Boxing is a sport of great debates. Fight fans rarely have conversations of about great fighters without comparing them to the ring legends of yesteryear. In team sports such as basketball and football, a player’s greatness is often impacted by those around him. How Michael Jordan be as great without Scottie Pippen? Would Joe Montana as great without Jerry Rice? How many yards could Barry Sanders have accumulated with a decent quarterback and offensive line? When comparing any of those players with today’s greats, all those things have to be taken into account (in addition to the significant rule changes between eras).
In boxing, the rules are simple. The personnel impacting a fight are minimal. Legacies are built on the fists of the fighters. There is room for reasonable debate on whether Muhammad Ali is the greatest fighter of all-time, or even the greatest heavyweight. However, what cannot be debated is that Ali stands alone as the most important and impactful fighter in the history of the sport.
From the moment John Graham Chambers penned the Marquess of Queensberry rules in 1865, until the recent plague of mediocrity that has infected the current crop of heavyweights, boxing’s heavyweight division was its pride and joy. Even when boxing was solely broadcast over the radio waves, marquee matchups for the heavyweight title put the Super Bowl hype to shame. Heavyweight champions were billed as the biggest and baddest men on the planet. They were simultaneously feared and revered.
Then came a slender, fast-talking kid from Louisville, Ky. that had the audacity to claim he was pretty in the manliest sport around. He highlighted his speed, agility and skill over the brute strength and power for which heavyweights were celebrated. Witnessing Ali in the ring was like watching Miles Davis on the trumpet or Charlie Parker on the saxophone. He was poetry in motion. His footwork was a graceful as a ballerina. When his dancing and rhythmic movements entranced his opponents, he had the power to render them unconscious in the blink of an eye.
When I think of Ali’s in-the-ring accomplishments, the fight that stands out most to me was “The Rumble in the Jungle,” his fight against George Foreman. In this bout, Ali broke all the rules of conventional wisdom and emerged victorious. Some thought Ali would get killed in the ring. Foreman had destroyed both Joe Frazier and Ken Norton in just two rounds. At age 32, Ali wasn’t quite as swift and elusive as he was when he shocked the world to become heavyweight champion. Still, his obvious advantage over the brute and stalking foreman, was his foot and hand speed. Rather than using his natural advantages though, Ali did the unthinkable and laid on the ropes and corners and allowed Foreman to tee-off on his face and his body for eight long rounds.
Ali dodged some punches and ate plenty of others. The extreme confidence that led Ali to long proclaim that he was ‘The Greatest,’ allowed him to devise the plan to beat Foreman. He sat still and allowed one of the most devastating punchers in history to punch him. To make sure Foreman threw everything at him, Ali taunted and peppered him with insults before (and during) the fight to make his opponent angry. Ali gambled that that Foreman would get tired of punching before he would get tired of being punched in the face. Ali gambled on this heart, endurance and ability to perseverance and it paid off with one of the most impressive victories in the history of the sport. The victory laid the foundation for mental warfare as a strategy in the sport of boxing.
Between his showmanship and entertaining personality, his affinity for mind games, his never-wavering (publically, at least) confidence, without Ali, your favorite fighter probably would not exist. Recent greats such as Floyd Mayweather Jr., Roy Jones Jr., Sugar Ray Leonard, Mike Tyson, Bernard Hopkins and others owe part of their success and the ability to be flashy, brash or outspoken fighters to the doors Ali opened during his reign.
Ali defied convention fought against the odds in almost every aspect of his life. In the time of segregation, when it was even more deadly for black men to be defiant, Ali stood up for civil rights. He stood up for the Muslim faith when he changed his name from Cassius Clay to Cassius X and ultimately Muhammad Ali. He stood up for the Vietnamese and against war by refusing to fight in the Vietnam War, even when it put his career and life in jeopardy. He stood up against Parkinson’s Disease by waging a long and public battle against the debilitating illness.
The fact that an entire nation wept after Ali, a loud-mouthed, black, war-skipping Muslim man passed away, shows that there was no foe too great for him to defeat. It is likely that we will never see another Muhammad Ali, inside the ring or out. As I mentioned, boxing fans and historians can debate and discuss where his skills place him amongst the all-time greats. What cannot be debated though is that any conversation on the most-important and influential fighters of all-time begins and ends with Ali. Much like Foreman was never the same after the Ali defeat, boxing will never be the same without ‘The Greatest.’
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