The Record: ‘The Greatest’ was never a boast
THERE WAS a time when Muhammad Ali was one of the most well-known people in the world, enjoying fame and adulation far and wide from millions of people who probably never saw him fight even once. The transformation of a black, American boxer who was born in Kentucky in 1942 into a worldwide celebrity is a remarkable story.
Ali’s once strong voice had been muted in recent years, as he battled Parkinson’s disease, but news of his death late Friday produced a groundswell of tributes from people across the globe. Ali was praised as a champion of civil rights and social justice. He was all these things and more.
His life mirrored — and at times helped lead — the social changes that began occurring in the United States in the 1960s.
To young people today, Ali is only a “former boxing champion,” and there’s nothing wrong with that. But those old enough to remember Ali’s early incarnation as Cassius Clay must stand in awe at how this one man’s life evolved.
He won a boxing gold medal at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, but whatever public support he earned from that soon dissipated when his professional career began. The young Clay was arrogant, often giving his opponents derogatory nicknames (Sonny Liston was the ugly bear; George Chuvalo was the washerwoman) and using poetry to predict how he would win a fight.
He proclaimed himself to be “The Greatest” and liked to talk about how good looking he was. They were boasts, but they were also true. In the ring he was not seriously challenged. After winning the heavyweight championship in 1964, he successfully defended his title multiple times over the next three years.
Still, his cocky behavior was not the norm for athletes in the 1960s, especially African-Americans. Black athletes in that era were expected to be humble and Ali’s demeanor earned him many detractors. Things got worse for him when he joined the Nation of Islam, shed what he called his “slave name” and in 1967 refused induction into the Army, famously saying he had no quarrel with the North Vietnamese.
Ali was convicted of draft evasion and quickly stripped of his world heavyweight championship. He was in his prime, but his boxing career was seemingly over.
And then, things changed. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned Ali’s draft evasion conviction in 1971. And with sentiment in the United States quickly turning against the Vietnam War, Ali’s opposition to it was no longer outside the mainstream. There was also a clamoring by many fans to see him back in the ring.
It was when Ali returned to boxing, that his worldwide fame began to grow. No longer the young kid with the smart-alecky mouth, Ali was now a sympathetic figure trying to regain a championship taken from him because of his political beliefs. Reclaim that title he did. And as champion, he toured the world and was mobbed by admirers.
Like many athletes, Ali remained fighting for too long, ending his career a mere shell of his former greatness. Most of his retirement, sadly, was spent coping with a debilitating disease, one that hurt Ali’s ability to engage and to speak out on pertinent issues. But even in silence, he had power. When he lit the Olympic torch at the 1996 summer games in Atlanta, he mesmerized the world again.
Ali was more than muscle or mouth and perhaps it took a debilitating illness for the world to see that stripped of both, he remained an extraordinary and powerful man.
We have many famous athletes in America; we have few whose fame transcends their sport, their country and their own physical being.
Muhammad Ali was one.