Post by Admin on Sept 17, 2019 16:37:33 GMT -4
Muhammad Ali, previously known as Cassius Clay, posed for a photo shoot in 1966.
For much of his life, Muhammad Ali lived on the front page of newspapers around the world. Handsome and outspoken, Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the 20th Century enraged and enchanted people for decades.
Now, 16 months after Ali’s death, Jonathan Eig’s new 623-page biography is being hailed as the first book to dive deep enough into the life of this unique man — boxer, Olympian, world heavyweight champion, black activist, Muslim, beloved icon — to capture so much of his complexity.
Among the most interesting bits from Ali: A Life:
Ali's talent may relate to his dyslexia. Eig writes that the Louisville, Ky., teenager then known as Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. was probably dyslexic, and the reading disorder could have given him an advantage in the ring because he’d developed an ability to read visual cues faster. The author adds, “It may be why Cassius Clay had a gift for anticipating a punch and backing or sliding out of its way.”
He had an ambivalent, complicated relationship with Malcolm X. Ali became close to fellow Muslim Malcolm X, his friend and mentor, until he split with the activist to follow Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad shortly before Malcolm’s murder in 1965. “Decades later, Ali would say that turning his back on Malcolm was one of the biggest regrets of his life,” Eig writes.
There was very early evidence he had suffered serious brain damage. Ali, who would eventually battle Parkinson’s syndrome, was 35 when he beat Earnie Shavers on Sept. 29, 1977. Although Ali won, his ring doctor Ferdie Pacheco resigned and asked the New York State Athletic Commission to pull Ali’s boxing license for the sake of his declining health (including his failing kidneys). Eig quotes Pacheco: Ali “didn’t think he was brain damaged. He didn’t remember things. He was stuttering and stammering…. I couldn’t stop him. I tried.” The biographer notes that Ali took “somewhere around 200,000 blows to the head and body” in his boxing career.
His true love was first wife Sonji Roi. According to Ali’s brother, Rahaman Ali, the greatest ordeal of his brother’s life was not Parkinson’s or losing boxing bouts or his legal troubles when he refused induction into the U.S. military during the Vietnam War, declaring himself a conscientious objector. A bigger hardship was his breakup with his first wife, a beautiful dancer, model and barmaid who was not a Muslim. Roi’s refusal to dress in a modest Muslim manner enraged Ali and ended the marriage. “He went through hell,” his brother told Eig. “She’s the only one he ever really loved. His true love, his only one.” (Ali had four wives and many, many liaisons).
How he influenced the movie Rocky. In 1975, Ali fought a journeyman white boxer named Chuck Wepner, known as the Bayonne Bleeder for his unfortunate tendency to gush blood when hit in the face. According to Eig, the Ali-Wepner fight would inspire Sylvester Stallone to write a screenplay about a working-class boxer who “goes the distance” with the reigning heavyweight champion. Rocky would win the Best Picture Oscar in 1977.
s a world champion boxer, social activist, and pop culture icon, Ali was the subject of numerous creative works including books, films, music, video games, TV shows, and other. Muhammad Ali was often dubbed the world's "most famous" person in the media. Several of his fights were watched by an estimated 1–2 billion viewers between 1974 and 1980, and his lighting of the torch at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics was watched by an estimated 3.5 billion viewers.
Muhammad Ali pop art painting by John Stango
Ali appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated on 37 different occasions, second only to Michael Jordan he also appeared on the cover of Time Magazine 5 times, the most of any athlete. In 2015, Harris Poll found that Ali was one of the three most recognizable athletes in the United States, along with Michael Jordan and Babe Ruth.
On the set of Freedom Road Ali met Canadian singer-songwriter Michel (also known as Robert Williams, a co-founder of The Kindness Offensive and subsequently helped create Michel's album entitled The First Flight of the Gizzelda Dragon and an unaired television special featuring them both.
Ali was the subject of the British television program This Is Your Life in 1978 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews. Ali was featured in Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, a 1978 DC Comics comic book pitting the champ against the superhero. In 1979, Ali guest-starred as himself in an episode of the NBC sitcom Diff'rent Strokes. The show's title itself was inspired by the quote "Different strokes for different folks" popularized in 1966 by Ali, who also inspired the title of the 1967 Sylvester Johnson song "Different Strokes", one of the most sampled songs in pop music history.
He also wrote several best-selling books about his career, including The Greatest: My Own Story and The Soul of a Butterfly. The Muhammad Ali effect, named after Ali, is a term that came into use in psychology in the 1980s, as he stated in The Greatest: My Own Story: "I only said I was the greatest, not the smartest." According to this effect, when people are asked to rate their intelligence and moral behavior in comparison to others, people will rate themselves as more moral, but not more intelligent than others.
When We Were Kings, a 1996 documentary about the Rumble in the Jungle, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, and the 2001 biopic Ali garnered an Oscar nomination for Will Smith in the category of Best Actor for his portrayal of Ali. The latter film was directed by Michael Mann, and mixed reviews, with many critics praising Smith's portrayal of Ali. Prior to making the film, Smith rejected the role until Ali requested that he accept it. Smith said the first thing Ali told him was: "Man, you're almost pretty enough to play me."
In 2002, Ali was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the entertainment industry. His star is the only one to be mounted on a vertical surface, out of deference to his request that the name Muhammad—a name he shares with the Islamic prophet—not be walked upon.
The Trials of Muhammad Ali, a documentary directed by Bill Siegel that focuses on Ali's refusal of the draft during the Vietnam War, opened in Manhattan on August 23, 2013. A made-for-TV movie called Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight, also in 2013, dramatized the same aspect of Ali's life.