The greatest. Such boxing skill, such brashness, such wit, such humor, such a personality.
Growing up in the 60s and 70s was a great time. Heavyweight boxing glory, and Ali was awesome.
R.I.P., Ali. You will be missed, but thank you for all you gave to us.
Ali bomaye!
Leave the Little Pig in the mud where it belongs. This is about Ali.
This is a warning for you. You have been modded and warned over using hate speech terms at least three times before, and this post here is a combination of threadshitting, mild trolling (I feel), and saying the hate speech you seem to often use, so your posting privileges will now be discussed. Don’t post in this thread again if you can’t stop threadshitting in it.
Don’t insult others outside of the Pit.
Ali was still able to exercise just a few years ago. Interesting how the shakes went away temporarily.
Freddie Roach is a Hall of Fame trainer and also has Parkinson’s.
Okay, I feel like this topic is getting hijacked really horribly. It’s supposed to be a RIP thread–and while there is no rules saying you have to talk nicely about recently dead celebrities–some posters have already stated what they believe a few times.
Once or twice is enough. If you want to continue to debate what a horrible person Ali was, apparently–or to argue supporting him–please make another thread about it in the Pit, IMHO, or Great Debates. It can be called “Was Ali racist?” or something like that (just an example).
But as for this thread, please stop all debate about if he was racist or bigoted or anything like that. If you feel another poster is posting wrong or incorrect info, then call them out about it in the separate thread about it and you all can debate it as much as you like.
In fact, I have moved the hijack out of this topic and it became its own thread now, it can be found here.
From this post on, no more talk about it in here, please.
Here is Davis Miller’s 1989 piece My Dinner With Ali. Only recently I reread, yet again, his book The Tao of Muhammad Ali which is one of my all time favourite sports books.
Plenty of people in the 60s and 70s thought Ali was just as big a dick as many people think Trump is today. And it didn’t matter in the slightest whether Ali could back up his bragging or not.
As an aside, I remember once watching Ali stand in front of an opponent with his hands at his side, dodging blows right and left just by moving his head and upper body. I wasn’t able to find a video of that fight but Drudge has a link up entitled “Video: Dodges 23 punches in 10 seconds…”, which is pretty similar. In it, Ali takes on a 19-year-old boxer named Michael Dokes who’d claimed his fists were so fast that film couldn’t catch them and who had said to Ali, “I’m gonna get you, old man [Ali was 35], so you better get out while you can.”
This was a three round exhibition match in which Ali was admittedly overweight and out of shape. But he hardly threw a punch, preferring instead to toy with Dokes, making him look like a fool and showing him what real speed looks like. Many times he just dropped his guard and let Dokes throw punches which he easily avoided just by moving his head, and a couple of times Ali backed himself into a corner, spread his arms out on the ropes, and slipped one blow after another, again mostly by moving just his head. Ali had incredible speed and reflexes and an almost superhuman knowledge of his opponent’s reach and just where his fists were going to end up, and would dodge and weave just enough to take himself out of range.
Here’s the video. It’s both fun and amazing to watch, especially at 1:55.
A rare commodity, someone who became so successful but appeared to be a genuinely nice guy.
RIP, Champ. 
My father, a white Canadian guy who wouldn’t know Muslim from muslin, loved Muhammad Ali. Adored him. He was adamant that there was no one greater. He and my grandfather would have enthusiastic debates about who was greater, Ali or Joe Louis. (My grandfather spent part of his childhood in Detroit during Louis’s rise the greatness so you can understand his position.)
I suppose it goes without saying there is no chance Ali will ever be surpassed because they very sport is falling apart. After he was allowed to box again Ali fought again and again against boxers of exceptional talent. His first fight back was October 26, 1970, when he beat up Jerry Quarry, and he fought five more times before 1971 was up, including the loss to Joe Frazier. In 1972 he fought SIX times. In 1973 he fought another four times. In 1974 he fought “just” twice, one being of course the Rumble in the Jungle, and then he defended his title four times in 1975 and four times in 1976. No waiting nine, ten, twelve months for the next bout.
In 1968 my high school invited Ali to speak, a fairly amazing thing to do during his period of exile from boxing and controversy over Vietnam. We were also a school with a rapidly increasing black percentage of the student body and all the tensions that involved in a school that drew from the epicenter of the Rochester riots.
I was backstage in the auditorium with him before he spoke. What I remember most was how gigantic he appeared. He wasn’t the biggest person I knew - I was friends with our swim champ who was 6’5" and built like a Greek god - but Ali seemed twice as big. He was certainly the most physically imposing person I’ve ever encountered. He had a presence.
