Word: alie
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...seemed at first that the conversion was just another idiosyncrasy, some kind of gimmick. It was nothing of the kind. Clay had actually changed his religion before the Listen fight. Harold Conrad, for mer sportswriter, sometime promoter, and, in the years when Ali was banished from the ring, tireless seeker after the means of his return, was privy to a prefight crisis...
...weeks before the fight in Miami, Promoter Bill McDonald learned of Ali's Black Muslim associates and threatened to can cel the fight if Cassius did not denounce the Muslims. Conrad remembers: "When Ali heard that the fight was going to be nixed, he turned to Angelo and said matter of factly, 'Well, that's that.' He had absolutely no intention of renouncing his faith, not even for a crack at the world championship he'd fought and slaved so long and hard to get. It meant chucking the fight and plunging into obscurity, but he didn't hesitate...
...conversion, complete with the adoption of the new name, Muhammad Ali, raised eyebrows but not full public ire?yet. He was funny and, yes, pretty, and so what if Malcolm X was looking over the man-child's shoulder? He was still eating ice cream. How bad could...
...Ali and the American public learned the answer to the question in 1965, when he defended his title against Floyd Patterson. A sporting event became a religious war between Catholic Patterson and Muslim Ali. It was also a terrible mismatch between a flagging ex-champ and a cruelly derisive young titleholder. By the time of the K.O. in the 12th round, even the most bloodthirsty fight fans were sickened by the gruesome giving and taking of pain. But there was more than that to the scene. White America had seen Watts burn with a deadly rage that summer. Now there...
There was a war on. Every night, television sets in the nation's living rooms showed?in color?the horror of the fighting in Viet Nam. Ali refused to do his bit. "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong," he said, and changed his life forever. When the Army tried to draft Ali, he appealed, claiming that, as a Black Muslim, he was a conscientious objector: Ali managed to squeeze in a few fights, mostly in Europe, before the date he was supposed to take the fateful step forward to induction. Ironically, the man who read...