Word: aly
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Ali and his entourage claim that the Government secretly sought to strike a deal?offering, if he would go quietly into uniform, to allow him to defend his title regularly and put on boxing exhibitions. A similar arrangement had been worked out for Joe Louis during World War II. The Pentagon last week denied that any such arrangement was ever suggested to Ali...
...April 1967, Ali had exhausted all of his appeals. At the Houston Induction Center, he refused orders to step forward to join the Army. Within minutes the New York State Athletic Commission rescinded his boxing license; it took the World Boxing Association four hours to do its patriotic duty and take away his title. The State Department confiscated his passport so that he could not travel to nations willing to sanction his fighting. For his stand, Ali was convicted of draft evasion and given a five-year prison sentence. He started the lengthy process of appeal, and discovered that...
...three and one-half years, Ali was not allowed to earn a purse at the only work he knew. The banishment cost him his fighting prime. Finally, late in 1970, he began to get some bouts: he tuned up by beating Jerry Quarry and Oscar Bonavena and then challenged Joe Frazier for the title on March 8, 1971. He lost, but three months later scored a bigger victory in another arena. On June 28, 1971, his conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court, which ruled 8 to 0 that the draft board had improperly denied Ali's claim for exemption...
...matter that his best years were gone; the fighter was back working at his craft. His championship had been a bully pulpit, and he eagerly sought it once more. The Muslims had softened their separatist hard line, and with that there was less raw, reverse-racism talk from Ali. Finally Ali reclaimed his crown in Kinshasa, Zaïre. George Foreman, the hardest puncher since Sonny Listen, spent himself pounding Muhammad Ali ceaselessly?and uselessly?on the ropes one early African morning. Ali again was the underdog, but it was his galvanic personality that drew the attention of the world...
...long odyssey, Muhammad Ali became a global celebrity on a scale known by only a handful of men. He called upon heads of state, and it is they who were thrilled by the meeting. As one of the world's most recognizable faces, he drew appreciative, knowing crowds from African village to Asian hamlet to European capital. If he walked a single block, he trailed a mob in his wake. Now an aged, dethroned champion, he can no longer light the ring with his skills. But the path he burned across his time remains...