I watched his truly great fights on ESPN Classic, and I read about his spiritual conversion and antiwar stance in books. For me, Ali was at first that mythical being called the Heavyweight Champion of the World, the toughest man alive in my second grade imagination. And then he was inexplicably dethroned by a guy named Leon Spinks. I still remember trying to comprehend that after I heard it on the radio during a long family vacation drive. The newscasters seemed absolutely stunned, and I felt stunned, too.
I was older and a huge Larry Holmes fan when Ali tried to win the title again. That was a fight that never should have been allowed, and it can’t have done Ali’s brain any favors.
I have to get the youngster off to soccer soon, so it’s not possible for me to even scratch the surface of Ali’s impact on me or on the country and the world.
Clearly, what he did outside the ring will be remembered the most, and rightly so. But he was the most courageous fighter I’ve ever seen. His will to win was unlike any anything I’ve ever seen in an athlete, and I include folks like Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird who were mind-boggling in their inhuman competitiveness. The Thrilla in Manila is still the best fight ever because no other mere mortal could have beaten Joe Frazier that night. No one but Ali could have possibly wanted to win that fight more than Frazier wanted to win it.
Boxing is a brutal and controversial sport, and we can all see what it did to Muhammed Ali. But he made the sport something more. He used it to inspire people from all walks of life. He inspired people to believe in themselves and he showed everyone what craftsmanship can do, and what heart can achieve.
He wasn’t the biggest puncher or the most electrifying boxer, but he was the greatest.
I’m too young to remember anything of Ali except his illness and the fact that fighting caused it. I suppose that made him seem more like a tragic figure and a cautionary tale in my mind rather than someone great or inspirational. As such I just don’t get this eulogy so common on TV and the internet today. I guess you had to be there.
Sports heroes are a complicated subject because we all have specific memories of them mostly unrelated to their character. We never actually know them as people. How could we?
Anyway… Sad day for his family.
I’m now off to a kid’s birthday party. Busy weekend for me, but just as a boxer, you should watch three fights.
The first is his loss to Frazier in the Fight of the Century. Ali wasn’t prepared for the fury or brutality of Frazier and he got his assed kicked. One of the most magnificent ass-kickings in history.
The second is Ali’s brilliant deconstruction of George Foreman, the Rumble in the Jungle.
And the third, and greatest, is the third Ali-Frazier fight, the Thrilla in Manila. That Ali survived it and won is one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of sports.
Dave Zirin wrote a wonderful article about Ali. I was quite moved. I had no idea that he had such a broad perspective; he said this at a rally for fair housing:
RIP Mohammed Ali. You are truly a profile in courage.
http://www.thenation.com/article/i-just-wanted-to-be-free-the-radical-reverberations-of-muhammad-ali
/
Yes indeed!!!
His statement “No Vietnamese ever called me ‘nigger’!!!” was the final impetus for me to avoid being drafted during the Viet Nam War at any and all costs. A great man. A great mind, soul and body. And…as seems to be the case with all bigger-than-life heroes…eventually a tragic hero.
The Greeks knew.
Later…
AG
From the President and the First Lady on Muhammad Ali:
such a piece could be. Especially for the seemingly heartfelt sincerity of it (I won’t claim to know it’s heartfelt/sincere — I hate when people pretend to be able to do that — but it sure reads so to me!) in addition to the spot-on content.
It will, of course, send many rightwingnuts and unreconstructed racists into spitting fury (something I presume the Obamas had to have known would happen).
Good.
Fuck ’em. (Which also seems to have been the Obamas’ attitude in writing that, and if so, good on them for that, too!)
Ali gave up his LIVELIHOOD for what he believed in.
his LIVELIHOOD.
none of these modern athletes, let alone the twitter kids, understand that.
let along have that kind of conviction.
Why limit your criticism to athletes? Or those you dismissively refer to as “twitter kids?”
How many today would recognize the courage of someone like Ali? There are a few whistle-blowers that are paying a similar high price today (and without any future hope of high earnings later on). Who advocated for them being locked up just as many in similar positions back in 1966 advocated for locking up Ali?
Who today is willing to do what Ali refused to do, drop bombs and bullets on brown people 10,000 miles away?
Good Lord
Another dyspeptic comment.
Maybe you could try a positive tone. Just once. Especially in a thread tha t amounts to a eulogy.
Guess my praise for Muhammad Ali in my two comments upset your sensitive tum-tum.
30 of Muhammad Ali’s best quotes.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/boxing/2016/06/03/muhammad-ali-best-quotes-boxing/85370850/
My favs
“It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.”
“I’m so mean, I make medicine sick.”
“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”
“A man who views the world the same at 50 as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.” (the bestest imo)
“Live everyday as if it were your last because someday you’re going to be right.”
is great, and I don’t recall having heard it before. Thx again.
Awesomely Luvvie ✔ @Luvvie
Remember that Blackness. Because when the greats die, folks love to windex away their melanin. Nah. He was unapologetically BLACK.
