I’m writing a letter, not because it’s the 50th anniversary of anything, not to celebrate a birthday or any other benchmark, not because I believe you will ever read this but because I believe I am one of millions of people that owes you a thank you.
In a world where reality tv characters are pop culture icons, and we know more about our favorite movie stars than our own families, I often ask myself why we care so much about people we’ve never met nor will meet. Yet, here I am writing a letter to a man that it is safe to say I will never meet, thanking him for events I wasn’t even born t to see. What sets you apart? Easy, you shook up the world, with an aftershock so profound the trembling can be felt a half century later.
Will I ever shake up the world? Probably not. Will anyone ever do so the way you did? Also doubtful, but the image of a 22 year old Cassius Clay breaking free from his entourage, jumping onto the ropes and pointing into the crowd of critics, almost as if to count the men that doubted he could beat Sonny Liston that night never fails to give me the idea that anything in the world is possible.
Having the audacity, at age 22, to look the world in the eye and say “I told you so” is something you have to take for yourself, and that night Cassius Clay grabbed it with no intention of giving it back.
46 years after you captured your first world title, a cold reality has long been established, and a man that once bounded around the ring with an innovative grace has been dramatically slowed and withered by Parkinson’s Disease. The same hands that stunned the sports world by knocking out George Foreman are now plagued by tremors, and the feet that shuffled around the canvas in a manner that no one had ever seen at that time are now bound to a wheelchair. The mouth that had the audacity to fearlessly shoot off at the government, the business, and any man that stood across the ring from him has been all but silenced. Although you are not the same man today that you were in 1960, 1965, or 1980 for that matter, the story of a man daring to tell the world “I told you so” has been told, and can never be untold. A man that announced his greatness over and over, until it became true.
Few men have been as loved as well as hated to the degree that Muhammad Ali has, but it takes something special to evoke that kind of emotion. Mothers, fathers, husbands and wives often have that power, the ability to inspire, anger, and break a person’s heart. You have to give yourself over to someone entirely to give them that power, and Muhammad Ali was this person to the entire globe.
I write this letter as a thank you note, for changing the landscape of the sports world, and in many ways American culture. For giving boxing an icon unlike anything else. In a sport that is said to be dying a glimmer of hope can be found in the image of Muhammad Ali lighting the torch at the 1996 Olympic Games, and the realization is that one of the most influential human beings of all time was a boxer.
A thank you note, addressed to two men, Muhammad Ali, who with hands that tremble with Parkinson’s Disease is still able to grab the world’s attention, and make people fall in love with him all over again, and a 22 year old Cassisus clay. The same Cassius Clay who’s image is frozen in time as he informs the world that he is indeed the greatest of all time.
You shook up the world champ. Rumble young man, rumble.
