SOME
time ago, former Sun.Star Cebu copy editor Francis Abelgas presented me
with a gift – a coffee table book of features and essays about a man of
many contradictions.
The book, which had been Francis’ way of thanking me for some favor
that I now no longer recall, was immediately brought home, made to
occupy an honored place in the shelf and, as with other books not
related to deadline reporting, promptly disregarded until some other
opportune time.
That time came Friday night. Now it’s my turn to thank Francis for
providing the impetus for a reflection on one whose life serves to
remind us about the unpredictability of our own – Muhammad Ali.
With a career spanning 21 years highlighted by 56 wins, 37 by knockout,
five losses (only one of which came by knockout), three heavyweight
titles, a bout – perhaps one of his most memorable fights – held in
Philippine soil, and a three-year suspension for refusing to fight in
the Vietnam war, the man born as Cassius Marcellus Clay is definitely
one of the greatest boxers the world has ever known.
He began from what sportswriter Alex Haley described as “relative
obscurity” – earning the public’s halting acceptance through a 1959
Golden Glove championship win and a gold medal in the 1960 Olympics –
into “dubious renown,” getting continued public attention because of
the entertaining value of a signature loudmouthed exhibitionism that
made him the Louisville Lip, and then into “stardom” because of fights
still unequalled in intensity.
Replays of his fights with Joe Frazier sometimes still get replayed on
TV and the beating he absorbed from and gave back to the gigantic
George Foreman in their Oct. 30, 1974 fight in Zaire is still
considered as an all-time great.
“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,” went a limerick he made up for the Foreman fight.
Ali retired from boxing in 1981 and, in 1986, announced his having been
diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. And in typical Ali fashion, he
hammed: “I’ve got to have Parkinson’s syndrome. If I were in perfect
health, people would be afraid of me. They thought I was Superman. Now,
they can go ‘he’s human like us.’”
Now, as his body is slowly being laid to waste by the disease, Ali has
chosen to become a writer. He writes about the peace intertwined not
only in his Islamic belief – a faith that was discovered as a scornful
Negro youth growing up in a unapologetically White America but has
deepened with his retirement from boxing – but also of the peace
attained in a life that has come full circle.
Soul of a Butterfly, a book he wrote with his daughter, Hana Yasmeen, is about coming full circle.
It details his journey from the small skinny kid who started boxing to
punish the thieves that stole his bike to one of the most recognizable
men in the world today. It talks of his views on issues of life itself,
of unity among people and of a spirituality that goes beyond religion.
Of it Pulitzer prize-nominated sportswriter and humorist William
Plummer wrote: “This afflicted man – who made his name by fighting and
whose espousal of the Nation of Islam religion and refusal to enter the
military draft during the Vietnam war made him a symbol of division –
offers himself up now as a vehicle for worldwide healing.”
And of being with Ali, the irreverent American sportswriter Peter
Richmond, after an interview for the 1999 publication Muhammad Ali –
Ringside, masterfully narrated:
“On the table in front of him sit a copy of the holy Koran and a plate
holding three frosted raspberry coffee cakes, and when he leans forward
on the couch and reaches out it is not for enlightenment. It is for a
piece of pastry. With his right hand wobbling just this side of
uncontrollably, he guides it, slow inch by slow inch, toward that mouth
that once yapped without stopping but is now, largely mute, chews
slowly, as the eyes stare straight ahead, seeing nothing; only the
patter of a cold rain splashing the leaves of the trees outside the
window mars the silence.
Flecks of frosting tumble in slow motion to light on his belly, which
gently swells beneath a black sweater. I am sitting next to him. Close
enough to see the tiny scar on his eyelid that looks like a birthmark.
Close enough to hear him chew. Close enough to taste the cake as he
tastes it. The look on his face is the fat and happy near smile toping
the fact and happy body of all the renderings of Buddha you’ve ever
seen. It is an expression of bemusement and contentment and wonder at
the beauty to be found in the simplest things.
As I watch him eat, I have never been more sure of a man’s inner contentment. Except maybe when he eats the second piece.”
How one man who has gone against the grain his entire life and emerged
victorious is now being affected by what writer Jose Torres called the
“erosion of time” is a painful specter but one that manifests to us all
how life has its own terms and inculcates the humbling fact that
invincibility is an illusion.
(First saw print in Sun.Star 04/17/06)
