So much has been said about Muhammad Ali as an athlete, an
entertainer (for he surely was that), and as a civil rights icon. The guy was a
hero in a bunch of ways, but one of those ways isn't talked about as much,
because it made us all “uncomfortable” while it was going on. I'm referring to
his dealing with Parkinson's, and the fact that he didn't shrink from the
spotlight even after he admitted he had it. (He had been denying it for
some time before that.)
His obits were accompanied by images of him as a champion boxer, a lot
of them using the famous photo of him looming over Sonny Liston (which in and
of itself was a victory but a cloudy one – read Nick Tosches' The
Devil and Sonny Liston for more details). However, the most
stirringly heroic image of his life for me wasn't when he was young, lean,
clever, articulate, and “pretty” (the word he most often used in interviews to describe
himself). It was when he lit the Olympic torch in 1996.
At the time I was younger and found it upsetting, seeing him
in that condition. Now that I'm older I realize that it truly was a heroic act
– letting the world see him in that state, one hand shaking wildly. Yet he did
it, proudly showing he could do the task he was called up on to do. He was relatively young, a middle-aged man of 54 at that time and gravely
afflicted by Parkinson’s, and while he was not the Ali of old (the loss of his
dazzling verbal skills was indeed heartbreaking), he was still an athlete and a
proud individual. The only footage of the event that is not punctuated by unnecessary talking heads can be found here.
The last surprise he had for us was when he spoke about the 9/11 attacks on a charity program, urging Americans not to associate the attacks with the Muslim faith as a whole. By that point Muhammad no longer consented to interviews, and the public perception was that he was incapable of audible speech. But he came out and delivered a message of tolerance that, while clearly rehearsed and scripted, was a triumph for those who had written him off as a “sad victim of Parkinson’s.”
The last surprise he had for us was when he spoke about the 9/11 attacks on a charity program, urging Americans not to associate the attacks with the Muslim faith as a whole. By that point Muhammad no longer consented to interviews, and the public perception was that he was incapable of audible speech. But he came out and delivered a message of tolerance that, while clearly rehearsed and scripted, was a triumph for those who had written him off as a “sad victim of Parkinson’s.”
He of course wasn’t the Ali of old, playing with words like
he toyed with his opponents, but it was a touching moment to hear him speak
about something that mattered to him deeply. Even while stricken with an
irreversible ailment he was a man of principle who was fine with being seen in
public in an “unflattering” (but still majestic) state.
Those are the two moments that I immediately flashed on when
I heard about his death, but as a bonus I’ll just add this particular encounter between Ali and Prince I discovered in researching those clips. Here the
normally quiet Purple One speaks about his reverence for Ali at a July
1997 press conference promoting an upcoming charity concert.
Ali’s condition in the last three decades (plus) made many argue that he should’ve quit boxing sooner, or that the sport should be outlawed entirely. Both of those options make sense, but if the latter had happened before 1960, we would’ve never been treated to some of the greatest moments in the sport, courtesy of the “prettiest” of them all.
