Muhamed Ali Didnt No How to Read

On May 27, 1963, Ali (known and then as Cassius Clay) held up 5 fingers in a prediction of how many rounds it would accept him to win against British boxer Henry Cooper. In June 1963, he fulfilled his prediction and was declared the tour winner after five rounds. Kent Gavin/Getty Images hide caption

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Kent Gavin/Getty Images

On May 27, 1963, Ali (known so equally Cassius Clay) held up v fingers in a prediction of how many rounds it would have him to win against British boxer Henry Cooper. In June 1963, he fulfilled his prediction and was declared the bout winner afterward five rounds.

Kent Gavin/Getty Images

Decades before NFL thespian Colin Kaepernick took a knee joint during the national anthem to protestation police treatment of African-Americans, boxer Muhammad Ali roiled white America with his 1967 resistance to the Vietnam War draft.

The boxer had converted to the Nation of Islam a few years before, and he explained his resistance to the war past saying, "I own't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong."

Ali's resistance to the draft resulted in his beingness stripped of his heavyweight title, banned from boxing and charged with evasion. (Though he avoided jail fourth dimension, it would exist more than than 3 years before he returned to the ring.) Biographer Jonathan Eig says Ali'south protest was unprecedented in those days.

"It was unimaginable for most black athletes to stand up that way and say, ... 'I'm going to play by my rules and to criticize presidents and to criticize the war and to call all of white America a fraud,'" Eig says. "That was radical."

Eig spent iv years learning virtually Ali by interviewing the late boxer's associates and former wives, and poring over previously unreleased FBI and Justice Department files. His new book, Ali: A Life, chronicles Ali'due south remarkable boxing career, his office as a social critic and his colorful and often chaotic personal life.

Eig says that although Ali was attacked for his political views at the fourth dimension, attitudes towards the boxer shifted equally American support for the war waned.

"To see this guy who goes from being the most hated man in the world to beingness the near dearest in many ways, to being seen equally this kind of saint is fascinating," Eig says. "And I don't call up we do Ali any practiced by treating him every bit a saint. He was a man being and he was deeply flawed, only I retrieve the reason people await to him this way is because he had the spirit of a rebel. He was willing to fight for what he believed in."

Interview Highlights

On how Ali announced that he had joined the Nation of Islam

Immediately subsequently the fight [with Sonny Liston], he makes this very assuming pronouncement that really shocks everybody: He admits that he'due south a member of the Nation of Islam and that he'due south not going to take this Christianity anymore. This was a slave organized religion that was forced on him and his people during slavery, and he was gratuitous to choose whatever he wanted.

And he makes this important annunciation of independence really. He says, "I don't have to be what you want me to be. I don't have to say what yous want me to say. I don't have to do what you want me to exercise. I'm free to be who I am."

Ali

A Life

by Jonathan Eig

That's really, I think, the defining moment in Ali'southward career. It'due south his coming out, and at a fourth dimension when African-Americans were expected to be subservient in American civilisation. For him to say, "I can do what I want," was radical.

On Ali's signature trash talking

It was fascinating because he was a bright marketing guy. He understood that he was going to go a fight with Sonny Liston sooner than anybody else, before he was actually qualified based on his battle record, because he was making so much racket.

His first nickname was "The Louisville Lip," and it was meant with disdain that he was a bad sport. He was behaving like a kid. He was modeling his beliefs, in part, on Gorgeous George, the wrestler who came into the band with his hair in curlers. He was trying to make the crowd angry. ...

He ends up becoming even more hated for more legitimate reasons, and so he becomes the most beloved man in the history of battle. So that is fascinating to see how well he manipulated that.

On how Ali trash talked his black opponents more than his white opponents

Ali saw one of his great goals in life to exist the uplift of African-American people, to bring black pride out, to show people that they could say they were the greatest, even when America said they were second-class citizens. And yet, at the same fourth dimension, he is undercutting these other potent, proud African-American men and using the most racist images to do so. So that was Ali: There were no easy answers. He was very complicated in these ways, and he didn't really care about the contradictions. ...

He showed more respect for his white opponents. It'southward almost like it was this line he didn't desire to cross, that calling these white opponents names, that belittling them was more complicated for him. It was dangerous. He didn't want to practice it. Simply calling out other black men — some people I talked to said they idea he had his own sense of inferiority.

[Boxer] Joe Frazier was a tough kid who came upward out of poverty. [Boxer] George Foreman grew upward in the ghetto, dirt poor. Ali was middle course. He didn't fit in with the earth of a lot of other boxers. ... Ali wasn't of that demographic, so some people have speculated that he was acting out this fashion to evidence he was as bad and as black every bit anybody else.

On the possible connectedness between Ali's dyslexia and his power to dodge punches

Everybody kind of wondered why Ali had this miraculous ability to dodge a punch, and some doctors I talked to said it might've actually been connected to his dyslexia, that when you lot're dyslexic your brain works differently. When you larn to read, your brain gets re-wired and so that you focus actually carefully on 1 thing, you can concentrate actually hard on those letters on the page.

But when yous never learn to read, your brain remains more accessible to outside forces. You can perchance hear and understand two conversations at one time, because your brain hasn't been re-wired by the process of learning to read.

Ali, because he learned to read very belatedly and never really very well, may have been better at picking up visual clues than nearly people. He may have been able to meet little signs in his opponent's body that suggested when and where the punch was going to come. It's a fascinating theory, I think.

On Ali's comeback in the 1970s, after existence hated and having his heavyweight title stripped because of draft evasion

When he comes dorsum from his exile, commencement of all, the war is wildly unpopular. And so, when he began his protest, there was however very strong support for the state of war in Vietnam. Merely past 1971, people tin say, "Wow, Ali was right. That war has been a disaster. No wonder he didn't want to fight over there."

He also has suffered. He'south given up 3 and a half years of his career and millions of dollars, and so he comes back to the band and he fights Joe Frazier and he gets whooped. ... This is one of the greatest and most savage fights in boxing history and Ali loses, but he stays on his anxiety. He survives this thing. I think and so you brainstorm to run across him as a martyr, as a hero, and somebody who gets knocked downward and keeps coming back.

Sam Briger and Therese Madden produced and edited the audio of this interview. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Nicole Cohen adjusted it for the Web.

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Source: https://www.npr.org/2017/10/04/555301222/new-muhammad-ali-biography-reveals-a-flawed-rebel-who-loved-attention

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