Muhammed Ali-The greatest!

There were several iconic ‘celebrity’ heroes that dominated my generation’s consciousness and transcended music, sports and entertainment, making socio-political impact as well. Bob Marley, Fela and Muhammed Ali stood out for me, in impacting the politics and society of their time in a transformational manner. There is no doubt that in the global context, Muhammed Ali was “the greatest” of those three!

Cassius Marcellus Clay Jnr as he was born, won the Olympic heavyweight boxing gold medal in Rome in 1960, Nigeria’s year of independence, aged just 18 years. By the time he was 22 in 1964, he had defeated Sonny Liston and become the heavyweight champion of the world. Until Ali, that “world” meant by-and-large America as the rest of us barely took notice of US boxing, until Cassius Clay globalized the sport. As he unexpectedly beat Liston on February 25, 1964, Ali shouted to the press, “I am the greatest! I shook up the world. I’m the prettiest thing that ever lived”later admitting that he declared himself the greatest before he knew it to be true!Clay also made another of his famous lines after defeating Liston, “I float like a butterfly, I sting like a bee”! He would subsequently shake up both America and the world and be almost universally regarded as the “greatest heavyweight in the history of the sport” with Sports Illustrated declaring him “Sportsman of the Century” and BBC acknowledging him as “Sports Personality of the Century”.

Born January 17, 1942 in Louisville, Kentucky, USA, Cassius Clay Jnr started training as a boxer at the age of 12 after a chance encounter with a local policeman Joe E Martin, swiftly becoming amateur national, Olympic and world professional heavyweight champion. According to Wikipedia, “he was a descendant of pre-civil war era American slaves in the American South, and was predominantly of African-American descent with Irish and English heritage”. His rejection of slavery, segregation and perverse discrimination against African-Americans was one of the most defining aspects of Cassius Clay’s life. It certainly led him to change his name to Muhammed Ali under the influence of Elijah Muhammed of the Nation of Islam, and Malcolm X. There is evidence that Ali,and his fame and charisma may have been manipulated by Elijah Muhammed for political, economic and religious advantage, but his anger at the US establishment at least in the 1960s and 1970s was a predisposing factor.

He knocked out Liston in the first round of the rematch in May 1965 in the so-called “phantom punch” episode with the entire fight lasting less than two minutes and later beat former champion Floyd Patterson in November of the same year. He defended his title against George Churalo, Henry Cooper, Brian London, Karl Mildenberger, Cleveland Williams and Terrel until 1967 when his refusal of the military draft to fight in Vietnam led to a new chapter in Ali’s life and career. In February 1966, Ali had said, “I ain’t got nothing against no Vietcong; no Vietcong ever called me nigger” and then outlined his conscientious objection to the Vietnam war, “my conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big, powerful America. And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger, they never lynched me, they didn’t put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality, rape or kill my mother and father…How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail.”

Today everyone celebrates Ali but few understand that at the time, Ali was giving up his career and huge potential wealth for his convictions. Like Mandela, who could not have expected to survive apartheid prison, and/or become South Africa’s first black democratic president, Ali could well have died in penury, failed and forgotten, yet he preferred to stand by his conscience! In 1968, Martin Luther King put Ali’s actions in the right moral perspective noting “he is giving up millions of dollars to do what his conscience tells him is right”. His last fight was a victory against Zora Folley on March 22 1967 until October 26, 1970 when Atlanta gave him a license that allowed him to fight and beat Jerry Quarry in just three rounds. In that period in which he couldn’t fight, Ali made modest incomes from speaking engagements but had been denied his peak boxing years from 25 to almost 29 years, a factor that may have featured in his later medical problems with Parkinson’s disease. When the Supreme Court unanimously quashed his draft evasion conviction in 1971, Ali was free to resume his glorious career.

Thus began the era of the big fights-the “fight of the century” against Smokin’ Joe Frazier on March 8, 1971 which Ali lost on points, his first professional defeat; second victories over Jerry Quarry and Floyd Patterson, and beating Bob Foster; his second professional defeat to Ken Norton who broke his jaw, and a rematch which Ali won; his unanimous victory on January 28, 1974 over Joe Frazier who had lost his title to George Foreman; and the “rumble in the jungle” in Kinshasha, Zaire now Democratic Republic of Congo on October 30, 1974 when Ali was already 32 years old. I stayed up all night to watch that fight on live television, as a 9 year old primary school student! It was the spectacle of the “rope-a-dope” where a younger, stronger, more powerful champion Foreman, who had devastated the two boxers to have ever beaten Ali, Norton and Frazier in just two rounds, admitted that the older, but cleverer Ali “outthought me and outfought me”. Ali knocked out George Foreman in eight rounds reclaiming the world heavyweight championship that had been stripped from him seven years earlier!

I also watched the brutal “Thrilla in Manilla” rematch between Ali and Joe Frazier on October 1, 1975 on TV. It was the third and final encounter between the two great boxers and what a fight it was! Ali won after a punishing 14 rounds of continual mutual pummeling and when it was over, described it as “the closest thing to dying that I know”. He refused to watch the fight on video wondering, “why would I want to go back and see hell” and acknowledged Frazier as “the greatest fighter of all times next to me”. In between his Foreman and Frazier fights, Ali defeated Chuck Wepner, Ron Lyle and Joe Bugner. He lost his title to Leon Spinks on February 15, 1978 and regained it from the same boxer, for an unprecedented third time on August 15 later same year before retiring on July 27, 1979. He came out of retirement to fight Larry Holmes, disastrously on October 2, 1980 resulting in his sole career knockout, and also lost on points to Trevor Berbick on December 11, 1981.

Ali probably should have retired after beating Frazier or at the latest after Spinks. Decline was visible in a September 1976 contested victory over Ken Norton and his fight with Ernie Shavers a year later which led his long time doctor Freddie Pacheco to quit after advising Ali to retire. He recorded a total of 56 career victories, of which 37 were knockouts, and five losses to Frazier, Norton, Spinks, Holmes and Berbick. He reflected thus on how champions are made, “Champions aren’t made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them-a desire, a dream, a vision. They have to have the skill, and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill” reportedly declaring in a private conversation with Al Sharpton that “you’ve got to fight when you are weary”!

Ali lit the flame to start the Atlanta Summer Olympics in 1994 and appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated 40 times! He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in November 2005 by President George W Bush; the Arthur Ashe Courage Award in 1997; and a Honourary Doctorate in Humanities from Princeton University in June 2007. In September 2009, he was named the first Honorary Freeman of Ennis, County Clare, Ireland from where his great-grandfather, Abe Gordy hailed and established the Muhammed Ali Centre in Downtown Louisville in 2005. He battled through several failed marriages and ultimately gave in to a long term struggle with Parkinson’s. He died on June 3, 2016 aged 74.

 

Opeyemi Agbaje