Oliver Wendell Holmes once observed that every profession is great that is greatly pursued. Boxing in the early ’60s, largely controlled by the Mob, was in a moribund state until Muhammad Ali–Cassius Clay, in those days–appeared on the scene. “Just when the sweet science appears to lie like a painted ship upon a painted ocean,” wrote A.J. Liebling, “a new Hero…comes along like a Moran tug to pull it out of the ocean.” Though Ali won the gold medal at the Rome Olympics in 1960, at the time the experts didn’t think much of his boxing skills. His head, eyes wide, seemed to float above the action. Rather than slip a punch, the traditional defensive move, it was his habit to sway back, bending at the waist–a tactic that appalled the experts. Lunacy. Nor did they approve of his personal behavior: the self-promotions , his affiliation with the Muslims and giving up his “slave name” for Muhammad Ali , the poetry or the quips . At the press conferences, the reporters were sullen. Ali would turn on them. “Why ain’t you taking notice?” or “Why ain’t you laughing?” It was odd that they weren’t. He was an engaging combination of sass and sweetness and naivete. His girlfriend disclosed that the first time he was kissed, he fainted. Merriment always seemed to be bubbling just below the surface, even when the topics were somber. When reporters asked about his affiliation with Islam, he joked that he was going to have four wives: one to shine his shoes, one to feed him grapes, one to rub oil on his muscles and one named Peaches. In his boyhood he was ever the prankster and the practical joker. His idea of fun was to frighten his parents–putting a sheet over his head and jumping out at them from a closet, or tying a string to a bedroom curtain and making it move after his parents had gone to bed. The public as well had a hard time accepting him. His fight for the heavyweight championship in Miami against Sonny Liston was sparsely attended. Indeed, public sentiment was for Liston, a Mob-controlled thug, to take care of the lippy upstart. Liston concurred, saying he was going to put his fist so far down his opponent’s throat, he was going to have trouble removing it. Then, of course, three years after Ali defended the championship, there came the public vilification for his refusal to join the Army during the Vietnam War–“I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong”–one of the more telling remarks of the era. The government prosecuted him for draft dodging, and the boxing commissions took away his license. He was idle for 3 1/2 years at the peak of his career. In 1971 the Supreme Court ruled that the government had acted improperly. But Ali bore the commissions no ill will. There were no lawsuits to get his title back through the courts. No need, he said, to punish them for doing what they thought was right. Quite properly, in his mind, he won back the title in the ring, knocking out George Foreman in the eighth round of their fight in Zaire–the “Rumble in the Jungle.”
