Muhammad Ali (the artist formerly known as Cassius Clay) was a gifted pugilist who won a gold medal for the USA in the 1960 Olympics, buckled the knees of the fearsome Sonny Liston, reclaimed his title from the dangerous Joe Frazier and rope-a-doped the less talented but brutally powerful George Foreman. He had a limited intellect, but a genuine gift for gab and an ability to connect with more than mere punches.
His refusal to be inducted into the Armed Forces was unnecessary: as a celebrity athlete during an increasingly unpopular war he certainly would have been given an assignment to build morale through exhibitions, external to any combat role, and would have been done with it inside of two years. Instead, Ali refused service because his conscience so instructed him, and thereby lost three and one-half years of the prime time of his career. He paid a price and deserved to. But he took it just like he endured the beating that Frazier laid on him in 1971, and moved on to the next fight.
In truth, I believe he made a poor choice, and thought so even after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction, but I respected him for not bugging out to Canada or elsewhere, as others did at the time.
Muhammad could be cruel and taunted his opponents mercilessly and viciously, at times: behavior for which Joe Frazier never, ever forgave him. And yet he also exhibited genuine kindness toward his legion of fans, taking time to chat with them, sign autographs for them, and even talked a suicidal man off a ledge in Los Angeles in 1981.
Ali's association with the risible Elijah Mohammed of the Nation of Islam was perhaps a fair index of the man's limitations, in choosing to follow the very person most directly responsible for the death of his mentor and spiritual guide, Malcolm X.
But again, his smallness of character, further evidenced by his four marriages and his affairs in between does not fully diminish the fact that he was one of those rare people whose talent for popularity and for their chosen craft make them seem larger than life, as Muhammad Ali always was. RIP.
