‘I shook up the world!’ – It wasn’t a boast, it was a statement of fact

How Muhammad Ali took the planet by storm

FIFTY–TWO years have passed since that February dawn, yet still the cry comes ringing down the decades: ‘Ah shook up the world! Ah shook up the world!’ The pictures from Miami told an extraordinary tale. Sonny Liston was slumped on his stool, monstrous, bewildered and crushingly defeated, while Cassius Marcellus Clay Jnr was dancing lightfooted across our screens. His eyes were bright, his voice was shrill and his message was compelling. ‘Ah shook up the world!’

Within a few weeks, he had changed his name. Within a few years, Muhammad Ali had become the most celebrated individual on the planet. His fame evolved from his sporting excellence. The prize ring had never known a fighter — least of all a heavyweight fighter — who could move with such instinctive fluency or execute his strategies with such dramatic efficiency. Certainly it had never known a man capable of fulfilling to the letter even the most outrageous of his promises. Ali could do all of these things and very much more besides.

Half a century later, it is impossible to convey the impact of his emergence. Before Ali, sportsmen tended to be modest in victory and sanguine in defeat. Self-confidence was acceptable but only when it was tempered with discretion.

Yet Ali obeyed different rules. For him, modesty was unpalatable and defeat unthinkable. He exuded a manic optimism, a conviction that everything was possible if only you had sufficient nerve and courage and talent. And he possessed each of those qualities in staggering profusion.

LOOKING back, we were always aware that he was never ‘just’ a fighter, for the wit was too nimble and the personality too vivid. From the start of his professional career, he realised that ability was not enough. He needed to stand out from the crowd, to make his mark on public awareness. Hence the daft little rhymes, the bumptious assertions, the calling of the conclusive round.

People began to notice him, to talk about him. He was different and he was genuinely formidable. Even so, it took him more than three years and 20 fights before he secured the title, slaying the ogre Liston in the Miami Convention Centre.

We knew he was exceptional, that much was always obvious. But as we kept a bleary watch through the early hours at city centre cinemas, we slowly started to realise that he was much more: he was genuinely significant. Between the first and second Liston fights, he became affiliated to the Nation of Islam, renouncing his ‘slave name’ of Cassius Clay and taking the name which he would carry to the grave. This move incensed a wide swath of white America, particularly when it was followed, three years later, by his refusal to serve in Vietnam.

Although he was not alone in rejecting that tragic misadventure — “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong. No Vietnamese ever called me n **** r’, he famously explained — the consequences were profound, both for Ali and for America.

Already he had defended his title against an array of opponents, including Liston, Floyd Patterson and the Britons Henry Cooper and Brian London. But refusal to serve, followed by conviction for draft evasion, saw him stripped of his titles in 1967. He did not fight for almost four years, between 25 and 29 when he would have been at his peak. In an era of great racial turbulence in America, a time of riots, civil unrest and the assassinations of inspirational leaders Senator Robert Kennedy and Dr Martin Luther King, Ali’s conscientious objection, and the price he paid, gave him an aura of martyrdom. He lost his passport and he almost lost his freedom but he used those years to imbibe and propound the disturbing racial doctrines of the Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad, lecturing in colleges and universities across the States and revelling in the status of teacher and evangelist. The Supreme Court unanimously overturned his conviction in June 1971, but Ali had resumed his boxing career a few months earlier, defeating Jerry Quarry in three rounds. So began the glory years, an era such as heavyweight boxing had never known. And Ali was its most charismatic figure. In March 1971, he fought Joe Frazier for the title, losing on points after a brutal epic. The preamble to the fight had been dominated by Ali’s taunting wit; the poems, doggerel and blood-chilling threats delivered with a roguish grin. But the performance had also revealed a different side to his character. He demeaned Frazier with a cruelty which went far beyond even boxing’s acceptable bounds. He called him an ‘Uncle Tom’, the vilest of racial insults, and repeatedly mocked Frazier for his inability to trade verbal abuse. Any valid assessment of Ali must include that streak of wanton spite. He fought Frazier again in January 1974, another harrowing battle which Ali won by virtue of his extraordinary ringcraft and superb physical conditioning.

This opened the way for ‘The Rumble in the Jungle’, against reigning champion George Foreman. This preposterous escapade, staged in the small hours of the Kinshasa morning to accommodate American television, was largely funded by a corrupt despot named Mobutu Sese Seko and became one of the landmark events of 20th century sport.

ONCE again, Ali was facing an ogre; fearsome as Liston and apparently implacable. And once again, the odds were overthrown in dramatic fashion, with Ali inviting Foreman to do his worst, to throw a relentless stream of murderous punches at Ali’s unprotected body until fatigue overwhelmed him.

It was the strategy of the asylum, yet it worked. After almost eight rounds of submission, Ali unleashed a series of lacerating combinations, followed by a thunderous right hand which sent Foreman tottering across the ring. As he subsided to the canvas, the lingering memory is of the BBC commentator, the late Harry Carpenter, yelling: ‘Oh my God! He’s won the title back, at 32!’

