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"I don't have to be what you want me to be. " |
What a loss to suffer, even if for years you knew it was coming! Its hard, especially for the ones in the sportsfield to accept the fact that "GREATEST" is no more.
The reverberations. Not the rumbles, the reverberations. The death of Muhammad Ali will undoubtedly move people’s minds to his epic boxing matches against Joe Frazier, George Foreman, or there will be retrospectives about his epic “rumbles” against racism and war. But it’s the reverberations that we have to understand in order to see Muhammad Ali as what he remains: the most important athlete to ever live. It’s the reverberations that are our best defense against real-time efforts to pull out his political teeth and turn him into a harmless icon suitable for mass consumption.
After a 32-year battle with Parkinson's disease, Muhammad Ali has passed away at the age of 74. The three-time World Heavyweight Champion boxer died this evening.Ali had suffered for three decades from Parkinson's, a progressive neurological condition that slowly robbed him of both his legendary verbal grace and his physical dexterity. A funeral service is planned in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.
Even as his health declined, Ali did not shy from politics or controversy, releasing a statement in December criticizing Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States. "We as Muslims have to stand up to those who use Islam to advance their own personal agenda," he said. At at the age of seventy-four too,he was the most fantastical American figure of his era, a self-invented character of such physical wit, political defiance, global fame, and sheer originality that no novelist you might name would dare conceive him.
The remark bookended the life of a man who burst into the national consciousness in the early 1960s, when as a young heavyweight champion he converted to Islam and refused to serve in the Vietnam War, and became an emblem of strength, eloquence, conscience and courage. Ali was an anti-establishment showman who transcended borders and barriers, race and religion. His fights against other men became spectacles, but he embodied much greater battles.
Born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. was born on January 17, 1942, in Louisville, Kentucky. He was a skinny, quick-witted kid, the son of a sign painter and a house cleaner, who learned to box at the age of twelve to avenge the indignity of a stolen bicycle, a sixty-dollar red Schwinn that he could not bear to lose. Eventually, Ali became arguably the most famous person on the planet, known as a supreme athlete, an uncanny blend of power, improvisation, and velocity; a master of rhyming prediction and derision; an exemplar and symbol of racial pride; a fighter, a draft resister, an acolyte, a preacher, a separatist, an integrationist, a comedian, an actor, a dancer, a butterfly, a bee, a figure of immense courage.
"It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up."
Ali shot to fame by winning light-heavyweight gold at the 1960 Rome Olympics.At the 1960 Rome Olympics, Clay won the gold medal with a victory over a lumbering opponent from Poland. Liebling offered only qualified praise. “Clay had a skittering style, like a pebble scaled over water,” he wrote. “He was good to watch, but seemed to make only glancing contact. It is true that the Pole finished the three-round bout helpless and out on his feet, but I thought he had just run out of puff chasing Clay, who had then cut him to pieces.”
Nicknamed "The Greatest", the American beat Sonny Liston in 1964 to win his first world title and became the first boxer to capture a world heavyweight title on three separate occasions."Sonny Liston is nothing. The man can't talk. The man can't fight. The man needs talking lessons. The man needs boxing lessons. And since he's gonna fight me, he needs falling lessons." As with the first Liston fight, Ali was given little chance against the indomitable Foreman and some commentators even feared for his life.With a frenzied crowd behind him, Ali spent most of the first eight rounds leaning back on the ropes, soaking up the punches of his younger, and significantly larger, foe.He called the tactic "rope-a-dope", and at the end of the eighth round he sprang out of his defensive shell and sent Foreman sprawling to the canvas with a picture-perfect combination.
Perhaps Ali's greatest moment came in October 1974 when he defeated George Foreman in Zaire in the so-called Rumble in the Jungle.
Cassius Clay opted ISLAM & Changed his Name to ALI."Cassius Clay is a slave name. I didn't choose it, and I didn't want it. I am Muhammad Ali, a free name, and I insist people using it when speaking to me and of me."
At the age of 32, Ali had become only the second man in history to regain the heavyweight championship of the world.
A year later, Ali met Frazier for a third time in the so-called Thrilla in Manila, perhaps the most brutal encounter in heavyweight history.Ali said it was the closest he had come to death in the ring, but he was victorious when Frazier's corner halted the fight after 14 rounds.
In Las Vegas in February 1978, he lost his title to Leon Spinks, the 1976 Olympic light-heavyweight champion who was 12 years his junior.
The return fight in New Orleans eight months later drew a world record gate, with millions more watching on television.
This time Ali took a unanimous decision and won the world title for a third time at 36.
Generous with his money, Ali is thought to have earned more than $60m (£37.2m) from his ring career - but by 1979, he seemed to have little of it left.
That may be one of the reasons he refused to call time on his ring career, but he was clearly a fading force when he lost his title for the last time to former sparring partner Larry Holmes in Las Vegas in 1980.
Ali had one more fight, against Canadian Trevor Berbick in December 1981, and after losing on points he finally retired from the ring, at the age of 40.
Soon after, rumours began to circulate about the state of his health. His speech had become slurred, he shuffled and was often drowsy..
He eventually retired in 1981, having won 56 of his 61 fights.
Crowned "Sportsman of the Century" by Sports Illustrated and "Sports Personality of the Century" by the BBC, Ali was noted for his pre- and post-fight talk and bold fight predictions just as much as his boxing skills inside the ring.
Muhammad Ali's record as a boxer was impressive. The record books show that his professional career spanned 21 years, during which he won 56 fights, 37 by way of knockout, and lost five.
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