"calling Muhammad Ali a great boxer is injustice. Muhammad Ali was bigger than Boxing!"
~George Foreman
Hello Guys i'ts me 🌹Ubeyd. I am a student at the HTL Dornbirn/Austria. In my freetime I do martial Arts, Python programming, produce music and write Blogs about History, Poetry, Physics, Computer Science or other Topics i like.
Todays Blog is about why Muhammad Ali was indeed the greatest.
First of all, we need to talk about his Boxing.
Muhammad Ali himself describes his style as "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee". This quotation actually describes his boxing style perfectly. He literally flew like a butterfly around his oponents. A Sportswriter once said:"Although he was a heavyweight boxer, he was lighter on his feet than most welterweights!". Which is accurate to say. You can see it when you watch some of his fights and some welterweight fights. He was drawing cyrcles around his opponents. And hitting, more precisely "stinging" in the right time. He didn't get hit that much. He was too fast. He didn't even block the blows, he was leaning back.
He was and is the greatest of all time and he couldn't even fight in his prime.
Let's talk about the Vietnam War
For some Context: The cause of the Vietnam War was that, the US believed in the "domino effect". If one country was communist, then they were all going to become communistic. Let's be honest WTF. This is not enough for a reason to start a war and just bombing entire cities full of innocent people. But nobody critisized the US.
On April 28, 1967, Muhammad Ali was drawn in the "The Draft Lottery". It was the first Lottery used to order men into military service since 1942. Muhammad Ali refused to be inducted into the United States armed Forces.
One of the most iconic dialogs between the court and Muhammad Ali was in my Opinion the following:
Court: "You said you were the peoples champion?"
Ali: "Yes Sir"
Court: "You think that you're acting like the peoples champion?"
Ali: "Yes Sir"
Ali had the strength to speak in a time you could be silenced. A little before 8 a.m. on April 28, 1967, Muhammad Ali arrived at the Armed Forces Induction Center in Houston. Now renowned sportscaster Howard Cosell thrust a microphone before Ali, demanding to know what he would do. Cosell prodded the boxer, “Your action will be registered in two hours.” As cameras flashed, Ali smiled and said, “No comment.” Inside the induction center in Houston, Ali, a Muslim convert, refused to step forward when the name he’d been given at birth — Cassius Clay — was called. Later that day, Ali was stripped of his boxing license.
“My conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America,” he had explained two years earlier. “And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger, they never lynched me, they didn’t put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father. … Shoot them for what? How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail.”
"You my opposer when I want freedom, you my opposer when I want justice, you my opposer when I want equality.... you won't even stand up for me in America for my religious beliefs and you want me to go somewhere and fight but you won't even stand up for me here at home...."
I am at some point absolutely write another part of this one. There's no way I can describe Muhammad Ali in one Blog.
That was todays Blog. I hope i was somewhat helpful or entertained you for some time. If not, feel free to leave a comment/feedback down below.
See you later 👋
