[It
wasn’t just the matches that were blockbusters. It was Ali himself. He was the
most important political-cultural figure to survive the deadly tumult of the 1960s
and flourish in the 1970s. Ali licked Liston, Frazier, Foreman and dozens of
other men. But he was at the center of American culture in part because he had
turned boxing into a condition of the American self: Punch or be punched. With
him, boxing wasn’t just a sport but a referendum on the state of the country.]
By Wesley Morris
 |
Seated from left, the Celtics great Bill Russell, Muhammad Ali, the retired Cleveland Browns
running back Jim Brown and Lew Alcindor, then an undergraduate at U.C.L.A., at a meeting of top African-American athletes in June 1967. Credit Tony Tomsic/Getty Images |
“Jaws,”
they say, invented the blockbuster. But damn if Muhammad Alididn’t get there
first. From 1971 to 1974, he starred in two of the greatest events in the
history of American sports, fights with Joe Frazier at Madison Square Garden
and George Foreman in Kinshasa that had names that belonged on a movie studio’s
release schedule: “The Fight of the Century” and “The Rumble in the Jungle.”
In
October 1975 came a rematch with Frazier. They called that one “The Thrilla in Manila Manila morning knew it was the original “Apocalypse
Now.”
In
1965, the photographer Neil Leifer captured Ali after he had knocked out Sonny
Liston two minutes into their match — Ali stands over a laid-out Liston, roaring
in conquest, making you think the man is playing a totally different sport. To
stick with the “Jaws” comparison, he was the shark, the ocean and the boat
captain, and if he was fighting, you were going to need a bigger bout — the
biggest.
It
wasn’t just the matches that were blockbusters. It was Ali himself. He was the
most important political-cultural figure to survive the deadly tumult of the 1960s
and flourish in the 1970s. Ali licked Liston, Frazier, Foreman and dozens of
other men. But he was at the center of American culture in part because he had
turned boxing into a condition of the American self: Punch or be punched. With
him, boxing wasn’t just a sport but a referendum on the state of the country.
He
had become larger than life, but without forgetting how much black lives matter.
The legacy of his bodacious charisma was built to last well beyond his death on
Friday. Ali was telegenic, funny, clever, blunt, fearless and, above all, politically
principled. His beliefs transfixed and polarized the country: What would he say
next; where would he take us? The short answer to that second question is “on a
public journey.”
Ali
was a politically black Zelig, but instead of merely lurking within the times, he
shaped them. He was complicated and contradictory as both a man and an African-American,
embracing and shedding radical black Islam, wielding racist imagery to rile
opponents, refusing to play the black clown for the press.
The
journey led the baddest boxer in the world to shake hands with Gerald R. Ford, one
of the blander presidents. He acted on Broadway and wrote braggadocio raps that
we called poetry because, at the time, we didn’t know what rap was. By the time
he lit the Olympic torch for the Atlanta Games in 1996, he was an elder
statesman, visibly shuddering with signs of Parkinson’s disease, a powerful, poignant
distance from his 1960s self but still media-ready.
The
day after he upset Liston in 1964, he hooked up with the Nation of Islam and
announced that he would no longer be going by his birth name, Cassius Clay. Sure,
it was the name of a white abolitionist — from Ali’s own Kentucky
The
news media took its sweet time coming around to “Muhammad Ali.” Many reporters
kept calling him Cassius, in a childish, bear-poking style. So he had to fight
for that, too. By 1977, when LeVar Burton’s Kunta Kinte chose in “Roots” to be
whipped for refusing to repeat his new name, you can imagine a portion of the 30
million people who watched exhaling something like, “Oh. I get it!”
