Abuja – Muhammad Ali, the eloquent, colorful, controversial and brilliant three-time world heavyweight boxing champion, died at the age of 74 late on Friday to signal the end of a memorable era.
The greatest boxer of all time was known as much for his social conscience and staunch opposition to the Vietnam War as for his dazzling boxing skills.
Ali, who had a long battle with the Parkinson’s disease, was taken to a Phoenix area hospital in Arixona earlier this week where he was being treated for a respiratory issue.
Once the most outrageous talker in sports, he was largely quiet for the last quarter century of his life, muted by the battle with Parkinson’s.
Born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. on Jan. 17, 1942 in Louisville, Keystone, Ali learned to box after his bicycle was stolen when he was 12 years old.
When young Clay vowed to “whoop the behind’’ of the thief, a local police officer encouraged him to learn to box to channel his energy.
He went on to become known as “The Greatest’’, and at his peak in the 1970s was among the world’s most recogniable faces.
The boxer was known for his tendency to recite poems while making predictions about his fights.
“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. The hands can’t hit what the eyes can’t see.’’ was a popular one of his.
He was also known for giving opponents often unflattering nicknames.
Ali referred to Sonny Liston as “the big ugly bear’’, George Chuvalo as “The Washerwoman’’, Floyd Patterson as “The Rabbit’’ and Earnie Shavers as “The Acorn’’.
But his most controversial, and some would say cruel, nicknames were reserved for his fiercest rival, Joe Frazier, first dubbing him “Uncle Tom’’ and then later calling him “The Gorilla’’.
When Ali prepared to meet Frazier for a third time in Manila, Philippines on Oct. 1, 1975, he frequently carried a toy rubber gorilla with him.
At one news conference, he pulled the gorilla out of his pocket and began punching it as he said “It’s going to be a killa and a thrilla and a chilla when I get the gorilla in Manila’’.
Frazier, though, took it personally and harbored a decades-long grudge.
But this did bother him Ali as he was simply promoting the fights and meant no harm, and he did regret the impact his words had upon Frazier.
Ali had converted to Islam in 1964 after the first of his two wins over Liston, and changed his name from Cassius Clay.
He said Islam was a religion of peace and that he had no desire to engage in combat with those who had done him or his family no harm.
This all went down at the height of the civil rights movement.
“Shoot them for what?’’ Ali asked in an interview after he refused induction. “They never called me nigger. They never lynched me. They never put dogs on me.
“They didn’t rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father. What do I want to shoot them for, for what?
“Why do I want to go shoot them, poor little people and babies and children and women? How can I shoot them? Just take me to jail.’’
He went on trial in Houston on June 20, 1967. The jury deliberated for only 21 minutes before finding him guilty.
Ali was fined 10,000 US Dollars, faced five years in jail and had his passport taken.
He was stripped of the crown and deprived from making a living, but he wasn’t silenced.
Ali would go on a lecture circuit, speaking at colleges for as little as 1,500 Dollars and as much as 10,000 Dollars.
He desperately needed the money because he wasn’t making a lot after being stripped and he was paying an expensive team of attorneys.
Always conscious of his image, Ali joked in one interview that he couldn’t allow people to see his car.
“I didn’t want people to see the world heavyweight champion driving a Volkswagen, while all them guys were driving their Cadillacs,’’ he said.
At first, there was a lot of tension in the crowds, as opposition to the war had only just started.
Gradually, though, Ali swung the crowds to his point of view as the country’s opinion of the situation in Vietnam turned dramatically.
The Supreme Court would reverse Ali’s conviction in 1971 by an 8-0 vote, even though by then, Ali was already back in the ring.
He actually returned from exile in 1970, as the State of Georgia didn’t have an athletic commission and so he was not banned there.
Ali faced Jerry Quarry on Oct. 26 in Atlanta, a fight Ali won via a third-round stoppage.
After one more fight, a knockout of Oscar Bonavena in the 15th round, Ali was ready to face the undefeated Frazier.
It was an epic night that featured scores of celebrities in the crowd, with Frank Sinatra as a ringside photographer and Burt Lancaster doing colour commentary.
It was an outstanding fight, but Frazier’s pressure carried the day as he floored Ali in the 15th round.
It was with one of the most famous and perfectly executed left hooks in boxing history to seal the fight.
But Ali would have his days against Frazier, defeating him twice, in a non-title bout on Jan. 28, 1974, in New York, and for the heavyweight title in Manila on Oct. 1, 1975.
That was a fight for the ages, remembered as one of a handful of the best in boxing history.
Ali won by 14th-round stoppage when Frazier’s trainer, Eddie Futch, asked referee Carlos Padilla to stop the fight.
There has long been question about whether Angelo Dundee, then Ali’s trainer, would have allowed Ali to go out for the 15th had Futch not stopped it.
Ali was not nearly the same fighter after that, as he had taken a fearsome pounding in his second career, after his return from exile.
His three fights with Frazier, his 1974 fight with George Foreman in Africa and his 1980 bout with Larry Holmes were particularly brutal.