“…when the greats die, folks love to windex away their melanin!!!”
Nice.
I’m gonna use that one.
Thank you.
AG
When asked why he wasn’t going to Vietnam:
This quote from Ali’s biographer, Thomas Hauser, is fitting:
“More than anyone else of his generation, Muhammad Ali belongs to the world. He encouraged millions of people to believe in themselves, raise their aspirations, and accomplish things that might not have been done without him. He wasn’t just a standard-bearer for black Americans. He stood up for everyone.
“http://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/civil-rights-movement/essays/importance-muhammad-ali
What Americans should never forget about the Muhammad Ali story is their bigotry and fury that formed a part of the public rejection of an athlete. Ali twice refused to live by the WASP rules.
He first converted to Islam and changed his name to Muhammad Ali. That was in 1964 and right after he defeated Liston for the world heavyweight title. At that point he was like Snowden in 2013 but more widely known. Journalists then were as cowardly as they are today.
Refusing to be drafted into the Army in ’66 made him even more of a pariah. He personally paid a huge price in refusing to participate in the US southeast Asian killing fields. Stripped of his title, boxing license, and indicted and convicted of draft evasion. The general public approved of all of that.
Most conventional journalists represent TPTB–just court jesters whose purpose is telling entertaining stories, while persuading the citizens to go along with the flow. Couple this with the fact that a human’s instinct is to not stand out and be noticed. There are exceptions and Ali was one of them and he paid a big price. I think when Ali looked in the mirror, he wanted to see himself, not somebody else. A truly courageous person.
Most journalists are like most people; recognizing the right thing in real time, much less doing it and/or supporting those that do it, escapes most people. Hence, fifty years on we’re still bombing brown people 10,000 miles away and supporting and voting for the politicians that claim it’s a good thing. (Although Madame Secretary seems quite open to bombing white people in a few countries.)
A TV manager once told me people’s memories of important events are about 6 months, unless the event is periodically reinforced. Also, the media presents Life as a barrage of unconnected happenings, maybe because that’s how they look at their profession today. It’s definitely an uphill climb. But what’s new about that fact?
The Guardian — Shunned by white America, how Muhammad Ali found his voice on campus tour
I am 99% sure I saw that Spinks fight on TV when I was very young. My mom and dad were huge fans of Ali. So was i.
Refusing to be drafted.
Being stripped of his title.
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).
Regaining his title.
Developing Parkinson’s disease at age 40-something.
Standing as the symbol of never giving up at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.
Muhammad Ali was the greatest.
He helped shape my life in a profound way. As an adolescent I worshipped athletes, especially Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle, and Ali became one of the athletes in that pantheon. But as a young teen with a developing consciousness about politics and the Vietnam war who volunteered for Eugene McCarthy as a 14-year old in 1968, it was Ali who rose above it all. Here was a great athlete with an acute social conscience who opposed the war for all the right reasons, including its inherent racism, who was willing to forgo his exploding athletic career because of his deep conviction.
In those days, at my age, I knew I would likely be caught in the draft lottery when I turned 18. Because of Ali, I decided to go through the lengthy process of becoming a Quaker, with the intention of filing for conscientious objector status in the event I was drafted. If necessary, I would have gone to prison or left for Canada–in the event in 1972 my number was, by then, just high enough to keep me out. But the example Ali set, and the sacrifices he made for what was right and true, was a lesson that has lasted my entire life.
I remember my parents, baseball aficionados, mentioning Jackie Robinson while we watched Mays & Mantle play. He was a trailblazer and the recent PBS series was very informative about this man. (It’s fun to watch videos of Jackie stealing home base against the Yankees.)
Except that my number was high enough (300ish, as I recall) to make it virtually certain that I wouldn’t be drafted (and then they ended the draft within a year or so, IIRC).
However, I can’t claim my politics/morality/ethics had matured at that point to anything much more complicated than huge relief that I would not have to make the choice you had already decided on. Good for you. Thanks, Muhammad.
I well remember the doggerel (“float like a butterfly, sting like a bee”, etc.).
This is a revelation (to me).
Thx.
being found, remembered, shared.
Thanks to all.
Awesomely Luvvie ✔ @Luvvie
When you remember him and eulogize him, remember how much he loved his Blackness. Don’t whitewash his legacy. #MuhammadAli
12:57 AM – 4 Jun 2016
About Ali:
I was sad, but prepared for this loss.
Doesn’t make it any less painful, but I can accept it.
Ali was so much more than a boxer.
Ozzie Davis said about Malcolm X at his funeral
” Malcolm was our manhood.”
That might be so, but Ali had to have been our BLACKness.
When Ali stood up there, it was as if he were channelling all the ancestors before him when he called America on its shyt. He put that mirror right up there and said
LOOK AT YOURSELF
and, then tell me why you think I should give a rat’s ass what you think of me.
