Ali was the only boxer I ever liked, and I liked him a lot.
He was a giant when I was a boy, when there was only one 'Heavyweight Champion of the World', and it really meant something - even to people like me who never felt comfortable about, or enjoyed, a 'sport' which involved people doing their best to cause another human being real and savage physical damage. But Ali was different. He wasn't really (in my mind) a boxer; he was a dancer, who had to hit people because that was how he made his living. And he was a poet - was there any better couplet in the 20th Century than 'Dance like a butterfly, sting like a bee'? Above all, perhaps, he was absolutely central to the vital political battles of his era - not just
blacks' liberation from the aftermath of slavery, but challenging America's assumed God-given right to impose its will on people all over the world (using as cannon-fodder the sons of the sons of the slaves who had created the wealth and power they applied). 'Hello no, we won't go!' chanted the sons of America's elite, at universities throughout the land; but how more bitterly eloquent was the son of a son of a slave, refusing to do the bidding of his 'masters': 'I ain't got no quarrel with the VietCong....no VietCong ever called me a nigger.'
Man, superman, legend. As a hater of boxing, and even after the horrible recent rollcall of deaths of my childhood heroes, this is the one I mourn the most. Can any other man of the 20th century compare, for strength, for integrity, for dignity, for sharpness of mind and grace of body? I can't think of one. Good bye, big man. RIP.
