MUHAMMAD ALI
Boxer
In 1967, Muhammad Ali, 25 at the time and the heavyweight boxing champion of the world, became the most famous man to refuse to fight in Vietnam. “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong” he declared. In the midst of an historic civil rights movement in the United States, Ali said that “no Vietcong ever called me a nigger”.
“Just take me to jail,” he said, and they could have done but Ali was granted bail. Overnight he became a national pariah, Ali’s boxing license was suspended and his world title stripped. He lost three years of his career at the height of his prime.
Ali’s conviction was overturned in 1971 but he returned to the ring short of his old spring and swagger. After two tune-up bouts he faced Joe Frazier at Madison Square Garden in New York for the world title. Frazier knocked Ali to the canvas in the 15th round and won by unanimous decision. It was Ali’s first professional defeat and prompted widespread claims he was washed up.
Ali would defeat Frazier in a re-match in 1974 but by then Frazier had lost his world title to giant George Foreman, a fighter of peerless power. In the “Rumble in the Jungle” in Kinshasa, Zaire [now the Democratic Republic of the Congo], on October 30, 1974, 32-year-old Ali was the underdog and 25-year-old Foreman—who had knocked out Frazier in 1973—was 40-0 and at his brooding, menacing best.
“If you think the world was surprised when Nixon resigned, wait ‘til I whup Foreman’s behind,” claimed the ever-confident Ali. “I’m so mean I make medicine sick,” he declared.
With an estimated worldwide television audience of one billion—the world’s most watched live broadcast at the time—Ali invited Foreman to swing freely with a “ropea-dope” tactic in the middle rounds that defied convention. Ali taunted Foreman, dodged punches and absorbed a pounding. Then in the middle rounds Ali switched gears, once Foreman was exhausted, and sensationally Ali knocked him out in the eighth. Ali was world champion again, eight years after he had first won the crown.
In the first pass play of the first round of the 2006 AFC Playoffs, playing in his third NFL season, Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer stepped back and delivered the longest completed pass in Bengals Playoff history: a 66-yard bomb to rookie receiver Chris Henry. Normally the former USC standout would have jumped up in celebration, but after he’d released the ball Pittsburgh Steelers defensive tackle Kimo von Oelhoffen had brought Palmer down hard, wrapping up his leg while on the ground, a move for which the Steeler later apologized. The injury nearly took Palmer out of football: it tore his ACL and MCL, dislocated his patella and effectively destroyed his knee. Rather than retire so early into his career Palmer elected to have a dramatic series of surgeries. Using an Achilles tendon from a woman who’d been killed several years before and employing other creative solutions, surgeons reconstructed Palmer’s knee, though the head doctor had called the injury “devastation and potentially career-ending.” Unbelievably, Palmer pushed through rehab and returned the following year as the Bengals starting quarterback, starting all 16 regular season games en route to one of his best seasons ever. At the time of his retirement in 2018, he was 12th all-time in both passing yards and passing touchdowns.