Mohamed Ali

From a stolen bicycle to Olympic gold

Cassius Marcellus Clay was born on 17 January 1942 in Louisville, Kentucky. At 12 his bicycle was stolen. Joe Martin, a police officer who coached young boxers in the gym next door, suggested he learn to fight rather than hunt for the thief. His first amateur bout came in 1954, won on points. Six Kentucky Golden Gloves titles, two national Golden Gloves titles and two national AAU titles followed, for an amateur record of 100 wins and 8 losses.

At the Rome Games in 1960 he won light-heavyweight gold by beating Poland's Zbigniew Pietrzykowski in the final. He turned professional on 29 October 1960 against Tunney Hunsaker and put his preparation in the hands of Angelo Dundee, who stayed in his corner to the end of his career. By the close of 1963 he was 19-0, with 15 stoppages.

Three-time heavyweight champion of the world

On 25 February 1964 in Miami Beach he faced Sonny Liston, an 8-1 favourite. Liston did not come out for the seventh round. At 22, Clay was heavyweight champion of the world. He took the name Muhammad Ali that same year, after converting to Islam. In April 1967 he refused induction into the US Army: the boxing bodies stripped him of his title and no state would license him for more than three years. He returned in October 1970 in Atlanta against Jerry Quarry.

The 1970s brought the most famous fights in boxing history. On 8 March 1971 at Madison Square Garden, Joe Frazier handed him his first professional defeat in the Fight of the Century. Ali took his revenge on 28 January 1974. On 30 October 1974 in Kinshasa he regained the title from George Foreman by knockout in the eighth round, after absorbing punishment on the ropes for seven rounds: the rope-a-dope. On 1 October 1975 in Manila, Frazier's corner stopped their third fight before the fifteenth round.

Outpointed by Leon Spinks on 15 February 1978, he won the belt back on 15 September that year in New Orleans and became the first man to win the world heavyweight title three times. His last two fights, against Larry Holmes on 2 October 1980 and Trevor Berbick on 11 December 1981, were both defeats. Professional record: 61 fights, 56 wins, 37 of them inside the distance, 5 losses.

A middleweight's style in a heavyweight's body

Ali boxed with his hands low, slipped punches with his torso and head, and moved 95 to 100 kilos with the footwork of a middleweight. His jab landed from long range, his combinations came while moving backwards, and the Ali shuffle, a fast stamp on the spot, unsettled opponents before the punch. He predicted the round of his knockouts before fights and taunted opponents in front of the microphones, a showmanship borrowed from the wrestler Gorgeous George.

Ali on screen

Ali appeared as himself as early as 1962 in Requiem for a Heavyweight, then in the documentaries a.k.a. Cassius Clay (1970) and William Klein's Muhammad Ali, the Greatest (1974). In Tom Gries's The Greatest (1977) he played himself, with Ernest Borgnine as Angelo Dundee. The television film Freedom Road (1979) gave him a character part, Gideon Jackson, a former slave elected to the Senate, opposite Kris Kristofferson.

Leon Gast's When We Were Kings (1996), about the Kinshasa fight, won the Academy Award for best documentary feature. Michael Mann's Ali (2001) earned Will Smith an Oscar nomination for best actor. The documentaries Facing Ali (2009), The Trials of Muhammad Ali (2013) and I Am Ali (2014) followed, as did Ken Burns's four-part series (2021).

Legacy

On 19 July 1996 in Atlanta he lit the Olympic cauldron with a trembling hand: he had announced in 1984 that he had Parkinson's disease. In 1999 Sports Illustrated named him Sportsman of the Century and the BBC its Sports Personality of the Century. He died on 3 June 2016 in Scottsdale, Arizona, aged 74. For a boxer today, his fights with Liston, Frazier and Foreman remain lessons in distance, rhythm and how to handle a stronger opponent.