Muhammad Ali, who once said he “handcuffed lightning” and threw “thunder in jail,” died last Friday at 74 from the complications of Parkinson’s disease.
The lightning in his fists left long ago, the thunder of his famous boasts muffled by the disease he battled for decades.
He called himself “The Greatest” and the world had no quarrel with his claim because time after time he backed it up. In his prime, he was beautiful to watch.
It was Ali, after all, who put the sweet in “the sweet science.” Yet, with the kind of humility he showed again and again over the years, though he was the most recognizable and beloved man on the planet, Ali called Joe Louis the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time.
He was not the first but by far the most famous black athlete to confront racism head on. His great-grandfather was a slave and Ali believed, wrongly it turns out, that his given name, Cassius Marcellus Clay, was a slave name given to him under the influence of whites. He changed it to Muhammad Ali when he converted to Islam, before learning that his father had named him for a white abolitionist champion.
Ali’s ring style, showmanship, quick wit and moral courage perfectly fit the era when he came of age, the tumultuous 1960s and ’70s. He earned the hatred of many as an uppity black man at a time when the quest for civil rights for blacks spawned violence and kept the nation on edge.
“I know where I’m going and I know the truth, and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want,” Ali said. And over and over again, Ali was right.
The cause of civil rights that made him friends with Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King was just. Ali became the standard bearer for minorities of every kind, color and religion.
Ali was stripped of his title and boxing license for 3½ years for refusing induction into the armed forces during the Vietnam War. “I got nothing against no Viet Cong. No Vietnamese ever called me a nigger,” the champ famously said.
Many called him a coward but Ali was right about the war, his position taken by millions of Americans who engaged in protests, claimed conscientious objector status or fled to Canada.
No one who willingly faced the ferocity of Smokin’ Joe Frazier or the enormity of George Foreman could be a coward, however, and the cowardice of those who opposed the war could no longer be an assumption.
Ali reigned in the last golden era of boxing. The men he fought, Frazier, Ken Norton and Foreman, were among the best the sport has ever seen. Ali was the world champion heavyweight three times but he went on fighting too long.
In the end, already suffering from the onset of Parkinson’s disease, he was beaten by one lesser opponent after another before retiring. Boxing began its long, slow death as an iconic American sport when Ali retired. Only one more champion, Mike Tyson, became a household name – but not always for the right reasons.
Ali did not believe that his disease had anything to do with the punishment he took as a fighter, but it couldn’t have helped. Watching him as he struggled to maintain nobility in the face of decline was to wonder whether, if boxing could do that to a beloved champion, it is worth it.
Ali died a philosopher of fisticuffs, philanthropist, inspiration, moral force, and man of peace and faith. He lived his motto, “Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth,” and he died a champion in more ways than anyone before him.
The world misses him.