A boisterous trend-setter, his singular example changed the complexion and ethos of professional sports forever?
He had been regarded as one of the most significant sporting figures in history, if not the greatest of them all ? inspiring, controversial and polarizing inside and outside the ring. An icon of the counterculture of his time, Muhammad Ali was foremost a showman, cleverly mastering the art of ?Tongue-Fu,? a promotional trash-talking style borrowed from pro wrestler ?Gorgeous George? Wagner. Known as the ?Louisville Lip,? he was a crafty boxer, talker and boyish practical joker without parallel. A boisterous trend-setter, his singular example changed the complexion and ethos of professional sports forever, ushering many of the copycat headliners that followed into the glitzy era of ?Showtime? entertainment.
His fistic accomplishments are, of course, legendary, copiously iterated and reiterated in the wake of his passing. He stands alone among our national sports icons in the adulation department, transcending the American trinity of Jim Thorpe, Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson.
Ever the promoter, he once privately invited opponent Chuck Wepner to use the ?N? word in a pre-fight press forum, all for show of course, a grandstanding ploy to sell tickets for their mutual profit. Wepner declined. But in a soft-spoken, almost apologetic manner, Ali candidly admitted off-stage that such was merely the public image of himself, a Trumpish-caricature calculated to advance his boastful persona and brash reputation before the cameras. ?A wise man can play a fool? Ali once quipped, ?but a fool can?t play a wise man.? Leave it to ?The Greatest? to sift reputation from character, the latter defining the measure of a man, reflected in the way he treats those who can do nothing for him. Ali, the impish man, conscientious citizen and international ambassador, was all of that.
For Ali, boxing became a means to influence others and the world beyond the ring, making him a transcendental figure shrouded in an electric aura that carried cross-cultural appeal, one that in his wake draws even greater reverence, and more smiles than tears. Beyond the contrived bravado his fiery spirit was forever young, tender and inspiring, one that the disease that hindered his gate and silenced his once nimble tongue could not waver or quench. Such defines the transcendental. Aside from what he did for others, perhaps therein lay his greatest testimony and legacy, secondary to his noteworthy ring heroics.
As to the greatness he achieved in the ring, however impressive, Ali was but following the way of the male of his species, seen globally in pedestrian fashion wherever men gather in circles of competition, power and control ? be it the locker-room, board-room, class-room or war-room. In the law of the jungle, only the fittest survive. In his element, he was the paragon of excellence, a benign law unto himself.
While Ali embodied the art and science of his sport as no other, like most men he sometimes used his power imprudently under fire, and was not without foibles or domestic shortcomings. Yet the playful boy within him amply informed the man whose essence was genial, holding in check the kind of stereotypical machismo that renders some men unfeeling, and taints the character of many modern gladiators devoid of social conscience, compassion and self-control, of late lauded for their manly exploits in our nation?s competitive venues.
Let us not so much mourn Ali?s passing as memorialize his unique niche as a living icon during our nation?s troubled times, now and then remembering to unleash the imaginative, Ali-like trickster within whose playful spirit is forever young, and father to the man.
