There are some athletes that we will never forget. There are those that define a generation, and there are those that transform the game. But none have ever transcended sports the way Muhammad Ali did.
Nothing seems more heartbreakingly futile than trying to find the words to honor The Greatest. In a world where players and coaches are ever worried about saying exactly the right thing exactly the right way, Ali never cared.
Breaking away from the mold of coach-speak and media training, he said whatever he wanted without thinking. But that was exactly the beauty of his words. Nothing Ali ever said felt planned or scripted, yet it all flowed perfectly into a rhythmic cadence found only in poetry. He was a lyricist in a way no public figure has ever been.
Every day I fight to find the right words to make a point or explain how I feel. Ali never had such a fight. He found just as much ease in speaking as he did in boxing. He was the best quote the sports world has ever seen.
And it is only fitting that the smoothest talker we’ve ever known was just as smooth in the ring. His speech was a reflection of his body of work. There was an effortless beauty about the way the man who handcuffed lightning moved around his opponent.
“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” was a fair description, but even that doesn’t do justice to Ali’s work. Butterflies are too harmless, too carefree to represent his motion. Sure, he did float around the ring, but it was anything but carefree.
Every tiny half step, every dance here and there was a sharp, calculated plan of attack. Every second you were in the ring with Ali was another moment you were losing. Any motion you made, any hint of movement was a mistake that he fed off.
His greatness was never about how good he was at boxing, though he was certainly damn good. There’s no question that he was among the best to ever do it. But greatness goes beyond that. There has never been—and never will be—a better show than Muhammad Ali's.
You weren’t going to watch a great boxing match. You already knew the result. It wasn’t about that. You were going to see something no one had ever seen before, every single time.
Ali’s greatness wasn’t limited to the ring, either. As one of the most vocal athletes in history, he fought for everything he believed in and never backed down.
At a time when Jim Crow was law and racism was encouraged, Ali (and Cassius Clay) transformed the image of the black athlete. He embraced his blackness with open arms and displayed it proudly for all the world to see.
When Ali refused to enter the armed forces during the Vietnam War, he knew the consequences. He was denied boxing licenses in every state and stripped of his passport, effectively ending his boxing career.
But his stance on war was more important to him than any game could have been. And that stance was inextricably linked to his fight for racial justice. Black Americans had no gripe with the Vietcong; they were already at war in the States.
Ali eventually regained his right to fight and returned to his throne atop boxing. But again, it never mattered how many fights he won or how quickly he did so. Every one of his fights was so staggeringly different from any other boxing match that you couldn’t help but fall in love.
Accounts of Ali’s fights are as plentiful as they are admiring. There was no forgetting the way he danced around his prey, stalking, biding his time and finally pouncing. Anyone lucky enough to bear witness never forgot.
There are far too many great things to say about Muhammad Ali and far too few ways to say them. For the man who had the right words for every occasion, there are no words.
It’s a rare human who can be so truly great as to proclaim himself “The Greatest” and have the rest nod in agreement.
And there’s only one who could "drown the drink of water and kill a dead tree."
Just wait ‘til you see Muhammad Ali.
