MUHAMMAD ALI: THE MAN WITH A GREAT OFFSET

HATED By Millions; Yet LOVED By Many Multitudes!
Muhammad Ali, the lyrical heavyweight showman who thrilled the globe with his sublime boxing style, unpredictable wit, and gentle generosity – especially later in life – had passed on. He was 74. Ali, the former Cassius Clay, was not just an athlete who embodied the times in which he lived. He shaped them. His conscientious objection to the Vietnam War, and reasoned rants against a country fighting for freedom on the other side of the globe, while its own black citizens were denied basic rights of their own, energized a generation. Ali refused to serve in Vietnam, was convicted of draft evasion, and stripped of the heavyweight crown he won from Sonny Liston in 1964.

Imagine, for a moment, a 21st-century athlete who could command an audience with presidents and the pope, the Dalai Lama, Castro, Idi Amin and Saddam Hussein. Ali might have been the most famous man on earth. Disease robbed Ali of his speech late in life. But his peacekeeping trips, fundraising efforts for Parkinson’s research, and support for UNICEF and the Special Olympics and many more charitable organizations were more powerful than his poetry.
“Muhammad Ali was not just Muhammad Ali the greatest, the African-American pugilist; he belonged to everyone,” poet Maya Angelou wrote in the 2001 book Muhammad Ali: Through the Eyes of the World. “That means that his impact recognizes no continent, no language, no color, and no ocean.”
Ali was also a reminder of what boxing has lost. Ali’s classic fights, like “The Rumble in the Jungle” and the “The Thrilla in Manila” were masterpieces of the form. Though Ali fought George Foreman in Zaire, the electricity spilled into your living room. “Bap! Bap! Bap!” Ali told TIME, describing his fight strategy before his first bout with Frazier in 1971, the so-called “Fight of the Century,” which he lost. “I jab him once, twice, three times. Dance away. I move in again. Bam. Bam. Bam. I hit him five times. He hits me one time. I back away. I’m moving around him. Bim. Bim. Bim. I get him again. He’s movin’ in, ain’t reaching me because he’s too small to reach me. He’s reachin’ and strainin’ with those hooks, and they’re getting longer and longer. And now he’s lunging and jumping, and that’s when I started popping and smoking.”
Let me take you back in time when Muhammad Ali was the most hated man in America. You are not hearing that in all the tributes you are reading following his death. We are hearing how much he was loved. Let me give you a dose of reality. He was not loved by most. You must realize all manners of nasty names people call him, how much they rooted for him to lose and how people wished he were dead.

The praise he gets today is well deserved. It’s just not real. Ali was The Greatest for many reasons outside the ring. But he did not become loved by America until later in his career and for some after his career was finished. You must understand that for a black man to take stands against the government and against the majority of society were acts of bravery for some and acts of treason for others.
The braggadocio was beyond compare. He talked too much and some came to his fights to watch him lose. The problem is Ali backed his words up with lightning quick fists that tore opponents apart. America did not enjoy this man making a mockery of sportsmanship and watching this “colored man” dominates and demonstrates. People refused to call him by name after he went from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali. It took a while before many newspapers and broadcasters called him Ali. When he said he buried his slaved name, it drove people nuts.
Today, we say that Ali joined the Nation of Islam. Back then they were “the Black Muslims” and they threatened America with their bow ties, rhetoric and just by walking down the street. People did not like or trust “the Black Muslims” and that included some black people who viewed them as a religion of extreme militancy. It wasn’t much different back then. America did not like him rejecting “his slave name” for a name they did not understand or like.
America forgave Ali also. He became sympathetic mostly after it was announced in 1984 that he had Parkinson’s disease. The shake that defined Ali became a constant companion.
Ali was polarizing, which is to say that some loved him and some hated him.  Very few, if any, were neutral.  He was a promoter, and as such, he would say a lot of things to sell his fights. Yes, America loved Ali – eventually.
The Greatest is gone. We might never see one like him again.