Nonetheless,
Ali’s embrace of the pro-black, anti-integration Nation of Islam alarmed the
country. Almost overnight, a cocky young fighter became a scary black man. In 1967,
he claimed conscientious-objector status and refused the Army induction to
fight in Vietnam America
He
was fined $10,000, sentenced to five years in prison, stripped of his boxing
title and forced to wait three and a half years for the Supreme Court to
overturn his conviction. He lost prime fighting years and gained honor. The
roaring monster in Leifer’s photo now appeared on the cover of Esquire, in his
boxing trunks, his bare chest shot with arrows just like poor, martyred St. Sebastian.
Another astonishing transformation: The scary black man had become a national
folk hero.
Ali’s
objection to the war came the same year that Sidney Poitier, long a symbol of
the possibilities of racial integration and of turning the other cheek, hauled
off and slapped an old white racist in “In the Heat of the Night.” (He’d
finally run out of cheeks.) By the 1970s, Poitier had found a second, less
gusty wind, directing and starring in slick comedies that pushed the kind of
cultural politics of appearing respectable (if not accommodating) that Ali
sometimes espoused.
Take
this moment from 1974 on “The Mike Douglas Show.” Douglas asks his guest co-host, Sly Stone, to
introduce Ali. And Sly — cool, stoned, super-duper enthusiastic — brings Ali
out like this: “I love Muhammad Ali.”
Out
strolls Ali. He looks crisp in a great dark suit, white shirt and tie. They
shake hands, and Sly, in a star-splotched, bell-bottom one-piece, goes in for a
hug. Ali has barely taken his seat when Douglas ’s joshing sarcasm sets the tone: “You’re
happy again today. I can tell.”
The
audience laughs, and then Douglas completes his thought: “You never walk out
with a nice smile. You always look troubled,” as if Ali — the world’s greatest
athlete, least likely sufferer of fools, and most famous living civil right
activist — was supposed to be Soupy Sales.
If
Douglas was going there, Ali was going to follow. “I
am troubled. We have so many problems in the world,” he says, reclining a bit
in his chair, generating suspense with his terrific, meaty Louisville America
Ali
questions the complicity of black entertainers in this circus, while Sly
mockingly repeats what Ali says and tells him to lighten up: “We ain’t planning
on going to church now.”
The
more Sly leans toward him, the more Ali seems to lean away — it’s the physics
of temperament but also of racial disposition. On this day, Ali has everyday
black folks on his mind. Sly doesn’t not share the same concerns, but he makes
a passable case for the values of peace and love. This isn’t a disagreement
over philosophy but of presentation: Ali didn’t want to be seen smiling if he
didn’t feel like it.
Much
of America
Even
in 2016, it’s arresting, especially with two men this outwardly different. Officially,
black is a who. But with Ali, it was always a how. How do you use your
blackness both for and against? How is it helping? How might it hurt? How is
our own blackness being turned against us?
When
he left boxing after his last fight in 1981, he took the majesty of the sport
with him. He took the symbolism and grim spectatorial history, too. Boxing is a
two-man contest. But if Ali was in the ring, so was the rest of the country.
After
him, blackness as a point of public pride had also drifted away from American
popular culture — or rather it had been absorbed by the gradual mainstreaming
of hip-hop and the proliferation of a black middle class. It found shelter in
such apolitical spaces as the Huxtables’ Brooklyn home and Will Smith’s adopted Bel Air
mansion.
But
in the last few years, something has changed. There’s been increased political
awareness of the inequality of black life and outrage over unjust black death. Technology
has given megaphones to previously voiceless people. At the same time, major
black artists and stars have reconnected blackness, history and politics — from
Kanye West and Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar to LeBron James, who in 2012 put the
Miami Heat in hoodies for an iconic photo after Trayvon Martin’s death. Even
our black president has come further unfettered, not simply addressing race but
almost luxuriating in his blackness. He told Howard University
Some
of what’s happened in this period has been rightly received as radical. These
are hardly boring times we’re living in. But when the country is seen through
the prism of Muhammad Ali, words like “radical,” “truth,” “fame,” and “risk”
suddenly feel as if they should come with an asterisk.
