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Muhammad Ali at a news conference that he conducts from inside the ring in Atlanta, Ga., Oct. 24, 1970
"I Am The Greatest"
(b. January 17, 1942, Louisville, Ky.), African American heavyweight prizefighter, converted to Islam, antiwar protester, and international ambassador of goodwill.
As the dominant heavyweight boxer of the 1960s and 1970s, Muhammad Ali won an Olympic gold medal, captured the professional world heavyweight championship on three separate occasions, and successfully defended his title 19 times. Ali's extroverted, colorful style, both in and out of the ring, heralded a new mode of media-conscious athletic celebrity. Through his bold assertions of black pride, his conversion to the Muslim faith, and his outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War, Ali became a highly controversial
symbol of the turbulent 1960s.
Ali's 1981 retirement from boxing did not diminish his status in international public culture. Despite suffering from Parkinson's disease, he remained on the world stage as an adherent of the Nation of Islam, an
advocate of children and war victims, and a proponent of international understanding. Ali has been described as "the most recognizable human being on earth."
The Life and Times of Muhammad Ali in Pictures
Muhammad Ali awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal
The Louisville Years
Muhammad Ali was born Cassius Marcellus Clay, the son of Marcellus Clay, a sign painter, and Odessa (Grady) Clay, a domestic worker. He was named for white Kentucky abolitionist Cassius M. Clay. Ali began boxing at the age of 12 under the tutelage of white Louisville policeman Joe Martin. Enraged one
day to discover his bicycle missing, Ali resolved to "whup whoever stole it." Martin, wary of the problem of undisciplined adolescent belligerence in Ali's tough neighborhood, convinced the young Ali that such verbal boasts were best complemented by a mastery of the principles of boxing.
An indifferent student who graduated 376th in his high school class of 391, Ali passionately devoted himself to amateur boxing, appearing in 108 bouts between 1955 and 1960. He won six Kentucky Golden Glove titles, two National Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) championships, two National Golden Glove crowns, and the Gold Medal in the light heavyweight division in the 1960 Summer Olympic Games in Rome, Italy.
Returning triumphantly from Rome to Louisville, Ali was bitterly disappointed at not being welcomed as an American hero in his segregated hometown. According to one story, after being refused service at a
Louisville diner while wearing the Olympic Medal around his neck, Ali threw it into the Ohio River.
Professional Boxing Career
Ali's professional debut as a heavyweight came in October 1960 with a six-round decision over Tunny Hunsaker. Clay won his next 18 fights, 15 by knockouts. On February 25, 1964, in Miami Beach, Florida, Clay waged his first challenge for the heavyweight championship in a match against Sonny Liston. Though Liston was thought by many boxing experts to be invincible, the brash 22-year old Clay spent the weeks leading up to the fight entertaining reporters and fans with colorfully-worded promises of his impending victory. In one of the most stunning upsets in boxing history, Clay delivered on his promise, knocking Liston out in the seventh round.
Shortly after the fight, Cassius Clay startled the sports world by announcing that he had joined the Nation of Islam and had changed his name to Muhammad Ali. Ali defended his heavyweight crown in nine matches over the next two years. His title was revoked in 1967 when, citing his Islamic faith, he refused induction into the United States military and was sentenced to a five-year prison term.
Ali started fighting again in 1970, though the U.S. Supreme Court did not officially reverse his conviction for draft evasion until 1971. Knockout victories over Jerry Quarry and Oscar Bonaven earned Ali a chance to regain his heavyweight crown. But on March 8, 1971, Ali dropped a 15-round decision to Joe Frazier, the first loss of his career.
Ali regained the heavyweight championship on October 30, 1974, in Kinshasa, Zaire (present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo), with an eighth-round knockout of George Foreman. Ali defended his title ten times over the next four years, most famously in a 15-round victory over Joe Frazier on October
1, 1975, in the Philippines. Ali relinquished the crown to Olympic champion Leon Spinks in a 15-round decision on February 15, 1978, in Las Vegas, Nevada. He regained the championship, however, on September 15, 1978, prevailing in a 15-round decision over Spinks in their rematch at the Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana, to become the only fighter to ever win the heavyweight crown three times.
Ali announced his retirement from boxing on June 27, 1979, but within a year challenged the new heavyweight champion Larry Holmesfor his crown. On October 2, 1980, in Las Vegas, Nevada, Holmes dealt Ali the worst loss of his career, physically punishing the former champion before delivering a
knockout blow in the 11th round. Ali retired permanently in December 1981 after losing a ten-round decision to Trevor Berbick.
