Over the years, like many people I’m sure, I’ve had numerous conversations with friends on the subject of best or favourite bands, actors, footballers, authors and the like, developing occasionally into heated disagreement. However, when the debate turned to best or favourite sportsman there was usually only one answer, Mohammad Ali, whose funeral it is today.
To most youngsters growing up in 1960s Britain, there seemed little common ground with this brash young man from across the Atlantic. He was of a different nationality, had different skin colour, different beliefs and different everything. But none of that mattered because, to use an expression much used over the years and particularly in obituaries and testaments this week, Mohammad Ali transcended all of that.
It was true, any obvious or perceived differences were irrelevant, Ali rose above it all. Here was a man who appeared to have everything. He was young, smart and savvy, brave as a lion, strong, fast, had a superb physique and was elegant and graceful. If ever a man could be described as beautiful, it was he. How could anybody not warm to such a human being?
I can remember, at the age of 7, seeing posters in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire (a million miles from Kentucky in almost every sense!) advertising the fight, to be screened in local cinemas, between a young Cassius Clay and the huge terrifying Sonny Liston. A David v Goliath fight if ever there was one. David won, of course, and Cassius Clay (soon to be renamed Mohammad Ali), the self-proclaimed “Greatest”, became the new heavyweight champion of the world.
Over the following years there followed controversy over his conversion to Islam, his struggle against racial prejudice, his refusal to fight in Vietnam and his subsequent ban from boxing, depriving him (and all of us) of 4 years when he would have been at his peak.
His return was astounding, winning and losing the world title before winning it again in the most dramatic bout against the seemingly unbeatable George Foreman who’d laid waste to all around him like a farmer scything corn. Ali’s defeat of Foreman was the greatest fight I have ever seen. I said it when I saw it back in October, 1974 and nothing has happened since to change my mind. It was staggering; brave defence, a soaking up of punishment, leaning hard against the ropes before going brilliantly on the offensive, destroying his previously unbeaten opponent with a speed and violence that simply amazed everybody who saw it.
He became a practised television personality and everybody who saw them will have fond memories of the interviews with Michael Parkinson on the BBC. We saw another side of Ali there, a man of charm, grace, humour and more than a little wit.
We all knew how it would end though since, whether through shortage of money or a desire to remain in the limelight (who knows) he kept on fighting and suffered some terrible poundings when, really, he should have left the ring years previously. I remember him fighting Larry Holmes (a worthy world champion himself) and Holmes was quite clearly distressed at the beating he had to give to a man who he probably revered as much as the rest of us.
If only Ali had quit while he was still ahead. To see such a great man brought low by the ravages of disease was sad, tragic and, well, just so unfair. That’s the way life is however and even though we will remember that image, the overwhelming memory of this true colossus among men is the young, powerful, handsome, strong, brave boxer (in his own words but no less true because of it) floating around the ring like a butterfly and stinging like a bee. We will remember that because he really was that special. He was totally unique. They broke the mould when they made Mohammad Ali.