Speaker 1: Personology is a production of I Heart Radio. Muhammad Ali,
Speaker 1: whose nickname was aptly the Greatest, is regarded as the
Speaker 1: greatest professional boxer of all time. He was also a
Speaker 1: celebrated celebrity figure of the twentieth century, known for his
Speaker 1: political and social activism, humanitarian works, philanthropy, and champion of
Speaker 1: the Muslim faith. My guest today is Jonathan ig Ig
Speaker 1: is the author of five books, three of them New
Speaker 1: York Times bestsellers. A former staff writer for The Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal, I has also written for The New York Times,
Speaker 1: The New York are Online, and The Washington Post. His
Speaker 1: latest book is Ali, a Life, which won the penn
Speaker 1: ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing. Ali was also named
Speaker 1: Best Book of the Year by Sports Illustrated, one of
Speaker 1: the ten best non fiction books of the Year by
Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal, and one of the New York
Speaker 1: Times Notable Books of two thousand and eighteen. Muhammad Ali
Speaker 1: was born Cassius Clay January of two in Louisville. And
Speaker 1: we will talk a little bit about his family of origin,
Speaker 1: his father, who was a sign painter, and his mother,
Speaker 1: who was a homemaker. But really what matters is the
Speaker 1: kind of people that his parents were and the kind
Speaker 1: of relationship that they had with their son. So let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about his namesake. His father, Cassius, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Cassius Clay senior, Cassius Marcellus Clay Senior. Everybody called him Cash.
Speaker 1: Was a great character. Um, a womanizer, a very effervescent,
Speaker 1: very popular guy, love to go out and drink, drank
Speaker 1: a little too much, got arrested a few times for
Speaker 1: public intoxication, and ran around on his wife. So um,
Speaker 1: he was this very compelling, very dynamic figure that has
Speaker 1: you know, in some ways his his two sons really idolized.
Speaker 1: But he was also a troubled figure who brought violence
Speaker 1: into the home and and you know, beat his wife
Speaker 1: on occasion, came home drunk and and and beaten his
Speaker 1: kids a couple of times too. So uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I think this is one of the really key relationships
Speaker 1: in shaping young Muhammad Ali, particularly in terms of thinking
Speaker 1: about what Ali went on to do with his life.
Speaker 1: That it's interesting to think about, as you said, he
Speaker 1: this father who, in the kindest way you could say,
Speaker 1: was maybe a scoundrel. You know, that he was a
Speaker 1: womanizer and that he got into trouble, but people liked him.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, as you said, there was
Speaker 1: this dark side to him. He did hit his wife,
Speaker 1: he did hit his children, and he had interactions with
Speaker 1: the police because it got into fights, physical fights. And
Speaker 1: this is important because when you think about children who
Speaker 1: grow up in abusive homes, they have to find a
Speaker 1: way to cope with the abuse of what's going on,
Speaker 1: and often what they do, and this is why you
Speaker 1: see this repeated pattern in families is they use a
Speaker 1: defense mechanism called identification with the aggressor, which means basically
Speaker 1: they've been the victim and they've been the powerless one,
Speaker 1: and to cope with the trauma of that, they grow
Speaker 1: into somebody who tries to have the power and be
Speaker 1: the doer, not the one done to. And so we
Speaker 1: often see this pattern of kids who have been in
Speaker 1: abusive homes going on to become abusers themselves in domestic
Speaker 1: abuse or in abusing their children. And of course, while
Speaker 1: that is not what Muhammad Ali is known for, he
Speaker 1: did go on to be a fighter, a boxer, and
Speaker 1: um that would be an incredible sublimation of another defense mechanism,
Speaker 1: of a way of taking urges to be the hitter,
Speaker 1: to be the powerful one, and using it in a
Speaker 1: way that is constructive. So and just in terms of
Speaker 1: already right out of the gate, thinking about motivators for
Speaker 1: young Cassius Clay to be interested in fighting and in boxing.
Speaker 1: That's right. One of the things that really struck me
Speaker 1: about Ali that I was so interested in is that
Speaker 1: he was never a bully in school. He was much
Speaker 1: bigger than the other kids in his class. You look
Speaker 1: at the school pictures, the class photos, and he towers
Speaker 1: over everybody in the class. He grew not only large,
Speaker 1: but he grew early, and he um struggled in school.
Speaker 1: Later discovered that he was dyslexic, but he really lagged behind.
Speaker 1: And I was always kind of surprised that he didn't
Speaker 1: lash out and become violent in any way. That he
Speaker 1: didn't you become a bully, and he didn't. He was
Speaker 1: the class clown instead. It wasn't until he was twelve
Speaker 1: that he discus over boxing. He had some physical prowess
Speaker 1: as a young boy. He as you said, was bigger, stronger,
Speaker 1: and even in some ways faster. Already that he was uh,
Speaker 1: not terribly engaged in the academics of school, to say
Speaker 1: the least, but he turned his let's say, energies to
Speaker 1: a lot of athletic pursuit. You tell this great story
Speaker 1: of how he raced the bus to both entertain students
Speaker 1: who were in the bus, but also because running and
Speaker 1: being physical was was part of his makeup at a
Speaker 1: very early age. That's right. He liked the idea of
Speaker 1: getting in shape. He liked the idea of getting stronger
Speaker 1: and being the strongest and the fastest um and the
Speaker 1: fact that he could also um entertain the other kids
Speaker 1: on the school bus was was key because he loved attention.
Speaker 1: He desperately needed attention. His mother said that he used
Speaker 1: to stand up in the stroller because he wanted people
Speaker 1: to see him even as they were as he was
Speaker 1: a baby walking down the street. And and that seems
Speaker 1: to have really been a part of his d n
Speaker 1: a that he just needed to be noticed all the time.
Speaker 1: And that may come from feeling like he didn't get
Speaker 1: the love of his father. He certainly felt like he
Speaker 1: got the love of his mother. And his mother was
Speaker 1: in many ways the opposite of Cash. She was this
Speaker 1: sweet Her nickname was Bird because she had this sweet,
Speaker 1: little high pitched laugh, and everybody loved bird. Bird was
Speaker 1: was was stable and solid and and took care of
Speaker 1: her family, took care of other families. Like so many
Speaker 1: black women of the nineteen fifties, the only work she
Speaker 1: could get was as a domestic cooking and cleaning for
Speaker 1: white families. But she was the you know, the epitome
Speaker 1: of a of a of a loving mother. So he
Speaker 1: had the balance from his parents. Well, she was, as
Speaker 1: you said, described as very angelic, churchgoer, a caretaker at
Speaker 1: all costs, very selfless. And that's important because his model
Speaker 1: for the first woman in his life, UM seems to
Speaker 1: be pursue him, let's say, in terms of who he
Speaker 1: chooses as wives and his girlfriends and what he expects
Speaker 1: of them. Certainly you see as he moves through life,
Speaker 1: definitely an expectation of caretaking. Definitely an expectation of selflessness
Speaker 1: on the part of women. Um. Sometimes it seems that
Speaker 1: he later takes a lot of advantage of that. But
Speaker 1: clearly his model for a woman seems very much based
Speaker 1: on his relationship with and the model that his mother said. Um.
Speaker 1: Also important is his relationship with his younger brother. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, and the younger brother kind of serves in
Speaker 1: that role of being the giving him even more attention.
Speaker 1: His his younger brother is kind of like his Sancho Panza.
Speaker 1: You know, He's there's there all the time to give
Speaker 1: support and encouragement and to remind Ali of how great
Speaker 1: he is. And Mohammed's hungry. The first thing he his brother,
Speaker 1: you know, does his run to the kitchen without even
Speaker 1: you know, being asked to go make him a sandwich.
Speaker 1: He's obedient fan. He's the ultimate fan. And he stays
Speaker 1: close with Rudy Ruddy, his brother. He stays close with
Speaker 1: Rudy and involves him in all of his life ongoings
Speaker 1: as his second mate throughout his life. So that remains
Speaker 1: a very important relationship for him. But equally important to
Speaker 1: the impact of this mother and this father and this
Speaker 1: brother is the environment in which she's growing up in,
Speaker 1: in the culture in the years of which he's growing
Speaker 1: up where basically this is the Jim Crow South. He
Speaker 1: grows up with tremendous race consciousness. His father has some
Speaker 1: strong opinions about what it is to be a black
Speaker 1: man in Louisville in those years and what he thinks
Speaker 1: his son can and cannot accomplish. As a result. Yeah,
Speaker 1: once again with everything around Ali. It's beautifully complicated because
Speaker 1: he's growing up in the Jim Crow South. He's he's
Speaker 1: you know, he's born into segregation. Um. But but he's
Speaker 1: not poor. Most back there's tend to come out of poverty.
Speaker 1: Ali lives in a middle class neighborhood where he sees
Speaker 1: people going to work every day, um, including business owners,
Speaker 1: people who own funeral homes and dentists offices, and school
Speaker 1: teachers and principles. His family is a little bit sort
Speaker 1: of on the lower end of that uh spectrum, but
Speaker 1: still solidly within the middle class. So he sees this
Speaker 1: proud community that he lives in. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: if he goes downtown, he can't shop in the clothing stores,
Speaker 1: he can't try on close in the department stores. He
Speaker 1: can't um sit anywhere but the balcony in the movie theater,
Speaker 1: and they're most of the city parks in in Louisville
Speaker 1: are completely off limits to him. So he grows up
Speaker 1: knowing that he's considered second class, and he can't understand why.
Speaker 1: For example, Um, you know, they go to church and
Speaker 1: they pray to a white Jesus. Um. You know, he's
Speaker 1: he's puzzled by that, and he can't understand why, um,
Speaker 1: skin color should make a difference, why should he be
Speaker 1: categorized this way? And when he tells his father one
Speaker 1: day that that he wants to be rich and famous,
Speaker 1: his father laughs at him and says, you can't be
Speaker 1: you can't be rich and famous. I'll tell you why.
Speaker 1: He just points to his skin and says, look at that.
Speaker 1: You know you're too dark. You're never going to be anything. Mhm.
Speaker 1: So a couple of interesting psychodynamics are set up early
Speaker 1: in the life of Ali, these models that are before him.
Speaker 1: His clear temperamental set up to be an extrovert. I
Speaker 1: mean that seems very obvious from his life and lifestyle
Speaker 1: and what he seeks out that unlike introverts who gain
Speaker 1: and need some time alone to re establish their energy,
Speaker 1: he clearly gets his energy off of being with other
Speaker 1: people and playing to other people, interacting with others. Very
Speaker 1: very extrovert man. And that's something that probably he was
Speaker 1: just biologically born with. Yeah, he hated being alone all
Speaker 1: his life. So that's that's that's often what exactly what
Speaker 1: a what a pure extrovert would say. Um, And they'll
Speaker 1: go to great lengths to be around other people, so
Speaker 1: that that desire for attention, you know, maybe some combination
Speaker 1: of wanting to, you know, aspire as everyone does, and
Speaker 1: having a father telling him he could never be special,
Speaker 1: and so feeling insecure in that way and looking for
Speaker 1: things that would shore up his self esteem or make
Speaker 1: him feel that he was able to be special, and
Speaker 1: being an extrovert wanting to be recognized therefore, and interacting
Speaker 1: with other people. And then you take this whole milieu
Speaker 1: and you plumped him into school, where as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: he really struggled. He really struggled because, as it turned out,
Speaker 1: he had dyslexia and could not read. That's right, and
Speaker 1: I think that must have been incredibly frustrating for him
Speaker 1: and it but but he again didn't act out in
Speaker 1: a in a bullying kind of way as he might have.
Speaker 1: He He just turned up the notch, turned up the levels,
Speaker 1: and went even more extroverted and just tried to be hilarious,
Speaker 1: trying to be the class clown. And then this miraculous
Speaker 1: thing happens and he finds the perfect cure for all
Speaker 1: of his problems. That's something that satisfies every bit of
Speaker 1: his enormous appetite and that's boxing. At the age of twelve,
Speaker 1: he stumbles accidentally into a gym where a white police
Speaker 1: officers training kids how to box, and there are black
Speaker 1: and white kids in the ring together. So, Son, I mean,
Speaker 1: it had to be like a monstrous epiphany where he
Speaker 1: suddenly sees that there's this place, a boxing ring, where
Speaker 1: the normal world, the normal rules of the world, do
Speaker 1: not apply. Here's a white police officer who wants to
Speaker 1: help him, who wants to be kind to him, who's
Speaker 1: working with black and white kids together, and there are
Speaker 1: white kids and black kids in a boxing ring punching
Speaker 1: one another. You know, his father has told him all
Speaker 1: his life that if you get into a fight with
Speaker 1: a white kid, you're going to jail. If you have
Speaker 1: any kind of running with a white police officer, you're
Speaker 1: in trouble, And here the opposite seems to apply. And
Speaker 1: then best of all, he gets to fight in front
Speaker 1: of crowds and on Friday nights, those fights are on television.
Speaker 1: He can't believe it, like this is a dream come true?
Speaker 1: What could be better than this? He gets to punch
Speaker 1: white people and they'll put him on TV for it.
Speaker 1: He brings to the mix, right this this background of
Speaker 1: what he's been told. So this this is like a revelation,
Speaker 1: as you point out. But also I think it's important
Speaker 1: to understand when one has dyslexia, one often has another
Speaker 1: diagnosis along with it, and the most common one is
Speaker 1: attention deficit disorder, particularly attention depth is a disorder with hyperactivity.
Speaker 1: And as you said, he seemed too many people who
Speaker 1: interacted with him, particularly his mother, but others like he
Speaker 1: was a very hyperactive kid, that he was in addition
Speaker 1: to being trying to be the class clown and get attention,
Speaker 1: that he was moving all the time, that he had
Speaker 1: high energy and high movement all the time. And for
Speaker 1: someone who feels hyperactivity, which feels kind of like ants
Speaker 1: in your pants all the time, the eye idea of
Speaker 1: being able to jump around a ring and box and
Speaker 1: hit people and get feedback would be like phenomenal. Would
Speaker 1: be an engaging, absorbing and actually physically relieving kind of
Speaker 1: activity because it's so busy, because it really plays into
Speaker 1: feeling hyperactive. So there were so many things that could
Speaker 1: lead to and then of course having this moment where
Speaker 1: actually it was there that really existed. Yeah, it was really,
Speaker 1: like I said, almost miraculous. Because he tried basketball and
Speaker 1: football and baseball and he hated those things. There was
Speaker 1: there was too much time standing around, and you know,
Speaker 1: in football, he said, you got to wear a helmet.
Speaker 1: Nobody can see you. And this was really serendipity. He
Speaker 1: had basically had a new bicycle that his family had
Speaker 1: given him and it was stolen and he was enraged
Speaker 1: and he marched down to the police station to really
Speaker 1: report this. And this is when he comes upon this
Speaker 1: white police officer who happens to be the boxing coach.
Speaker 1: That's right, and the white police officer says, if you
Speaker 1: want to learn the box, come back and all. He
Speaker 1: comes back and in fact finds another gym and starts
Speaker 1: training at two gyms at one time because he just
Speaker 1: can't get enough of this and it absolutely transforms his life.
Speaker 1: And he starts almost immediately telling everybody, I'm going to
Speaker 1: be the heavyweight champion of the world. He starts, you know, imagining, daydreaming,
Speaker 1: sitting in class, imagining that the principle comes on to
Speaker 1: make the announcement that Muhammad Ali has just won the
Speaker 1: gold medal in the Olympics. But then he's still castis
Speaker 1: clay at this point, um he starts sketching pictures of himself,
Speaker 1: you know, in a boxing robe with the words World's champion,
Speaker 1: you know, across across the back. Um as he once said,
Speaker 1: you know, the years later he said, I was calling
Speaker 1: myself the greatest before I knew it was true. So
Speaker 1: he is in basically middle school and then high school,
Speaker 1: and he's he's boxing already. He's boxing for crowds, he's
Speaker 1: getting positive feedback, he's finding that he's good, and that's
Speaker 1: giving a sense of self esteem and why is he good?
Speaker 1: Because and this becomes actually the hallmark of who only
Speaker 1: becomes as a boxer. He doesn't use typical boxing techniques. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, it's really fascinating. He Um again seems to
Speaker 1: just get lucky that he's got these this, this, all
Speaker 1: these things lined up perfectly for him. He never really
Speaker 1: takes the coaching seriously. You know, in boxing you're supposed
Speaker 1: to keep your hands up to protect your head at
Speaker 1: all times. You throw a punch and you put your
Speaker 1: hands right back to protect your head, and you duck punches.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't just um like, lean back because
Speaker 1: if you lean back, you're gonna get tagged eventually. But
Speaker 1: Ali develops this style all of his own, where he
Speaker 1: he keeps his hands down low, doesn't protect his head,
Speaker 1: just moves his head out of the way, and his
Speaker 1: reflexes are so fantastic that he gets away with it.
Speaker 1: And everybody keeps saying, well, when he gets to fight
Speaker 1: some real opponents, when he when he moves up to
Speaker 1: some some serious boxers, he's gonna get clawbered, But that
Speaker 1: never happens. He somehow manages to consistently find a way
Speaker 1: to win. And and some of it is because he's
Speaker 1: he's just got these natural gifts. He's so fast and
Speaker 1: he's so big, and this kind of a combination of
Speaker 1: speed and strength it's really unusual. Today we can look
Speaker 1: at the neuroscience and the data that support this. He
Speaker 1: has some actually other special talent in his pocket, if
Speaker 1: you will. And that is when a person has dyslexia,
Speaker 1: their brain is wired a little bit differently, and that
Speaker 1: is the reason that actually they can't process parts of
Speaker 1: words um called phonemes, and that's why it's so difficult
Speaker 1: for them to learn to read. But this same difference
Speaker 1: in wiring also seems to confer a strength, and that
Speaker 1: is a wider net for spotting visual and auditory and
Speaker 1: cognitive material, but wider spatial attention. And what does that
Speaker 1: mean visual spatial attention, It means that their ability to
Speaker 1: see what's in the per referee of their visual field
Speaker 1: is greater than someone who does not have dyslexia. And
Speaker 1: that means, as a boxer, right, your ability to see
Speaker 1: and process and use the information that's coming from a
Speaker 1: wider lens, from a wider view than someone who doesn't
Speaker 1: have that would be better and that you might see
Speaker 1: that and process it more quickly. And also another strength
Speaker 1: of people with dyslexia is an increased ability to discern patterns.
Speaker 1: And often as sports of all kinds, but particularly in boxing,
Speaker 1: there are patterns to boxing styles. So this combination might
Speaker 1: have been what allowed at that time cash As Clay
Speaker 1: to use a different tchnique because he would be faster
Speaker 1: and he would see more and he would see punches
Speaker 1: coming or moves coming before someone else might. Absolutely, and
Speaker 1: when you're talking about elite athletes, you know a split second,
Speaker 1: a hundredth of a second makes a huge difference. And
Speaker 1: when you're a boxer and you can move, start moving
Speaker 1: your head out of the way of a punch, just
Speaker 1: a split second sooner, and when you can discern where
Speaker 1: the other fighter's head is moving as he's throwing that
Speaker 1: punch and prepared to counteract it, you have an enormous advantage.
Speaker 1: And Ali could never really quite explain it, but he
Speaker 1: would say, I don't know how it happens. It just
Speaker 1: happens that my chin is always just a little bit
Speaker 1: out of the way when the punch lance, like I
Speaker 1: can just make that that punched glance off my chin
Speaker 1: in a way that other fighters would have been hit
Speaker 1: full on. And he sensed that he had this ability
Speaker 1: and he didn't really know how because it was just
Speaker 1: completely native to him. Let's take a quick break here,
Speaker 1: we'll be back in a moment. Sadly, even though this
Speaker 1: was amazing and he was doing more and more boxing,
Speaker 1: getting more and more accolades, that he was able to
Speaker 1: make money, he had people start to back him to
Speaker 1: end help him with the management of that money. He,
Speaker 1: as you pointed out, loved the fame. He never learned
Speaker 1: to read. He never I mean, he was now traveling
Speaker 1: so much for one in high school. Um, but in
Speaker 1: those days they didn't have the kind of schooling that
Speaker 1: they have now to help children who have dyslexia learn
Speaker 1: different techniques and different styles so that they can read.
Speaker 1: And it was really that his high school principle ultimately said,
Speaker 1: you know, we could see this guy's going somewhere, and
Speaker 1: we're not going to be the ones to have not
Speaker 1: graduated him. We would like a superstar to have graduated
Speaker 1: from our high school. So he graduates, but he really
Speaker 1: doesn't get the academic tools that say would have probably
Speaker 1: benefited him in life, and and that ends up being
Speaker 1: important simply. I think in the world of later on,
Speaker 1: when he could be taken advantage of financially, sometimes his
Speaker 1: ability to say, read a contract for himself or or
Speaker 1: manage any of the finances was was not so good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. Although I suspect that even if he had learned,
Speaker 1: and he did eventually learn to read um slowly, but
Speaker 1: he got better at it. I suspect even if he
Speaker 1: knew how to read, there was something else in his
Speaker 1: personality that made him vulnerable to two con men and
Speaker 1: shady managers. He was just so trusting and he just
Speaker 1: always believed that everything was going to work out fine
Speaker 1: for him. He had this incredible sense of confidence that
Speaker 1: he would always have money. He would always make more
Speaker 1: money and if he needed, if he lost some of
Speaker 1: it to some shady con man, well that shady con
Speaker 1: man must have needed it, must have must have needed
Speaker 1: the money more than he did. And he just had
Speaker 1: this very like um Leisa Fair about a relationship about money.
Speaker 1: What time was it when the whole issue of the
Speaker 1: Olympics presented for him? He won the Olympics, the gold
Speaker 1: medal in nineteen sixty when he was still in high
Speaker 1: school one the the light heavyweight division, and came back
Speaker 1: and to the United States and was suddenly a star.
Speaker 1: And in fact, even in the Olympics even are there,
Speaker 1: um the newspaper reporters all before he even won the thing,
Speaker 1: before they even knew whether he could box, they all said,
Speaker 1: we really hope this kid wins because he's got such personality,
Speaker 1: such charisma, and the sports world really needs a needs
Speaker 1: a kid like this to brighten up the boxing universe,
Speaker 1: which had become you know, kind of dull and was
Speaker 1: losing popularity. So people recognized his star power even when
Speaker 1: he was a kid. So he's in high school, he's
Speaker 1: an Olympic gold medalist. He is outgoing and handsome and charismatic,
Speaker 1: and he likes girls. He really likes girls. Talks about
Speaker 1: how much he likes girls. But he's shy, which is
Speaker 1: so interesting. It's the one environment that he seems to
Speaker 1: be really socially inhibited in. He definitely describes himself as
Speaker 1: shy around girls. And so even though you think this
Speaker 1: must be a high school boy who's definitely, you know,
Speaker 1: having girlfriends, he really didn't. Yeah, it was interesting. When
Speaker 1: he turned pro a few years later, a lot of
Speaker 1: the sportswriters who covered and thought he was either he
Speaker 1: was certainly a version in their opinion, and that he
Speaker 1: might have been gay because he was so nervous around
Speaker 1: girls and seemed to, you know, have no swagger whatsoever.
Speaker 1: And I talked to a girl who went out with
Speaker 1: him once in high school, and she told this hilarious story.
Speaker 1: She was a year older, She was a senior, and
Speaker 1: he was a junior. He was already somewhat famous because
Speaker 1: he'd won all these amateur tournaments. And he walked her
Speaker 1: home from a play at the at the school, and
Speaker 1: when they got up to the top of the stairs,
Speaker 1: he asked if he could kiss her good night, And
Speaker 1: when he leaded for the kiss, he fainted and tumbled
Speaker 1: down the stairs. Um foof rolled down the whole flight
Speaker 1: of stairs, and when he got to the bottom, he
Speaker 1: looked up at her and said, I ain't I ain't.
Speaker 1: Nobody gonna believe this. You won't tell, will you? Uh?
Speaker 1: And uh and and I really do think he was
Speaker 1: terribly shy. Um. It's not clear to me whether he
Speaker 1: may well have been a virgin until he met his
Speaker 1: his first wife. Uh. It seems that after that he
Speaker 1: more than made up for it. Um. He a man
Speaker 1: with the four wives and many, many, many other women.
Speaker 1: Even when he was married, he would be with other women.
Speaker 1: He expected his wives to accept that the woman that
Speaker 1: you describe or in that story was actually she was
Speaker 1: a little older than he was. She actually had a child,
Speaker 1: she was being a single mother. He really liked her.
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess it worked out after the initial fainting.
Speaker 1: He kept her in his life actually even when he
Speaker 1: got married. And um, that was something that was part
Speaker 1: of this man. He felt that people who were important
Speaker 1: to him, everybody should understand that they were important to him,
Speaker 1: and he would be very loyal and he would keep
Speaker 1: them in his life for long, long periods of time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he sort of had say a battitude about women that
Speaker 1: he had about money. He's like there would always be
Speaker 1: enough of him to go around and and that he
Speaker 1: would these women would would would be so happy to
Speaker 1: have his company that they would be willing to put
Speaker 1: up with anything, including sharing that was his. You know.
Speaker 1: He viewed himself as being, you know, a magnanimous in
Speaker 1: that way. One of his managers told me this story
Speaker 1: of like finding Ali in the hotel room sleeping with
Speaker 1: the with the with the chamber me the woman who
Speaker 1: had been cleaning his room, and it wasn't older, heavy
Speaker 1: set woman. And the manager said, you know, they are
Speaker 1: all these gorgeous models waiting for you in the lobby,
Speaker 1: like you could have your pick up any one of
Speaker 1: those gorgeous women down there. Why are you sleeping with
Speaker 1: with this maid? And Ali said, because she's going to
Speaker 1: appreciate it more and she'll remember this for the rest
Speaker 1: of her life. That's fascinating to me. It is um
Speaker 1: It certainly is at that point amazingly self preferential. And
Speaker 1: we could definitely consider the word narcissism in there. Right,
Speaker 1: he's making love to himself the most there. Essentially he
Speaker 1: is saying this is I am so amazing that she
Speaker 1: is having this amazing experience. And uh, he definitely had
Speaker 1: a grandiosity about him. Now, I will say this, when
Speaker 1: people are surrounded by others and are told seven that
Speaker 1: they are the greatest, and they are lauded with not
Speaker 1: only not only kinds of compliments all the time, but
Speaker 1: essentially told they can do no wrong and they are
Speaker 1: the center of attention, they do develop over time a
Speaker 1: certain amount of hubrists. You see this in world leaders
Speaker 1: and in high level sports figures, and they come to
Speaker 1: sort of drink their own tea, as it were, and
Speaker 1: feel that the actually, yeah, they can do no wrong.
Speaker 1: And so whether Cashus was a young person who already
Speaker 1: had a good dollop of narcissism and carried that through
Speaker 1: or whether that's something that developed more as a young
Speaker 1: man by starting to be told already in high school
Speaker 1: you are the best and you can do no wrong
Speaker 1: and development more of hubris is hard to know, but
Speaker 1: there is a lot of evidence, as he is a
Speaker 1: man at least, that he has a tremendous amount of grandiosity.
Speaker 1: It's hard to call grandiosity actually when you are the
Speaker 1: greatest at something. But he was doing it before he
Speaker 1: was the greatest, you know, But when he was a kid,
Speaker 1: when he was boxing in high school, he would enter
Speaker 1: these amateur tournaments and sometimes there'd be thirty year old
Speaker 1: amateurs that he'd be fighting against, so he'd be twice
Speaker 1: his age, and he would go into the dressing room
Speaker 1: before the fight and mock these people who had far
Speaker 1: more accomplished careers, who had one way more about, who
Speaker 1: were bigger and stronger than him, and just tease them
Speaker 1: and say, you've got no chance. What are you doing here?
Speaker 1: Why are you fighting me? That the cockiness was there.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was a compensation, Maybe it was, you know,
Speaker 1: that that was his way of dealing with the feet,
Speaker 1: or maybe it has something to do with, you know,
Speaker 1: having been an abused kid and not being willing to
Speaker 1: show his vulnerability. I don't know, but it was definitely
Speaker 1: there before he was truly great. After the Olympics, he
Speaker 1: takes off on his career. He is boxing, he's winning,
Speaker 1: he comes into contact with the Nation of Islam, and
Speaker 1: this becomes all important really to him. Let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about that and his relationship with Elijah Mohammad.
Speaker 1: What happens there. In some ways, this is like his
Speaker 1: discovery of boxing. It's something that will absolutely change his life.
Speaker 1: And it somehow seems like this is exactly what he
Speaker 1: needed or what he was waiting for, because, as we said,
Speaker 1: he grew up with this very conflicted feeling about his father.
Speaker 1: His father was was a drinker and a rabble rouser
Speaker 1: and had a very unsteady income. And then here's this religion,
Speaker 1: the Nation of Islam, with this leader named Elijah Mohammed,
Speaker 1: who's this tiny mousey uh man who conveys this enormous
Speaker 1: sense of strength by saying that we don't drink, we
Speaker 1: don't carry on with women. We will build our own nation.
Speaker 1: We don't need white people to give us permission to exist.
Speaker 1: We don't need white people at all. We can build
Speaker 1: our own country. We will carve out our own land,
Speaker 1: and we will build our own businesses, and and black
Speaker 1: people will prove that they are the greatest race of
Speaker 1: them all. This sense of discipline and this sense of
Speaker 1: something bigger than himself, the fact that this this tiny
Speaker 1: little man could be so powerful really intrigue Dolly. He
Speaker 1: decides that, you know, he's not really a Christian man.
Speaker 1: That was something that was forced upon him by not
Speaker 1: just his family, but really by the culture and by
Speaker 1: the history of black people that they were told, you
Speaker 1: will be this religion, you will be this sort of educated,
Speaker 1: you will have this name. He decides, Cassius Clay is
Speaker 1: not is not the name that I choose. It's the
Speaker 1: name that was given to me. Clay is a white
Speaker 1: slavery owner's name, and I don't accept that any longer.
Speaker 1: So he has this real shift in identity, sort of
Speaker 1: an awakening as you describe it to him, that that
Speaker 1: this this resonates for him, and it's important not only
Speaker 1: for his personal identity in terms of changing his name,
Speaker 1: in terms of who he aligns with and what he believes,
Speaker 1: but it's also important because at the same time this
Speaker 1: is going on, the civil rights movement is also going on,
Speaker 1: and most black people and white people are hearing that
Speaker 1: the civil rights movement is about desegregation, it is about
Speaker 1: being together, It is about equal rights together, and that
Speaker 1: is not what the Nation of Islam says. The Nation
Speaker 1: is Islam is saying, we are entitled to at least
Speaker 1: the equal rights, and they should be separate. We should
Speaker 1: have our own and we shouldn't be together, which which
Speaker 1: clashes with culturally, what's happening at the time. That's right.
Speaker 1: And it's so interesting because Ali grows up um steeped
Speaker 1: in the early days of the civil rights movement. You know,
Speaker 1: he's the same age as Emmett till he knew what
Speaker 1: happened to Emmett till then he saw the Montgomery bus
Speaker 1: whitcotts breaking out, he saw the sit ins, the Freedom Rise.
Speaker 1: He never really participated in any of that. It didn't
Speaker 1: seem interesting to him. He had no seemed to have
Speaker 1: no interest in politics, no interest in joining the movements.
Speaker 1: He even sort of made fun of the some of
Speaker 1: the segregation protests, the integration protests that were going on
Speaker 1: in Louisville during his school days, saying that he didn't
Speaker 1: want to go there and have people yelling at him.
Speaker 1: He just wanted to box and that was all he
Speaker 1: was in dressed it in. And then along comes Alijah
Speaker 1: Mohammed and suddenly, Um he goes even more radical than
Speaker 1: than Martin Luther King, even more radical than the mainstream
Speaker 1: civil rights movement. And I think part of what appealed
Speaker 1: to him was that it was different, that it was
Speaker 1: rebelling even more than Martin Luther King. It was saying that,
Speaker 1: you know, integration isn't the answer. Um, He's going to
Speaker 1: take an even more bold and radical approach and say
Speaker 1: that that we should remain segregated. Black people should just
Speaker 1: have their own way of doing things, their own independence.
Speaker 1: Separatist notion really appealed to him, and in some ways,
Speaker 1: I think it's the same kind of discipline that he
Speaker 1: found in boxing. But the threat of being himself anti authoritarian,
Speaker 1: which is evident since early life. You know, he isn't
Speaker 1: going to do something just because his father told him
Speaker 1: to do it. He isn't going to do something just
Speaker 1: because the teacher said to do it. He's going to
Speaker 1: do what he thinks is best, what he thinks is right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when Elijah Mohammed split with Malcolm X, Ali had to
Speaker 1: make a choice. Do you go with the young rebel
Speaker 1: who has become your friend and your mentor or do
Speaker 1: you stick with the authority figure who who started it all,
Speaker 1: the man at the very top, Alijah Mohammed. And this
Speaker 1: was one of the most difficult decisions of Ali's life
Speaker 1: because he loved Malcolm X like a brother, but Alijah
Speaker 1: Mohammed was more of a father figure and he had
Speaker 1: to choose, and he chose Alijah Mohammed and and and
Speaker 1: in some ways he may have written the death warrant
Speaker 1: for Malcolm X because Malcolm was soon after assassinated it
Speaker 1: and he did not have the protection of the Nation
Speaker 1: of Islam. Both of these men wanted Mohammed Ali with them,
Speaker 1: so that even though Elijah Mohammed is the is the
Speaker 1: leader of the movement, he still he wanted Mohammed Ali
Speaker 1: to be with him, right because at this point Ali
Speaker 1: is it's such a huge name and influencer, that's right. Um,
Speaker 1: it meant the world in terms of promoting the Nation
Speaker 1: of Islam, in terms of getting new members. The fact
Speaker 1: that they could brag the heavyweight champion was one of theirs.
Speaker 1: And this is after Ali beats Sunny Listen, and that's
Speaker 1: when he announces to the world that he is not
Speaker 1: a Christian anymore. He's a member of the Nation of
Speaker 1: Islam and he's joining Malcolm X and and Elijah Mohammed.
Speaker 1: And this was incredibly radical and it's fascinating for a
Speaker 1: guy like Ali who wants to be loved to think
Speaker 1: that at the moment of his greatest acclaim, when he
Speaker 1: finally wins the heavyweight championship. He's willing to risk it
Speaker 1: all by joining the Nation of Islam and and and
Speaker 1: throwing away the popularity, throwing away the potential endorsement contracts
Speaker 1: from Coca Cola and all the TV appearances. Uh, he's
Speaker 1: willing to risk all of the fame and celebrity that
Speaker 1: he's built up to that point because of this new
Speaker 1: belief of his he loves fighting um in terms of boxing,
Speaker 1: and as you said, he's now heavyweight champion following his
Speaker 1: his match with Sunny Listen, and as you said, it's
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four. But because of his affiliation with the
Speaker 1: Nation of Islam, the draft comes up and he feels
Speaker 1: that he cannot do it. He will not do it.
Speaker 1: He will not go to Vietnam. And he's essentially the
Speaker 1: first of the most famous, let's say, of conscientious objectors.
Speaker 1: Yet this really more than affects his popularity, to say
Speaker 1: the least. He people are very angry. They're saying he's
Speaker 1: doing it because he's afraid to go. You know he's
Speaker 1: saying I mean, not only is he saying I'm not
Speaker 1: afraid to go. I believe this is wrong, but he's
Speaker 1: even willing to give up boxing, his beloved boxing, and
Speaker 1: his career possibly forever. Didn't end up being forever, but
Speaker 1: he didn't know that at the time. To be part
Speaker 1: of the nation of Islam and to not go serve
Speaker 1: in Vietnam, that's right. A lot of people would question
Speaker 1: whether he was true to his religion, whether this was
Speaker 1: a sincere belief, or whether he was really doing this
Speaker 1: for political purposes, for personal reasons. But he believed so
Speaker 1: firmly in the teachings of Elijah Mohammed that he was
Speaker 1: willing to give up his the thing that he wanted
Speaker 1: most in the world, his boxing career, his heavyweight championship,
Speaker 1: And as you pointed out, he didn't know that he
Speaker 1: was going to be giving it up for a few years.
Speaker 1: He believed that he was giving it up forever, and
Speaker 1: he said he would be willing to die before he
Speaker 1: would serve in Vietnam, before he would fight, because his
Speaker 1: religion forbade Uh fighting on behalf of an of a
Speaker 1: nation fighting in any kind of of a of a
Speaker 1: secular war. So I think there's there's no question that
Speaker 1: he that his religious beliefs were legitimate. In fact, his
Speaker 1: religion entered when it came to marriage as well, he
Speaker 1: got a lot of pressure to be married to another
Speaker 1: member of the Nation of Islam. He did ultimately marry Belinda,
Speaker 1: who was much younger than he, who was Muslim, his homemaker,
Speaker 1: but continued to have many affairs. In fact, cruelly asked
Speaker 1: Belinda or told Blinda that she was going to arrange
Speaker 1: some of these meetups that you know, she should make
Speaker 1: the hotel room and she should leave at the appropriate
Speaker 1: time because he was going to be with other women.
Speaker 1: I mean, this became a point of contention really right
Speaker 1: between he and the Nation of Islam. Yeah, the Nation
Speaker 1: of Islam always talked about marital fidelity but didn't follow
Speaker 1: through so well. And Ali I can have the attitude
Speaker 1: that that maybe, um, you know, Islam allowed multiple wives
Speaker 1: and that Americans couldn't quite embrace that, so he would
Speaker 1: kind of keep it on the down low. But he
Speaker 1: acted as if he were entitled to having multiple wives.
Speaker 1: And in fact, there were a couple of women that
Speaker 1: he he married an unofficial ceremonies who also believed themselves
Speaker 1: to be his wives. And at one point, um, you know,
Speaker 1: he was maintaining relationships with at least three or four
Speaker 1: of these women. At the same time, women who all
Speaker 1: believed that she was his wife or would be soon.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, this is an incredible um juggling act,
Speaker 1: an incredible act of hubrists. Whether it has anything to
Speaker 1: do with your religion or not, I think it probably
Speaker 1: predates the religion. I think this is just something that
Speaker 1: Ali had convinced himself he was he could handle and
Speaker 1: was and was deserving of. Let's take a quick break here.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment. Yea, he took this
Speaker 1: what ended up being this three and a half year break.
Speaker 1: It was actually during his prime. These would have been
Speaker 1: important I guess I'll say years for him as a boxer.
Speaker 1: Absolutely these were arguably the best years of his career.
Speaker 1: Nineteen sixties seven, he's, you know, six years old. This
Speaker 1: would have been absolutely prime. And when he comes back
Speaker 1: finally three and a half years later, he's clearly slowed down.
Speaker 1: And not only is that bad for him as a boxer,
Speaker 1: it's bad for him as a human being, because he
Speaker 1: starts getting hit a lot more at his ability to
Speaker 1: avoid those punches is severely diminished, and you start to
Speaker 1: see him realizing that he has another talent that he
Speaker 1: didn't really know about, and that talent is one to
Speaker 1: remain standing after he's already been concussed, after he's taken
Speaker 1: hundreds and hundreds of punches, he does not fall down
Speaker 1: and this becomes one of his great strengths as a boxer,
Speaker 1: which is unfortunately not a great strength when you want
Speaker 1: to look at preserving your brain for your later life.
Speaker 1: Very little was known at that time about the impact
Speaker 1: of head trauma in terms of developing Parkinson's disease. But
Speaker 1: he missed this time period which was probably good for
Speaker 1: his brain. But when he comes back, he comes in
Speaker 1: with this renewed vigor. He he changes his tactic a
Speaker 1: little bit as he feels that he's a bit slower
Speaker 1: and he needs to remain standing and that that is
Speaker 1: the way that he will, you know, later, come back
Speaker 1: and win the match. But it is around his fight
Speaker 1: with Joe Frasier, a very big and important fight which
Speaker 1: he manages to stay in even though he's sustaining unbelievable
Speaker 1: blows and is knocked down and it's fifteen rounds. But
Speaker 1: it is after that fight that one starts to see
Speaker 1: some brain changes already, no doubt about it. And Ali's
Speaker 1: doctor told me that he saw changes right there. And
Speaker 1: Ali would go on to fight ten more years. And
Speaker 1: I said to this doctor, you know, how could you
Speaker 1: let him keep fighting? And he said, our job was
Speaker 1: to keep him in the ring. Our job was to
Speaker 1: help him fight, not to help him not fight. And
Speaker 1: those you know, I felt bad for the doctor because
Speaker 1: he was clearly torn about this that he contributed in
Speaker 1: some way to this damage. But Ali's friends, his family,
Speaker 1: his wives all said you gotta stop. You know this
Speaker 1: is bad for you. And they can see it. They
Speaker 1: could hear it in his voice that his words were
Speaker 1: becoming slower and and slurred, and um, you know, I
Speaker 1: worked with speech scientists to actually count the number of
Speaker 1: syllables per second that Ali was using, and you can
Speaker 1: you can track it over the course of the decade,
Speaker 1: and you can see that he lost a significant portion
Speaker 1: of his speaking ability, and after each fight, you can
Speaker 1: see dips um in his ability to speak coherently. And
Speaker 1: everybody around him knew it, and he just couldn't stop.
Speaker 1: He he loved the sport. He loved the easy money.
Speaker 1: You know, he would say, how else am I going
Speaker 1: to make three million dollars in one night? How can
Speaker 1: I give that up? Not only were people hitting him
Speaker 1: in the ring and he was he was staying up
Speaker 1: and taking these this tremendous amount of head trauma. But
Speaker 1: in his practicing he would, unlike other boxers, he would
Speaker 1: spar with people that he would ask to actually hit
Speaker 1: him in the head so that he would sort of
Speaker 1: toughen up and be able to take it. And he
Speaker 1: would do that without protective headgear. And that was not
Speaker 1: tip goal of a lot of boxers. But clearly, you know,
Speaker 1: more repeated, perhaps lower level, but still trauma to the brain.
Speaker 1: It was tremendous trauma. These are two men, and they
Speaker 1: weren't going easy on him. Ali believed that it was
Speaker 1: kind of like building up callus is that if you
Speaker 1: got hit often enough, your brain would become tougher. And
Speaker 1: he would encourage these giant men just hit him in
Speaker 1: the head and he would keep his hands down on
Speaker 1: purpose to prove that he could take it and to
Speaker 1: build up his resistance. And this was just tragic, and
Speaker 1: there's no other word for it. We now know, of course,
Speaker 1: that you know, knocking your brain around within the cavity
Speaker 1: that the skull holds it in means that essentially the
Speaker 1: brain isn't is having repeated hits against the bone. We
Speaker 1: know that even deep brain structure is influenced by repeated trauma,
Speaker 1: that they're shearing of tissue inside the brain. And we
Speaker 1: know from other sports, even like football, that repeated concussions
Speaker 1: cause cognitive decline, cause ultimately mood disorder, terrible depression long term.
Speaker 1: Basically we're talking about organic brain damage. And in boxers,
Speaker 1: unlike other sports where like football, where there's probably organic
Speaker 1: brain damage, in boxing there was this specific area from
Speaker 1: taking hits in the face that was affected, the substantial nigra,
Speaker 1: which is an area where basically, when there's decline in
Speaker 1: the amount of dopamine that can be produced, you see
Speaker 1: the development of Parkinson's disease. And there were, you know, sadly,
Speaker 1: at a fairly young age, there was already evidence of
Speaker 1: Parkinson's in Muhammad Ali, this flat facial expression that you know,
Speaker 1: somebody who had looked unbelievably animated as we've described him,
Speaker 1: you know, tremendously electric and with a lot of facial
Speaker 1: expression and talking quickly and gesticulating key Over time, right,
Speaker 1: his face gets less and less emode of appearing. He
Speaker 1: slows down in his language, he uses fewer words, his
Speaker 1: body movement slows down. He developed what is called pill
Speaker 1: rolling tremor. He developed the stiffness in the limbs that
Speaker 1: is consistent with Parkinson's. So he really for many many
Speaker 1: years lived with Parkinson's. But um, it starts to become
Speaker 1: obvious really towards the end of his fighting career, which
Speaker 1: is part of what essentially ended his fighting career. That
Speaker 1: he continued to fight through the nineteen seventies, um into
Speaker 1: the early eighties. That correct, that's right. He was. He
Speaker 1: was about forty when he when he stopped fighting finally,
Speaker 1: and some of those symptoms were showing themselves already. And
Speaker 1: his wife at the time was saying, you know, you've
Speaker 1: got this tremor in your hand, and you're not walking right.
Speaker 1: You know, how can you how can you box? How
Speaker 1: can you step into the ring with some of the
Speaker 1: toughest men on the planet when you can't even really
Speaker 1: navigate walking across the living room rug And And yet
Speaker 1: his his doctors and his managers were throwing him in
Speaker 1: the ring, and Ali was doing so willingly because he
Speaker 1: had money. He managed his money so badly. He still
Speaker 1: needed to earn and he just couldn't quite picture another
Speaker 1: life for himself. You know, he was he was offered
Speaker 1: parts in movies and he would sit there in the
Speaker 1: in the dressing room waiting for his turn to go
Speaker 1: out and act, and he'd be bored out of his mind.
Speaker 1: So he was the star of a movie, and he
Speaker 1: was it wasn't enough to satisfy his need for attention
Speaker 1: because it had to be all the time. And he
Speaker 1: really had a difficult time imagining something other than boxing
Speaker 1: that would satisfy all those urges that he felt and
Speaker 1: pay him that's right, people, you know, sadly took a
Speaker 1: lot of his money, used a lot of his money,
Speaker 1: put his money into schemes or created sham companies that
Speaker 1: said they need the money for so he really became
Speaker 1: very depleted. And his last couple of fights were really tragic. Actually,
Speaker 1: I guess you could say they sound incredible sad. They
Speaker 1: were brutal, they were disasters, and watching them today is
Speaker 1: just um, really tragic because he shouldn't have been in
Speaker 1: the ring. The people who loved him and cared about
Speaker 1: him shouldn't have allowed him to be in the ring.
Speaker 1: Boxing officials should not have allowed him in the ring.
Speaker 1: There's just no reason any of this should have happened,
Speaker 1: and the only reason was money. What did he said
Speaker 1: was his greatest fight. I think his greatest fight was
Speaker 1: the one he lost to Joe Frasier, the first Fraser
Speaker 1: fight in because he came back, he wasn't the same guy.
