I think it was the various boxing organizations that stripped Ali of his title/license and not Uncle Sam. The organizations joined all the hoopla over Ali refusing induction into the armed forces during the Vietnam debacle. If someone other than Ali had done the same, the furor wouldn’t have been raised.
But to answer the question in the OP, yes, Ali was and is the greatest. That’s the reason he is still known simply as The Champ.
I couldn’t say, but he sure was beautiful.
Ali was damn good, no two ways about it. But he also got a lot of help from officials who looked the other way, and pretended he won fights that he clearly lost.
As long as you’re watching footage of the Chuvalo fight (when Ali may very well have been the greatest of all time), get a copy of the Jimmy Young fight, and then try to tell me that Ali wasn’t completely outclassed and outpointed. (And that was NOT the only fight Ali should have lost in the Seventies!)
Yes, the boxing establishment took his title away unfairly in the Sixties- but they more than made up for that by letting him keeping it in the Seventies, long after he should have hung up the gloves for good.
Ali had a lot of everything, speed, power, but one of the most amazing things was the way he could just lean back, juuuust out of reach of an opponent’s glove, or the way he could move his head juuuust to the side and have an opponents glove sail past his ear. Incredible.
(Yes I know,* Earl Snake-Hips Tucker** has already said this but I would have said it if he hadn’t so I did!)*