6 June 2016
Muhammad Ali was punch-drunk when he died
Like every pugilist, Muhammad Ali mastered the sweet science of smashing his fist into another man’s face only to find that in the end, the sweet science had mastered him. In his prime in the ring, he floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee. But in his middle and old age, he shuffled his feet and slurred his speech like the punch-drunk old fighter he was. His fame came at a terrible price.
Boxing may have been his only path to glory. In the New York Times, Robert Lipsyte reported:
For all his ambition and willingness to work hard, education — public and segregated — eluded him. The only subjects in which he received satisfactory grades were art and gym, his high school reported years later. Already an amateur boxing champion, he graduated 376th in a class of 391. He was never taught to read properly; years later he confided that he had never read a book, neither the ones on which he collaborated nor even the Quran, although he said he had reread certain passages dozens of times. He memorized his poems and speeches, laboriously printing them out over and over.
I always found his life tragic, not inspiring.