Ali as Performer and Cultural Hero
Ali's skills as a fighter included lightning-quick hands, a razor-sharp jab, agile footwork, and (especially evident in the later part of his career) the ability to absorb punches from bigger and stronger opponents. As important as these physical skills were to Ali's success, what distinguished him as an athletic performer was his use of the boxing ring as a public stage. "It is Ali," suggested Bartlett Giamatti, "who brought to the surface the actor in every athlete." A brilliant showman and provocateur, Ali enlisted the media - especially television - as an integral part of his competitive strategy.
While it was Jack Johnson, the first African American heavyweight champion, who introduced boasting and the taunting of one's opponent into the culture of boxing, Ali elevated the language of ridicule into an art form. Master of rhyming insult and a seminal contributor to the African American tradition of "signifying" or "playing the dozens," Ali transformed the prefight weigh-in from a procedural formality into the occasion for a display of creative verbal warfare.
In the days leading up to his championship match against George Foremanin 1974, Ali regaled the international press corps on hand in Zaire with this exercise in matching couplets: "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. His hands can't hit what his eyes can't see. Now you see me, now you don't. George thinks he will, but I know he won't." In the fight itself, Ali flustered the physically imposing, harder punching Foreman with a stealthy defensive maneuver he dubbed the "rope-a-dope."
Ali's celebrity status and instincts as a performer did not diminish his religious convictions or defiant independence. His affiliation with the Nation of Islam came at a time when many Americans, and many of his fans, considered the Black Muslims a subversive and dangerous organization. Because of his religious convictions, Ali refused to serve in the American military ("I have searched my conscience" he said, "and I find I cannot be true to my belief in my religion by accepting such a call.") Similarly, he recited:
Keep asking me, no matter how long
On the war in Viet Nam, I sing this song
I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong.
Such sentiments led some critics to portray Ali and the Black Muslim faith as anti-American. In the sports arena, Ali's flamboyance and self-promotion challenged a traditional unwritten code under which black athletes were expected to be dutiful, modest, and respectful of white authority.
Triumphs and Tribulations
Since retiring from the ring, much of the attention focused on Ali has centered on his physical condition. Ali suffers from Parkinson's syndrome, a neurological affliction that causes tremors, loss of balance, memory lapses, and confusion. Doctors have asserted that Ali's symptoms were brought on by the repeated blows to the head he endured in the latter part of his boxing career, a diagnosis that has prompted medical organizations and other civic groups to lobby for the elimination of boxing or for the use of head gear.
The young Ali was practically untouchable: Sonny Liston could land only two punches in their 1965 rematch. But in his late fights against the hard-hitting Joe Frazier, Leon Spinks, and Larry Holmes, Ali took several hundred punches in every match; in the punishing 1980 loss to Holmes, Ali took 125 punches in the ninth and tenth rounds alone.
Ali's neurological disorder is essentially a motor-skills problem; he has retained his wit and his thought processes are clear. Ali has remained an important figure on the world stage. In November 1990, Ali traveled to Iraq to meet with Saddam Hussein in a bid to forestall war in the Persian Gulf. In late 1996 Ali acted as a spokesperson for Operation USA in war-torn Rwanda.
Earlier that year, Ali lit the flame to open the Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia. He has been honored for creating the Muhammad Ali Community and Economic Development Corporation, an organization that teaches job skills to low-income public housing residents in Chicago.
In 1994, Sports Illustrated ranked Ali first on its "40 for the Ages List." In 1987, The Ring named him the greatest heavyweight champion of all time. Ali was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990, and into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 1983. The Muhammad Ali Museum opened in Louisville, Kentucky in 1995.
The Thoughts of Muhammad Ali in Exile, c. 1967
"I never thought of myself as great when I refused to go into the Army. All I did was stand up for what I believed. There were people who thought the war in Vietnam was right. And those people, if they went to war, acted just as brave as I did. There were people who tried to put me in jail. Some of them were hypocrites, but others did what they thought was proper and I can't condemn them for following their conscience either. People say I made a sacrifice, risking jail and my whole career. But God told Abraham to kill his son and Abraham was willing to do it, so why shouldn't I follow what I believed? Standing up for my religion made me happy; it wasn't a sacrifice. When people got drafted and sent to Vietnam and didn't understand what the killing was about and came home with one leg and couldn't get jobs, that was a sacrifice. But I believed in what I was doing, so no matter what the government did to me, it wasn't a loss.
