BOXING GOD
How a man of war became a man of peace
In the summer of 2003, US Esquire sent me to spend some time with Muhammad Ali for a cover story celebrating the magazine’s 70th anniversary. I met Ali and his wife, Lonnie, in Dublin, where Ali was a special guest at the opening ceremony of the Special Olympics World Summer Games. There were many memorable moments during this week, but one I never counted on was being with Ali as he circled the stadium in a golf cart, waving to 80,000 spectators.
All my life I had been seeing Ali from the vantage point of the spectators in the stadium around us. I couldn’t imagine the tidal wave of energy that poured over him. Our ears filled with the roar of, “Ahhhhh-leee! Ahhhhh-leee! Ahhhhh-leee!” The energy seemed to climb to the top of the stadium and then wash down upon us. This was when the United States was being vilified for the unprovoked war on Iraq. I can remember a cartoon at the time depicting a giant Statue of Liberty wearing sunglasses and holding a bayoneted machine gun, towering over tiny Iraqis hurling stones. And I thought, how many people in the history of the planet could make everybody in the world stop for a moment, forget their differences, and cheer together? Perhaps Ali was the only one left.
Nelson Mandela had also come to Dublin for the Special Olympics that year. One morning, he walked with Ali, Lonnie, and me to a hotel suite to chat. I remember Mandela saying how the news of Ali was so uplifting to him while he was in prison in South Africa during apartheid. I remember thinking, “Hold on, my childhood hero was a hero to Nelson Mandela?”
This can never happen again, because there will never again be another Nelson Mandela. An Ali or a Mandela comes at a very specific point in time and from a web of circumstances, and then the world spins on to give us someone new or something different. Future generations will have smaller heroes — niche heroes. The world is looking at too many places at once and in bursts of time that are way too short to allow for the birth of a hero on the scale of Muhammad Ali.