Muhammad Ali, the former, three-time world heavyweight champion, turned 70 on Tuesday. He was movingly feted in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, even as people around the world paid homage to an icon of the second half of the 20th century. In a time when the word is loosely bandied around, the boxer proclaimed by himself and by most as “The Greatest” and, for many, the greatest athlete of the last century, is fully deserving of the accolade of ‘icon.’ His greatness, however, goes beyond boxing.
The day after the young, brash Cassius Clay, light heavyweight gold medallist at the 1960 Rome Olympics, upset the formidable Sonny Liston to claim the world heavyweight title in 1964, he converted to Islam, taking the then relatively alien name of Muhammad Ali. This, along with his association with the radical Malcolm X, alarmed the racists of early 1960s America, who saw successful black people as entertainers, at best.
But Muhammad Ali did not know his place. In 1967, he refused to be drafted into the US Army during the Vietnam War, saying that it was contrary to his religious beliefs and famously declaring, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong… They never called me nigger.” His example reportedly inspired not only Dr Martin Luther King Jr, but also a generation of young Americans to oppose the Vietnam War. For this, however, at the age of 25 and at the peak of his physical powers, he was vilified by the US Establishment, stripped of his world title and convicted in a court of law.
A lengthy legal battle ensued, with the US Supreme Court eventually overturning the conviction in June 1971. Meanwhile, the anti-war movement and support for the man still regarded as the champion had grown. Only now, he was making a name for himself as an articulate opponent of the war, speaking at universities across the country.
In 1970, Muhammad Ali was granted a licence to box again. His comeback culminated in the ‘Fight of the Century,’ in March 1971, against the new champion, Joe Frazier, in what was to be the first of three epic encounters for the world heavyweight championship. He lost. But in 1974, in the ‘Rumble in the Jungle,’ in sweltering Kinshasa, he knocked out the seemingly invincible George Foreman, to regain his title.
The 1970s were the golden age of heavyweight boxing, of all boxing really, and Muhammad Ali, dancing and punching under the lights, brought an unprecedented combination of artistry, theatre, charisma, glamour, guts and power to the sport. The original rapper, the poet of the ring, given to spouting rhymes to out-psych his opponents, he is best remembered more for the poetry of his dazzling hand speed, the nimbleness of his footwork and the deceptive power of his punch than for the doggerel he used as another weapon. Yet, here is a man who could captivate a university audience with the strength of his argument, the quickness of his brain and the force of his personality, just as he could outwit and outpunch goliaths of the ring like Liston and Foreman.
Of course, he is still only a man, all too human in his foibles and fallibility. The pride and the lip that took him to the heights he achieved were perhaps just as responsible for his less than stellar moments in and out of the ring. Like many of the best sportsmen and most politicians, he just did not know when to stop, giving truth to the adage that all such careers end in defeat. And, in his affliction with Parkinson’s disease, Muhammad Ali has shown that he is as human as any of us.
But even if the famed and once feared lip has deserted him, the pride is still there. He has borne his illness with tremendous serenity and courage, all the while in the public eye. He may be a shadow of the athlete he once was, but the spark can still be glimpsed in his gaze, though it is, sadly, getting dimmer with the years. Yet, he is all the greater for persevering in the face of such cruel and crippling adversity.
We celebrate, this week, not so much Muhammad Ali, the athlete who made his sport a thing of awesome beauty even at its most destructive, but Muhammad Ali, the man who stood up for the courage of his convictions, who stood up to The Man, the Establishment and its distorted value system, to pronounce his pride in his religion and his colour.
Here is a man who not only literally fought the good fight, but also personalised the struggle of African Americans and people of all colours, everywhere, to be treated with respect, not just for their athletic prowess or a particular skill, but for the beauty of their minds and their rights as human beings. Muhammad Ali transcends boxing in a way that no boxer before or since has done. He transcends the very notion of sport itself and invests it with a human dignity and worth too rarely seen in the professional era. Therein lies his true greatness. That is why he is so admired and loved.
