Nobody else would get their fist this close'."Larking in an LA night-club with the most famous man in the world ... He said to me, 'you see this fist, it's in my mouth because I want it there. Then he turns around, and says 'no, it's the guy with the big mouth' Someone did a photograph with us, with my fist in his mouth. Once, in a night-club in LA, I went behind him and covered his eyes, and he says 'this guy behind me must be a faggot'. "Well, I don't know about that, but I was the one to start the talking on court I met Ali a couple of times. Those guys really gave something back to the spectators."Somewhat sycophantically, I suggest to him that he was, in a way, the Muhammad Ali of tennis He smiles I think he quite likes me. "Pele, Beckenbauer, Cruyff, Bobby Charlton, Muhammad Ali, guys with great technique, maybe less physical than now but nicer to watch.
"My era was full of guys with class," he says, and there is no gainsaying his examples. They could only see that things were better in the past."For Nastase, too, as diplomatic as he is in his assessment of modern men's tennis, things were better in the past. The young people realised that they had to suffer before things got better, but for the old people, the future didn't exist. Because the situation then was even worse than in Ceausescu's time.
But I wanted something I was missing from not playing tennis any more .. power, I suppose And I wanted to help the people. In sport you win or lose, in politics you have to promise things you cannot deliver. What happened to his political ambitions, I wonder? Shouldn't he at least be Chancellor of the Romanian Exchequer by now?"Ah, the political thing My craziness, I call it I'm glad I didn't succeed. And me."In 1996, trading on that fame, he embarked on a political career, running unsuccessfully to become mayor of Bucharest.
