Muhammad Ali / How Things Break

Barak Obama and Muhammad Ali

How Things Break

Ali fought Liston 50 years ago. Two legends were born, but another was broken.

By Dave Mondy

A version of this essay was originally printed in the Iowa Review.

Sonny Liston landed on canvas below Muhammad Ali’s feet on May 25, 1965, and Neil Leifer snapped a photo:

Muhammad Ali / New Again

NEW AGAIN: MUHAMMAD ALI

By DANIELA MORERA

Photography KEN REGAN

Muhammad Ali Digital Art

Today is St. Stephen's Day, or Boxing Day, a national holiday in the UK. As we couldn't think of anyone interesting named Stephen (kidding, Stephen Hawking and Dorff are both great in their own ways), we decided to commemorate December 26 by reprinting an interview from our archives with the world's "greatest" boxer, Muhammad Ali. In the interview below, Ali discusses religion, fame, naming children, and the place of women in society, and shamlessly flirts with his interviewer, Daniela Morera. It is August of 1977, Ali is nearing the end of his boxing career and has just married his third wife, Veronica Porsche Ali. The boxer begins the interview reticent and sullen, but ends it on a decidedly more animated, if offensive, note. —Emma Brown

MUHAMMAD 

by Morera

Muhammad Ali, the most popular human being on earth, has been proclaimed the man with the most sex-appeal in the world. On March 8th, 1971, before the fight with Joe Frazier, he pronounced the famous sentence, "I'm The Greatest." Ali has five children, he is a black hero, the most famous promoter and defender of the faith of Islam. Many crowds follow this legendary personality not really to acclaim his celebrity but to communicate the profound belief that they feel for this prophetic man. The elements of religion are the main ingredients in his existence and it is through religion that he creates the very special relationship with the crowds.

Muhammad Ali / The man behind the icon

Muhammad Ali:

THE MAN BEHIND THE ICON

Saturday 4 June 2016 14.43 BST

BIOGRAPHY OF MUHAMMAD ALI

The late boxer’s biographer recalls getting to know a deeply spiritual and intelligent man with endless tales, no regrets and a passion for life that never diminished, even as his condition did

by Thomas Hauser

In 1991, I journeyed to England with Muhammad Ali to promote Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times, which had just been published in Great Britain. One afternoon, we were at a book signing in London when a woman in her forties passed through the line. She looked at Muhammad, then at me, and in a thick Irish accent asked, “Excuse me; are you Ali’s son?”

“No, ma’am,” I replied.

“Oh,” she said with obvious disappointment. “You look just like him.”

Muhammad Ali / Quotes

Muhammad Ali

QUOTES

by Muhammad Ali

Affirmation

I figured that if I said it enough, I would convince the world that I really was the greatest.

Confidence

It's lack of faith that makes people afraid of meeting challenges, and I believe in myself.

Imagination

The man who has no imagination has no wings.

Pride

I am the greatest. Not only do I knock em out, I pick the round!

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BIOGRAPHY OF MUHAMMAD ALI

Andy Warhol / Muhammad Ali

Andy Warhol ~ Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay), 1978

Muhammad Ali

by Andy Warhol

"I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was." 

Muhammad Ali

 ✻

Victor Bockris ~ Andy Warhol and Muhammad Ali at Fighters Haven, 1978

“I said that the athletes were better than movie stars and I don’t know what I’m talking about because athletes are the new movie stars.” 

Andy Warhol

 ✻

In 1977, Ali sat for an Andy Warhol silk-screen portrait, thus joining Marilyn and Elvis among the artist's gallery of American "icons." The champ was astounded to learn how much Warhol was being paid for "an hour's work," and Warhol dryly agreed that ti was an easy life.  In retrospect, the Warhol portrait marks the moment of symbolic appropriation, the transition of Ali from a divise to a consensual figure.  In Warhol's iconography, Ali became one among an infinite series of celebrity images, all equivalent, all interchangeable.  For the best part of two decades, the boxer used the electronic conduits of the burgeoning global media industry to project his personal identity and the messages that sprang from it to a vast new audience.  At the same time, this industry used Ali to project its messages, to itself and its products.  The icon of Ali could not but be transformed in the process.  

http://www.toutceciestmagnifique.com/2011/06/true-champions-are-born-not-made.html

Read also
BIOGRAPHY OF MUHAMMAD ALI