He fought like a lightweight, bouncing in and out, circling always. He hit like a sledgehammer, but he fought like a heavyweight. Getting into his opponent’s head, baiting him to fight on emotion rather than strategy, that was all part of the plan.Īli shocked the world when he beat Liston. He was a showman, a tactician and a strategist, inside the ring and out. At times, he seemed a man out of control. He showed up with his bus and a bullhorn outside of Sonny Liston’s in the middle of the night.

If you despise the trash talk that has become so standard in modern-day combat sports, you can thank Ali. Especially early on, Cassius Clay’s mouth preceded him. (In one of the saddest moments in the book, Patterson, who had his pilots license, slips out after the second loss and charters a jet to fly himself from Vegas back to Chicago, a long, lonely overnight flight across the dark country below him.)Īnd then came Cassius Clay, who would somehow be even more objectionable than Liston. Patterson was the hero, Liston the villain. Remnick sets the Liston-Patterson fights up as a pivotal moment in boxing history, one that would define the character of the heavyweight championship. Liston, on the other hand, was from an abusive family, had been in and out of prison, was brutal, mean, a criminal controlled by the mob. Floyd Patterson was a well-respected, polite man- a deferential black man, “acceptable” to those who believed black men had their place. That part of the story is as interesting, if not more so, than the story of Ali. And to understand those fights, you have to understand the Liston-Patterson fights. Rather than a traditional biography (there are plenty of Muhammad Ali biographies), Remnick focuses on the fights between Ali and Sonny Liston. To many people, for much of his career, Ali was a transcendent villain. Every sport has their heroes and their villains. He was a rebel in nearly every aspect of his life. He was feared and reviled for his outspoken politics and his strange religious beliefs. He was despised by boxing purists for his style and his braggadocio. It’s hard to imagine that as he stepped into the ring for his early title fights, he was often met with a chorus of boos. Ali (and Cassius Clay before he changed his name) was draped in controversy through most of his career. Today, we put Ali on a pedestal with the greatest American heroes-not just the groundbreaking athletes, but the icons of American achievement.

I remember watching the opening ceremony of the 1996 Olympics on television, seeing Muhammad Ali stand proudly, his arm shaking wildly from Parkinson’s as he lit the Olympic torch in front of a roaring crowd in Atlanta.

King of the World by David Remnick