Unless you live under a rock, you probably already know that Muhammad Ali died at the age of 73 on June 3, 2016.
I never met Ali. I’m too young to have seen Ali fight. I wasn’t even born yet when he lit the Olympic Flame to start the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.
But I know who Ali is. I also recognize the impact he had on sports, America, and the world.
It’s safe to say that there will never be another athlete who will impact the world in the same way he did. There will never be another boxer that will influence the sport as much as Ali did. The only person who you can challenge this statement might be Jackie Robinson, but that's it.
Although, I’m not here to try and make that argument. I’m here to talk about how Ali impacted me, a 20-year-old, white college student who was born well after Ali started to make his mark on the world.
I first heard about Ali through my dad, mainly while he repeated some of Ali’s classic rhymes and sayings, the big one was obviously “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee." And how could you not love this iconic motto? I was told repeatedly that Ali was the greatest, and as a five or six-year-old, you just accepted this because your dad was always right, especially when it comes to sports.
But eventually I started to question that, and do my own research. Wikipedia and YouTube were my starting points as I discovered more about who Ali was. At that point in my life all I really cared about was his place in the sport of boxing, which I hope is understandable. I was probably 11 or 12, so his cultural impact probably would have gone over my head anyway.
And wow did the sports part amaze me. He went 56-5! I can’t even imagine stepping in a boxing ring twice in my life let alone doing it 61 times a professional and who knows how many times as an amateur. He went seven years between holding the World Heavyweight Champion! Seven years in boxing is more than most careers, let alone being at the top of the mountain, and then climbing it again seven years later. He had the third most wins in heavyweight championship fights at 22. That’s remarkable. And it’s not like he was in an era that lacked boxing talent. He fought in the same era as some of the best like George Foreman, Leon Spinks, Joe Frazier etc.
The next thing I began to take note of was his swagger and bravado outside of the ring. He called himself the greatest, something that athletes aren’t supposed to do, but as a young, cocky teen, I loved it. He said that Sonny Liston smelled like a bear and that he would donate him to a zoo after he beat him. Bleacher Report would go on to name that the greatest trash talk line in sports history. And it is. Nothing will ever beat that. It’s perfect.
But then I got to the cultural impact that Ali had. And this wasn’t until recently, maybe two or three years ago. Now I wish there was a way to put this up at the top because his cultural impacts are clearly his most important gift to the world. But for him to make the impact that he did, he needed to be the biggest sports star of the 20th century. He needed to dominate the sport of boxing for almost 20 years.
The one thing that never made sense about Ali’s title reign’s during my Google searches as a kid was why he was stripped of the heavyweight title and why he refused to enlist after he was drafted into the military. While conducting my research, it was right after 9/11, and patriotism was at an all time high. So as a young kid, I just wasn’t able to wrap my brain around why someone wouldn’t want to serve the our country.
But this was a different war, and more importantly, a different time. Ali, at the time, was a member of the nation of Islam, and had no issues with the Vietcong, and didn’t want to participate in wars that weren’t declared by God. He also didn’t feel that he should have to go give his life for a country that didn’t respect his life. Eventually he would have his conviction overturned by the US Supreme Court in a unanimous decision, and perhaps least importantly, he was allowed to box again.
He gave a voice to African Americans who, at the time, didn’t have much of one. His refusal to enlist inspired so many different people, from Martin Luther King Jr. to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He made it okay to speak out against a system if he thought the system was broken.
I could give stories about Ali forever. He told Will Smith “you’re almost pretty enough to play me” before he started filming the movie Ali. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but it’s the only star to be mounted on a vertical surface because he requested that his name not be walked on.
I will never understand the struggles that Ali went through in his life, so I’m not even going to try, because to try would be a disservice to the work that he did. All I know is that America and the world are better off because of Muhammad Ali.
Rest easy.