I couldn’t care less about sports and knew Muhammad Ali more as a celebrity than as a sports icon (though I understand he was a reasonably good boxer in his day, what).
But that said, I always liked him. His arrogance was tempered with a wink, which is missing in many celebrities who are far less vocal but far more obvious in their self adoration; it was clear that with Ali he simultaneously knew his worth but also had a sense of humility and perspective.
I never actually met him but I did see him once, ca. 1985 and at a distance: he was in a mall in Charlottesville, Virginia doing butt crunches for a mob of cheering fans. (It wasn’t a personal appearance- I think he had a property nearby and just happened to be at the mall.)
Very sorry he had to endure such a long illness, but he seems to have been surrounded by people who loved him in his decline and to have been spared the financial nightmares of so many former boxers. And I am glad he lived long enough to be vindicated in his stance on Vietnam and the draft.
Inna lillaahi wa inna ilayhi Raaji’oon.
Word. Said it much better than I. And another poster pointed out that Ali was kinda like your favorite uncle that kicked serious ass but would wink and joke around.
BTW, I was born in '61. I wasn’t there for everything but Ali sure made a positive impression and I saw him followed him live on TV from the late '60’s onward.
Just as a follow-up, they were reporting on the radio last night that people were already lining up outside the Ali Center here in town to get tickets for the memorial service that’s occurring Friday.
His funeral will also be on Friday, at the KFC Yum! Center, which is the biggest venue around. It’s where the big concerts are usually held, and where the University of Louisville plays their basketball games. Interesting footnote: the Center was originally constructed with the thought of trying to land an NBA team here (IIRC, this was about the time that the Seattle team moved to Oklahoma City). One of the reasons that didn’t happen was because the city had a few demands that no one wanted to meet. The arena was the be called the Bucket, and the incoming team would have to change their names to the Colonels (this is the area where KFC got its start, so the city wanted to be able to tie the two things together).
Oddly enough, a swarm of bees was spotted around the Ali Center, and a bee wrangler had to be brought in to collect them.
Local television station WDRB has released a list of pallbearers, as well. Included are George Foreman, George Chuvalo, Larry Holmes, and Ali’s brother Rahaman Ali.
Ali was the first sports figure who caught my attention as a child. I used to sneak a radio into my bedroom past bedtime to listen to his fights. It was worth being groggy at school the next day. He was a champion’s champion who did more to positively promote his sport than anyone I can think of.
At times I loved to hate him (e.g. when he fought Joe Frasier—how could I route against a fellow Philadelphian?). Other times I hated to love him (how can you route for that braggart, Tibby?). But, his braggadocio was both well deserved (he really was “the greatest”) and delivered in such an over-the top, good-natured, humorous manner, that you couldn’t help but like the guy.
He was the darling of many sports-casters and talk show hosts for good reason. A force to recon with inside the ring; pure entertainment outside the ring. Too bad more sport stars aren’t as great a role model for kids as was Ali.
It was sad to see such a bright flame of ability and personality slowing dimmed by the ravages of Parkinson’s disease. Sadder still to see the flame extinguished for good by the grim reaper.
RIP, Champ, you made my childhood a little brighter.
I might add that I switched back to routing for Ali when he moved even closer to me than Frasier (within a few miles when he moved to Cherry Hill). But, then he moved away 4 years later, so I had to route for Frasier again for the Thrilla in Manila. Confusing times for a young fan.
And, before I get routed by a pedant, I, of course meant “rooted”, not “routed”. Needed a second cup of coffee to pick up on that flub.
Maybe a third cup would be in order, because even I could have beaten Frasier. Not sure about Niles, though.
My grandmother met Ali before he was famous (obviously before his name change).
She was a high school English teacher and one of her students was a top middleweight named Wilbert “Skeeter” McClure. The 1959 and 1960 AAU championships were both held not far from her home, and Skeeter came to see her after one of them (which one is lost in family lore, Grandma died 40 years ago). He brought his friend, Cassius, because Skeeter was sure he’d be famous some day (not as sure as Ali, but no one was). Grandma had nothing but wonderful things to say about him.
I watched a lot of the funeral coverage on Friday, and I caught something I hadn’t noticed before. We’ve probably all seen the film clip from the 1964 Sonny Listen fight where Ali shouts “I shook up the world! I’m pretty! I’m a bad man!” I had never realized that tThe guy trying to interview him eventually turns his head and starts to laugh.