Boxer

Born: January 17, 1942;

Died: June 3, 2016

MUHAMMAD Ali, who has died 74, was a legendary boxer whose influence was felt on politics, religion, art and history itself. There may, pound for pound, have been better boxers. There may even have been bigger, stronger and more fleet-footed sportsmen. But there can be only one The Greatest.

Muhammad Ali not only created that title but he lived it, too. His extraordinary triumphs in the boxing rings were eclipsed by a greater victory. Simply, Ali transcended boxing, soared above the mere mundane matters of sport.

He was a boxer, after all, who articulated the opposition to the Vietnam war by declaring: “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong.” It was a stance that cost him the heavyweight championship of the world and three years in boxing limbo.

However, it became part of the Ali legend and raised him on to a pedestal beyond the boxing ring. That legend was told in print by literary luminaries such as Norman Mailer, Gay Talese, Hunter S Thompson, George Plimpton, AJ Liebling, Irwin Shaw, Thomas Hauser and David Remnick.

Ali was also the subject of the Oscar-winning When We Were Kings which told the story of Ali’s Rumble in the Jungle with the fearsome George Foreman. If this uncommon pugilist was an unlikely artistic muse, he was also influential in politics and religion, not least in his conversion from Cassius Clay (“my slave name”) to Muhammad Ali when he joined the Nation of Islam.

His place in history is assured not because he won the heavyweight championship of the world three times but because he was to prove prescient on the scandal of the Vietnam War and because he proved an early, volatile mouthpiece for radical Islam. He later provided a glorious lesson on how to deal with illness with dignity and humility.

The myth of Ali contains definitive staging posts. Born to a feckless, womanising father and a proud driving mother, in Louisville, Kentucky on January 17, 1942, Ali was first introduced to boxing when his bike was stolen outside the Columbia Auditorium in Louisville when he was 12. He went to local policeman, Joe Martin, to complain. Martin was coaching boxing in the basement and asked the young Cassius if he wanted to fight. Six years later, Ali won the gold medal at the Rome Olympics in the light heavyweight division. He famously threw the medal into the Ohio river in protest at racist policies in America.

Ali’s boxing career, too, was the stuff of myth. He was the man who slayed two monsters in Sonny Liston and George Foreman. Both opponents were fearsome and depicted as unbeatable by the media. Ali beat Liston in one of the most astonishing upsets in the sport on February 25, 1964. Ali coined his immortal “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” comment in the build-up to that fight. Liston, haunted by Mob connections, capitulated in the rematch and all seemed set fair for a glorious Ali career. That, of course, was brutally interrupted when in 1966 Ali refused to be inducted into the US Army, stating: “No Vietcong ever called me nigger.” In 1967, he was stripped of his title and not allowed to fight professionally for three years.

His resurrection was glorious, if bloodied and flawed. He found an opponent of substance to match the myth. He fought Joe Frazier three times, losing at Madison Square Garden on March 8, 1971, and then winning in a rematch in 1974. His greatest fight, however, was the Thrilla in Manila with Frazier in 1975, just a year after Ali had toppled Foreman in Zaire.

The Manila fight was brutal, heroic and fatal to both men’s careers. Eddie Futch, Frazier’s trainer, called a halt after 14 rounds of concussive punching from both men. Ali declared in the immediate aftermath: “This is what death must feel like.”

He fought a series of, at best, mediocre opponents before losing his title to Leon Spinks in February 1978. He regained the title from Spinks in the same year. He then retired but made an ill-conceived comeback and took a pasting from his former sparring partner, Larry Holmes. It was evident by now that Ali had been slowed, perhaps permanently damaged by decades of brain-jarring punches. He had one more contest, a farcical dance with the lumbering Trevor Berbick, before mercifully retiring in 1981.

His remaining years were spent intermittently in the public eye with appearances on chat shows, at Olympic ceremonies and in his capacity as an ambassador for Sunni Islam. He increasingly seemed to be in the grip of a Parkinson’s-type illness, although he always maintained his condition had nothing to do with his battles in the ring.

He achieved a maturity then that was beyond the rantings that he used to employ, sometimes hilariously, in pre-match hype. “God is showing me I’m just a man, just like anyone else,” he said.

He was, in truth, a flawed hero. He was a brave man because he suffered from fear, not because he did not have any. Ali trembled before Liston, blanched before entering the ring against Foreman and suffered from banal but powerful phobias such as the fear of flying. He overcame them all.

He was gracious, but could be contemptuously cruel. His treatment of the intellectually inferior Frazier bordered on a disgrace. He was ruthless in his demolition of Ernie Terrell who had insisted on calling his opponent Cassius. Ali slowly, deliberately brutalised Terrell while continually taunting: “What’s my name, Uncle Tom? What’s my name?” He was gregarious and charming but could also be vicious in verbal exchanges, particularly with those he believed were pursuing their own agendas.

He was loving but could also be callous. He married four times and his womanising caused difficulties in three of them.

He was loved lately by the public but was once hated passionately by white America.

He was similarly flawed as a boxer. He was not invincible. Frazier and Norton beat him in his pomp. He had the “Ali shuffle” and a great jab, but he was prone to holding and could be hit all too easily, particularly as he aged.

But his significance rises above such comments and quibbles. Ali’s ultimate victory was not that he chose God, but that God seemed to choose him. He was imperiously imperfect. He was humanely human. He was The Greatest.

He is survived by his fourth wife, Lonnie; and by two sons and seven daughters.

HUGH MACDONALD