I remember Ali

I remember the first Sonny Liston vs Cassius Clay fight. I lived in a one-room bed-sitter in Upper Rathmines Dublin at the time, and on the night of the fight it was crammed with around a dozen Derry students (all male, alas) who like me were studying in UCD. They were attracted to my place by the fact that I was the only one of them who had a transistor radio, and therefore was in a position to let them listen to a live commentary of the fight. Officially my landlord, who lived downstairs, forbade visitors after 10.00 pm, but he turned a blind eye that night. The fight began around midnight and our delight when the Louisville Lip took out Liston was unbridled.

The man about to become Muhammad Ali attracted our support for all sorts of reasons. He was anti-establishment and we warmed to that. He was outspoken and outrageously funny, and he was good-looking. Above all, he did indeed float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. There was nothing not to like.

He rose even further in the eyes of young people a few years later, when he refused to enlist and go to Vietnam. “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong” Ali said, and it put succinctly what many young people throughout the world felt about the US’s involvement in Vietnam.

Then there were those epic fights.   The 1967 one when he demolished Ernie Terrell, who’d refused to acknowledge Ali’s new identity. Ali pursued him round the ring with punches and taunts of “What’s my name? What’s my name?” There was the Rumble in the Jungle with George Foreman and the Thrillah in Manila with Joe Frazier. And so many more.

Ali had all the things that most young men (and huge numbers of young women) admired: looks, wit, a sense of fun, a refusal to submit to public pressures, a consummate performer in what we then considered the noble art of self-defence. Not that Ali engaged much in self-defence, apart from making his opponents miss. “Ah’m so pretty!” he would say, and point to his Adonis-like perfection of a face. The world’s photographers got him in his glory days, and there were few sights more impressive in the sporting world.

He brought delight to millions through his skills, inspiration to millions more through his self-confidence, hope to millions that an African-American could take on the forces of the US establishment and in the end win. As a TV guest he was God’s gift, as Michael Parkinson and many other chat-show hosts found out.

Now that he’s gone, in a perverse way it’s a relief. It allows us to put away the image of the bloated, mumbling wreck which Parkinson’s had reduced that noble body and mind to. The Greatest is now free to romp unencumbered in our imaginations, graceful and pretty and pretty-damn-near perfect for all time.

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a h-anam.

Footnote. Here he is,  as courageous outside the ring as in it…