What a tragic irony that boxing, the sport that propelled Muhammad Ali to the pinnacle of fame, was the very thing that disabled him so badly.
On the bright side and much to his credit, Ali endured his slow, sad decline with stoicism, dignity and good cheer, according to those closest to him.
When a great man dies, it makes a sound – the sound of a mighty tree in a forest crashing to the ground among the smaller, ordinary trees. Ali was a great man, and his passing sent shock waves around the world.
A few decades ago, an experiment was conducted when teams of people took a collection of photos of famous people to remote places throughout the world. The photo of Muhammad Ali was the only one that was universally recognized by virtually everyone who viewed the photos. That was a testament to the extraordinary reach of Ali’s fame and his high regard among millions of people.
We who are old (but hopefully not about to die) grew up with Muhammad Ali. Not literally, of course, but he was very much part of our lives because he was so often in the news.
I first remember hearing about him in 1964 when he won the world heavyweight championship over Sonny Liston. I was no fan of boxing. I could never understand why two grown men would want to climb into a roped ring and bash each other’s heads in. I still don’t get it. However, many writers I used to read, including Norman Mailer, wrote insightful, fascinating essays on the subject of boxing so I realized, at least, that it took intense training and great skill.
What struck me most about Ali in 1964 was when he changed his name, Cassius Marcellus Clay, which sounded like an ancient Roman name, to the Islamic-sounding Muhammed Ali. Clay had not only cast off his “slave name” but converted to the Islam religion. That seemed a strange thing to do back then. In our heavily Catholic southside St. Cloud neighborhood, it was considered by many almost an outrage if a Catholic became a Methodist, even through marriage. Converting to an Eastern-style religion was just too far out, too weird.
Later that year, 1964, I began to become aware of Malcolm X, the black leader who had also converted to Islam, and I could understand his influence on Cassius Clay.
Clay’s name change, his conversion, were just the first of the startling metamorphoses that made him a household name, ways in which a fearless black man asserted himself against an often hostile society. Another stunner was when Ali defied the government by announcing he would refuse to be drafted for the Vietnam War. He became an active war resistor, losing his championship title and being convicted of charges of draft evasion. In doing so, he became a counterculture hero to millions of us young people who also opposed the war.
In the meantime, until his conviction was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1971, Ali had been barred from boxing for four years – years when he was in his physical prime.
Not being a boxing fan, what struck me most about Ali was his ferocious in-your-face taunts and braggadocio. Most of the time, they were mock taunts, often hilarious ones, sometimes embellished by corny-but-clever rhymes.
One of my favorites:
“If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make something out of you.”
Like the Beatles, Ali had mastered that lightning-quick verbal repartee in the limelight, playing a kind of sly verbal ping-pong with media people. It was a new way of being “hip,” a way to challenge assumptions and authority, to remake oneself constantly. That defiant style was especially astonishing coming from a black man – one who was determined not to play the humble, dissembling, subservient roles that had humiliated blacks for so long – the Uncle Toms, the Steppin Fetchits.
In that way, very much like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., Ali trashed the old stereotypes and helped create the “new” black man – a man of strength, intelligence, wit, self-determination and deep confidence.
And, not to forget, there were those astonishing photographs. Ali was born for the camera. He loved to mug, to clown around, have fun, often with celebrities nearly as famous as he was. The dazzling photos of him boxing are visuals of physical dynamism, grace under pressure, energy unleashed, as if he had harnessed lightning.
Ali really was, in many respects, “the greatest.” He was arguably the greatest athlete of the 20th Century who “floated like a butterfly, stung like a bee.” He was also one of the greatest social-cultural heroes – for the anti-war movement and for the emergence of black pride. He was, as they say, one of a kind, and his particular kind will likely never be seen again.
