Why Ali is still the greatest (From Asian Image)

Why Ali is still the greatest

10:12am Tuesday 17th January 2012 in World news

It is now more than 30 years since Muhammad Ali, the man widely regarded as the greatest boxer who ever lived, laced on the gloves for an ill-advised final fight against Trevor Berbick in the Bahamas.

That a clearly ailing Ali ended it all by sliding to a dismal 10-round points defeat is neither here nor there.

Berbick could never have laced the boots of those who had long since helped Ali chisel his boxing legacy, least of all Ali himself.

The passage of time has not been kind to Ali. His once awesome body is ravaged by Parkinson's disease, yet he remains one of the most recognisable figures from all walks of life on the planet.

"Will they ever have another fighter who writes poems, predicts rounds, beats everybody, makes people laugh, makes people cry, and is as tall and extra pretty as me?" Ali asked biographer Thomas Hauser.

"In the history of the world from the beginning of time, there has never been another fighter like me."

Cassius Marcellus Clay was born in Louisville, Kentucky on January 17, 1942.

He was first persuaded into his local boxing club by a policeman named Joe Martin, who found the eight-year-old distraught and bent on revenge on the boy who had stolen his bicycle.

"I wanted to learn how I could box so I could whip the kid who stole my bicycle," Ali said. Boxing owes an extraordinary amount of gratitude to that bicycle thief.

By 1960, Clay was Olympic light heavyweight champion and turned professional having lost just five of 105 amateur fights.

Clay won his first world title by shocking the 'Big Ugly Bear' and overwhelming favourite Sonny Liston in round seven in Miami Beach in 1964.

It was the start of a 16-year-old odyssey that would see him become the first man in history to win the world heavyweight title three times and take his remarkable roadshow to all corners of an enraptured and occasionally outraged globe.

Clay was brash and boastful, courting controversy after his second win over Liston by announcing he had joined the mysterious Black Muslims and changed his name to Muhammad Ali.

Ali's first tenure as world champion ended one year later when he refused to enter the draft for Vietnam and was stripped of his title, handed a suspended five-year prison sentence and banned from travelling abroad.

His three-year boxing exile robbed the world of Ali at his peak.

When he returned, Ali lost a brutal epic on points to Joe Frazier in 1971, the defeat denying him the world title but the manner of it lifting his name back into the lights.

Next there was a new man on the horizon, a new Liston in the shape of George Foreman, a hard-hitting ogre who had demolished Frazier and claimed the title as his own.

The pair took boxing to a remote part of Africa and immortalised it as the 'Rumble in the Jungle'.

Using the "rope-a-dope" technique, Ali humbled Foreman in eight rounds to reclaim the title in Zaire.

Foreman expected Ali to dance and move out of range. In fact, Ali did the opposite, allowing Foreman to punch himself out round after round before pouncing to drop his opponent.

Ali had gained his revenge over Frazier in their second meeting to set up a third and final clash, the brutal 'Thrilla in Manila' in 1975.

By then, the pair had developed an intense dislike of one another, which would fester for decades to come.

In Manila, the pair surpassed everything they had previously summoned. After 14 rounds of astonishing brutality, Frazier failed to answer the bell for the final round.

He may have inadvertently saved Ali, who also was contemplating throwing in the towel at that time and later conceded it was "the closest thing to dying that I know of".

It is that third fight with Frazier which many attribute - without proof - to Ali's current condition. What is certain is that, from that night on, Ali never was the same in the ring again.

He lost his title to brash young upstart Leon Spinks in 1978 and summoned some remarkable reserve of energy to win it back later that year.

Comfortable retirement loomed, but Ali came back to challenge Larry Holmes in 1980. It was a terrible night, a fact Holmes knew only too well.

Having been raised on Ali's legend, Holmes was close to tears as he handed his hero a merciless 10-round beating, marking the first time Ali had been stopped.

The Berbick loss came later, his extraordinary career ended by the clang of a cow-bell.

Ali was more than just a great boxer. He transcended his sport like no other fighter, before or since.

He always boasted he was the greatest, in and out of the ring. And he never really was one for overstatement.