Goodbye to THE GREATEST
A fighter and a secular saint who changed sport He might not have been the best, but he was the most thrilling, writes Robert Lipsyte in a tribute to Muhammad Ali
The world is mourning today the passing of Muhammad Ali, arguably one of the greatest sportsmen of all time, after news of his death yesterday, at the age of 74. Ali's rise from humble beginnings to become the first boxer to win three world heavyweight titles is the stuff of legend. But it was outside the ring that the man born Cassius Clay was to scale even greater heights.
MUHAMMAD Ali, the three-time world heavyweight boxing champion who was the most charismatic and controversial sports figure of the 20th century, died yesterday. He was 74.
Ali was the most thrilling if not the best heavyweight ever, carrying into the ring a physically lyrical, unorthodox boxing style that fused speed, agility and power.
But he was more than the sum of his athletic gifts. An agile mind, a buoyant personality, a brash selfconfidence and an evolving set of personal convictions fostered a magnetism that the ring alone could not contain. He entertained as much with his mouth as with his fists.
Ali was also polarising — admired and vilified for his religious, political and social stances. His refusal to be drafted during the Vietnam War, his rejection of racial integration at the height of the civil rights movement, his conversion from Christianity to Islam and the changing of his “slave” name, Cassius Clay, to one bestowed by the Nation of Islam, were perceived as serious threats or noble acts of defiance.
In later life Ali became something of a secular saint. He was respected for having sacrificed more than three years of his boxing prime and untold millions of dollars for his anti-war principles and he was beloved for his accommodating sweetness in public.
In 1996, he was trembling and nearly mute as he lit the Olympic cauldron in Atlanta. That passive image was far removed from the exuberant, talkative, vainglorious 22-year-old who bounded onto the world stage in 1964 with victory over Sonny Liston to become the world champion. The press called him the Louisville Lip. He called himself the Greatest.
From a bubbly teenage gold medallist at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, he became a critic of his country and a government target in 1966 with his declaration: “I ain’t got nothing against them Vietcong.”
Civil rights activist Dick Gregory said: “He lived a lot of lives for a lot of people. He was able to tell white folks for us to go to hell.”
But Ali had his hypocrisies, or at least inconsistencies. He mocked the colour, hair and features of other African-Americans, most notably Joe Frazier, his opponent in three classic matches. Ali called him “the gorilla” and it long hurt Frazier.
The traditionalist fight crowd was appalled by his style; he kept his hands too low, the critics said, and instead of allowing punches to “slip” past his head by bobbing and weaving, he leant back from them.
Eventually his approach prevailed. Over 21 years, he won 56 fights and lost five. His Ali Shuffle may have been pure showboating, but the “rope-a-dope” — in which he rested on the ring’s ropes and let an opponent punch himself out — was the stratagem that won the Rumble in the Jungle against George Foreman in 1974, the fight in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) in which he regained his title.
His personal life was paradoxical. Ali belonged to the religion of Islam that emphasised strong families, yet he had dalliances as casual as autograph sessions.
Ali was politically and socially idiosyncratic, but he generated so much goodwill that there was little he could say or do that would change the public’s perception of him.
Ambition at an early age
Cassius Marcellus Clay was born in Louisville on January 17 1942 into a family of strivers that included teachers, musicians and craftsmen.
Cassius started to box at 12 after his new bicycle was stolen. He reported the theft to Joe Martin, a police officer who ran a boxing gym. When Cassius boasted what he would do to the thief when he caught him, Martin suggested that he first learn how to punch properly.
For all his ambition and willingness to work hard, education eluded him. He was never taught to read properly and he memorised his poems and speeches.
In boxing he found boundaries, discipline and guidance. Martin, who was white, trained him for six years and persuaded Clay to “gamble your life” and go to the Rome Olympics despite a fear of flying. Clay won the light-heavyweight title and came home a professional contender. But few journalists followed Clay home to Louisville, where he was publicly referred to as “the Olympic nigger” and denied service at restaurants.
Clay turned professional, signing a six-year contract with 11 local white millionaires and was groomed by Angelo Dundee, a top trainer, in Miami.
