Muhammad Ali, Great?

Muhammad Ali has died.

For persons of my age, of course, Ali was the super celebrity. His fights in the ring proved major events--perhaps comparable to today's Superbowl. Even somebody such as me, uninterested in and bored by professional sports, would get caught up in the hype. Glued to our TV sets, we would watch "The Greatest" do battle. He rarely lost. Was he The Greatest Fighter who ever lived? I don't know. No doubt clever computer programs exist that can "fight" Ali against, say, Tyson, Dempsey, Louis, etc., and tell us what to think. Was he a great boxer? I am no expert, but I would have to say, yes, yes, he was. If he did nothing else, he saved boxing, at least for a time, from the slide into obscurity which it probably deserves. No other fighter generated or generates the sort of excitement and interest in the sport. When he was Champ, everybody knew it; when he wasn't Champ, and fighting to regain the title, everybody knew it. I, for example, have no idea who currently holds the title. So, yes, he was a great boxer, and a great sportsman. I leave it to others to decide if he was The Greatest of All Time.

Was he great in the non-sports world? Open for debate.

He, according to the narrative, stood up for his religious beliefs by refusing to be inducted into the army in 1967. He paid a price of sorts for that (good summary here) including the loss of his title. His conviction for evading the draft was later overturned by the Supreme Court, and Ali returned to the ring. This, of course, is the stuff of progressive legend, which forgets, of course, the other young men without his celebrity, vast wealth, and army of lawyers, who did their duty, went into the military and to war; presumably somebody took the slot which Ali rejected, and, perhaps, that somebody, too, paid a price, a heavy one, heavier than Ali's.

I was never 100% sure about his conversion to Islam. He changed his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali, and joined a variant of Islam not widely recognized as Islam by the wider Muslim world--although an exception seemed to have been made by that world in the case of super celebrity Muhammad Ali. How much was real and how much show? I don't know.

Did he advance the cause of civil and human rights? Perhaps, perhaps. He talked the talk, certainly, but . . . what did he actually do? OK, he was not a racist and not an anti-semite. As he openly acknowledged, he owed the start of his boxing career to a sympathetic white police officer who introduced him to the sport as a way to fend off the bullies who had stolen his bicycle. He also owed much of his oversized fame to the relationship he had with white New York Jewish sportscaster Howard Cosell. As kids we would watch enthralled as Cosell and Ali teased and "tormented" each other, all the while the genuine affection that existed between them coming through. It was great unscripted television entertainment, the sort that shames the tired "reality" shows of today. All that's something, I guess. If it helped show that cop and ghetto kid, white and black, Jew and Muslim can get along, OK, that's something.

Let me sum up my thoughts. Yes, Ali was a great and talented sportsman, certainly right up there at the very top with Cobb, Mays, Ruth, Mantle, Louis, Bannister, Dempsey, Graziano, Pele, Owens, Jordan, etc. Perhaps he was the greatest sportsman of all time. I won't argue. He was also a great entertainer and a super celebrity who had intelligence, a sense of humor, and an ability to connect with people other than with his fists. Despite his violent profession, he certainly did not come off as a thug. His personal life, however, as with many celebrity "greats," was a mess, with his son living estranged from him. A complex man who lived large and became, perhaps, the most famous man in the world--I remember, for example, being in a small town in Morocco, and there were Muhammad Ali posters all over the place. Hard to find somebody on the planet who has not heard of him. But was he Great? I remain open to convincing.

RIP