Yesterday, news broke that Muhammad
Ali, the boxer and civil rights champion who dubbed himself ‘The
Greatest’ before dedicating his life to live up to that billing,
had dead at the age of 74. The legendary boxer breathed his last at a
hospital, where he had spent the previous few days being treated for
respiratory complications. Ali battled Parkinson’s disease for
three decades, a neurological condition that over time, robbed him of
both his eloquence and his physical dexterity.
He was born Cassius Marcellus Clay on
January 17, 1942 in Louisville, Kentucky, and started boxing at the
tender age of 12, before going on to win Golden Gloves titles, before
heading to the 1960 Olympics in Rome, where he won a gold medal as a
light heavyweight.
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His contribution to the world at large
is stuff of legend, right from the time that he burst onto the global
scene in the early 1960s, when as a young heavyweight champion he
converted to Islam and refused to serve in the Vietnam War. While Ali
was doubtlessly someone who fought the establishment to become a
symbol of strength, eloquence, conscience and courage, his fights
against other men became spectacles, when he took on battles that
mattered far more.
