Muhammad Ali: A Tribute to the Greatest. Thomas Hauser

retire the national debt. On-site construction has begun and television planning is underway. Eventually, the Olympic torch will be transported to the United States. The triumphal procession that follows will lead to the highlight of the games’ opening ceremonies – lighting the Olympic flame.

      Traditionally, someone from the host country ignites the flame. At the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, Rafer Johnson received the torch and carried it up the Coliseum steps to rekindle the world’s most celebrated fire. Last year in Barcelona, a Spanish archer shot an arrow into a cauldron, thereby reawakening the flame. The eyes of the world are always on this moment. One wonders who will be chosen to fulfil the honour in Atlanta.

      The view here is that the choice is obvious. One man embodies the Olympic spirit to perfection. He’s a true American in every sense of the word and the foremost citizen of the world. At age 18, he won a gold medal in Rome fighting under the name Cassius Clay. Since then, he has traversed the globe, spreading joy wherever he goes. Atlanta has special meaning for him. It was there, after three years of exile from boxing, that he returned to face Jerry Quarry in the ring. He loves the spotlight, and the spotlight loves him. Indeed, one can almost hear him saying, ‘When I carry that Olympic torch, every person in the world will be watching. Babies in their mother’s tummies will be kicking and hollering for the TV to be turned on. It will be bigger than Michael Jackson. Bigger than Elvis. Bigger than the Pyramids. Bigger than me fighting Sonny Liston, George Foreman and Joe Frazier all at the same time. Bigger than the Olympics –’

      Wait a minute, Muhammad. This is the Olympics.

      Anyway, you get the point. So I have a simple proposal to make. I’d like the International Olympic Committee to announce that, as its gift to the world, Muhammad Ali has been chosen to light the Olympic flame in Atlanta. Muhammad has already given us one memorable Olympic moment as Cassius Clay. Now let him share another with the world as Muhammad Ali. That way, the 26th Olympiad will truly be ‘the greatest’.

ALI AS DIPLOMAT: ‘NO! NO! NO! DON’T!’

      (2001)

      In 1980, in response to the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, the Carter Administration sought to organise a boycott of the Moscow Olympics. As part of that effort, it sent Muhammad Ali to five African nations to gather support for America’s position.

      Ali’s trip was a disaster. Time magazine later called it ‘the most bizarre diplomatic mission in recent US history’. Some African officials viewed Ali’s presence as a racial insult. ‘Would the United States send Chris Evert to negotiate with London?’ one Tanzanian diplomat demanded. Ali himself seemed confused regarding the facts underlying his role and was unable to explain why African nations should boycott the Moscow Olympics when, four years earlier, the United States had refused to join twenty-nine African countries in boycotting the Montreal Olympics over South Africa’s place in the sporting world.

      ‘Maybe I’m being used to do something that ain’t right,’ Ali conceded at one point. In Kenya, he announced that Jimmy Carter had put him ‘on the spot’ and sent him ‘around the world to take the whupping over American policies’ and said that, if he’d known the ‘whole history of America and South Africa’, he ‘probably wouldn’t have made the trip’.

      That bit of history is relevant now because Jack Valenti (president of the Motion Picture Association of America) has unveiled tentative plans for a one-minute public service announcement featuring Ali that will be broadcast throughout the Muslim world. The thrust of the message is that America’s war on terrorism is not a war against Islam. The public service spot would be prepared by Hollywood 9/11 – a group that was formed after movie industry executives met on 11 November with Karl Rove (a senior political advisor to George Bush). In Valenti’s words, Ali would be held out as ‘the spokesman for Muslims in America’.

      The proposed public service announcement might be good publicity for the movie industry, but it’s dangerous politics.

      Ali is universally respected and loved, but he isn’t a diplomat. He doesn’t understand the complexities of geopolitics. His heart is pure, but his judgements and actions are at times unwise. An example of this occurred on 19 December 2001, at a fund-raising event for the proposed Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville – which is intended to be an educational facility designed to promote tolerance and understanding among all people. At the fund-raiser, Ali rose to tell several jokes.

      ‘No! No! No! Don’t,’ his wife Lonnie cried.

      Despite her plea, Ali proceeded. ‘What’s the difference between a Jew and a canoe?’ he asked. Then he supplied the answer: ‘A canoe tips.’ That was followed by: ‘A black, a Puerto Rican and a Mexican are in a car. Who’s driving?’ The answer: ‘The police.’

      Afterwards, Sue Carls (a spokesperson for the Ali Center) sought to minimise the damage, explaining, ‘These are not new jokes. Muhammad tells them all the time because he likes to make people laugh and he shocks people to make a point.’ Two days later, Lonnie Ali added, ‘Even the Greatest can tell bad jokes.’

      The problem is, this is a situation where misjudgements and bad jokes can cost lives.

      Ali is not a bigot. He tells far more ‘nigger’ jokes than jokes about Hispanics and Jews. But Ali sometimes speaks and acts without considering the implications of his words and conduct. And he can be swayed by rhetoric; particularly when the speaker is a Muslim cleric with a following in some portion of the world.

      What happens if, six months from now, Ali makes an intemperate statement about Israel? What happens if Ali calls for a halt to all American military action against terrorism in the heartfelt belief that a halt will save innocent lives? Will he then still be ‘the spokesman for Muslims in America’?

      Muhammad Ali leads best when he leads by example and by broad statements in support of tolerance and understanding among all people. To ask more of him in the current incendiary situation is looking for trouble.

GHOSTS OF MANILA

      (2001)

      Albert Einstein once remarked, ‘Nature, to be sure, distributes her gifts unevenly among her children. But it strikes me as unfair, and even in bad taste, to select a few of them for boundless admiration, attributing superhuman powers of mind and character to them.’

      But society did just that with Muhammad Ali. Few people have ever received accolades equal to those that have been showered upon him. Indeed, Wilfrid Sheed, who himself was sceptical of Ali’s merit as a social figure, once observed that boxing’s eras would be forever known as BC (before Clay) and AD (Ali Domini).

      Enter Mark Kram. Kram is a very good writer. How else can one describe a man who refers to Chuck Wepner as having a face that looks as though it has been ‘embroidered by a tipsy church lady’, and likens Joe Frazier’s visage after Ali–Frazier I to ‘a frieze of a lab experiment that was a disaster’.

      Kram covered boxing for Sports Illustrated for eleven years. Now, a quarter of a century later, he has written Ghosts of Manila: The Fateful Blood Feud Between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. The book, in the first instance, is the story of two men whose rivalry was ugly, glorious, brutal and enthralling. And secondarily, Kram declares, ‘This book is intended to be a corrective to the years of stenography that have produced the Ali legend. Cheap myth corruscates the man. The wire scheme for his sculpture is too big.’

      Thus Kram seeks to raise Joe Frazier to a level virtually equal to that of Ali in the ring and perhaps above him in terms of character. In so doing, he portrays what he believes to be the dark side of Ali.

      Ghosts of Manila is divided into four parts. They cover, in order, (1) Ali and Frazier in retirement; (2) the emergence of both men as fighters and in the public consciousness; (3) their three fights; and (4) the two men, again, in retirement.

      Kram concedes