It sure doesn?t seem like it?s been a year since the passing of ?The Greatest,? but it is.
Muhammad Ali was 74 when he breathed last on June 3rd, 2016, leaving behind an unparalleled legacy as one of the most significant figures of the 20th century, sports or otherwise. Unfortunately, the former heavyweight champion had been silenced for years by the scourge of Parkinson?s Disease, which robbed the rest of the world of his wit, wisdom and poetry.
As Gordon Marino, a professor of philosophy and highly regarded boxing correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, so aptly tweeted Saturday, ?A year ago we lost sight of the dazzling comet that was Muhammad Ali.?
Another highly respected scribe who became a longtime friend of Ali?s, Jerry Izenberg, was about to be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame last year in Canastota, N.Y., when he heard the news he’d been expecting yet dreading.
?The day before I got inducted into the Hall of Fame and learned about Ali?s death was a great strain on me,? Izenberg, still an active writer at 86, told USA TODAY Sports by phone on Friday from his home in Las Vegas. ?Then when I got inducted I almost broke down.?
During a career of covering sports for the Newark Star-Ledger that began in 1951, Izenberg collected a fabulous treasure chest of stories and anecdotes about Ali, many of which were included in his recent book, Once There Were Giants: The Golden Age of Heavyweight Boxing, a 35-year-period which began in 1962, really got going in ?64 when then-Cassius Clay shocked the world with his upset of Sonny Liston, and ended when Mike Tyson bit off a piece of Evander Holyfield?s ear in 1997.
Izenberg was asked how a big-mouthed kid from Louisville who got into boxing after someone stole the 12-year-old’s bicycle, went on to become one of the most revered men on the planet. He said, simply, ?He evolved. He grew. He saw the flaws in certain things and realized things that were better and went along that path. And he turned out to be a very, very substantial man.?
In order to understand at once the simplicity and complexity of the man, Izenberg related a few anecdotes from his years of covering Ali that better explain the man, and not the myths.
The Rumble in the Jungle: After Ali, against all odds, defeats George Foreman, who was 40-0 and thought to be unbeatable, in Kinshasa, Zaire on Oct. 30, 1974, Izenberg and fellow writer Dave Anderson of the New York Times went looking for Ali a few hours after the fight, which was early in the morning after the fight. Izenberg felt that if Ali was going to be anywhere, it would be down by the Congo River inside the military compound at which they were staying. Sure enough they found Ali by the river bank, though he didn?t see them. ?He?s standing at the water?s edge, gazing across the Congo River, towards what was once French Congo,? Izenberg said. ?He can?t see us, we can?t hear him, we don?t know what he?s doing. He?s standing there staring across the river. What he does next is fascinating to me, because there was nobody there and as far as he knew we?re not there. Suddenly, he raises both arms up to the sky in a Rocky pose. And of course there was no Rocky at that time. He stands and holds the pose. Seemed like an hour but it was maybe 3 or 4 minutes. Then he turns around and starts to walk up the bank and sees us. And he said, ?fellas, don?t ask me about tonight because I don?t know if I can explain it and I?m not sure you would understand it. All I can tell you is, this was the most important night of my life.? . . . That?s the way I?ll always remember him, because with that tableau outlined against the sky, he was definitely at that moment the king of the world.?
The Larry Holmes fight: ?He?s about to fight (Larry) Holmes, and I know he shouldn?t fight Holmes and he knows he shouldn?t fight Holmes, but the reason ? and everybody said the money, well, the money didn?t have (expletive) to do with it ? was that people were his opium. When Frank Sinatra lost his voice, he couldn?t get off stage. Muhammad couldn?t get off the stage, either. So I went to his room the night before the fight, and he said to me, ?you don?t think I can win this fight, do you?? I said, ?Muhammad, this will be your last fight ? well I thought it would be but it wasn?t ? I came over here just to tell you what a pleasure it?s been to cover you. How much I enjoyed all the things we did together and how I gained an appreciation of a different side of you that most people don?t see.? He jumps up and rips his shirt off. It was scary. He looked exactly the way he looked the night he fought Sonny Liston for the title. He said, ?Now what do you think?? What I didn?t know is that a couple of morons had him on a diuretic diet. That?s how he lost the weight. He could barely lift his arms that night, and he?s lucky he couldn?t because if he?d been able to make it into a real fight, I think he?d have gotten badly injured. So after the fight, I walked around Caesar?s Palace and gambled some and lost. I go into the men?s room at about 3 a.m. An elderly African-American gentleman in a white coat hands me a towel. I said, ?can I ask you a question? Did you bet on this fight?? He said, ?you bet I did.? I said, ?who did you bet on?? He looked me right in the eye and said, ?Come on, mister, you gotta know I bet on the man who first gave me my dignity, Muhammad Ali.? When I thought about it later, Ali gave a lot of people dignity.?