My memories of Ali: First saw him as 10 yo on the Jack Paar Show, a Friday night staple in many homes, where in the buildup to the first Clay-Liston fight in 1964 he recited his amusing poetry to the improvised piano of Liberace. No fighter or any other professional athlete of the time had boasted, and performed on national tv in front of millions, so well.
The second Liston-Ali fight: A puzzler, and almost certainly thrown by Liston (allegedly because the Black Muslims, which Ali had just joined, had threatened to kidnap Sonny’s family, according to a recent author). One of the most anticipated re-matches in history — held not in Madison Square Garden or Yankee Stadium, but in Lewiston, ME in a small gymnasium.
The way the almost all-white sportscasters for years in the 60s refused to call Ali by his new name, but instead called him Cassius Clay. A notable exception being Howard Cosell.
His Finest Hour: Refused to be inducted into the military, spoke out for the next 3 years against the VN War, giving up his best prime years as a boxer. When he unretired in 1970, he was heavier and not nearly the same fleet-of-foot dancing pugilist.
The brutal Thrilla in Manila 3d Ali-Frazier fight: Ali should have retired then, but apparently felt obligated to the many hangers-on around him dependent on his income. Boxing should have been banned then, too. I haven’t watched a match since.
Larry Beyince
@DragonflyJonez
Seinfeld’s loved in all his Jewishness. JLo’s loved in all her Latinaness. Troubling that ppl have to erase blk celeb’s blkness to love them
So I’m catching up some of the tributes and news and reports on the death of Muhammad Ali, and I’d just wanted to make a point that it seems a certain segment of folks (not talking here at BT) are trying to forget and not acknowledge about Muhammad Ali…
Muhammad Ali was unabashedly Black, unabashedly Muslim and unabashedly political. Saying he “transcended race” is to not acknowledge what Ali stood for and fought for, even if meant in the “best” way.
Don’t let #MuhammadAli’s story get whitewashed
As someone said on tv, some today may not know or may have forgot, but a number of folks did not like Ali. Ali lost a good bit when he changed his name and became Ali. It wasn’t until later, when Muhammad Ali “lost his voice” to Parkinsons, that he maybe no longer became a “threat” for some folks. Imagine if Ali had not lost his voice. What made MLK easy to sanitize was his death. Ali of course was not dead, but Parkison’s essentially was the “death” of the flashy voice that folks liked and yes folk HATED about Ali. Imagine what Muhammad Ali would have had to say if not for Parkinson’s stealing his voice…
Imagine this if Parkinson’s hadn’t stolen his voice from him
RIP Champ
“I am America, 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.”
Hard to find something new to add. I remember Ali solely for his political stands, actually. Boxing as a sport I have always found troubling, and why is it always Brown people fighting for the white man’s entertainment? I seem to recall that Ralph Ellison used that idea in Invisible Man . So Ali’s legacy is complicated in that regard.
I’m glad President Obama spoke out the way he did, not letting Ali outside the boxing ring be forgotten.
○ Muhammad Ali, supporter of Palestine denouncer of Zionism, dies
○ The Nation of Islam Welcomes Muammar Gadhafi – 2009
○ Officials to Block Qaddafi Gift to Farrakhan | NY Times – 1996 |
In 1974, the legendary American world champion, Muhammad Ali, visited Libya and played a number of spectacle matches with Libyan boxers.
So Bill Clinton gives the eulogy at his burial in Louisville, Kentucky …
Intent of my post, how can the “people’s champ” have eulogies from representatives of leading nations suppressing the individual rights of it’s citizens. Gaddafi was the people’s champ across Africa to combat the old western colonial powers. See the role played by both Bill Clinton as president and HRC as secretary of state. Her joy at the demise of enemy of the state nr. 1 in 2011. What about Erdogan? He is a representative of the Muslim Btotherhood and suppresses women’s rights. An ideal pair at the funeral of the champ? It’s a bad sign when the establishment comforts the family of Muhammad Ali …
Inspiration of the 1960s
Posted earlier @MoA
Greek tragedy in Louisville
Sultan Erdogan lost his speaking slot at Mohammad Ali’s funeral coming Friday (in Muslim rites burial takes place in a day). King Abdullah II of Jordan was uninvited?
The funeral ceremony had been decided by the Greatest himself with all particulars. All was meticulously written down extensively in what family had referred to as The Book. Nevertheless … last minute changes. Perhaps, Erdogan hasn’t behaved as a Muslim leader should have the last few years. 😉
If you haven’t seen Jerry Izenberg’s piece on Ali, you’re missing on of the best commentaries on Ali that I’ve seen yet. Thanks to Barry Freidman for bringing it to my attention: http://www.nj.com/sports/index.ssf/2016/06/former_heavyweight_champ_muhammad_ali_dies_the_gre.html?
to those who attempt to whitewash Muhammad Ali.
From a Playboy interview in his OWN WORDS: