canopied by tall
trees, are log-framed, including the 3,000-square-foot gym.
"He was really into cowboy movies, which were big then,"
Dillman said. "He loved the look of the Old West, so he had this
built like a cabin he saw in a cowboy movie."
But the 18 giant boulders that dot the landscape are the first
clue this isn't an ordinary camp. Painted on each in big block
letters is the name of a great boxer Ali admired.
Joe Louis hangs on a 40-ton rock. A 20-ton lump of coal is Jack
Johnson. Rocky Marciano covers a flat rock.
There are other reminders of Ali inside the gym, including the
hooks that supported his punching bags, and the movie screen he
would spend hours in front of, studying great fighters of the past
and upcoming opponents.
His trainers made Ali write and sign a log of each day's
activities on a door frame. One entry, signed "MA," reads: "Up
at 4:45 a.m. (GOOD!), weight before running 228, ran four miles,
weight after 226, boxed six rounds, shadow-boxed two rounds,
massage."
There are a series of one-room log cabins that housed sparring
partners and staff members. One is painted white, and a minaret
juts up from the roof. It was where Ali knelt toward Mecca every
day to pray.
At the time, Ali lived in Cherry Hill, N.J., just outside
Philadelphia. While he had long dreamed of building a training
camp, he never thought it would be in the country.
"It's in my blood to be around people while I was training,"
Ali wrote in his 1975 autobiography, "The Greatest, My Own
Story." "I thought I'd go crazy if I left the city."
In time, he grew to love the serenity of what he called "the
best fighter's camp in heavyweight history. I'm more at home with
my log cabins than I am in my house in Cherry Hill."
By the time Dillman bought it, the property was run down. "The
smell up here was awful," said Dillman, who said he hauled out 55
tons of trash.
The exteriors of the buildings were pressure washed. The
cabins were completely redone with new roofs, floors and
bathrooms. The gym, whose foundation buckled when an embankment grew into
it, was also fortified and rehabilitated. Dillman, who owns a
karate studio in Reading, conducts classes in it.
Bed-and-breakfast guests are able to run the same hilly route Ali did his road
work on, and eat in the same enlarged kitchen where his aunt cooked
his favorite meals. A giant stone fireplace provides warmth on
chill evenings.
Turkey and deer are frequent visitors. Hawk Mountain, one of the
country's best places to see hawks and eagles, is about a 10-minute
drive. The Appalachian Trail, a rugged hiking trail between Georgia
and Maine, is about three miles away.
The surroundings invigorated Ali. "I've been hiking up hills,
cutting down trees and chopping wood, just like the old fighters,
and it's given me more confidence," he wrote in his book. "I like
the quiet of the night when, at first, I couldn't stand it."
Dillman, whose name is one of 19 on a granite monument Ali
erected on the site in 1980 to recognize his staff, can't believe
his good fortune.
"I was lucky enough to be here while every building was being
built, and I wound up the owner of it," he said.
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