Muhammad Ali: three time heavyweight champion of the world, the 1960 Olympic gold medallist, the 1999 “BBC Sports Personality of the Century” and one of the youngest and oldest men to hold the heavyweight championship of the world. The list is endless. The man’s face was at one point the most recognized on the planet and truly no sportsman has proved as integral to popular culture since.
But has this global adulation for Ali got far too out of hand? There is absolutely nothing wrong in awarding Muhammad Ali a place in popular culture as his achievements in and out of the ring are most deserving of it. But when I see article after article of lightweight documentary and biography cultivating the “Ali Myth”, the idea that Muhammad Ali was some sort of larger than life, social enigma and learned intellectual, it is too much to accept.
Are we really to accept the notion that Ali was some sort of hero in the Civil Rights movements in the 1960s, standing side by side with Dr King as a symbol for non violence and peace? The legions of hagiographers tend to understate the enormous contradictions and imperfections which made up the man, and it is important that we do not forget them.
Look at Ali’s boxing rival “Smokin’” Joe Frazier, with whom he shared three memorable and celebrated bouts in the 1970’s. The two first met in the late 1960s when Frazier was giving Ali a lift. While Ali’s famous “I ain’t got no quarrel with no Viet Cong” statement, and his subsequent refusal to participate in the Vietnam War, was dividing American public opinion, Frazier actually supported Ali financially when he was temporarily banned from boxing.
In return, Ali was less forthcoming. Ali bullied, teased and dissected Frazier on the world stage once it came to boxing. He called Frazier a gorilla, an Uncle Tom and an uneducated fool. Of course, insult and trash talking is nothing new to boxing; in fact Ali was a famous exponent of it, but he went too far. Using his articulacy and personality, he cast Joe Frazier as the “White Man’s Champion”: a figure to be scorned and rejected by the black community.
Frazier, without the eloquence and stage presence of Ali was continuously humiliated and ridiculed. He could not even walk the streets of his own hometown of Philadelphia without being called an Uncle Tom. Ali’s treatment of Frazier was brutal and seemingly inconsistent with the image of Ali as a deeply affectionate and kind human being. But it is a reflection on the bullying and nasty side of Ali’s personality often played down by his barrage of 21st century supporters.
Moreover, Ali was no intellectual. Somehow his entertaining but rather lightweight poetry (“I’m so mean I make medicine sick!”) and his conversion to the Nation of Islam in 1964 have put him on some absurdly elevated pedestal of social importance. But when interviewed Ali could discuss the doctrines of Islam only on a simplistic and artificial level and in the 1960’s he advocated segregation between black and white communities, arguing it was the only way that violence could be avoided.
Yet paradoxically, Ali had no qualms in surrounding himself with white promoters, trainers, doctors and celebrities over the course of his career. Biographers particularly highlight Ali’s devotion to Islam; yet Ali has had four wives, with his unfaithfulness being well documented and publicized.
A BBC article calls Ali “a powerful activist for black rights, both in America and around the world”. This is surely overstated. Yes, Ali was brave in resisting the US government who stripped him of his livelihood in the years of his prime, but a powerful activist for black rights? Really? Even the change of name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali, the allegedly iconic moment when the man removed the shackles of slavery and ended his subjugation from the white slave masters, was not his decision. It was the decision of Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam, because Cassius Clay was not an appropriate name for his star promoter for the Nation.
I am not trying to “expose” Muhammad Ali. He is only human and is not a particularly awful one either. I simply think we should re-assess the man and appreciate him for what he really was. His abilities as a sportsman were astounding. He boxed long into the early 1980s and despite being years detached from his prime, Ali was the crown of the heavyweight division going through its golden age with such greats as Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Earnie Shavers and Ken Norton. Ali was, and still is today, the centrepiece and it is not difficult to see why. Ali was witty, extravagant and lively. He was “a photographer’s dream” for Neil Leifer; a man who could floor you with his humour just as much as with his left jab.
His greatest achievement in my mind was his smashing of the race barrier which opposed many black sportsmen of the 20th Century. While men like Joe Louis were slavishly and diligently trained to conform to the acceptable image of what a black sportsman should be in white America, Ali carved out his own image: one of dynamism and charisma. He was, in many ways, the first real personality in American sport. Some of boxing’s most famous stars including “Sugar” Ray Leonard and Mike Tyson have publicly voiced their praise of Ali for making it possible for boxers and indeed sportsmen to achieve fame, recognition and wealth.
It is precisely for these reasons that Ali should be acclaimed. Not for the political, the social, the personal or whatever the cultivators of the “Ali Myth” would have us believe.
