Word: alie
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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What drives Ali to think of returning to the ring is pride. If he could somehow beat Spinks and win back his title, he would round out his career and make time stand still?for a little while. The rhyming ex-champion is much like Shakespeare's deposed poet-king Richard, who wrestled with himself and the gathering forces that beat against his life. Muhammad Ali careened across his stage, by turns as hopeful and despairing as his times. He is unlikely to go quietly into the past...
...heavyweight champions have known some of the glory that Ali did-and for the rest of their lives they can take solace from the fact that they once held the most coveted title in boxing. Three of the ex-champs since Joe Louis are dead: Rocky Marciano was killed in a plane crash in 1969, Sonny Liston died of an overdose of drugs in 1970, and in 1975 Ezzard Charles succumbed to the lingering muscular disease that killed baseball's Lou Gehrig. Louis and the other five surviving champions have coped with life without the title in a variety...
...Muhammad Ali has caused inflammations of metaphysical prose in a number of writers; perhaps the urge ought to be resisted. But sport and play can lend themselves to extravagant speculations, and Ali is one of the most abundantly complicated figures in the history of games. His career in boxing has of course been totally entangled with his celebrity-Ali may be the most famous man in the world. Since he took the heavyweight title from Sonny Listen in Miami Beach 14 years ago, "the Greatest" has been the protagonist of a vast popular psychodrama in which sport was only...
...years in pro football, is one. In his early years with the New York Jets, Namath's popular image had more to do with booze and stewardesses than football. His feats alone brought the upstart American Football League into parity with the National Football League. But like Ali, Namath's lasting imprint in memory involves certain splendidly perfect moves: his flickingly fast release of passes, his clairvoyant readings of defenses and where his receivers would be. Like Ali, Namath could be an arrogant gamesman: he preposterously predicted that his 17-point underdog Jets would beat the Baltimore Colts...
...always an enemy. Experience can equip an athlete with a savvy to compensate for what he has lost in reflexes. As Ali said in demanding a rematch with Leon Spinks last week: "I may be old, but I'm not dumb." But in physical competition, an old pro's tricks can only postpone retirement...