Muhammad Ali: Why 'The Greatest' Was the Right Title

Before he was Muhammad Ali, he was Cassius Clay — a mouthy 18-year-old from Louisville, Kentucky who won a gold medal at the 1960 Rome Olympics and then said things no boxer had ever said before.

"I am the greatest," he announced, to no one in particular and everyone at once. "I am the prettiest." He recited poems predicting the round in which he would knock out his opponents. He called his opponents ugly and slow and scared.

They thought he was performing. He wasn't. Or rather: the performance was real.

The Louisville Lip

Cassius Clay turned professional in 1960 and went 19–0 before getting a title shot against Sonny Liston in February 1964. Liston was considered unbeatable — a former convict with organized crime connections who had destroyed Floyd Patterson in the first round, twice, and who exuded such menace that most sportswriters predicted Clay would be hurt.

Clay made predictions all week. He called Liston a "big ugly bear." He drove to Liston's house at 2am and made noise outside. The prefight weigh-in was chaos — Clay's blood pressure was so elevated the ringside doctor thought he was terrified. Liston stared at him with contempt.

Then the fight started. Clay moved. Liston swung. Clay wasn't there. For six rounds, Clay made the most feared man in boxing look slow and confused. At the start of the seventh round, Liston sat on his stool and did not get up. He said his shoulder was injured. Clay — about to be Muhammad Ali — leaped onto the ropes.

"I am the greatest! I shook up the world!"

He was 22 years old.

The Name

The morning after the fight, Clay announced he was a member of the Nation of Islam and was changing his name to Muhammad Ali.

This was, in 1964, more controversial than it sounds today. The Nation of Islam was viewed by mainstream America as a radical separatist organization. The heavyweight champion of the world — the most visible athlete in the country — was aligned with it.

Sportswriters refused to use his name. Television announcers called him Clay for years. He corrected them, over and over, every time.

"Cassius Clay is a slave name," he said. "I didn't choose it, and I don't want it."

The Draft

In 1967, Ali was reclassified 1-A by the Selective Service and ordered to report for induction into the US Army during the Vietnam War. He refused.

"I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong," he said. "No Viet Cong ever called me nigger."

He was stripped of his heavyweight title. His boxing license was revoked in every state. At 25, at the peak of his athletic career, he was banned from fighting for three and a half years. He was convicted of draft evasion and sentenced to five years in prison — a sentence he appealed and never served, but which hung over him for years.

He spent those years speaking on college campuses. He became, during his imposed exile from boxing, one of the most prominent voices in America against the Vietnam War and for civil rights.

In 1971, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned his conviction. He came back to boxing.

The Fights That Defined an Era

The three and a half years away had cost him something — the reflexes that had made him untouchable. The Ali who returned was different: he absorbed punishment that the earlier Ali would have avoided. What he had instead was extraordinary: a chin, a will, and a strategic intelligence that his opponents consistently underestimated.

Ali vs. Frazier I (Fight of the Century, 1971): Both undefeated, both legitimate claims to the heavyweight title. Frazier knocked Ali down in the 15th round. Frazier won a unanimous decision. It was the first professional loss of Ali's career. It was also one of the greatest fights ever contested.

The Rumble in the Jungle (1974): George Foreman had demolished Frazier in two rounds. Everyone said Ali, now 32, was too old and too slow to survive Foreman. Ali developed the rope-a-dope: he leaned against the ropes and let Foreman punch himself out for seven rounds. In the eighth, he knocked Foreman out. He was heavyweight champion of the world again. When We Were Kings, the documentary filmed during the bout in Kinshasa, Zaire, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1997. It remains one of the greatest sports films ever made.

The Thrilla in Manila (1975): Ali vs. Frazier for the third time, in the Philippines. Fourteen rounds of brutality in 110-degree heat. Frazier's trainer stopped the fight before the 15th round. Ali later said it was the closest thing to dying he had ever experienced.

He retired, unretired, and finally retired again in 1981 with a record of 56–5. He held the heavyweight championship three times — the only man to do so until Evander Holyfield matched the record years later.

After Boxing

Parkinson's disease began to affect Ali visibly in the early 1980s. The diagnosis was eventually made official. The man who had been defined by the speed of his speech and movement now moved slowly and spoke with great effort.

He remained the most recognizable person on earth through it all. He lit the Olympic torch at the 1996 Atlanta Games — his hands trembling, his face composed. The stadium went silent and then erupted. There was nothing to say that the moment didn't already say.

He died in 2016 at 74. Among the pallbearers at his funeral were Will Smith (who played him in the 2001 biopic), former President Bill Clinton, and Billy Crystal.

What Made Him Greatest

David Remnick's King of the World argues that Ali was the most important American athlete of the 20th century — not just because of what he did in the ring, but because of the moment he chose to do it in, and the things he said out loud that other people were afraid to say.

This is correct. Ali fought the best fighters of two different boxing generations. He refused military service at the cost of three and a half years of his career. He changed his name and said it was his right to do so. He said the things he believed and he kept saying them.

"Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee," he said. "The hands can't hit what the eyes can't see."

He was right about that too.