Adieu, Mohammad Ali (1942-2016), ultimate champion, black activist

In our time, shall we ever see another meteor that burned so long and so bright and streaked so profligately fast, and whose tail had room for so many riders? When such a ques­tion is asked about any other great person, it would be the ultimate compliment. But the question would be an insult if it is asked about the great Afro-centrist, Mohammad Ali, who is being buried today because another Ali may NEVER decorate this world again.

The chance is so slim that all the extravagantly peerless qualities –beauty, grace, courage, tenac­ity, indomitable will, swiftness of foot, mighty and all-round ath­leticism, pride in his Black race, pacifism, readiness to suffer ter­ribly for his beliefs, etc, etc, would ever again converge in moulding another like the poetry-spewing Ali, so the Greatest could actually be one of a kind – even forever unequalled.

Today, The AUTHORITY reaches across the Atlantic Ocean to pay a fitting tribute to a great man that was not only black - and proud of it - but who remade box­ing in his beautiful and whole­some image – floating like a butterfly but stinging like a bee, dancing but punching hard, defy­ing age to regain championship titles at impossible ages, and then to defy debilitating sickness for decades. Yes, Ali was phenom­enal. He was the world’s greatest show.

Thus, it was not for nothing that a young Barack Obama who was running for his first Senate elec­tion had the embossed picture of a triumphant Mohammad Ali, taunting Sonny Liston (whom he had flattened in the eighth round to earn the World Boxing Heavy­weight title for the first time) fixed above his desk. It was the first thing he saw daily as he entered his office – as he took those first audacious steps that would even­tually place him right inside the United States of America’s Oval Office.

Ali was not content with living within the narrow confines which the USA of his youth had reserved for Blacks and so he rewrote the rules and forced others to accept it.

Yes, he was such a man among men that Sir Rudyard Kipling could have written the poem “If” just because of him. “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster/And treat those two impostors just the same” wrote Kipling, and Ali did just that. He had emerged world boxing champion at age 22 and was stripped of his title with­in a few years for refusing to be drafted into the army to against Vietnam and he counted that as a lesser tragedy than conforming to the dictates of a society that treated his fellow Blacks as less than human beings. Would he go to jail? He said it did not matter for Blacks had been in jail in the US for 400 years – since slavery times.

Kipling wrote: “Or watch the things you gave your life to, bro­ken/ And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools”. Ali would, after having been banned from boxing at 23, return to the rings in his 30s .campaigning with worn out muscles.

Kipling wrote: “And lose, and start again at your beginnings/ And never breathe a word about your loss;/ If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew/To serve your turn long after they are gone,/ And so hold on when there is nothing in you/ Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’/If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,/ Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,/Yours is the Earth and ev­erything that’s in it, /And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Yes, Ali’s return to boxing was problematic. He had lost almost a decade of his flowery years, and as a boxer he must have known that no heavyweight former champion had ever regained his crown. Or as the saying went, “the heavy weights never come back”. Ali banished that saying by reclaim­ing the tile not once or twice but thrice – a record difficult to equal. Yes, he forced his heart and sin­ewy to serve his turn long after their youthful days had gone. He lost fights to Joe Frazier, Ken Nor­ton, even Leon Spinks and Larry Holmes – many of whom are only remembered simply because of Ali.

He lived in the rarified world of the very rich whites in the rac­ist enclave that was the Southern United States of the 1960s and early 1970s but maintained his friendship with those who were there when he was a star still the making and remained Afrocen­tric all the way through.

In the end Ali gained the Earth, becoming the most recognizable face in the universe. Today, he is being mourned in all corners of the globe.

Adieu the Champ, the Greatest, the Prettiest. THE AUTHORITY eulogizes him for enhancing the pride of the Blackman through sheer force of character. He had the will and the world yielded a way to him. Oh what an incom­parable trail he blazed!