While more than enough things will be said about boxing great Muhammad Ali, who passed away at the age of 74, I just want to give my personal point of view about the greatest boxing champion in my lifetime.
I wasn't even born when he started his career of greatness, winning his Olympic gold medal in the light heavyweight division in Rome. I was just six when he lost his heavyweight title, losing to the United States Government because of a conflict of his religious beliefs. Although it took three years, apparently Ali had a point when his conviction was overturned.
Although I started playing sports at a young age, I wasn't really into sports figures. I just enjoyed playing. One of the early figures that I looked up to was actually Hank Aaron, and only because I actually saw him break Babe Ruth home run record live as it happened on TV.
And then came Ali. It's a difference between having confidence and today's more popular word, swagger. In Ali's case, he had both. In fact, saying that Ali had swagger is not really doing him justice. While some people called him a trash talker, for me you're not talking trash if you follow thru and actually do what you say. For me, I never got the flavor of him being a bully.
Except when you called him Cassius.
For an pre-teen urban kid of color in the inner city, Ali helped to give me both the pride and confidence that I could succeed in anything if I put my mind to it. And that was a big deal for me at the time.
