Phil Sheridan: Fallen on hard times, a Philly boxer seeks to rise again

Maybe you only get one miracle per lifetime. Matthew Saad Muhammad seems all right with that. He made the most of his, going from toddler abandoned on the streets of Philadelphia to light-heavyweight champion of the world.

And besides, Saad Muhammad doesn't really need a miracle now. At 56, he just needs one chance to get back on his feet. The boy found on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in 1958 is a man who found himself back on the street again, without a job or a home.

It was the hardest thing Saad Muhammad has had to do, harder than the hours of training and the epic fights that left him and his opponent bloodied, battered and exhausted. About a month ago, he walked into the RHD Ridge Center, the city's largest homeless shelter. This Hall of Famer who earned millions with his fists had to admit he needed a hand.

"I was in a state of shock," Saad Muhammad said Thursday afternoon. "I thought, am I going to go into this shelter? I had to go somewhere. My money ran out. I was going hotel to hotel, [bills] piling up. So I went into the shelter and hoped the shelter could help me make a change."

His story is sadly typical. It would be real news to find a boxer of his generation who was treated fairly and responsibly by promoters and managers, who made smart investments and turned his earnings into some kind of security. Saad Muhammad earned somewhere between $2 million and $4 million in the late 1970s, early 1980s. He had a Rolls-Royce and mink coats and "an entourage" he estimates at up to 60 people.

"I was putting people up in hotels, buying cars," Saad Muhammad said. "I would be nice to other people, help other people out, give to other people."

When the money was rolling in, he didn't ask himself the question he asked during an interview at Alessandro's, a pizza place near the Ridge Center.

"Who's going to take care of me when I'm broke?"

Saad Muhammad, wearing a crisp white dress shirt and a dark suit, spoke of all this without a trace of bitterness. If he was taken advantage of, he knows, he was too trusting, too naïve.

"Stupid me," he said, turning his large hands up.

Really, when you take his full story into account, it is the years of wealth and fame that are remarkable. Born Maxwell Loach, he went to live with an aunt after his mother died. When the aunt couldn't support him any longer, she told his older brother to take the 4-year-old for a walk and lose him on the streets.