Mohammed Ali was The Greatest, no doubt about it.
I first heard of him during the build-up to the Liston bout in the summer of ‘64 when he was still fighting under his birth-name, Cassius Clay. He had won the Light-Heavyweght gold medal in the 1960 Olympics at 18 years old. My dad couldn’t stand him. He said this Cassius Clay was a decent boxer, but an obnoxious kid who needed to be taught some humility. His “loudmouthed craziness” was bad for boxing and made America look silly. He was setting himself up for a major take-down. He hated him at first, but just about everybody did. He was a young braggart without real substance, a kid from Louisville reaching way beyond his station.
Most white boxing fans feelings about Clay followed the same evolution as sport’s announcer Howard Cosell, a former NYC union lawyer-turned-sportscaster. Cosell himself was described by colleagues and audiences as arrogant, obnoxious, pompous and vain, but a man of obvious talent and a gift for words. For Cosell, it remained to be seen if this arrogant, obnoxious, pompous and vain kid from St. Louis had any substance. Cosell doubted it and continuously let America know he doubted it.
Liston was a giant with “gloves the size of bowling balls,”. He had knocked out popular World Champion Floyd Patterson in two first-round knockouts for the title. Liston’s style was simple and brutal. He fought like a steamroller. He would just plant his feet, begin a long barrage of powerful knockout punches then slowly move into his opponents until they were annihilated. The general feeling before the fight was that now this little uppity bastard from Louisville would finally get his comeuppance.
Clay responded to this sentiment by taunting Liston during the pre-fight buildup, dubbing him “the big ugly bear”. “Liston even smells like a bear,” Clay said. “After I beat him I’m going to donate him to the zoo.” Clay’s superior speed and mobility enabled him to elude Liston, making the champion miss and look awkward. Liston couldn’t connect, Clay was too fast. At the beginning of the third round Clay hit Liston with a combination that buckled his knees and opened a cut under his left eye. It was the first time Liston had ever been cut. In the sixth, Clay dominated, hitting Liston repeatedly. The bear was going down. Liston did not answer the bell for the seventh round, and Clay was declared the winner by TKO. Upon announcement, Clay rushed into the ring and danced yelling into the microphones “I am the Greatest! I am the Greatest!” A shocked America was wondering if he was right, that maybe this kid was all he said he was. Even Cosell began to cautiously change his tune
Shortly after the Liston fight, Clay converted to Islam and changed his name to Mohammed Ali, once again contracting the ire of America and becoming the target of snarky sportscasters. Cosell was the first announcer to address him as such when nobody else took Ali seriously. Cosell protested loudly on the grounds of religious freedom when the WBA, one of two boxing associations, had stripped Ali of his title following his joining the Nation of Islam.
In February, 1966, Ali was reclassified by the Louisville draft board as 1-A from 1-Y, and he indicated that he would refuse to serve, commenting to the press, “I ain’t got nothing against no Viet Cong; no Viet Cong never called me nigger.” On March 22, he was stripped of his title due to his refusal to be drafted to army service. His boxing license was also suspended by the state of New York. He was convicted of draft evasion on June 20 and sentenced to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. He paid a bond and remained free while the verdict was being appealed.
He was systematically denied a boxing license in every state and stripped of his passport. As a result, he did not fight from March 1967 to October 1970—from ages 25 to almost 29—as his case worked its way through the appeals process. In 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction in a unanimous 8–0 ruling (Thurgood Marshall recused himself, as he had been the U.S. Solicitor General at the time of Ali’s conviction).
During this time of inactivity, as opposition to the Vietnam War began to grow and Ali’s stance gained sympathy, he spoke at colleges across a divided nation, criticizing the Vietnam War and advocating African American pride and racial justice. At Harvard, he took the stage to a standing audience of lily-white, privileged faces. He was asked by the audience to deliver a poem. He gave it a moment of thought, then spoke into the mic, “I, WE,” to a 6 minute standing ovation.
He regained the Championship title in 1974 and kept it until he finally lost it for good in 1978 Leon Spinks in a TKO decision. Ali was 36 years old and had been fighting since his Golden Gloves debut in 1954 at 12 years old. The Spinks fight was his only career loss due to a knockout of any kind. By this time, Cosell and Ali had long been close friends off camera and had been throwing each other backhanded compliments on camera greatly entertaining all of us. We loved him, too. In 1984, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. In 2013, he lost the capacity to speak. He has been closely looked after by his children, nurses, present and ex-wives.
During his career and after, he did good work for the Civil Rights Movement, struggled with his spirituality, loved, married and divorced several times, raised children and continued friendships with most of his opponents in the ring. He was The Greatest in many ways.
The world is a poorer place without the great Mohammed Ali.
Factcheck through various Wikipedia articles.
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