EULOGY Perhaps his was the name that was the most chanted across the globe. Though Indian Independence fighter Mahatma Gandhi, Catholic nun Mother Teresa and American civil activist Martin Luther King, Jr too wooed the world with their distinctive brands of charisma - three-time World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Muhammad Ali @ Cassius Marcellus Clay basked on his own pedestal.

Just as there could only be one Mahatma Gandhi, one Mother Teresa and one Martin Luther King, Jr, there can never be another Muhammad Ali.

Ali was a boxer, orator, poet, civil rights activist and a whole load of every other thing and in his own words he claimed: “I am the greatest thing that ever lived, I am the king of the world, I am the prettiest thing that ever lived, I am a bad man.”

And he tells the world why he is boxing’s baddest boy in this self-styled poem: “I have wrestled with an alligator, I have tussled with a whale, I have handcufffed lighting and put thunder in jail, I am bad! Just last week I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalised a brick, I was so mean, I made medicine sick. I’m bad!”

Ali mesmerised the world with his science of boxing and his art of talking. For his boxing, he proclaimed himself ‘The Greatest’. And for his talking, the media which adored him, gave him the monikers ‘The Louisville Lip’ and ‘The Mouth of the South’. Even the entertainment industry produced a song about him titling it ‘The Black Superman’.

He had wit. He was always philosophical and lived by his strong personal convictions: “I know where I am going and I know the truth and I dont’t have to be what you want me to be. I am free to be what I want to be.”

The world’s greatest boxer was a willful anti-war opponent. On April 28, 1967, with the United States at war in Vietnam, Ali refused to be inducted into the armed forces, saying: “I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong. No Vietcong ever called me Nigger.

“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam whom I do not even know, while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?

“Why should I go fight for the freedom of other people, when my own people have no freedom here?”

For evading the draft into the US Army, Ali paid a very heavy price at a very prime age of his boxing career. He was sentenced to five years in prison, banned from boxing for three years and fined US$10,000.

On appeal against the sentence, in 1971, the Supreme Court overturned Ali’s conviction of draft evasion and he returned to the ring still bushy-tailed and bubbly.

As such was Ali, an enigmatic persona inside and outside the ring. He created such novel dynamics in the boxing arena such as the ‘Ali Shuffle’ and the ‘Rope-a-Dope’that helped him take down monstrous opponents in the likes of Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier and George Foreman.

Ali talked, he taunted with razor-sharp rhymes and he joked as he danced across the ring, circling his quarry, waiting for a chance to deploy his blinding left hook, or his lethal left-right-left right artillery.

Epic blockbusters

Ali gave the world epic blockbusters rarely heard off in other sports arenas. On March 8, 1971 he encountered Joe Frazier in ‘The Fight of The Century’ at the Madison Square Garden. On Oct 30, 1974 he took on George Foreman in what he dubbed as ‘The Rumble In The Jungle’ in Kinshasa, Zaire, and then in Manila, Philippines, on Oct 1, 1975, it was ‘The Thrilla In Manila’ which saw Ali in a third slugfest with the indomitable Joe Frazier which saw both pugilists drained off every dollop of body strength.

He wore more than one hat, acting as his own marketing executive and public relations officer, giving fight promoter Don King very little slot to pitch in a word or two at pre-fight press conferences. But King did not mind having his microphone snatched away by Ali, as it was King, the man with the gravity-defying hairdo, who laughed all the way to the bank.

Muhammad Ali amused reporters, sometimes spilling his fluid verse: “To make America the greatest is my goal, So I beat the Russian and the Pole, And for the USA won the medal of gold, And the Greeks said you are better than the Cassius of old.”

And before regaining the World Heavyweight Championship from George Foreman in 1974, Muhammad Ali went into fluid jingle talk: “You think the world was shocked when Nixon resigned, Wait till I whup George Foreman’s behind, Float like a butterfly, Sting like a bee, His hands can’t hit, What his eyes can’t see, Now you see me, Now you don’t, George thinks he will, But I know he won’t.”

But Muhammad Ali was always eloquent. He could simply speak on a myriad of topics and never did he disappoint the media whenever they caught up with him.

His quotes on achievement and personal development, social justice, religion and war made him an iconic and well-loved global personality.

To motivate young people with low self-esteem, Muhammad Ali uttered this sharply inspiring one-liner at a youth camp: “If they can make penicillin from mouldy bread, they can sure make something out of you.”

‘Wars of poverty are fought to map changes’

A well-recognised philanthropist, Muhammad Ali lent journalists this philosophical enlightener: “Wars of nations are fought to change maps. But wars of poverty are fought to map changes.”

Lately after the Paris attacks by the Islamic State he said: “I am a Muslim and there is nothing Islamic about killing innocent people in Paris, San Bernardino, or anywhere else in the world. True Muslims know that the ruthless violence of so-called Islamic Jihadists goes against the very tenets of our religion.”

In the ring nor outside the ring he never let up. He kept his dancing pace against his opponents, whipping and a whupping gladiators such as Archie Moore, Zora Folley, Floyd Paterson, Henry Cooper and Sony Liston in his early boxing career and later taking on Oscar Bonavena, Jerry Quarry, Ken Norton, Joe Frazier, George Foreman and Larry Holmes - all in style combining ‘rope-a-dope’ with the ‘Ali shuffle’ and a smashing left hook arsenal that seems to come from nowhere.

His hands were furiously fast, and so was his mouth - infuriating government officials with his anti-war speeches, let alone mocking a hard-nosed global society with his stinging jabs against pervasive racism.

But still, the humble and mortal side of this modern day Goliath hit by Parkinson’s disease was not lost to his millenial global audience when he once told an interviewer: “I’ve made my share of mistakes along the way, but if I have changed even one life for the better, I haven’t lived in vain.”

Logician and theorist Albert Einstein in a personal citation said this of Mahatma Gandhi: “For generations to come, it may well be, will scarce believe that such a man as this one ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.”

The same can be said about Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King and Muhammad Ali.

Indeed Muhammad Ali has fought the good fight, he has run the full distance and he has finished the race. The Greatest is gone. Rest in peace Muhammad Ali.

JOSEPH MASILAMANY is a veteran journalist who has been a great fan of Muhammad Ali ever since he witnessed the first Cassius Clay-Sonny Liston encounter in Miami Beach on Feb 25, 1964. The seven-year old Joseph watched the recorded fight on a black-and-white television screen at the Gomali Estate staff club in Segamat, Johor.