More coverage of Muhammad Ali’s passing
Boxing champion stood for principle and peace, inspired generations
When I first got into sports writing in 1983, I made a promise to never be intimidated by pro athletes.
So when I first saw New York Giants linebackers Lawrence Taylor and Harry Carson sitting on stools with blood all over their uniforms in 1987 after a loss to the Dallas Cowboys, it was no big deal.
When I had a chance to cover the Dream Team in the 1992 Summer Games in Barcelona, it was great to cover Larry Bird, Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson, but not overwhelming.
Meeting Jim Brown in 1995 during the Browns’ last season in Cleveland gave me some chills because Brown was bigger than the game itself. But Muhammad Ali was bigger than life. I never got a chance to meet Ali, who died at age 74 late Friday local time in the Phoenix area, but if I had, I would have been intimidated. I would have been shaking in fear and gawking at him like some starry-eyed teenager.
Besides being the greatest boxer ever, the legacy Ali leaves behind is one built on principle, character and peace. And for young African-American men like me who grew up watching Ali in his prime, he taught us about racial pride and that being a leader was more than just rushing for 1,000 yards in a season or being able to score
quickness of his jab to “a lizard’s tongue” — who helped break down racial barriers in the ’60s and ’70s.
He refused the military call during the Vietnam War, grabbing huge headlines with the reason for his refusal: “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong.”
The outrageous was Ali’s calling card. He said at one point the only way blacks would be free from the oppression of whites was if blacks “take 10 of the states and separate from America.”
Author Mark Kram wrote of one of Ali’s favorite shock-value routines. He would tell a story about Abraham Lincoln going on a three-day drinking binge. When Lincoln awoke, Ali said, the first thing he said was, “I freed whooooooooo?”
As quickly as Ali became famous, he became a man of the people. When he traveled, he attracted crowds rivaling the Vatican courtyard awaiting white smoke. He never missed a photo op, but he also never missed a chance to visit a prison or hospital or orphanage. As often as not, the child sitting on his lap at the orphanage was white.
He had 61 fights, and that was probably 20 too many. He was heavyweight champion three times, and his three battles with Joe Frazier and his “Rumble in the Jungle” in 1974 with George Foreman, while cementing his fame, likely contributed to his deteriorating neurological condition in recent years.
Doctors labeled Ali’s condition a form of Parkinson’s disease, an affliction suffered by many outside boxing. The boxing world heard that, looked around at examples nearby everywhere and rolled its eyes. Like so many whose career canvas is a canvas, Ali got hit in the head a lot.
In the end, like most fighters, he stayed too long. Included in the five defeats he suffered was one to Trevor Berbick. The bout was held Dec. 11, 1981, was called “Drama in the Bahamas” and was hardly that. Berbick won a unanimous decision, Ali retired for the last time, and five weeks later he turned 40.
Foreman, who mercifully has escaped the ravages of his sport, said recently that he called Ali frequently at his home in the Phoenix area and learned that “if you get him early in the morning, you can understand him.”
More recently, Ali had become unable to converse. That was a cruel irony, but Ali remained what he always told us he was: the greatest.
After a while, few questioned that, though it remained difficult to define why or how. He was a carnival barker who somehow morphed into Socrates. He became a cultural icon, whatever that is.
He was famous beyond the ability of the word to define that trait, loved as an athlete, beloved as a person. His stature is global. His name appears on lists with Nelson Mandela, John F. Kennedy and Winston Churchill. He stopped boxing 32 years ago but never stopped being a hit.
For years, his health had left him anything but the greatest, but we never stopped thinking it was so.