Ali legacy is as much about US history as it is boxing
The Louisville museum devoted to ‘The Greatest’ showcases more than just his fight memorabilia, says Marcus Armytage
The most athletic boxer to grace a ring used that fame to be a great humanitarian
For a rather unexceptional North American city, Louisville, through which the Ohio River meanders, is a remarkable sporting place. Its racecourse, Churchill Downs, which hosts horse racing’s biggest travelling circus, the $30million (£23million) Breeders’ Cup, this weekend, has been home of the Kentucky Derby since it was first run in 1875.
Less than 10 years after the race’s inauguration, Bud Hillerich, the son of a wood turner, was watching local baseball star Pete Browning play when he broke his bat.
Hillerich offered to make Browning a new one in his father’s factory. The next day the player managed three hits with his new bat and the “Louisville Slugger” bat business, which to this day still has the contract to produce baseball bats for all professional players, was born.
But Louisville is also birthplace and final resting place of the 20th century’s greatest and most loved sportsman, Muhammad Ali. Born Cassius Clay, into a segregated city in 1942, he took up boxing aged 12 and went on to become the only three-time world heavyweight champion, but he was much more than just the most athletic boxer to grace a ring. He used that fame to become a great humanitarian.
The Derby, the Louisville Slugger and Ali all have dedicated museums in Kentucky’s biggest city and earlier this week I lost myself in a golden era of heavyweight boxing in the Muhammad Ali Center, dedicated to the “Louisville Lip”.
If you imagine it is hard to sustain a building devoted to a single sporting star, then there were so many facets to Ali’s life apart from boxing that the centre, all 100,000 square feet of it, with its lecture room, theatres and halls, is a must for the Louisville tourist. The centre is coming up to 12 years old so Ali – who died in 2016 and is buried in the city’s Cave Hill cemetery – had a big say in the place to which he contributed some of the cost.
He and his wife Lonnie wanted it to be much more than just a museum of fighting memorabilia – silk dressing gowns, gloves, archive television footage of his fights, his famous pre-fight hype and the Olympic torch – they wanted it to carry on his legacy for future generations.
In that respect, the Ali Center, with areas devoted to his stand in the civil rights movement, his refusal to be drafted into the US military because of his opposition to the Vietnam War and his religious beliefs, to his last and longest opponent, Parkinson’s disease, succeeds.
It is as much a museum of America’s history in the second half of the last century as it is to Ali. Of course, it showcases his boxing career brilliantly and there are two mock-up rings, in one of which you can learn to shadow box in an interactive lesson with his daughter. But one of the keys to the place’s success is that it is not so much chronological, but based around Ali’s six core principals; confidence, conviction, dedication, respect, giving and spirituality.
The place is adorned with quotes by him and about him. My favourite was a clip of George Foreman recalling, with laughter, the moment in the Rumble in the Jungle when, in the seventh round, after a barrage of hits and a massive hook to Ali’s jaw, Ali whispered in his ear: “That all you got, George?” and him realising the writing was on the wall.
I did not buy the boxing-glove key ring in the shop, but I will bring back the best Ali quote for my children. Of all he said, it perhaps best sums him up.
“Impossible,” he said, “is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It is a dare. Impossible is potential.” Hopefully they will be satisfied with that.