"Some people thought I was a hero. Some people said that what I did was wrong. But everything I did was according to my conscience. I wasn't trying to be a leader. I just wanted to be free. And I made a stand all people, not just black people, should have thought about making, because it wasn't just black people being drafted. The government had a system where the rich man's son went to college, and the poor man's son went to war. Then, after the rich man's son got out of college, he did other things to keep him out of the Army until he was too old to be drafted. So what I did was for me, but it was the kind of decision everyone has to make. Freedom means being able to follow your religion, but it also means carrying the responsibility to choose between right and wrong. So when the time came for me to make up my mind about going in the Army, I knew people were dying in Vietnam for nothing and I should live by what I thought was right. I wanted America to be America. And now the whole world knows that, so far as my own beliefs are concerned, I did what was right for me."
Time and again on college campuses, Ali sounded themes important to him:
On the war in Vietnam: "I'm expected to go overseas to help free people in South Vietnam, and at the same time my people here are being brutalized and mistreated, and this is really the same thing that's happening over in Vietnam. So I'm going to fight it legally, and if I lose, I'm just going to jail. Whatever the punishment, whatever the persecution is for standing up for my beliefs, even if it means facing machine-gun fire that day, I'll face it before denouncing Elijah Muhammad and the religion of Islam."
On being stripped of his title and denied the right to fight: "The power structure seems to want to starve me out. The punishment, five years in jail, ten thousand-dollar fine, ain't enough. They want to stop me from working, not only in this country but out of it. Not even a license to fight an exhibition for charity, and that's in this twentieth century. You read about these things in the dictatorship countries, where a man don't go along with this or that and he is completely not allowed to work or to earn a decent living."
On the financial hardship he was enduring: "What do I need money for? I don't spend no money. Don't drink, don't smoke, don't go nowhere, don't go running with women. I take my wife out and we eat ice cream....
On lack of black pride: "We've been brainwashed. Everything good is supposed to be white. We look at Jesus, and we see a white with blond hair and blue eyes. We look at all the angels; we see white with blond hair and blue eyes. Now, I'm sure there's a heaven in the sky an it colored folks die and go to heaven. Where are the colored angels? They must be in the kitchen preparing milk and honey. We look at Miss America, we see white. We look at Miss World, we see white. We look at Miss Universe, we see white. Even Tarzan, the king of the jungle in black Africa, he's white. White Owl Cigars. White Swan soap, White Cloud tissue paper, White Rain hair rinse, White Tornado floor wax. All the good cowboys ride the white horses and wear white hats. Angel food cake is the white cake, but the devils food cake is chocolate. When are we going to wake up as a people and end the lie that white is better than black?"
On hate: "I don't hate nobody and I ain't lynched nobody. We Muslims don't hate the white man. It's like we don't hate a tiger; but we know that a tiger's nature is not compatible with people's nature since tigers love to eat people. So we don't want to live with tigers. It's the same with the white man. The white race attacks black people. They don't ask what's our religion, what's our belief? They just start whupping heads. They don't ask you, are you Catholic, are you a Baptist, are you a Black Muslim, are you a Martin Luther King follower, are you with Whitney Young? They just go whop, whop, whop! So we don't want to live with the white man; that's all." Career
Former world heavyweight boxing champion. Began professional career, 1960; initially became heavyweight champ, 1964; stripped of title and boxing license over refusal to participate in the Vietnam War, 1966; retired from boxing, 1981. Appeared in film The Greatest, 1976, and television film Freedom Road. Awards
Olympic Gold Medal in boxing, 1960; six Kentucky Golden Gloves titles; National Golden Gloves titles, 1959-60; World Heavyweight Championship, 1964-67, 1974-78, 1978-79; U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame, inductee, 1983; named the greatest heavyweight champion of all time, Ring Magazine, 1987; International Boxing Hall of Fame, inductee, 1990; Jim Thorpe Pro Sports Award, Lifetime Achievement, 1992; Muhammad Ali Museum, Louisville Galleria, opened 1995; Essence Award, 1997. Writings - (With Richard Durham) The Greatest: My Own Story, Random House, 1975.
From Thomas Hauser, Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991), In association with Art.com |
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