Muhammad
Ali, perhaps the greatest heavyweight boxer the world has ever known and a
cultural icon, died Friday, June 3, in Phoenix. He was 74.
He died from
respiratory complications, reports NBC News. He suffered from Parkinson's
disease. He was diagnosed with Parkinson's syndrome (a similar condition often
caused by trauma to the head) in 1984, but was diagnosed with Parkinson's
disease proper when his conditions persisted.
Born Cassius
Clay in 1942, Ali won his first 31 fights before suffering a loss and was named
the world heavyweight champion by the World Boxing Association three different
times, in 1964, 1974, and 1978. He was an Olympic gold medalist and a
quick-footed dancer in the ring, lithe and smart and ready with trash talk to
throw off his opponents.
But he was
also a global celebrity who wasn't afraid to speak his mind at a time when
black men who spoke their minds often paid dearly. His gleeful boasting about his
abilities made him tremendously fun to watch on camera. But his unapologetic,
outspoken politics made him a figure of tremendous significance.
In
particular, Ali's refusal to fight in the Vietnam War caused him to be
suspended from boxing for almost four years, at the prime of his physical
prowess. "Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles
from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called
Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human
rights?" He asked.
Even as
recently as 2015, Ali spoke out against Donald Trump's proposed ban on Muslims
entering the country. (Ali was himself a Muslim and famously a Nation of Islam
member at the height of his fame.)
"The
Greatest"
Like Babe
Ruth before him and Michael Jordan after him, Ali was simultaneously the
greatest athlete in America and such a massive cultural figure that his every
move inspired news coverage. (Perhaps not coincidentally, those three athletes
were also judged the greatest in history in a 2015 Harris Poll of Americans.)
To get to
that point, however, he really did have to be "The Greatest," and
after winning the gold medal at the 1960 Summer Olympic Games, he burst onto
the professional scene that fall, tearing his way through opponent after
opponent.
Ali rarely
had the strongest punch in any given fight, nor was he the kind of brutalizer
who could simply keep forcing massive hits in through his opponent's defenses.
Instead, he danced, staying one step ahead of his opponent, dodging punches,
and looking for openings in the other fighter's defenses that he might quickly
exploit.
This
compilation of his greatest moments shows just how thrilling watching Ali at
work could be. He'll seem as if he's slightly indifferent to what's going on
around him, lazily ducking punches, then suddenly throws a combination that
drops his opponent completely.
The above
clips also suggest what a great psychological fighter Ali was, a master of
knowing just how to get under his opponent's skin and make them second guess
themselves. In particular, Ali would often suggest his black opponents were
tools of the (implicitly or explicitly white) man, while he himself was on the
side of the people, the underdogs. (He even called opponent Joe Frazier, among
others, an "Uncle Tom.")
While this
was a canny way of throwing his opponents off their games, Ali was also placing
himself at the center of the greatest political discussions of the day,
especially the struggles of the civil rights movement and the counterculture to
push back against white, mainstream American culture in the 1960s and '70s.
His
strategic genius followed him well into the waning years of his career. He hung
back against the ropes and baited George Foreman into exhausting himself in the
famous 1974 Rumble in the Jungle (though just how important this
"Rope-a-Dope" strategy was to Ali's ultimate victory is debatable).
And even when he was in his waning years and clearly past his prime, he
remained an expert at promoting both himself and the fights he was a part of.
A national
celebrity and political flash-point
Yet even as
Ali was racking up an impressive career in the ring, he was becoming a symbol
of the political battles cutting the US in two in the 1960s and '70s. Some of
this was his canny self-promotion, mentioned above, but just as much stemmed
from the fact that he joined the Nation of Islam, claimed Malcolm X as a
mentor, and refused to fight in the Vietnam War after being drafted.
It was the
latter that turned him into one of the foremost cultural figures of his time.
While he was unable to fight from March 1967 to October 1970, he made a point
of speaking out against the war on campuses and at gatherings, right at a time
when American public opinion was steadily turning against the 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," Ali said. He
labeled himself a conscientious objector.
Though
convicted of draft evasion, Ali paid bail and was never imprisoned. In 1971,
the Supreme Court overturned his conviction in an 8-0 decision, with Thurgood
Marshall abstaining.
Without the
ability to box, nor the passport that would let him leave the country to fight
elsewhere, he found himself struggling with money problems. Yet as public
opinion swung back toward his point of view, he was slowly but surely granted
license to box again, and he worked his way back up to the top levels of the
sport, taking out Foreman to win the title in 1974.
In his later
life, Ali became a symbol of declining health and mortality, the great fighter
reduced to a shell of himself by his Parkinson's. His most famous appearance in
this time was likely in 1996, when he lit the torch at the Opening Ceremony of
the Atlanta Summer Olympics. It's a fitting image to remember him by.
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