Speaker 1: How in the world have I landed here? I got
Speaker 1: my ass fired today, and yet here I am on
Speaker 1: the floor in Muhammad Ali's mother's house with Ali tickling me.
Speaker 1: He finally stops it, helps me up from the floor.
Speaker 1: We go back into the living room and sit down
Speaker 1: on the sofa. His knees are touching my knees. I'm
Speaker 1: starting to feel like family. I ask him if he
Speaker 1: has tapes of his old fights. He shakes his head no,
Speaker 1: and I say, well, look, until today, when I lost
Speaker 1: my job, I was managing a bunch of video stores
Speaker 1: and I still get free rentals. Would you like to
Speaker 1: go rent some of your old fights? He nods yes,
Speaker 1: and I say I'll drive. He shakes his head, says
Speaker 1: I'll drive.
Speaker 2: We go.
Speaker 1: When we pile out and clamber up into the winter,
Speaker 1: hit the road man. He's the worst driver I've ever
Speaker 1: been in a vehicle with, other than my drunk old
Speaker 1: grandfather just before he died. Mohamma is driving down the
Speaker 1: middle of the road. You get four lanes and he's
Speaker 1: in three of them. He's all over the place, speeds up,
Speaker 1: slows down. I'm scared half to death, clutching the arm rest,
Speaker 1: hoping we don't get killed. He pulls off on an
Speaker 1: exit and cuts off these teenage kids in an old
Speaker 1: beat to hell firebird.
Speaker 3: They get pissed.
Speaker 1: They crank down their windows, and the two kids each
Speaker 1: shoot him the bird, and Mohammed immediately shoots.
Speaker 3: The bird back.
Speaker 1: We go in the video store and get an old
Speaker 1: Godzilla movie that he wants to see.
Speaker 3: He loves old horror films.
Speaker 1: We borrow a tape of his fights called Muhammad Ali
Speaker 1: Skill greens and guts. The kids in the store, who
Speaker 1: had been my employees until earlier that day, are dumbstruck.
Speaker 3: Their mouths are falling open. Here I am.
Speaker 1: Hanging out with Muhammad Ali. We get back in the
Speaker 1: Winnebago drive back to his mom's and I remember that
Speaker 1: I have a book of photos in the car that
Speaker 1: I just bought the week before in a used bookstore.
Speaker 1: It's a book of photos of Ali and his prime
Speaker 1: beautiful photos. Beautiful book. I grab it out of the car,
Speaker 1: along with a copy of a Sports Illustrated article I'd
Speaker 1: written about sparring with him when I was in college.
Speaker 1: I've had it in the car ever since. Lynn and
Speaker 1: I moved to Louisville, hoping and dreaming that i'd eventually
Speaker 1: meet Ali. There's one photo in particular, a classic one
Speaker 1: of his face shining with sweat. I plan to ask
Speaker 1: him to sign it, but he opens the book and
Speaker 1: signs the title page to Davis Miller, the greatest fan
Speaker 1: of all times for Mohammad Ahweh, King of Boxing. Then
Speaker 1: he just keeps going. He signs that page, and then
Speaker 1: the next one, the next one. He turns page after
Speaker 1: page after page, taking probably forty five minutes to sign
Speaker 1: individual photos, signing about one hundred of them, unbelievable. Signs
Speaker 1: them with Malcolm X, with Howard Cosel, with Elijah Muhammad
Speaker 1: signs a photo of his first wife Sanji, and besides
Speaker 1: it writes she gave me Hall. Then his second wife Belinda.
Speaker 1: He signs one that is still one of my favorites,
Speaker 1: and I have a copy of it framed on my wall.
Speaker 1: It says love is the net where hearts are caught
Speaker 1: like fish. And then he hesitates over one of young
Speaker 1: Cassius Clay sitting in a bank vault atop one million
Speaker 1: dollars in one dollar bills. He says, money don't mean nothing,
Speaker 1: closes the book, hands it back to me and says,
Speaker 1: I'm giving you something very valuable. It stops me.
Speaker 2: He would say, and could get in a position to
Speaker 2: do bigger thing.
Speaker 1: That's Reverend Al Sharpton, civil rights activist and friend of Ali's,
Speaker 1: who worked with Muhammad on many projects, and who well
Speaker 1: understood Ali's true calling and what it was he considered
Speaker 1: important to do in this life.
Speaker 4: Where As a normal person you three times living, win
Speaker 4: champion of the world, you go, retire, you live, make money,
Speaker 4: do whatever you want. Where others look for doing a
Speaker 4: commercial on endorsement, he looked for a course that he
Speaker 4: wasn't going to get anything out of.
Speaker 1: Hey, it's me again, Davis. I know what you're thinking. No, No, really,
Speaker 1: I do you're thinking. Ain't No way, I got welcomed
Speaker 1: into Muhammad Ali's life like that, hanging out at missus
Speaker 1: Clay's house. No way, it's a logical doubt. I mean,
Speaker 1: how often does that stuff happen? Well, it just doesn't.
Speaker 1: But I assure you it is true, and it gets
Speaker 1: far more unbelievable as I enter into a dimension with
Speaker 1: Ali I could never have dreamed of. Episode three, A
Speaker 1: magical evening back at Mama Bird's house from the video Store,
Speaker 1: Ali and I take seats from the sofa and I say,
Speaker 1: this is a story I wrote in college about how
Speaker 1: you influenced me, and it's about the time we sparred together.
Speaker 3: He pretends to remember. There's no way.
Speaker 1: He remembers that he's sparred with thousands of people, from
Speaker 1: three year old Tykes to their eighty year plus great
Speaker 1: grandmama's I mean, you couldn't stop him from boxing people.
Speaker 1: He asked me to read the story, which I do.
Speaker 1: He listens, He listens intently. He laughs at the funny
Speaker 1: places when I try to imitate his voice, which I
Speaker 1: do horribly, and then he signs that I'm just blown away.
Speaker 1: I want to thank him in some way, but I
Speaker 1: can't come up with the words. He gets up and
Speaker 1: puts on the videotape. We're watching fight after fight, moment
Speaker 1: after moment of his comic life.
Speaker 2: Like a butter fun a rubble young man rubble.
Speaker 1: And he starts getting sleepy. I ask him, Champ, I
Speaker 1: think it's time for me to go. He says, no,
Speaker 1: stay you, my man. There's film with him training to
Speaker 1: fight Joe Frasier in their first fight.
Speaker 5: The big question to be answered, and this man shake
Speaker 5: off three and a half years of inactivity.
Speaker 3: When he was the most beautiful man in the world.
Speaker 1: Fires sprung from his fingertips, and I say, do you
Speaker 1: mind if I ask something serious?
Speaker 3: He nods.
Speaker 1: I say, does it bother you that you're a great man?
Speaker 1: Not being allowed to be great? He says, why what
Speaker 1: you mean, not allowed to be great? I say, the
Speaker 1: things that the rest of us think of as being
Speaker 1: Muhammad awe, the things that you.
Speaker 3: Care most about.
Speaker 1: Is so strange that those are the very things that
Speaker 1: have been taken from you. He radars in on me,
Speaker 1: looking at me very intensely, not offended at all, not
Speaker 1: in the lead. He says, I know why this has happened.
Speaker 1: God is showing me and showing you that I'm just
Speaker 1: a man like everybody else. We're sitting there silently, quietly
Speaker 1: on the sofa. He says, I'm going to make a comeback.
Speaker 1: What I say, I think he's joking. I mean, he
Speaker 1: has to be joking. But something in his tone makes
Speaker 1: me uncertain You're not serious. Suddenly there's power in his voice.
Speaker 1: He says, no, man, I'll get my weight down two fifteen.
Speaker 1: I'll have an exhibition at Yankee Stadium. It'll be the
Speaker 1: greatest comeback of all times. It'll be bigger than the Resurrection.
Speaker 1: And he stands up easily, not like he had before.
Speaker 1: He starts dancing around the room like the Ali on
Speaker 1: the screen, the one from March nineteen seventy one. He
Speaker 1: starts throwing punches, not like the ones he'd thrown at me.
Speaker 1: He's playing out in the yard, but now really letting
Speaker 1: him go his true art. Six seven, eight punches a second,
Speaker 1: blistering the air.
Speaker 3: He appears to glow in the dark.
Speaker 1: It's an absolutely magical experience. I can't believe this is happening,
Speaker 1: he says, look at the TV. I'm just as fast now,
Speaker 1: And stupidly, I say, and you know more now too.
Speaker 2: He says, wait till I come back. Watch this. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna destroy Mike Tyson.
Speaker 4: I try to retire, try to be cool, but I
Speaker 4: had to come back. I'm gonna show the world that
Speaker 4: I'm the miracle man.
Speaker 3: He looks so beautiful.
Speaker 1: I've never done hallucinogince, I've never dropped acid, but I
Speaker 1: feel this is an incandescent alternate reality moment in my life.
Speaker 1: I understand somehow that it's seminal, though I don't know
Speaker 1: how to get He keeps dancing, he keeps moving, he
Speaker 1: keeps throwing.
Speaker 3: Shots for three or four minutes.
Speaker 1: Then he sits down, sweating, exhausted, and we both go
Speaker 1: entirely quiet. We're quiet for a long time. It's close
Speaker 1: to midnight. I say, Champ, I've got a wife and
Speaker 1: kids waiting. I think I should go home. He says,
Speaker 1: bring your kids over Sunday. I'll do my magic. I'm
Speaker 1: impossibly honored. Not only do I want to thank Muhammad
Speaker 1: Ali for what he's meant in my life to millions
Speaker 1: of us, and what he's given me to I want
Speaker 1: to find the way to cures Parkinson's, but there's nothing
Speaker 1: I can do. Instead, I say, we'll see you Sunday. Champ,
Speaker 1: be cool and look out for the ladies, he says.
Speaker 1: I get back in my car. I drive to a
Speaker 1: grocery store to pick up a gallon of milk for
Speaker 1: Linn and the kids. There are quite a few customers
Speaker 1: in the store, even this late. To me, they seem
Speaker 1: to move more as floating shadows than his people. An
Speaker 1: old feeling comes across me that almost immediately recognize it's
Speaker 1: like making love for the first time. It's that same
Speaker 1: sense of landing and a lesser reality afterwards, and of
Speaker 1: having a secret the rest of the world can't see.
Speaker 1: I reach to grab the milk jug and I see
Speaker 1: my reflection and the chrome of the dairy counter. There's
Speaker 1: a half smile on my face, and I hatn't even
Speaker 1: realized it. This otherworldly experience was the beginning of what
Speaker 1: became a life changing friendship. Years later, I'd been working
Speaker 1: on a documentary in La. Hated the work and felt
Speaker 1: that I needed something real and pure in my life.
Speaker 1: I knew that Mohammad was in La for a book signing,
Speaker 1: so I hung out with him for a couple hours.
Speaker 1: I said, can you give me a ride to the airport.
Speaker 1: I need to go home and see my family. I
Speaker 1: haven't seen him in a month and a half. He motioned,
Speaker 1: get in the car. Howard, being Mohammad's best friend, was
Speaker 1: driving it. We're somewhere, I guess in South La, East La.
Speaker 1: Standing beside the road was this group of street people.
Speaker 1: Mohammad is sitting in the front seat. I'm in the
Speaker 1: back seat, and he points to that group of people.
Speaker 1: Howard understood that Muhammad wanted him to pull over.
Speaker 3: We pull off of the road.
Speaker 1: Mohammed gets out of the car, puts his hands up
Speaker 1: beside his head in a boxer supose so that everybody
Speaker 1: knows who he is, like they would have had trouble
Speaker 1: understanding anyway, approaches a little squat black guy and says
Speaker 1: Joe Frazier, which is one of his bits that Muhammad
Speaker 1: did over and over. He starts floating little feathery punches
Speaker 1: at this guy and if the guy's looking all startled
Speaker 1: and he's playing around with everybody. And then he opens
Speaker 1: his wallet and he'd been paid in cash for his appearance. However,
Speaker 1: many thousands of dollars that was he started handing out
Speaker 1: to this crowd of people who had gathered around him.
Speaker 1: I remember him approaching one old guy and he handed
Speaker 1: him a fifty dollars bill. Looked deep into his face
Speaker 1: when he said, no wine, just food. Mohammed gave out
Speaker 1: every nickel he had in his wallet. There's thirty people
Speaker 1: around him, fifty people around him. He said, stay here,
Speaker 1: I'll be back, and we get back in the car,
Speaker 1: drive to an ATM and I can still see orange
Speaker 1: and green lights around that ATM reflecting into the car.
Speaker 1: Mohammedd got whatever amount of money.
Speaker 3: The ATM would give him.
Speaker 1: We went back to that same corner and gave out
Speaker 1: all that money as well. That's Muhammad Ali. He was
Speaker 1: accepting people into his life with uncommon generosity, even maybe
Speaker 1: a singular generosity, and he did that untold thousands of times.
Speaker 1: Craig Mortally, Hey man, will you share with us one
Speaker 1: of the times you remember?
Speaker 5: I remember he's in the hotel room watching TV. There's
Speaker 5: a report on the local news of this Jewish home
Speaker 5: for the aged that was about to close. They ran
Speaker 5: out of funding. Mohammad gets in a car, drives up there,
Speaker 5: strokes a check and they keep their doors open. He
Speaker 5: didn't want publicity. He just did it. The next day,
Speaker 5: it's on the New York News. Here's this American Muslim
Speaker 5: helping some Jewish folks out in New York, and they
Speaker 5: gave him publicity. He did not want.
Speaker 1: It was absolutely in his nature. He was doing that
Speaker 1: before he was Islamic. He did it throughout his life. Trophies,
Speaker 1: various awards, He gave away everything like that. At the
Speaker 1: time that Lonnie came into his life, I think that
Speaker 1: Muhammad was anything but wealthy, but he continued to give
Speaker 1: away his stuff. He didn't care about material stuff. In
Speaker 1: the late eighties, I'd see him wear the same suit
Speaker 1: over and over in the same tie. He'd given most
Speaker 1: of his fortune away, and then Lani found a way
Speaker 1: to save what was left and eventually even make a
Speaker 1: new fortune. Sometime in nineteen ninety two, I was hanging
Speaker 1: out with Mohammed at his home Iberian Springs. He had
Speaker 1: this wall size television. It sat on some kind of
Speaker 1: cabinet and had all these flashing lights. It was always
Speaker 1: on CNN. The story comes on about the Chicago school
Speaker 1: system does not have the money to buy buses for
Speaker 1: the kids to get the kids to school.
Speaker 3: Muhammed, the way he.
Speaker 1: Was with kids, He's all absorbed into the story. Then
Speaker 1: when it goes off, he creaks up from his chair
Speaker 1: and motions to me to come over to his desk
Speaker 1: and help him get out his check book. He writes
Speaker 1: a check for half a million dollars to the Chicago
Speaker 1: school System to buy buses. He never told anyone about it.
Speaker 1: He didn't claim it in any manner, shape or form.
Speaker 1: He just did it. Mohammed and Money were not world
Speaker 1: class wealthy at that point. Ali just gave away a
Speaker 1: huge percentage of it so kids could get to school.
Speaker 2: I do need populicity, but not for what I do
Speaker 2: for good.
Speaker 4: I need publicity for my book, I need fight, I
Speaker 4: need pump listeners from a movie, but not for helping people.
Speaker 2: It is no longer sincere.
Speaker 5: Former President Barack Obama has called Reverend Al Sharpton a
Speaker 5: voice for the voiceless and a champion of the downtrodden.
Speaker 5: A Baptist minister of political, civil rights and social justice activist,
Speaker 5: he is the longtime president and founder of the National
Speaker 5: Action Network, as well as a member of the United
Speaker 5: States Commission on Civil Rights. He has dedicated his life
Speaker 5: to the fight for justice inequality by using the teachings
Speaker 5: of doctor Martin Luther King, Junior and applying them to
Speaker 5: a modern civil rights agenda. Reverend Sharpton can be seen
Speaker 5: regularly on MSNBC, where he is the host of Politics Nation. Reverend,
Speaker 5: thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule.
Speaker 4: Thank you Craig for having me, particularly on what we're
Speaker 4: going to talk about.
Speaker 5: Well, it's close to all of our hearts, so thanks again.
Speaker 4: A Lee saw the title sort of money, saw the
Speaker 4: lifestyle as vehicles to him do humanitarian work. Our League
Speaker 4: never engaged in a lot of material things just for
Speaker 4: material things.
Speaker 2: He saw that as a means to an end.
Speaker 4: Lonie his wife had to take care of his business
Speaker 4: because our Lead would give all his money away from
Speaker 4: up to him.
Speaker 5: Boxing was just a vehicle to get him the greater things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, Welson.
Speaker 4: He represented there was something more to life than just
Speaker 4: getting the trinkets of being a star or having a
Speaker 4: nice home. And our Lead was the symbol of somebody
Speaker 4: that really could make a difference and use fame and
Speaker 4: fortune for a greater cause. He's my doctor King. And
Speaker 4: he would always say, shocked. You be like doctor King.
Speaker 4: Don't be out held these money grabbers. He said, Doctor
Speaker 4: King stud for something, but you be to be faithful
Speaker 4: to what you're about.
Speaker 2: I go to fights. Is even after he stopped fighting, and.
Speaker 4: He said, don't let dogs he canting meet you other
Speaker 4: you don't need to be doing after the parties you
Speaker 4: were preaching. He really believed that people ought to do
Speaker 4: what they're supposed to do because that's what he did.
Speaker 5: You once a reference I've heard this about James Brown.
Speaker 5: Explain to you that it's important to say true to yourself,
Speaker 5: make people come to you, don't go to other people.
Speaker 4: James Brown is like a father to me, he said.
Speaker 4: In my music would make me different. As I started
Speaker 4: the one three beat rather than the two four, he said,
Speaker 4: and everybody told me I was crazy. But then when
Speaker 4: the music came out and went to number one, if
Speaker 4: I hadn't listened to myself and stood for myself, it
Speaker 4: would have never happened.
Speaker 2: Brother, our lead was like that.
Speaker 4: Everybody told I'll leave, don't do this, don't do that,
Speaker 4: and he did it and he made it work, he said.
Speaker 4: But you got to always have a strategy. But the
Speaker 4: most important thing you have to listen to other God
Speaker 4: will bring you through, Shoppton, I'm telling you he'll bring
Speaker 4: you through.
Speaker 5: You talked about projects that you worked with Ali on.
Speaker 5: Can you share some of those projects and how impact folk?
Speaker 1: He was.
Speaker 4: I said to our league that they have a crack epidemic,
Speaker 4: explained what it was, and out here getting the music
Speaker 4: industry involved. I will have a big luncheon. I'd like
Speaker 4: you to come and talk about we've got to get
Speaker 4: kids off crack. We had all the record industry guys
Speaker 4: in the Ali walks in and he stood up there
Speaker 4: and he said, we got to stand against crack.
Speaker 2: I'm a river Shopton.
Speaker 4: Every time I would ask him to show up for something,
Speaker 4: he show up and I say, I ain't got an
Speaker 4: honor reb I coveraged physics man. I didn't ask for
Speaker 4: no money. You doing God's work. One of the lessons
Speaker 4: I learned from him directly. During that time, he had
Speaker 4: a training camp in d Lake, Pennsylvania. He invited me
Speaker 4: down and I stayed in one of the guest cabins overnight.
Speaker 4: I got up and went to the training cabin.
Speaker 2: As god Win the sparring.
Speaker 4: This guy the real good at me, he Dad's He
Speaker 4: was beating up in his sparm apartment, and all of
Speaker 4: a sudden I could feel somebody behind me and I
Speaker 4: looked up and it was our Lee had come out
Speaker 4: of his cabin and he standing there watching again. I said, champion,
Speaker 4: this guy is good. He said, he look good sharping.
Speaker 4: I think this guy could get a champions He said, well,
Speaker 4: don't go too fairst.
Speaker 2: He said, we see him throwing good punches. Let's see
Speaker 2: if he can take a punch. And a minute later
Speaker 2: his sparing partner cocked me.
Speaker 4: And he went down and Ali said to me, the
Speaker 4: champion even what you do is not how good you
Speaker 4: can float, It is how good you could take it
Speaker 4: if you fell, you sharpon you get out there fighting,
Speaker 4: they're gonna throw punches. If you can't take it, don't
Speaker 4: get out there. And it was stuff like that that
Speaker 4: he lived by. He loved little magic tricks. But in
Speaker 4: the middle of the magic tricks, he'll come with something profound.
Speaker 4: Then he would ask me, did you ever read this poet?
Speaker 4: I'm talking about heavy guy. Rarely do you talk sports.
Speaker 4: It was always talking about heavy maids philosophy. Plain this
Speaker 4: line to me shocking. When the guy was rounded him
Speaker 4: later in life, he would be very sparing with his words,
Speaker 4: but he'd enerject what he wanted to say. Something that
Speaker 4: was important. I remember had gotten so that he could
Speaker 4: hardly speak. I tell you two stories as a civil
Speaker 4: rights community prepared this week for the National forty Rights March,
Speaker 4: that when I started my show on MSNBC Politics Nation,
Speaker 4: I was leaving the Dogs and thirty Rock Fellas sent
Speaker 4: a headed back over the nash Ash the work and
Speaker 4: Lonnie called me and I said, hey, how you doing.
Speaker 2: She said, I'm all right. She said just a minute
Speaker 2: from me a whole And he came on Brillion, you
Speaker 2: got you a TV show? I mean when you were
Speaker 2: a little fat boy. Because he didn't talk that well.
Speaker 2: I said, Chap, how you doing who? And then you
Speaker 2: couldn't understand him. And then he gave the phone to
Speaker 2: Lonnie Lane. He said he watches you every night. I
Speaker 2: said really, And he grabbed the throat back. He said,
Speaker 2: don't let me down. Now.
Speaker 4: He wouldn't sometimes have a good day and he would
Speaker 4: call him talk.
Speaker 2: You wouldn't talk along, and it was back to Lonnie.
Speaker 4: And when I would see him, if they would be
Speaker 4: in New York for somewhere else, he would never let
Speaker 4: you feel sorry for him.
Speaker 2: He would look at you.
Speaker 4: But he had that same determination, same curiosity, always thought
Speaker 4: big and global.
Speaker 5: It's amazing his arc. He was once the most despised
Speaker 5: man in America, and then later in life he became
Speaker 5: the most beloved.
Speaker 4: I remember before you got to sent to talk, we
Speaker 4: would talk about how he.
Speaker 2: Was so despised.
Speaker 4: He said that the reason his fight so loud, his
Speaker 4: three corters audience came to see.
Speaker 2: Him get beat.
Speaker 4: And now the sane people come around now to cheer
Speaker 4: me off. He'd be in New York and I'd be
Speaker 4: in some controversy, jobbed. Don't let the controversial bother you.
Speaker 4: Look at me, he said, people walking up getting my
Speaker 4: autograph now that wanted to kill.
Speaker 2: Me twenty years ago. He said, if you stat up,
Speaker 2: who what's right? What you're doing is right? Is it right?
Speaker 4: I said yeah? He said, well you believe it. He said,
Speaker 4: God will test you by giving you what is unpopular,
Speaker 4: and you.
Speaker 2: Are arned being popular. He said, if you can't pass
Speaker 2: the test, you can't get the degree. You went to school.
Speaker 2: You went up further than I did, the higher of
Speaker 2: the degree.
Speaker 4: The hegher the test. He'd always say that to me.
Speaker 4: The meaning why a lot of guys don't make it
Speaker 4: is they can't take the test.
Speaker 2: You got to pass the test.
Speaker 4: I didn't understand why I was so apartment for doing
Speaker 4: what I did, But I learned Lady of God.
Speaker 2: Was testing me. Can you believe all over the world?
Speaker 2: All league? All lady? He started laughing, and what is
Speaker 2: our right? Dee was out of the ring. There was
Speaker 2: never a day that.
Speaker 4: Muhammad Ali became irrelevant. Even though he couldn't even talk anymore,
Speaker 4: even though he couldn't get out of the wheel chair,
Speaker 4: he never became irrelevant. Because he presently no matter what
Speaker 4: he had to work when he made it work.
Speaker 3: First, Lonnie, I thank you for what you did to
Speaker 3: make the second half of his life greater than the first.
Speaker 5: In his eulogy of Muhammad, President Clinton called the second
Speaker 5: half of his life better than the first, that he
Speaker 5: transcended and had a greater impact.
Speaker 4: The second part of his life, he was challenged physically,
Speaker 4: and yet he was able to use the legend that
Speaker 4: he'd become this man wouldn't got hostages out, he would
Speaker 4: travel around the world. The first part of his life,
Speaker 4: it was to get a title and then to regain
Speaker 4: the title. Second part of his life is he redefined
Speaker 4: what being a champion was. It's hard now to look
Speaker 4: at guys that are number one in their sport and
Speaker 4: compare to to Mohman ally, because he was so much
Speaker 4: bigger than that. He had a global impact and he
Speaker 4: used it for humanitarian ways. And that's where I agree
Speaker 4: with President Clinton. He became much bigger than just a
Speaker 4: narrower thing of sitting in a lunch counter. Whereas a
Speaker 4: normal person you three times living with champion of the world.
Speaker 4: You go retire, you live and make money, do whatever
Speaker 4: you want. Where others look for doing a commercial on endorsement.
Speaker 4: He looked for a course that he wasn't going to
Speaker 4: get anything out of.
Speaker 1: And I think that's his greatness. He became all of us.
Speaker 1: He'd been the closest thing we're ever going to see,
Speaker 1: the superman. Then he became something greater. He became us.
Speaker 1: Everybody could relate to that man in the second half
Speaker 1: of his life.
Speaker 2: I like that that is exactly right.
Speaker 4: I think that if you read the Bible, the Tower
Speaker 4: or Koran, God uses people in ordinary sitting.
Speaker 2: I always say, why did God send Jesus to a
Speaker 2: maiden that nobody knew?
Speaker 4: Because you can't really be all of that if you're
Speaker 4: not with everybody and our lead last years, he was sick,
Speaker 4: he was one of us, and we found that he
Speaker 4: wasn't from Mount Olympusy.
Speaker 5: What do you think that says about his humanity?
Speaker 4: What I've learned is that you may get to the
Speaker 4: point where you can't depend on your oratory, so you
Speaker 4: better do enough work and.
Speaker 6: Enough action to you speak by just being in the
Speaker 6: room because everybody knew what you stood for. I le
Speaker 6: could go in any room from the White House to
Speaker 6: a hut, and he didn't have to say anything.
Speaker 2: Everybody knew what he stood for.
Speaker 4: Masculinity we define, and I think in trivial terms with
Speaker 4: macho symbolic things.
Speaker 7: Real masculinity is when you're in touch with yourself and
Speaker 7: you are able to use whatever natural gifts God gives
Speaker 7: you in a way that expresses you without having to
Speaker 7: minimize other We cheat them masculinity with macho and who
Speaker 7: we dominate.
Speaker 4: But real masculinity speaks who you are without you having
Speaker 4: to overpower others. Luther King used to say that if
Speaker 4: you haven't found anything to die for, you're not fit
Speaker 4: to live. For me, when I was stabbed, I was
Speaker 4: leading a march against a racial incident in Brooklyn, New York.
Speaker 2: He rushed me to the hospital and.
