Remembering an idol with feet of Clay

Years ago, long before this country became quite so cosmopolitan, a big black man appeared at the end of our road. Word, incorrectly, got out it was Muhammad Ali, which wasn't too infeasible given the great man was actually in town for a bout with Al "Blue" Lewis in Croke Park. Anyway, for the next few days, footballs and hurleys were discarded and everyone took to boxing in makeshift rings in front gardens; and everyone took to nursing headaches as a result of rushing unwisely into the world of pugilism.

The appeal of Ali was magnetic, and infectious. On Friday night, ITV showed Muhammad Ali: Through The Eyes of the World and it was revealing and disturbing, enthralling and, for its duration, totally fascinating. Old film, in grainy black and white and on to glorious technicolor, was used with dialogue from a wide range of associates of the boxer - family, friends, lawyers, handlers, writers, journalists, poets, artists and actors - to give us an insight into the man deemed as the greatest athlete of the 20th Century.

Ali was a man of contradictions. Raised as a Christian, in the Baptist tradition, before converting to Islam, he divorced his first wife Sonji Roi because she wouldn't wear dresses that were long enough. "A good example of living righteous," is how he described that decision. Yet, when he was fighting Joe Bugner, there were reports that he had "a hooker in every room on his (hotel) floor" and that he went from one room to another. He was, as the writer Hugh McIlvanney explained in the documentary, "quite randy." Maybe such an existence proved Ali was simply human, with human frailties, and, nowadays cared for by his fourth wife, and suffering from Parkinson's Disease, there is little evidence this man was indeed the greatest athlete of his and other generations. Which is why the throwback to his real glory days (warts and all) was so fulfilling, rekindling memories of a boxer who was simply the best.

Unlike many of the modern day boxers and so-called sports stars, Muhammad Ali had intelligence and charisma. In 1958, he made a phone call to the boxing trainer Angelo Dundee and told him, "I'm going to be the next Olympic champion." The teenage boxer made the journey from Lousiville to Miami Beach where Dundee had a gym. "He was the first guy in, and the last to leave," recalled Dundee. And so began a relationship that was to carry them to boxing greatness.

When Ali - known then as Cassius Clay - made his professional debut in October 1960, the motormouth was already in overdrive. In one of his first televised interviews, the reporter at one stage told him to "close your mouth," to which the boxer jokingly replied, "that's impossible .. . you keep that up and I am going to knock you out. I am the greatest."

It wasn't long before he had won the right to fight Sonny Liston, deemed invincible in the world of professional boxing. "He's too ugly to be the world champion," insisted Clay. "The world champion should be pretty, like me." And there were the famous rhymes to accompany such arrogance.

Of his impending bout with Liston, his eyes twinkled into the camera and he recited what he determined would occur in the eighth round of the contest: "Clay comes out to meet Liston, And Liston starts to retreat, If Liston goes back any farther, He'll end up in the ringside seats. Clay swings with his left, Clay swings with his right, Look at young Cassius carry the fight.

"Liston keeps backing, But there is not enough room, It's a matter of time, Ali goes boom. Now Liston disappears from view, The crowd's getting frantic, But our radar stations have picked him up, He's somewhere over the Atlantic."

His conversion to Islam led to him changing his name. "Cassius Clay is a black man's name, a slave name," he insisted. When he fought Ernie Terrell in a world championship bout, his opponent made the mistake of calling him Clay in the build-up to the fight. Ali took umbrage, and taunted the fighter throughout. "What's my name?" Ali constantly asked during the fight, pummelling his opponent.

It was what one contributor called "an angry time" in Ali's conversion. His refusal to be inducted into the US armed forces to fight in Vietnam - "No Viet Cong ever called me nigger," said Ali - led to him being stripped of his world titles. He was forced to give speeches on college campuses to scrimp a living. "All boxers would sell their soul to become the heavyweight champion of the world," said Richard Harris. "What did Ali do? He regained his soul by giving them up."

The musician BB King said he was "afraid" for Ali at that time. Remember, this was a time when Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated for being considered disloyal to the country. "It's remarkable he didn't get shot," admitted his lawyer, John Jay Hooker.

When American public opinion about the war in Vietnam changed, and Ali eventually made it back to the ring, he did so as "The People's Champion." What Dundee described as the "limo crowd" - stars of music and film - were among the crowd when he made a losing attempt to win back his title from Joe Frazier. In defeat though, Ali was a winner. "The heroism of his performance, the grace of how he handled defeat," according to McIlvanney, made Ali more popular than ever.

He was to defeat Frazier in a rematch, a title eliminator, and then defeated George Foreman to regain his heavyweight crown. Of course, the Ali story was to go on and on. He lost and won the title again for a record third time but was forced to box on long after he should have hung up his gloves. "It was like a drug," said the singer Tom Jones.

Others felt he needed the money. In his entourage, there were between 30 and 40 hangers-on. "He was ripped off," observed one contributor. Another told how he would give "the shirt of his back" to anyone. There was the time he was watching television and he saw a news item of a Jewish Home for the Aged in the Bronx that was to be closed down. He wrote out a cheque for $60,000, went to the home himself and handed the money over to the Rabbi.

There were many sides to Ali. Some likened him to Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela in the contribution he made to the world. Maybe, maybe not. But there can be no arguing with the belief of one contributor to an excellent sports documentary that Ali had "a gift from God to be one of a kind".