Muhammad Ali: Heavyweight Champ, Activist, Iconoclast, and ‘The Greatest’

Muhammad Ali’s family announced that the three-time World Heavyweight Champion had passed away Friday from septic shock. True to his fighting nature, the Champ’s heart beat a full half-hour after his organs had failed.

Unlike any other boxer, or athlete for that matter, Ali transcended sports to become a global political activist and cultural icon. Ali was an iconoclast; he relished in challenging societal norms, whether they be political, cultural, religious, or athletic, even before becoming a household name. More than anything, it was Ali’s willingness to be different, to challenge the status quo, that made him great.

Early in his career, Ali’s audacity was met with significant backlash — and even hatred. Segregationists despised him. Political leaders who supported segregation despised him. Many Christians, including black, Southern Christians, despised his conversion to Islam. Much of the American populace despised his refusal to fight in Vietnam, labeling him a draft dodger. Ali’s opponents despised the audacity with which he both attacked them and promoted his fights.

Once one of the most hated men on the planet — among the U.S. white populace, among fellow boxers, and among U.S. government offices (which would have enjoyed his participation, publicly, in the war effort), Ali died beloved globally, including by some of his fiercest foes. The powerful word “greatest” brought one man’s name mind to people worldwide, and that name was Ali’s.

Ali the Boxer

In the fighting world, Ali developed the now status quo model to hype fights — taunting one’s opponent pre-fight. In his first 19 fights, Ali would predict the round in which he would knock out his upcoming opponent — in rhyme of course. Many thought the taunt was unsportsmanlike at the time. But in the process, he would build both interest in his fights and get into the mind of his opponents.

Prior to his first heavyweight championship fight, a fight he entered as a significant underdog to reigning heavyweight champion and knockout king Sonny Liston, then 22-year old Cassius Clay rented a bus, drove it from Chicago to Liston’s home in Denver, pulled up to Liston’s house at 3 a.m., and challenged him to a fight using a megaphone – a fight Liston accepted. Painted on the bus was a projection – “Sonny Liston Will Go in Eight,” according to Sports Illustrated. Ali actually knocked him out in six rounds to win the first of his three world titles. He would knockout Liston in one round in a rematch. Ali compared his greatest foe, Joe Frazier, to a gorilla, and actually punched a toy gorilla for the media’s amusement at prefight events.

In the ring, Ali introduced the rope-a-dope strategy in his fight against another knockout artist, George Foreman. Ali was a significant underdog in the fight. The rope-a-dope tactic calls for a boxer to pretend to be hurt or trapped against the ropes, covering up one’s body and face and rolling with the punches, thereby wearing one’s opponent out by causing them to throw many ineffective punches. Today smaller, faster fighters use the strategy when challenging larger, heavy-handed opponents. Foreman was the dope, and Ali won the fight by knockout, wearing out Foreman.

Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement

Ali’s is a global household name, however, as a result of his actions outside the ring, not inside of it. He unabashedly questioned America’s role in the Vietnam War and accepted cultural norms, most notably segregation, two causes he routinely juxtaposed. Two of his most famous quotes, highlighting and juxtaposing segregation and the Vietnam War were:

“My conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America. And shoot them for what? They never called me n*****, they never lynched me, they didn’t put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father. … Shoot them for what? How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail.[i] ”

“I’m not gonna help nobody get something my negroes don’t have. If I’m gonna die, I’ll die now right here fighting you, if I’m gonna die. You my enemy. My enemies are white people, not Viet Congs or Chinese or Japanese. You my opposer when I want freedom. You my opposer when I want justice. You my opposer when I want equality. You won’t even stand up for me in America for my religious beliefs, and you want me to go somewhere and fight, but you won’t even stand up for me here at home.”

Unique among civil rights leaders, Ali ignored the conventional approach of leading civil rights leaders, such as Martin Luther King, which was designed to be as “nonthreatening to white America as possible,” according to Thomas Hauser.

Inspiring a Future Generation of Boxers and Civil Rights Leaders

In an exclusive interview with Bold, three-time world boxing champion Reggie “Sweet” Johnson spoke of Ali as inspiration for him, both professionally and in his own efforts to break down the color barrier internationally. Johnson beat the South African champion Charles Oosthuizen in 1988, during apartheid, via seventh-round knockout. Johnson would later have to be escorted out of the ring by security, as white South Africans threw glass bottles and other objects at him. Johnson went to South Africa with a single team member — all the others were scared to go one the journey.

“Ali inspired me to go over there [to South Africa] and act like Ali himself,” Johnson said.

Years later, Oosthuizen and Reggie are good friends, and Oosthuizen’s children refer to Johnson as their uncle.

Ali is globally referred to by an equally endearing term — the “greatest.” Whether he was the best boxer of all time is debatable. What is not debatable, though, is that Ali transcended sport unlike any other athlete. Ali is great because he unabashedly challenged the status quo, in boxing, in the civil rights movement, and in religion. Ali was an iconoclast.

Photo by IAN RANSLEY DESIGN + ILLUSTRATION

Comments

1 Discussion on “Muhammad Ali: Heavyweight Champ, Activist, Iconoclast, and ‘The Greatest’”

jay says:

June 5, 2016 at 5:25 pm

“I’m not gonna help nobody get something my negroes don’t have. If I’m
gonna die, I’ll die now right here fighting you, if I’m gonna die. You
my enemy. My enemies are white people…”

So he was racist, didn’t care for white people, and didn’t think much of America. Good to know.

“My conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people,
or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America. And
shoot them for what? They never called me n*****, they never lynched me,
they didn’t put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality,
rape and kill my mother and father. … Shoot them for what? How can I
shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail.[i] ”

None of that happen to him or his family. I’m not a fact checker, but this is made up bs.

Muhammad Ali: Heavyweight Champ, Activist, Iconoclast, and ‘The Greatest’

Ali the Boxer

Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement

Inspiring a Future Generation of Boxers and Civil Rights Leaders

Comments

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