ali: king of the world
muhammad ali and the face of america
.::phillip harvey

"I'm pretty."
Cassius Clay

According to lore, Muhammad Ali was seated at one end of an extraordinarily long banquet table.  At the other end of the table sat Idi Amin, staring impassively at Ali from behind the barrel of a gun.  Moments earlier, Amin had challenged “The Great Muhammad Ali,” to a fight for which the gun was either a kind of inducement or a harbinger of what such a ‘fist fight’ would entail.  After several tense moments, the incident would soon dissolve into belly laughs from the amused Amin, a man known to be full of jokes.  For even the most notorious of history’s dictators loved “The Greatest.”  Even Idi Amin had a need for Muhammad Ali. 

Such is the legacy of the man who wore the title of the World’s most recognizable human being long before more recent contenders such as Michael Jordan, Madonna or Barack Obama could claim the same.  Of all the legacies that Ali can lay claim to it was his position at the forefront of the modern Americanization of the world that may be his most lasting. 

By the time of his meeting with Amin, Ali was years into his world tour. Overseas, nations could pony up in amounts that the American sites such as Madison Square Garden simply couldn’t. Ali became the personal embodiment of the sport and took his act around the universe.  Language was no barrier. French, Spanish, Tag Along it didn’t matter as Ali could barely read English and it never stopped him from successfully navigating the USA.  Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., though birthed in Louisville, Kentucky, was born to the world.

This didn’t happen all at once.  Ali’s conquering of the world followed an arc that paralleled his life.  In his earliest incarnation, Cassius Clay plotted a path to the Heavyweight championship through the United Kingdom.  Aghast at the loud boisterous American Negro, Britains came out to see Clay get punched in the mouth.  This was a common theme in the early Ali’s life as people in the US and abroad paid good money to see the Louisville Lip buttoned.     

After taking the title from the over-matched Sonny Liston, Clay had effectively toppled two icons of his day.  One was the here-to-fore indestructible Liston as Heavyweight Champion of the World, the other was Malcolm X as the mainstream face of the Nation of Islam and Black resistance.  In days he went from Cassius Clay to Cassius X to Muhammad Ali.  The world took note.

For his first overseas tour as the newly crowned king, the champ visited Ghana and Egypt, where his new name harkened back to an earlier Muhammad Ali, a historic man credited as the father of modern Egypt. After doing the twist at a concert, railing against integration and meeting with Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, he headed to the birth place of civilization. The new Ali rode through the desert with Gamal Nassar, the former leader of Egypt and primary bad man of the Middle-East, and reveled in the adulation heaped upon him for bringing the Heavyweight crown to Islam.

Back home, however, the storms were gathering. After winning the religious war with Floyd Patterson—a devout Christian that insisted on calling Ali by his “slave name”—in his second title defense, Ali signed with Main Bout, a promotion company headed by a delegation of Muslims and pro football Hall-of-Famer turned activist Jim Brown.  Main Bout was the most progressive of black power manifestations in the Black Power era.  The backlash was immediate and strong.  The Black owned company stood on the precipice of controlling the boxing world and a nation, already angry at Ali for his threats to reject induction into the army, was simply not ready for such a realization. 

The first strike was the cancellation of a bout with Ernie Terrell, who had assumed the WBA Heavyweight crown that was taken from Ali due to his religious affiliation.  Ali and Main Bout were forced to Canada after US city after US city withdrew as possible host sites.  Ali would make his next 3 title defenses in Europe to enthusiastic audiences who still yearned, in vain, to see him defeated and his proven economic viability allowed him to finish off his first reign as heavyweight champion of the world stateside and undefeated.

The next time he hit the world stage, things would be different.

“I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong”

Muhammad Ali

Ali’s refusal to be drafted into the Vietnam conflict on moral and religious grounds struck a chord with people who felt oppressed around the world, dissenters who resented what they saw as US aggression and people who respected his sacrifice on principle. In Pakistan a demonstrator fasted outside the American consulate in protest.  Large rallies were held outside the US Embassy in Guyana, Egypt and Great Britain.  Ali’s three year expulsion from boxing for refusing to step forward had catapulted him 10 steps ahead in the eyes of the world. 

