Prologue

AS DEACON OF THE CHURCH of God in Norwich, Jamaica, eighty-four-year-old Canute Lambert hosted an early morning prayer meeting in the chapel every Saturday. Just after six a.m. on October 28, 2006, Lambert arrived at his place of worship to prepare for the arrival of his most devoted parishioners. Immediately, he noticed some sort of large object at the top of the steps to the entrance. At first, from a distance, he figured it was a garbage bag discarded there by somebody the previous night.

Beginning his ascent, however, Lambert recognized a trail of crimson tracking beneath his feet. Looking up, he was close enough to see what lay at the top of the church steps was not refuse but a body. “It looked like a human being,” he said later. When he bent over the corpse, even with four gaping wounds in its head, he knew immediately who it was. Lambert had known Trevor Berbick from the day he was born. He had watched him grow up, leave the island, become world famous and return, only to die in a pool of blood, a $100 bill lying beside him, yards from his home.

Within hours, news of Berbick’s death was flashing up on websites and newspapers across the world. Almost every headline described the former heavyweight champion as “the last man to fight Muhammad Ali.” His calling card in history.