At a mosque there, Clay was introduced to the Nation of Islam. Although he later converted to orthodox Islam, he gave the Nation credit for offering African-Americans a “black is beautiful” message at a time of low self-esteem and persecution.
Title and transformation
In 1964, after only 15 professional fights, he signed to fight Sonny Liston. It was feared the baleful slugger would seriously injure him.
But Clay was joyously comic. He mocked Liston as the “big ugly bear” and chanted a battle cry: “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”
Clay, taller, broader and faster than Liston, took immediate control of the fight. He danced away from Liston’s left hook and peppered his face with jabs. In the seventh round Liston slumped to defeat, his left arm hanging uselessly. He had torn muscles swinging at Clay in vain.
The next morning, Clay affirmed his membership in the Nation of Islam. He would be Cassius X, and a few weeks later, Muhammad Ali.
Refusing to be drafted
On February 17 1966, Ali heard that he was reclassified fit for military service after originally disqualified on a mental aptitude test. A subsequent lowering of criteria made him eligible to go to war. The timing was suspicious; Nation members were taking over as Ali’s managers and promoters.
As reporters pressed him with questions about the Vietnam War, then raging, he snapped: “I ain’t got nothing against them Vietcong.”
On April 28 1967, Ali refused to be drafted and requested conscientiousobjector status. He was stripped of his title. Several months later he was convicted of draft evasion, a verdict he appealed. He did not fight again until he was almost 29, losing three and a half years of his prime.
They were years of personal and intellectual growth, however. Ali was forced to explain his religion, his Vietnam stand and his opposition (unpopular on most campuses) to marijuana and interracial dating. Now the “onliest boxer in history that people asked questions like a senator” developed coherent answers.
As Ali’s draft-evasion case made its way to the Supreme Court, he returned to the ring on October 26 1970, quickly knocking out Jerry Quarry in a tune-up for his showdown with the new champion, Frazier.
“The Fight” took place at New York’s Madison Square Garden on March 8 1971 with Norman Mailer ringside taking notes for a book and Frank Sinatra shooting pictures for Life magazine. Ali slugged it out with Frazier, who won a 15-round decision in which both men suffered noticeable physical damage.
Two months later, a Supreme Court decision went in Ali’s favour. He was given conscientious-objector status.
Resurgence and decline
It was assumed now that Ali’s time had passed and that he would become a high-grade opponent, the fighter to beat for those establishing themselves. But his time had returned. Although he was slower, his artistry was more refined. “He didn’t have fights,” wrote Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times, “he gave recitals.”
He won 13 of his next 14 fights, including a rematch with Frazier, who had lost his title to Foreman, a bigger, more frightening version of Liston.
Ali was the underdog, smaller and seven years older than Foreman, when they met on October 30 1974 in Zaire. Each fighter was guaranteed $5-million, an extraordinary sum at the time. The fight also launched the career of the promoter Don King and was the subject of Leon Gast’s documentary When We Were Kings, released more than 20 years later. It won an Oscar in 1997.
Ali revelled in the African setting and the crowd fell in behind him, chanting: “Ali, bomaye! [Ali, kill him!]”
Ali leant against the ropes and absorbed Foreman’s sledgehammer blows. Then, in mounting excitement as Foreman wore himself out, and in a blur of punches in the eighth round, Ali knocked out Foreman to regain the title. He leant down to reporters and said: “What did I tell you?”
Ali successfully defended his title 10 times over the next three years, at increasing physical cost. He knocked out Frazier in their third match, the so-called Thrilla in Manila in 1975, but the punishment of their 14 rounds, Ali said, felt close to dying.
In 1978, he lost and then regained his title in fights against Leon Spinks. Ali’s doctor, Ferdie Pacheco, urged him to quit, noting the slowing of his reflexes and the slurring of his speech as symptoms of damage. Ali refused. In 1980, he was battered in a defeat against the champion Larry Holmes. A year later, he fought for the last time, losing to the journeyman Trevor Berbick in the Bahamas.
It was soon afterwards that he was told he had Parkinson’s disease. —
After beating George Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle, he leant down to reporters and said, ‘What did I tell you?’ He lived a lot of lives for a lot of people. He was able to tell white folks for us to go to hell