When the former champ returned to the world stage as a king in search of his crown, he was now the fully formed Muhammad Ali.  His journey back to the Heavyweight throne minted a man that transcended sports and country while seeming to continually defy the physical limitations of simple humanity.  His tag phrase “I’m Pretty,” became a universal call for self love instead of an individual boast.  Most of all he was a free man in both a literal and, more importantly, symbolic sense. This, above all, made him one of the most unique men on earth.

Paradoxically, Ali, by virtue of this status, had become a symbol of speaking truth to power but was regularly bought in to salve the masses by the very symbols of abuse he railed against at home. In each place Ali fought there was a motive and/or hunger that his presence was meant to fill.  

In Zaire, it was the eagerness of a ruthless dictator attempting to refract the glory of a re-born country moved from the colonial rule of the Belgians to the tyrannical rule of Mobutu.  The imagery of barefoot Zairians running past shanties along side Ali as they chanted his name is permanently emblazoned on the mind.  When Ali regained the crown, the world cried in jubilation.  The barefoot Zairians that had snuck inside the arena in Kinshasa, and others just like them across the globe, cried the loudest.

When Ali and Joe Frazier arrived in the Philippines for the “Thrilla in Manilla,” the last installment of their trilogy they found a country on the verge of civil war. President Ferdinand Marcos had imposed Martial Law and the scorn of the international community glared on the Southeast Asian nation.  In a country where poverty was persistent and cruel, the fight was being staged as an elaborate public relations event where a global audience could notice Marco’s honorable fight against corruption in government and the absence of tanks on the Filipino streets.

But along with a national marketing campaign, viewers received a blood struggle that held all of the macabre desperation many Filipinos felt their own personal lives had devolved into. Once again, Ali emerged victorious but he was never the same fighter or the same man.  He had grown old overnight.  In place of the magnificent reservoir of skill he had spent a lifetime building, not to mention the loquaciousness that had been such a part of his public persona, was the “Ali Mall,” the Philippines’ first multi-level shopping mall.  The structure was named in his honor and built on his blood.   

Still the party went on. For a short time, the champion of the world could be rented to come to your country and make your servants feel as if they, like him, were the king of the world. When the fight was over the mirage would disappear. Ali, with entourage intact, was on to the next country like a traveling circus.

There was the bizarre fight against the Japanese wrestler Antonio Inoki in Japan in what could be described as the first Mixed Martial Arts fight, but most would rather not think of at all. In Turkey, he suddenly announced his retirement from the ring to dedicate himself fully to the Islamic cause before quickly recanting and resuming his boxing career.  In San Juan, people mobbed the champ and brought the island of Puerto Rico to a stand still in a collective awe.  In Kuala Lumpur, Ali thrilled at the chance to fight in front of a sea of Muslims. The traveling circus would end in Nassau, Bahamas, a beautiful and proud city by any definition but a back alley in boxing terms. Muhammad Ali, the greatest boxer of all time, ended his career there, inauspiciously. Inconceivably. Appropriately.

"A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life."
Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali, the face of Americanization, would however continue his engagement with the world in a new form.  Jimmy Carter asked Ali to lobby African nations to join the US boycott of the 1980 Olympics.  The diplomatic mission was a disaster as the leaders of the targeted nations were insulted at the notion of Carter purposely sending a black celebrity to sway black nations on issues of such importance. 

Unperturbed, Ali continued with his new mission in life, growing more comfortable and effective at each turn.  He met with Saddam Hussein during the run up to the first Gulf War and secured 15 American hostages.  He delivered medical supplies to Cuba and traveled on goodwill missions to the lost world of North Korea. Ali even went to Vietnam to negotiate the release of American prisoners still held over from the war.  

Today, the transformation that started in the heat of the Philippines is complete.  Like the magician he fancies himself to be he has made the old Ali disappear and in his stead is the messenger of peace. Boxing no longer defines the man whose name was once synonymous with controlled violence.  Though others may have eclipsed Ali as the most recognizable person on earth in the nearly 50 years after he entered the World stage, the prettiest face that America has to offer still belongs to Muhammad Ali.