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(URR here.)  Muhammed Ali was arguably the greatest heavyweight boxer in the history of the sport.  His loud boasts and impromptu poetry were almost always backed up with his fists and his flamboyant ring style.  Ali was a cagey fighter, six-foot three and 220 pounds in his prime, with lightning quick hands and reflexes.  Ali will always be associated with Joe Frazier, and the savage fights those two engaged in.  Frazier beat Ali in 1971, in Madison Square Garden, the first loss of Ali's career.  Ali would win the next two, over four years, but each of those were no-quarter brawls.   As someone who has done some bit of boxing, I can appreciate his speed, grace, and ring savvy.  Ali, in his prime, may have been the best ever.

Ali, of course, won a gold medal in the 1960 Olympics as Cassius Clay, before his conversion to Islam.  But alas, like so many athletes, Ali blew through his considerable prize and endorsement money, spending lavishly on cars, women, and comfort.  He was forced to fight well past his prime, and much of the physical and neurological ailments he suffered later in life were, IMHO, a direct result of the beatings he took, even in fights he won.  

At age 35, Ali fought Spaniard Alfredo Evangelista, a decidedly mediocre opponent whom Ali would have dismantled quickly just a few years before.  But Evangelista managed to go the distance against the former champ, even landing a number of big shots to Ali's head.  Then came a beating from an over-the-hill Earnie Shavers, though Ali somehow was given a unanimous decision.  Ali's famous clowning in the ring could not disguise the fact that Shavers landed two dozen head shots, hurting Ali, whose punches lacked the old power, and whose reflexes had so badly slowed.

Then came a pair of fights with Leon Spinks, the first an embarrassing and damaging loss in which Ali suffered another thumping.  While a few months later he managed one more semi-miracle in defeating an unprepared Spinks in a rematch to regain the title, Ali lost badly to Larry Holmes at the advanced age of 38.  In that fight, as well, Ali took tremendous punishment.  However, Ali made one more foray into the ring, at age 39, against a young Trevor Berbick.  Ali was flabby, and his speech was already slurred.   Berbick tore Ali apart in a sad display of someone who never should have been allowed to fight again.   (Berbick, for his part, was savaged by a young Mike Tyson a few years later.)

Outside the ring, Muhammed Ali has been venerated as an icon to many.  But in reality, Muhammed Ali was a draft dodger who refused to serve his country.  Revisionists will be quick to tell us that refusing induction into the Army in 1967 was somehow braver than facing the fire of the enemy.  It wasn't.  Ali, unlike Willie Mays and Joe Louis and other athletes in their prime who served their country when called, claimed he "didn't have no quarrel with no Viet Congs".  Due to unpopularity of the war in Vietnam and the rise of the "Black Power" movement, Ali became a counterculture hero.  Interesting, though, that he claimed Islam did not permit him to go to war….  In the end, though he was banned from his sport for a little over three years, Muhammed Ali amassed a great fortune, some $80 million dollars in personal wealth, and worldwide fame, unlike nearly all of the men who answered their nation's call.  

Muhammed Ali was a tremendous boxer, and a bigger than life personality.  One of the sport's greats.  But the offering of platitudes all over the news today, from Barack Obama on down, as a "man of integrity" who "gave up everything" is but a false narrative some fifty years in the making.  Muhammed Ali was a charismatic and charming man who parlayed his skills and personality into substantial wealth, but he was a man whose character and integrity was sorely lacking.   Ali's new religion of Islam was, I suspect, an excuse to avoid service.  He was a notorious womanizer who drank heavily at times.  He was also a raging bigot who once called for interracial couples to be hanged.  His seedier and less flattering side, carefully buried by the media who fawned over him, coupled with his dodging of the draft, makes him far less than the effusive praise we will hear in the coming weeks would ever make one suspect.  While indeed a great heavyweight, he was far from a great man.  

For all that, he will be missed.