SONAHR: HALIFAX, Nova Scotia – June 5, 2016 – This past Friday, the long goodbye of three-time heavyweight champion of the world Muhammad Ali, who was born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. in Louisville, Kentucky on January 17, 1942, came to an end. Ali passed away due to a combination of respiratory illness and the long-term effects of Parkinson?s disease, the latter of which he had been battling for more than 30 years. During his lifetime, he loomed larger than life. Now that he?s gone, his legend will endure like that of his predecessor in greatness, Joe Louis.
The 74 years Ali spent on an Earth on which most of its seven billion inhabitants knew his name when he died can be divided into four distinct phases once he became a professional boxer following his gold-medal winning performance at the Rome Olympics in 1960. Each phase, or era, reflects Ali?s development and subsequent deterioration as a boxer, and the admiration and vilification he elicited outside the ring.
ERA I: THE CLOWN PRINCE RISES
When Cassius Clay emerged victorious from the Olympic Games, the heavyweight division was in dire need of a fresh face. The public ? boxing fans and otherwise ? had become weary of the back-and-forth struggles of champions Floyd Patterson and Ingemar Johansson. As well, they were wary of top contender Sonny Liston, who was a fearsome puncher but also a convicted criminal. And other major contenders such as Eddie Machen, Zora Folley, and Cleveland Williams excited no one because they had lost to each other, as well as to Liston and Johansson. So when the young Kentuckian burst onto the scene with his braggadocio and his rhyming predictions of when his opponents would be knocked out, he was a bracing breeze blowing through a stagnant division. His nimble footwork and wildly unorthodox style were like nothing ever seen before ? at least among the heavyweights.
Opinions of the youthful Clay were mixed, to say the least. His antics amazed and amused one segment of the public, and annoyed another segment, people who wished someone would shut the big mouth of ?The Louisville Lip? once and for all. How could he claim to be ?The Greatest? when he hadn?t even had 20 fights, had barely beaten solid contender Doug Jones and was floored heavily by the inconsistent Henry Cooper, even though Clay won the fight? How could he profess to be ready to challenge Liston, who had dismissed Patterson in one round in two successive title fights? And who needed a loudmouthed, embarrassing clown as champion, anyway?
Liston quickly accepted Clay?s brash challenge, seeing it as yet another easy payday. Clay?s struggles with Jones and Cooper gave Sonny no reason to believe otherwise. But in February of 1964, Clay upset the step odds against him and thoroughly outclassed the man he dubbed ?The Big Ugly Bear,? with Liston surrendering his title by staying on his stool when the bell rang to begin the seventh round. Clay danced circles around the befuddled champion, hitting him at will and making him bleed. ?I shook up the world!? the new champion bellowed as he celebrated his astonishing victory. Indeed he did, in one of the biggest upsets in the history of the heavyweights. Within a few days of winning the title, Clay shook up the world outside the ring, too, and suddenly he was a clown no more.
ERA II: THE REIGN OF THE CONTROVERSIAL KING
A storm of hullabaloo buzzed around the ending of the Liston-Clay bout. Why did Liston quit in his corner? Did Liston?s cutman try to blind Clay by placing a foreign substance on Sonny?s gloves after the fourth round? Was the fight fixed? But before those and other questions could be answered, they became irrelevant when Clay confirmed rumors that he was a member of the Nation of Islam, a religious sect also known as the ?Black Muslims.? He also said his name was now ?Cassius X? ? most Nation of Islam men adopted ?X? as their surnames to substitute for ?true? names last during the time of slavery. But that cognomen was short-lived, as he adopted the name ?Muhammad Ali,? which he would carry for the rest of his life.
The shift in the champion?s persona from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali detonated a bombshell even bigger than his upset of Liston. The Black Muslims espoused their own variation of Islam, in which whites were excoriated as ?devils? and blacks were extolled as superior people who had fallen far but would rise again. Those who supported the Nation of Islam were far outnumbered by those ? blacks as well as whites ? who were appalled and terrified by the inflammatory rhetoric of the sect?s leader, Elijah Muhammad, and his chief lieutenant, Malcolm X. Is it any wonder that the new heavyweight champion of the world?s conversion to that radical religion rocked the world?
Suddenly, the heavyweight championship became politicized. People who liked Ali before loved him now. People who had disliked him now hated him. The World Boxing Association stripped him of the title because he took a rematch with Liston, and high-ranking contender Ernie Terrell became that organization?s ?paper? champion. But everyone other than the WBA knew Ali was the real champ, and he proved it by wading through Liston (in another bizarre ending) and eight other challengers (including Terrell).
He firmly established his greatness as a fighter. But then he met an opponent tougher than all his ring foes put together: the United States government.
During Ali?s title reign, the U.S. was involved in a war to prevent South Vietnam from being taken over by neighboring North Vietnam, which was a Communist country. Unlike World War I and World War II, which united the country, the Vietnam War created deep divisions. Many young men objected to the point where they declined to be drafted into the military. Muhammad Ali was one of those who objected.
