By every poll, scientific or barroom-based, three-time heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali reigned as the most recognized athlete of the 20th century. Yet a life that ended Friday night at age 74 was not singular because of his ring record (56-5). It was far more remarkable as the embodiment of where we were careening as a culture and a country.
Before wide receivers were performing the second act of “HMS Pinafore” after every touchdown, Ali was proclaiming himself “The Greatest.”
Before the Michael Jordan franchise went worldwide, Ali was playing to the masses in Kinshasa and Kuala Lumpur. He fought in 12 countries and was such a global figure that his igniting the Olympic cauldron was the signature act of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
Before athletes found their voice, there was Ali proclaiming, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong.”
Before rap, Ali was penning rhymes like: “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. Your hands can’t hit what your eyes can’t see.”
Will Smith played him on the big screen. A thousand athletes have tried to imitate him. And yet no one since has been able to capture a charisma that rubbed both satiny and raw. From a fighting style that birthed the “Ali shuffle” and the “rope-a-dope” to a personal creed that challenged contemporary racial views and draft boards alike, Ali seemed to delight in swimming against the riptide of convention.
Still, the basis of his appeal was uncomplicated.
“Ali has had controversy after controversy,” said his best friend, Howard Bingham, during the 2005 dedication of the Ali Center in his hometown of Louisville, Ky. “One thing people ask me is, ‘Why do so many people like him; why is he so loved?’ It’s because he never lied to the people. He did things because it was the right thing for him; he didn’t care about anything else.”
He was a lightning rod during his prime in the turbulent 1960s and a silenced, palsied icon during much of his retirement as he lived with pugilistic Parkinson’s syndrome (diagnosed in 1982). Ali went through a series of very public incarnations. He seemed to make peace with them all when he appeared — as if directly out of the heavy summer air — to light Atlanta’s flame in 1996.
As the world held its breath and shed a tear, a tremulous Ali took the Olympic torch from swimmer Janet Evans, held it aloft for a moment and in deliberate, lurching movements ushered the flame to its final stop atop the Olympic Stadium. “The emotions going through the crowd were overwhelming. Everything he represented came into focus in that moment,” said Ali’s fourth wife, Lonnie. Ali’s place as a leading global citizen was secured.
The world would have to accept him on his terms. Even his name was contentious.
Born Cassius Marcellus Clay in Louisville on Jan. 17, 1942, he would join the Nation of Islam in 1965 and call himself Muhammad Ali. Journalists, other than bombastic ABC sportscaster Howard Cosell, were slow to recognize it.
“I am America,” he once said. “I am the part you won’t recognize, but get used to me. Black, confident, cocky. My name, not yours. My religion, not yours. My goals, my own. Get used to me.”
The young Clay began boxing at the age of 12, the indirect result of a petty crime. His bicycle had been stolen, and when Clay went to report it, Louisville policeman Joe Martin suggested the boy come learn to box at his club.
He struggled academically — “I think he got through school on his popularity,” once said his long-time trainer, Angelo Dundee. But in the ring, there was no questioning his brilliance.
Clay was a rare bright spot on the 1960 Olympic boxing team, winning gold at light heavyweight. He would lose that medal — the popular story that he threw it in the Ohio River after being denied service at a whites-only restaurant later was debunked. In 1996, the International Olympic Committee replaced it.
His boxing style was as unorthodox as his personality — hands down, dancing about the ring, giving with every punch thrown his way, taunting the opponent with his speed.
After beating the glowering, mob-connected Sonny Liston, Clay was a professional heavyweight champion at 22. With his name change and conversion to Islam came an increasing politicization of the boxer. On religious grounds, he refused military induction at the height of the Vietnam War in 1967.
He was vilified by many, including those in the mainstream media. Jimmy Cannon wrote in the New York Journal American that Ali’s connection to the Nation of Islam was “the dirtiest in American sports since the Nazis were shilling for Max Schmeling.”
As he fought the U.S. government in court, he was stripped of his title and sent into competitive exile over 3 1/2 years of the prime of his career. In 1970, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with him. That year, Ali easily won his comeback fight against Jerry Quarry in Atlanta.
That October fight encapsulated Ali’s polarizing nature. No other state’s boxing commission would license Ali because of his controversial stance on the war and his long legal battle with the U.S. But at the time, Georgia had no commission, making it an ideal venue of last resort. State senator Leroy Johnson helped bring the fight to the old Municipal Auditorium, over the protests of then-governor Lester Maddox and the American Legion. Of the crowd that came to celebrate the event, “Sports Illustrated” wrote at the time: “From every corner of the country and the world they came, in brilliant plumage, the most startling assembly of black power and black money every displayed.”
After Atlanta, many larger fights awaited. His first defeat in 11 years came against Joe Frazier in 1971 during the so-called Fight of the Century at Madison Square Garden, an event so large that Frank Sinatra worked it as a ringside photographer. Both men were unbeaten at the time. A master of attaching significance to a mere prizefight, Ali further fueled the hype by degrading Frazier as an “Uncle Tom” and a symbol of white-establishment America. He lost a brutal 15-round decision.
It would take him 15 more fights — including winning a rematch with Frazier — before Ali regained his title by upsetting George Foreman in Zaire in 1974. Covering up on the ropes while a fearsome puncher punched himself out, spurred by the chants of “Ali Bomaye” (Ali Kill Him), Ali knocked Foreman out in the eighth.
There would be one last dance with Frazier in the Philippines (the Thrilla in Manila, a 14th-round TKO victory by Ali), before Ali entered a steady decline. His final two fights were embarrassing losses to Larry Holmes and Trevor Berbick, the last staged in obscurity in the Bahamas because no other sites would have it.
As Ali ambled into retirement — he by that time had broken with the Nation of Islam — much of the vitriol of his youth faded. As his Parkinson’s progressed, he spoke less and less, until the world all but forgot the sound of his voice.
Transformed into a symbol of peace and understanding, Ali helped negotiate for the release of hostages in Lebanon in 1985, and even embraced Saddam Hussein in 1990 in the misguided belief he could head off the Gulf War.
In the end, his quiet presence became a convenient repository for whatever ideals a person required. “Muhammad Ali taught us all that, whatever color you are, whatever religion you are, you can be proud of who you are,” former president Bill Clinton once said.
Ali was married four times and had nine children, including the foremost female boxer, Laila Ali.
He also is survived by the United States of 2016, while a very loud and opinionated place, still a pale reflection of The Greatest.
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