The noise had sounded like a gunshot and Bobby Lee said he instinctively ducked behind the steering wheel of his car.

“I thought maybe somebody was trying to shoot me,” Lee said. “I wasn’t too popular that day, you know.”

It was Jan. 13, 1981 — the day Hawaii said “no” to Muhammad Ali.

The Hawaii State Boxing Commission, in a stunning surprise at the time, refused to license the three-time world heavyweight champion to box here. Amid shouts of outrage and the threats of lawsuits there had been a rumor of other, more dire, consequences for Lee, the man who galvanized the opposition and delivered the knockout.

The noise turned out to be the backfire of an adjacent vehicle and he would laugh about it later. But, at the time, Lee, who is now 95, recalls, “You couldn’t be too careful.”

Ali had absorbed a lopsided loss to Larry Holmes three months earlier in Las Vegas and had come to Honolulu seeking a license to fight British champion John L. Gardner at Blaisdell Center. Though Sad Sam Ichinose, who was to promote the fight in conjunction with Muhammad Ali Professional Sports (MAPS), talked excitedly of the possibility of moving it to Aloha Stadium with a world lightweight title shot for Waipahu’s Andy Ganigan before a worldwide audience.

But there were whispers in the boxing community that MAPS was just looking for a pliable commission to grant a license, which, once secured, would be a ticket to a bigger payday overseas.

Awed a week earlier by Ali’s presence and rhetoric, the commission had been prepared to fast track the application until running afoul of the state’s “Sunshine Law” and forced to postpone the meeting.

Sitting between the former heavyweight champion and flamboyant MAPS promoter Harold J. Smith at the meeting to deliver the news of the delay was Randy Iwase, a young assistant attorney general. “I was nervous as hell,” said Iwase, who recalls desperately wanting to ask his idol for an autograph.

A copy of a newspaper photo from that meeting hangs in the office of Iwase, who is now the chairman of the Public Utilities Commission.

With word of the license pending, other boxing bodies counseled against it. “Strongly urge you carefully consider every aspect of Ali’s future welfare in view (of) last ring performance and other signs of deterioration…” the British Boxing Board of Control wrote in a telegram.

But promoters waved a medical report by Dr. Richard You that recommended a license for Ali. The champ, whose appearance the week before had snared traffic on Richards Street, had declared himself fit and ready to prove the loss to Holmes was just “a bad night.”

So much so that Ali demanded, “somebody get me Duke Sabedong right now.” The hulking 6-foot, 6-inch Sabedong, a Hilo native, had been the first fighter to take Ali the distance and when he came to Hawaii, Ali, who praised the game Sabedong, often clamored for a rematch.

Gov. George Ariyoshi wasn’t talking any chances. With an open seat on the appointed commission, he summoned Lee, the commission’s retired executive director. “I got a call from the Governor’s Office and his secretary told me, ‘We need you here at 11 a.m.,’ ” Lee recalled. “I knew they were supposed to have a (commission) meeting at noon to give Ali his license to fight here. When I got there (to the capitol) they had a judge swear me in.”

Lee said, “The Governor never told me to kill the fight, but I think he knew how I felt about it. He (Ali) was deteriorating and people just wanted to use him to make money off him. We didn’t know then about his Parkinson’s disease, of course, but you could tell he’d already had enough.”

When Lee sat down at the table opposite, Ichinose “asked me what I was doing there,” Lee said. “I told him, ‘Sam, I just got sworn in.’ ”

Lee said, “Sam congratulated me and I told him, ‘Thanks, but before the day is over I think you and I are gonna be enemies.’ ”

Amid questions over whether Ali had voluntarily given up his Nevada license or had it revoked, Lee argued that Hawaii needed to get a written statement from Nevada and secured a 3-2 vote in favor of deferral with chairman Edward Kalahiki casting the deciding vote.

But, as Lee knew, the deferral was, in effect, a rejection since Ali’s birthday was in four days. By the time the statement was received and an agenda posted for the new meeting under the state’s “Sunshine Law” Ali would be 39 and be too old for license under the rules then in force, Iwase determined.

Smith, the cowboy-hat wearing MAPS promoter, stormed out of the Kamamalu Building threatening “to sue if it costs me $20 million.”

It would prove to be a curious choice of numbers two weeks later when Smith, whose name turned out to be Ross Fields, was cited by Wells Fargo in a $21 million suit alleging fraudulent manipulation of funds.

After a nationwide manhunt, Fields was brought to trial and convicted on 29 of 32 counts of conspiracy, interstate transportation of stolen securities and bank embezzlement — the last of which was labeled the nation’s largest.

Ali went on to fight Trevor Berbick later that year in the Bahamas, losing a unanimous 10-round decision in what would be his last fight.

True to his word that “I shall return (to Hawaii),” Ali did.

Just not in the ring.

Ali’s medical report

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.