Ali refused to be inducted into the U.S. army. His grounds were religious. The Nation of Islam was opposed to war, and Ali was a minister within that religion. Reaction to his decision was swift and sharp. If Ali was a decisive figure before, he was even more so now. The government indicted him for draft evasion, and the WBA again stripped him of his title. His supporters became more vehement than ever, and his detractors more scathing. The champion was free from prison pending appeal of the government?s actions. But he was no longer free to fight, as no state would grant him a boxing license.
ERA III: EXILE AND RETURN
For three-and-a-half years ? a period during which he would have surely reached his full pugilistic prime, given that he was only 25 when he was barred from boxing ? Ali could only watch as others vied to claim his crown. The WBA ran an eight-man tournament that saw Ali?s boyhood friend Jimmy Ellis become its champion. And a rampaging left-hooker named Joe Frazier became a partial champion in his own right. Frazier then knocked out Ellis to gain universal recognition as champion. But the big question was whether Ali would lose his appeal and go to prison, or win and be able to fight again for the title he hadn?t lost in the ring.
As the legal process dragged on, Ali?s detractors despised him even more, piling the labels ?draft dodger? and ?coward? on to the previous epithets of ?braggart? and ?egotist.? But among those opposed to the Vietnam War, Ali became a poster boy for resistance, not only to the war but to the ?Establishment? in general. He drew enthusiastic large and crowds to his speeches, just as he did to his fights. In some circles, he was thought to still be the heavyweight champion, and Frazier ? though undefeated ? was considered a pretender.
In late 1970, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Ali?s favor. Ali was free to box again, and settle matters with Frazier. Ali prepared by fighting two high-ranking contenders ? Jerry Quarry, then Oscar Bonavena. In the first round against Quarry, Ali looked as though his long absence from the ring had not affected him. But he slowed down afterward and Quarry got to him a few times. However, Quarry suffered a fight-ending cut in the third round. But questions about Ali?s form remained. In the Bonavena fight, the questions intensified, as Ali struggled against a crude opponent he should have been able to handle easily. But he knocked Bonavena out in the last round of the contest ? a feat Frazier had not managed to accomplish in two fights against the rugged Argentine.
And so the stage was set for a dramatic confrontation between a pair of undefeated champions for a then-record $5 million purse, split down the middle. And, by proxy, a clash in America?s ?culture wars,? pitting the conservative and patriotic element of the country against the countercultural, contrary part. Ali represented the latter segment, and Frazier the former, whether he liked it or not. Their March 8, 1971 superfight was the most significant heavyweight championship contest since Joe Louis?1938 rematch with Max Schmeling.
In the run-up to the contest, Ali practiced psychological warfare against Frazier, taunting him in a manner similar to his torment of Sonny Liston. But whereas Liston was discombobulated by Ali?s badmouthing, Frazier?s determination only intensified, as Ali found out once the first bell rang. Ali learned something else as well ? the speed and reflexes that had enabled him to avoid serious and sustained punishment before his exile had irrevocably deteriorated, and Frazier took full advantage, capping his unanimous-decision victory with a knockdown in the 15th and final round. Frazier was a raging pit bull that night, and Ali was unable to play the role of dogcatcher.
So, Ali was beaten at last. His foes gloated and rejoiced. His fans seethed and cursed. And Ali was determined to regain his title some day, diminished attributes be damned.
Outside the ring, the social climate was changing. As the Vietnam War dragged on with no conclusive end in sight, opposition to the military venture grew. Eventually, American forces pulled out of the country, and North Vietnam absorbed South Vietnam. Even some of the architects of the war, such as Defense Secretary Robert MacNamara, later said it was a mistake. In the end, perhaps Ali?s stance, as well as that of thousands of others who spoke and marched against the war, wasn?t so ?unpatriotic? after all. And in the wake of his loss to Frazier, Ali may well have gained more fans than he lost.
Frazier held his hard-won crown for only two more years. A young wrecking-machine named George Foreman demolished him in two brutal rounds in January of 1973. In the meantime, Ali was fighting often and winning ? until he suffered an upset decision loss to an unheralded body-beautiful named Ken Norton. After gaining revenge in a rematch, Ali met Frazier again ? two ex-champions striving to recapture their previous glory. This time, the decision went to Ali. But neither ex-champ appeared to be capable of dethroning the fearsome Foreman, the most intimidating heavyweight since the pre-Ali prime of Sonny Liston.
In the wake of his win over Frazier, Ali ?went for it? against Foreman, as Sylvester Stallone would have said in the Rocky movies. A heavy underdog, Ali utilized his previously-unknown ability to absorb punishment to tire Foreman out and stop him in the eighth round.