Ali was back but the golden era was passing. He beat Frazier once more, yet another war of attrition which ended in 14 rounds, then, in February 1978, he lost the title to Leon Spinks. Ali was then 36, his speech was already faintly slurred and he must have known that any extension of his career would prove unacceptably dangerous.

But he outpointed Spinks over 15 rounds just seven months later and then, on October 2, 1980, in a converted parking lot at Caesar’s Palace casino in Las Vegas, he faced the young, strong, utterly menacing figure of Larry Holmes for the

‘HE WAS NEVER JUST A FIGHTER, HIS WIT WAS TOO NIMBLE AND HIS PERSONALITY TOO VIVID’

‘HIS MISCHIEF CAPTIVATED CREEDS AND COLOURS AND CONTINENTS’

heavyweight championship of the world. It was the only Ali fight I ever covered, sitting in the shadow of A li’s c orner, s hamelessly y earning for a m iracle.

I r emember s canning t he r ingside and surveying the clientele; the hookers and high rollers, the Black Muslim e lders, f aces b lank a s p lates and their young minders in sober suits with revolvers slapping on their hips. I remember spotting Cary Grant and Gregory Peck, the curiously corpulent Frank Sinatra and the sad and slumberous figure of t he g reat J oe L ouis, s lumped i n a wheelchair l ike a t errible w arning.

Then the fighters. Ali was within four m onths o f h is 3 9th b irthday, h e had b een i dle f or t wo y ears a nd h ad shed 33lbs. When he removed his robe, h e s eemed a dequately f it, f ree from the blubbering fat which had recently clung to his waist. Then Holmes removed his robe and we realised the terrible futility of Ali’s enterprise. Holmes was lean, hard and menacing, a man capable of inflicting appalling damage. Ali’s great deception had fallen apart before a p unch h ad b een t hrown.

The o utcome w as e ven w orse t han we feared. I could actually hear the punches pounding the body and j olting back the head, the small grunts of pain which Ali emitted as the b lows f ound t heir t arget a nd t he fatuous shrieks of his odious camp-follower Bundini Brown: ‘Don’t b e h it, c hamp! D on’t b e h it!’.

I recall the tiny, terrible details: the black dye in Ali’s hair, designed to disguise his advancing years, mingling w ith t he s weat a nd r unning down h is t emples. A nd h is a ttempts to t alk t o t he c hampion a s t he b lows rained down; muttering old taunts, recognising t heir p athetic f utility.

The criminally incompetent r eferee allowed the slaughter to continue t hrough 1 0 r ounds u ntil t he cornerman Angelo Dundee pulled his fighter out. Even then, Bundini pleaded for ‘One more round!’ Ali sank to his stool, oblivious to the chaos around him. Holmes pushed through to his corner: ‘I love you, man. I respect you. You’re my brother’. Ali could not respond. A uniquely ugly occasion had run its course, leaving the broken man to stumble t owards h is f uture.

Unwilling to surrender even a hopelessly devalued meal ticket, they arranged just one more fight. It was boxing, you see; the Noble Art, t he s port i n w hich f ighters t ake all of the blows while men in sharp suits pocket most of the cash. He was on the eve of his 40th birthday when he faced Trevor Berbick in Nassau. ‘Drama in the Bahamas’, they called it. Ali was beaten up in 10 r ounds a nd t hat w as t hat.

By now, his physical distress was evident. In 1984, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Syndrome and his long, slow journey into the twilight took shape. He was wheeled out on major occasions to cut a ribbon or take a bow but his infirmity was p alpable.

I recall him lighting the Olympic torch in Atlanta in 1996, bravely presenting h imself t o a p ublic w hich adored him. But down the years, each t ime w e s aw h im, h is c ondition had d eteriorated. H is a ppearance a t the o pening o f t he L ondon O lympics was h eart-wrenching.

NOW he has gone, the light is extinguished, a life of a stonishing achievement is at an end. We live in an age which bestows its laurels t oo r eadily; l egends are 1 0-a-penny, i cons r un o f t he m ill. But A li w as d ifferent. H e s aid s ome foolish things and made some poor d ecisions and yet he made a d ifference. A man with virtually no formal education, cruelly slighted by the attitudes of the American South, A li r ose a bove i t a ll t hrough a mixture of skill, audacity, charm, courage a nd s ublime a thletic a bility. He l eaves a t angled l egacy. The sport he knew has virtually ceased t o e xist. P rofessional b oxing is littered with dubiously talented young athletes, boastfully booming while trying to remember their lines. To a man, they are untouched by A li’s w it o r t alent o r s aving s ense of m ischief. The cause he championed has far to t ravel. B lack A mericans s till s eek to s ecure t he s ame s ocial, e ducational and commercial opportunities as their white counterparts. And yet, these past eight years, a black p resident has adorned the Oval Office. And a heavyweight fighter was o ne o f t he p ioneers o f t hat. So M uhammad A li m ade h is m ark. He played a significant part in the drama of his age. And when we think o f h im, w e s hall r emember t he small s mile, a kin t o a t winkle, w hich flitted across that dazzling face. There was pure mischief in that smile, the kind of mischief which captivates creeds and colours and entire c ontinents. ‘Ah shook up the world!’, cried the kid from Louisville. It was more t han a b oast, i t w as a s tatement of f act.