A gold medalist at the Olympics, he won the heavyweight championship at age twenty-two by conquering Sonny Liston in dramatic fashion. The political establishment stripped him of his heavyweight title when he refused induction into the United States Army during the height of the war in Vietnam. Ultimately, Ali returned to reclaim his crown, prevailing in epic fights against the likes of Joe Frazier and George Foreman.
His talent and charisma—and above all, his adherence to principle—made him a cultural icon and one of the most beloved sporting figures of all time.
But that is only half the tale. Author Thomas Hauser got closer to Ali than any previous biographer. Translate PDF. Muhammad Ali: The Evolution of a Legend By Adeyinka Makinde Muhammad Ali, the ring legend and inspirer of a multitude of words, some intensely vitriolic, but most fulsome in praise and admiration continues to attract the attention of books, articles, films and documentaries. This has happened with unceasing regularity since the denouement of his career in a Bahamanian ring over twenty years ago.
During this time we have had various retellings, assessments and revisions of the man born Cassius Clay sixty years ago in Louisville Kentucky. The facts of the Ali tale, so familiar even to the most casual observer needs little in the manner of detailed recounting to fans of boxing.
For a figure like Ali who lived in the glare of media attention, many facts of his life are beyond dispute. But what does remain disputed and will continue to remain a focus of contention is the interpretation given to his true level stature. Is he a bona fide hero-figure of the civil rights movement who should rank alongside Martin Luther King and Malcolm X?
Or a dupe to a charlatan like leader for the cause of black American separatism? Or simply the most hyped about boxer and sportsman in history?
There have always been dissenters but this has always remained so. Ali, the film by Michael Mann falls into this category. And as befitting of the director is undergirded with atmospheric music and colourful and detailed attention to the sights and sounds of the era. Many a review has often made mention of this or that "missing" incident or theme. But this merely confirms the futility inherent in any attempt to compact the Ali saga in two or three hours of movie making.
The scope and sweep that is the life of Ali is simply not amenable to this. The Michael Kram book Ghosts in Manila released last year attempts authors point to reassess Ali, forming at its fundamentals the argument that the significance of Ali has being grossly over exaggerated by a fawning coterie of American journalists who have somehow brainwashed the succeeding generation of writers and thence the public into a state of mind much too reverential.
Ali it would appear to Kram is an overblown personage who may have been but nevertheless has not been subjected to the appropriate degree of critical scrutiny. The negative aspects of Ali, dealing with his womanising, his abominable treatment of Joe Frazier, his excursions into cruelty with Floyd Patterson and Ernie Tyrell, his lack of intellectual acumen and a propensity to be duped by certain people and causes, have all being accounted for in previous books and articles.
The recent book and documentary, Muhammad Ali continues with the tradition of treating Ali as a figure whose importance transcended the ring.
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