06.04.2016 08:41 AM

Front of this morning’s New York Times online

Wow. 

15 Comments

  1. Houland Wolfe says:

    HERE’S SOME GREAT QUOTES FROM THE GREAT M.A.

    “It’s hard to be humble when you’re as great as I am.”

    “If you even dream of beating me you’d better wake up and apologise.”

    “I’ve wrestled with alligators. I’ve tussled with a whale. I done handcuffed lightning and throw thunder in jail. You know I’m bad. Just last week, I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalised a brick. I’m so mean, I make medicine sick.”

    “I’m the best. I just haven’t played yet” — Ali on golf.

    “Float like a butterfly, Sting like a bee, your hands can’t hit, what the eyes can’t see”

    “It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.”

    “If you sign to fight me, you need speed and endurance but what you need most is to increase your insurance”

    “(Joe) Frazier is so ugly he should donate his face to the US Bureau of Wildlife.”

    “Frazier is so ugly that when he cries, the tears turn around and go down the back of his head.”

    I’ve seen George Foreman shadow boxing. And the shadow won.”

    Liston is nothing. The man can’t talk. The man can’t fight. The man needs talking lessons. The man needs boxing lessons. And since he’s gonna fight me, he needs falling lessons.’

    There are only two greats-me and Britain

    ​“The service you do for others is the rent you pay for your room here on Earth.”

    “Live everyday as if it were your last because someday you’re going to be right.”​

    • davie says:

      Just to add one that reflected the 1960’s:

      My conscience won’t let me shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America. And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger, never lynched me, never 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.

  2. patrick says:

    My hero! Phenomenal athlete (understatement). Courage in the moment – “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong”. And said, when asked about his beliefs, that the only thing that is important in life is love. The Greatest.

    I guess Strummer, Bowie, Ali, Cannetti and others are indicators that we have lived long enough for our past to die before we do.

    I don’t know what that means, but I think I’ll start drinking now and won’t stop until Tuesday.

  3. Brian says:

    My own father just passed away on December 29th. He taught me enough about Ali that I never stopped reading, learning and watching his fights. I am an Ali admirer to my very core. Over the next week, I’ll be thinking often of my dad. It would have been a special thing to have him here to talk about Ali’s passing, his career, his place in history and what he meant to society.

    My two cents:
    To me, his legacy is greater than that of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X or Marcus Garvey. Clay changed things and when he changed them, they stayed changed. Sadly, the other greats mentioned here left nothing lasting in their wake. Racism is still rampant, slavery still exists (government sponsored or not,) and now, there’s a backlash against anything Muslim. Ali, had he still had use of his voice, would have made the world an even better place if he could have spoken the truth; his truth. A truth that so many feared to hear. Ali was never wrong about justice. Not ever. He deserves to remembered not only for his fighting but for his work as a human being. He dwarfed all other boxers and all other men, including MLK, Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey and Barack Obama. He was always true to himself and never to politics. Right is right. Wrong is wrong. “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet-Cong,” was by and large, one of the greatest anti-war quotes ever uttered.

    When Ernie Terrel refused to call Ali by his Muslim name, and kept calling him Clay, Muhammad beat him to a pulp and with each shot, Ali could be heard shouting at Terrell, “what’s my name?!” Well, Terrell, I’m sure, never forgot and neither will any of us. I’ll miss both Cassius Marcellus Clay and Muhammad Ali. “Rumble young man, rumble.”

    • patrick says:

      I know what you mean. i’m lucky enough to be able get together with my Dad on Monday and know we’ll have a long Ali conversation over Tim Horton’s coffee. One of many over the next couple of days. Ali is the one thing my Dad and I have together that is ours and no one in our family really shares. Yeah, rumble young man rumble.

  4. Eric Weiss says:

    Fucking 2016….

  5. ottawacon says:

    An icon of my lifetime. But I am genuinely saddened that he never explained nor apologized for the terrible slurs (Uncle Tom, gorilla) he hurled at Frazier, and now they are both gone.

  6. Kevin says:

    Brilliant photo! The photographer is Len Trievnor, he’s done some stunning work. The intensity in Ali’s eyes in this shot remind me of the National Geographic ‘woman with the green eyes’.

  7. Joe says:

    As a boxing fan I couldn’t help but admire his prowess in the ring. As a humanitarian I could not get over his overt racism. Like so many we call great he was a man with tremendous talents and equally offsetting flaws.

    • smelter rat says:

      Yeah, well I guess you weren’t a black man living in America in the 60’s

      • Joe says:

        Great humans over come their upbringing. They are not bound by it for the rest of their lives.

        • smelter rat says:

          Says the white guy.

          • Joe says:

            I seem to remember a black guy who grew up in the Jim Crow laws racist south, who taught men and women should be judged by the content of their heart not the colour of their skin. Using that metric why are you judging me on your perception of my skin colour?

  8. Al in Cranbrook says:

    Very few went the distance with Ali in his early years.

    One who did so, and did it twice, was George Chuvalo, the first match on just 17 days notice. I watched both fights. Never hit the mat once, indeed never in his entire career. And he rocked Ali pretty good once or twice, too. Ali was said to have rated Chuvalo as one of the toughest boxers he’d ever fought.

    Little bit of Canadian trivia for you all.

    Great man Ali certainly was.

    2016 sure has been a tough year.

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