Unlike his title-winning effort against Liston a decade before, no controversy greeted Ali?s re-ascension to the heavyweight throne. Even those who still disliked him had to acknowledge his fortitude in absorbing the kinds of punches that had had Frazier and Norton bouncing like basketballs. At least some of the people who rejected his stand against the Vietnam War were willing to let bygones be bygones.
Ali?s second reign proved to be much rockier than his first one, even though some of his challengers were mediocre at best. But his third meeting with Frazier almost proved to be his undoing. For reasons that remain a mystery, Ali upgraded his verbal assault on Frazier, labeling him a ?gorilla? among other things. The vitriol backfired. Frazier?s previous resentment of Ali escalated to white-hot hatred, and he went into the ring determined to kill his tormenter. And he almost accomplished that deadly goal. Only a late-rounds surge by Ali enabled him to come back from near-certain defeat, and prompted Frazier?s trainer, Eddie Futch, to keep Joe on his stool when the bell rang for the final round.
Although no one knew it at the time, that war of attrition marked the end of Ali?s greatness as a fighter. He held on to the title for three more years, lost it to a novice named Leon Spinks, then regained it in what should have been his last hurrah. Prior to the first Spinks bout, close calls against Norton (in their rubber match), the light-hitting Jimmy Young and the heavy-hitting Earnie Shavers revealed a steady decline that not even courage could forestall. But Ali?s popularity did not decline, and when he announced his retirement after the second Spinks fight in 1978, he did so to acclaim that would have seemed impossible to even imagine back when he had first announced his affiliation with the Nation of Islam. Indeed, the Nation itself had changed, having abandoned the anti-white, separatist credo that caused so much consternation during the 1950s and ?60s.
If only Ali had stayed retired. But he didn?t. Perhaps he couldn?t ?
ERA IV: THE ICON FADES
Why did Ali, at age 38 and miles past his prime, decide to attempt a comeback against his successor, Larry Holmes, in 1980? Was it the money that was siphoned steadily by the leeches that infested his large entourage? (To be fair, not everyone in the entourage was a ?leech.? But it seems that the friends who had Ali?s best interests at heart were outnumbered.) Was it his ego? Was he unable to accept the fact that Holmes, who was once his pupil and sparring partner, was now holding the title, or at least the WBC version of it? Was it an irresistible combination of hubris and foolhardiness? Probably, but we?ll never really know.
Whatever his reasons, Ali stepped into the ring with Holmes in a real, multi-million dollar bout rather than just another sparring session. Superficially, Ali looked to be in good shape. But he had nothing left other than his ability to soak up the kind of punches that would never have come near him during his first title reign. And that wasn?t nearly enough to prevail against an elite champion who was in his prime.
Ali had taunted Holmes just as he had so many other opponents in the past. But Holmes bore no grudge against his friend and mentor. Unlike Frazier, Holmes had no desire to inflict serious damage on Ali. But that didn?t stop Holmes from administering a one-sided battering that lasted until the end of the 10th round. Ali?s long-time trainer, Angelo Dundee, stopped the fight before the bell sounded for Round 11.
That should have been the end of Ali?s days in the ring. It wasn?t. Again, for reasons known only to himself, Ali fought one more time in 1981. His opponent was a muscular Jamaican-Canadian named Trevor Berbick. Even though Berbick had gone the distance in a loss to Holmes, and would go on to briefly hold the WBC belt, it?s fair to say that even the Ali of the second Spinks fight would have toyed with him. But the Ali of 1981 had nothing left, and Berbick plodded his way to a unanimous decision. This time, Ali?s retirement announcement stuck.
Unfortunately, so did the effects of all the punches that had crashed into him since his ability to ?float like a butterfly? departed. Even as Ali?s popularity increased as the years passed, his speech slurred more and more. His once-animated features began to freeze into an expressionless mask. The hands that were once able to fire punches at lightning speed began to tremble. Parkinson?s disease robbed him of the two attributes that made him what he was when he first burst into public consciousness: his physical gifts and the gift of gab. Only the most heartless of his detractors would have wished him such a fate.
Yet Ali bore his tribulations with quiet dignity that gained him additional admiration. The youthful clown was long since gone. So was the controversial conqueror of the boxing ring, and the defier of government edicts and conventional wisdom. But the man in that hospital deathbed on Friday was still the most famous person on the planet, who defined celebrity long before the current cult of superficial superstardom. Muhammad Ali will be remembered and revered long after many of the current rich-and-famous crowd are forgotten.
May the man who once ?shook up the world? now rest in peace. Charles R. Saunders is the author of several books including Sweat and Soul: The Saga of Black Boxers in the Maritimes from the Halifax Forum to Caesars Palace, as well as the Imaro series of fantasy/adventure novels. Considered by many to be one of the leading authorities on boxing in Canada, he is the current Vice-President of Boxing for the Society of North American Sports Historians and Researchers. His novels, Imaro, Damballa, and Abengoni: First Calling are available at Amazon.com.