Ali’s win over Foreman became known as “The Rumble in the Jungle’’, fought in then what was called Zaire and is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
He employed his famous “Rope-A-Dope’’ strategy in that fight. Foreman was a fearsome opponent at the time, the hardest hitter in boxing with a 40-0 record and 39 knockouts.
Ali no longer had the foot speed or the elusiveness to dance away from Foreman as he’d done with Liston a decade earlier.
Instead, he figured out the best strategy was to lay back against the ropes, leaning back as far as he could.
He then covered his face with his gloves and as much of his body as he could with his arms and let Foreman pound at him.
Foreman obliged and threw crunching, punishing shots, with Ali taking them and waiting until Foreman became so tired he could no longer raise his arms.
When he couldn’t, Ali struck back and knocked out Foreman in the eighth round in the most remarkable upset of his career.
“It was my honor to get beaten up by that man’’, Foreman said, chuckling, in 2014. “I hated him at the time, because I didn’t understand. But we grew to love each other. I love him like a brother.’’
Ali slowed down even more after the win over Frazier and never again looked like the electric, blazing-fast athlete he’d been years
earlier.
After the Frazier fight, Ali became a personality as much as an athlete. He appeared on CBS programme “Face the Nation’’ in 1976 during the Ford-Carter presidential race.
He was asked whom he favored, and he declined to answer, saying he didn’t know enough and didn’t want to influence people who followed him and would vote for whomever he would say.
Ali officially retired from boxing in 1981 after a unanimous decision loss to Trevor Berbick, ending his career with a 55-5 record.
He remains the only three-time lineal heavyweight champion, having won titles in 1964, ’74 and ’78.
As he aged, Ali began to think of his role in the world and what he could do to improve it, and he talked on “Face the Nation’’ about his desire to do charitable acts.
“We only have so many hours a day to do what we have to do, so many years to live, and in those years, we sleep about eight hours a day,’’ Ali said.
“We travel. We watch television. If a man is 50 years old, he’s lucky if he’s actually had 20 years to actually live. So I would like to do the best I can for humanity.
“I’m blessed by God to be recognised as the most famous face on the Earth today. And I cannot think of nothing better than helping God’s creatures or helping poverty or good causes where I can use my name to do so.’’
In a 1975 interview with Playboy that was released around the time of his third fight with Frazier, he spoke of how his view of the world had changed.
He said it was his responsibility to take advantage of his notoriety by helping his fellow man.
“You listen up and maybe I’ll make you as famous as I made Howard Cosell,” he said in the Playboy interview.
“Wars on nations are fought to change maps, but wars on poverty are fought to map change. The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.
“These are words of wisdom, so pay attention, Mr. Playboy. The man who has no imagination stands on the Earth. He has no wings, he cannot fly.
“When we are right, no one remembers, but when we are wrong, no one forgets.’’
Ali, who was the most popular athlete in the world for years and commanded attention everywhere he went, would always be willing to do charitable acts.
But he said he did not want cameras or reporters around because he did not want anyone to think he was doing it for the publicity.
In 1973, for example, Ali learned that a home for elderly Jewish people was going to close because it was out of money.
“It was a cold January night and we saw it on the news. Ali really paid attention to it and you could tell it bothered him, that all these people were going to be put out. They had nowhere to go.
“He told me to find out where it was, so I called the TV station and got the address,’’ his media aide once disclosed.
“We drove over there and walked in and some guy comes up to me. I said, `We’re looking for the man in charge. Where is he?’ And the guy says, `I am. What do you want?’
“And Ali tells him he wants to help. He wrote him a check for $200,000 and tells him to put it in the bank that night.
“And then he writes another check for $200,000 and tells him to wait four days, because he has to get home and put some more money in the bank to cover the check.’’
In 1990, shortly before the first Gulf War between the U.S. and Iraq, he flew to Baghdad to speak with Saddam Hussein to secure the release of 15 U.S. hostages.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that Hussein agreed to release the hostages.
For the rest of his life Ali worked to promote the cause of peace and charity.
In December 2015, he condemned ISIS and took a shot at Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump (without mentioning Trump’s name) when Trump suggested temporarily banning all Muslims from entering the U.S.
NAN recalls that after the terrorist shootings in San Bernardino, Ali released a statement through his publicist.
The headline said, “Statement From Muhammad Ali Regarding Presidential Candidates Proposing to Ban Muslim Immigration to the United States’’.
“I am a Muslim and there is nothing Islamic about killing innocent people in Paris, San Bernardino or anywhere else in the world,’’ Ali said in the statement.
“True Muslims know that the ruthless violence of so-called Islamic Jihadists goes against the very tenets of our religion.
“We as Muslims have to stand up to those who use Islam to advance their own personal agenda. They have alienated many from learning about Islam.
“True Muslims know or should know that it goes against our religion to try and force Islam on anybody.
“Speaking as someone who has never been accused of political correctness, I believe that our political leaders should use their position to bring understanding about the religion of Islam.
“They should clarify that these misguided murderers have perverted people’s views on what Islam really is.’’
It was the last major public statement Muhammad Ali ever made.(NAN)