Speaker 4: It ended up the guy that stabbed me didn't hit
Speaker 4: an artery or hit a bible. But while I laid
Speaker 4: there on the gurney, you don't know that you're waiting
Speaker 4: then do an X rays. You don't know they can
Speaker 4: come back and tell you you'll never speak again, or
Speaker 4: it could be fatal. I don't think you really really
Speaker 4: really know what you stand for until you don't know
Speaker 4: if you're gonna make it, and you say, if I
Speaker 4: die on this gurney, it's been worth it. I did
Speaker 4: what I was supposed to do, and I think that's
Speaker 4: where I leave. Once several times in life before then,
Speaker 4: I was no justice, no peace, But on that gurney
Speaker 4: I had to meet with our shopton and say, you
Speaker 4: don't know what They're gonna come back and tell you
Speaker 4: hasn't been worth it.
Speaker 2: I say yeah, and I'll do it again.
Speaker 4: And when I got out of the hospit, you know,
Speaker 4: four days later, I wouldn't let another march. Until you
Speaker 4: meet that point, you are only guessing at what you
Speaker 4: really believe, because you.
Speaker 1: Really don't know what would you offer to this generation
Speaker 1: who's struggling so hard with their own violence and with
Speaker 1: these really lousy excuse for role models.
Speaker 4: I would say to them that they are better than that,
Speaker 4: and that they've got to find that in them like
Speaker 4: I leave found in himself. There are no a leads
Speaker 4: out there now, And you know what I would say
Speaker 4: to them about that. There was no lead before I
Speaker 4: lead people he admired with, they did stamp for things
Speaker 4: that he did. He found that in himself and he
Speaker 4: raised the bar to a whole other level. Before I
Speaker 4: leave we thought champions who could knock somebody else a
Speaker 4: lead made it something else. So if you don't have
Speaker 4: a role model, you become that role model. Reaching and
Speaker 4: you said, I'm better than this, I'm better than being vioted,
Speaker 4: I'm better than being a thug or hoodler. And use
Speaker 4: our lead as an example of somebody from a circugated
Speaker 4: Jim Crow background.
Speaker 2: That shouldn't have been able to do anything.
Speaker 4: Not only did he do it, he reinterpreted what it
Speaker 4: was to be famous and Richie I say to young people,
Speaker 4: and when I'm talking about our league, I said, if
Speaker 4: I would ask you who the last three heavyweight champions
Speaker 4: in the world are, you wouldn't know. If I would
Speaker 4: ask you who was the most popular cultural figure in
Speaker 4: the sixties, you don't know.
Speaker 2: If I ask you if you heard of Muhammad Ali,
Speaker 2: the whole class will.
Speaker 4: Raised him, even if they don't know the detail, because
Speaker 4: if you stand for something, that'll last longer than if
Speaker 4: you have something. If you stand for something, people will
Speaker 4: remember you for a long time. All League, he'll live
Speaker 4: forever in history. Maybe that's what descriptions about he turns life.
Speaker 4: As long as there's man, there'll be those that will
Speaker 4: be talking about Muhammad Ali.
Speaker 1: In the next episode of The Dalla Muhammad Ali, I
Speaker 1: get to see Muhammad for who he really is when
Speaker 1: his mother's not around.
Speaker 8: I think he just had some stuff to get out
Speaker 8: of his system. He wasn't perfect, but he was able
Speaker 8: to move systematically and steadily to higher and hire degrees
Speaker 8: of perfection.
Speaker 1: That's a mom Shakir, a spiritual advisor to Muhammad Ali. Also,
Speaker 1: I have to leave this magical experience with Ali. Go home,
Speaker 1: Tell my wife I'm not employed anymore. We got to
Speaker 1: find a way to pay the bills.
Speaker 3: What am I gonna do? Stay tuned.
Speaker 1: The Dow of Muhammad Ali is produced by Imagine Audio
Speaker 1: for iHeart Podcast and hosted by Me Davis Miller. My
Speaker 1: co host is Craig Mortally, Karl Welker, Mark Beouch, Nathan Kloke,
Speaker 1: Derek Jennings and Little Owe. Me Davis Miller are executive producers.
Speaker 1: Produced by Craig Mortally, sound design and mixing by Juan Borda,
Speaker 1: music by Djsparr and introducing a very good pal of
Speaker 1: mine Isaac Miller. Additional music by William Ryan Fritch and
Speaker 1: also luminescence Tracknuage Visit luminescentmusic dot com to check out
Speaker 1: more from the band.