Speaker 1: He found a way to survive. He lost the fight,
Speaker 1: got knocked down, but he got back up and and
Speaker 1: finished the fight. And I think that's the moment that
Speaker 1: fans went from thinking that he was a pompous jerk
Speaker 1: to seeing how tough he was and began to show
Speaker 1: some some sympathy and some some empathy with him. You know,
Speaker 1: the Vietnam War was over, we could see that he
Speaker 1: was right. We could see that he'd sacrificed all of
Speaker 1: this for his religion. And when he gets back up
Speaker 1: off of them at we see the true champion in him.
Speaker 1: At about that time, the public gets to see evidence
Speaker 1: of the resilience of Cassius Clay that he you know,
Speaker 1: up until that point, maybe we have the impression that,
Speaker 1: you know, this all came easily to him, and he
Speaker 1: sailed through and boom, he's he's the greatest, and everything
Speaker 1: just happens and he doesn't have to suffer very much,
Speaker 1: but we at that juncture start to see that, in fact,
Speaker 1: he's willing to dig in and try to overcome and
Speaker 1: sacrifice in these middle years of his life. That's right.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, he's moving away from the
Speaker 1: Nation of Islam a little bit. Alijah Mohammed is getting
Speaker 1: old and losing control of the organization. So Ali seems
Speaker 1: to mellow in the public's eye. He shows this toughness.
Speaker 1: He comes back from getting beat by Joe Fraser and
Speaker 1: starts working his way towards another shot at the championship.
Speaker 1: And he's not talking politics as much. He's not talking
Speaker 1: about of you know, space ships. They're gonna come and
Speaker 1: destroy all the white people and black people are going
Speaker 1: to own the earth. He's he's, he's appearing on TV shows,
Speaker 1: he's sitcoms like different Strokes, Um, He's he seems like
Speaker 1: a lovable guy all of a sudden, and and the
Speaker 1: public begins to embrace him in a whole new way.
Speaker 1: But it is about this time that he really ends
Speaker 1: his boxing career. Yeah, he comes back and he wins
Speaker 1: the championship again. He beats George Foreman in Africa, and
Speaker 1: that's when he should have retired, but instead it winds
Speaker 1: down slowly and painfully, and then finally, after losing his
Speaker 1: last two fights, he quits and and um in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties after that are really um sad and hard
Speaker 1: time for him. He's out of the spotlight. He doesn't
Speaker 1: like the way he looks on TV, so he avoids interviews,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't know what to do with himself. He
Speaker 1: drives around just looking for for something to do. He
Speaker 1: shows up at trade shows, he'll he'll sit and sign
Speaker 1: autographs in the airport. He'll go to the airport early
Speaker 1: just so he can sign more autographs because he has
Speaker 1: nothing else to do. It was people forget about this
Speaker 1: phase in his life. But the eighties were really depressing,
Speaker 1: I think for him, and then in the nineties he
Speaker 1: he sort of finds a way back, or at least
Speaker 1: a place to to feel that he's contributing. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this is kind of the beautiful coda to the story.
Speaker 1: He's invited to light the Olympic torch in and people
Speaker 1: have really kind of forgotten about him because he's been
Speaker 1: out of the spotlight for so long, and when they
Speaker 1: see him, when he emerges from the shadows with his
Speaker 1: torch in his hand. You hear this collective gasp from
Speaker 1: the crowd, like, oh my god, that's alien and he's old.
Speaker 1: Look at him, he's he's he's only forty five at
Speaker 1: this point, but he looks like he's sixty five or
Speaker 1: seventy five, and he's his hands are shaking, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't look like he's gonna be able to light the
Speaker 1: torch because because he can't control the movement of his arm.
Speaker 1: And then when he gets the thing lit, this the
Speaker 1: sense of relief and the crowd starts to chant his name, Ali, Ali,
Speaker 1: and that's a moment of reinvention for him. Really. He
Speaker 1: says the very next day that I'm going to be
Speaker 1: bigger than ever. I'm They're gonna love me more than
Speaker 1: ever now because they can see that I'm old and
Speaker 1: I'm weak, and we all get old and we all die,
Speaker 1: and people are gonna love me more now that they
Speaker 1: see that that I'm just like them. He invests himself
Speaker 1: at this point in basically, I guess we'll say, sort
Speaker 1: of philanthropic work. That's right. He spent pretty much the
Speaker 1: rest of his life preaching Islam, preaching in America that
Speaker 1: Islam is nothing we should fear and hate, going overseas
Speaker 1: to Middle Eastern countries and saying that America is a
Speaker 1: country of love and peace and brotherhood. He raises money
Speaker 1: for Parkinson's disease. Um. You know, he still likes to
Speaker 1: have a good time, but um. And he also says
Speaker 1: that the Kuran teaches that you will go to hell
Speaker 1: if you have more sins than good deeds. He calls
Speaker 1: it's a tallying angel, he says, as a tallying angel
Speaker 1: who's keeping track of all of his good deeds and
Speaker 1: all his bad deeds. And he's got He's done a
Speaker 1: lot of bad things, and now this is his chance
Speaker 1: to try to get on the right side of the score.
Speaker 1: So he really continues to feel invested in his religion.
Speaker 1: He is a Muslim. He tries to bring the communities together,
Speaker 1: that we can tolerate each other. He moves from his
Speaker 1: original feeling of we should be separate two we should
Speaker 1: be together. But everybody be able to be what they are,
Speaker 1: that's right. He embraces Sunni Islam. He's no longer a
Speaker 1: member of the Nation of Islam as it's rebuilt under
Speaker 1: Lewis Farakon. He abandons that and he he learns to
Speaker 1: really study the Kuran. He learns to read better than
Speaker 1: he's ever read before by by learning to read the Koran,
Speaker 1: and he absolutely embraces the principles of the of the
Speaker 1: religion in in the best way. He gives up the
Speaker 1: vanity that he had for so long. I mean, he
Speaker 1: doesn't have a choice if he wants to be in
Speaker 1: the public eye, because at this point he is exceedingly
Speaker 1: symptomatic with Parkinson's, which at this young age is is
Speaker 1: clearly directly related to the years of head trauma from boxing.
Speaker 1: He talks about that, He talks about the fact that
Speaker 1: boxers have to think about it. He he understands that
Speaker 1: this is what's happened to him, and he tries to
Speaker 1: highlight and raise money for research in the field of
Speaker 1: Parkinson's disease. Yeah, that's right, He'll He'll go on saying
Speaker 1: that he's not sure that that this has anything to
Speaker 1: do with boxing. He he never really liked to admit
Speaker 1: that he may have brought this on himself. Really, he
Speaker 1: thinks he just had. I thought that he was he
Speaker 1: understood that what he did had something to do with
Speaker 1: what has happened. I think he was in denial about that.
Speaker 1: I think he went on saying that, like, you know,
Speaker 1: Janet Reno had Parkinson's and nobody punched her, So it
Speaker 1: could be that this just was something I was, you know,
Speaker 1: the cards I was dealt, and I think that, you know,
Speaker 1: he remained in denial about that. But but he did
Speaker 1: try to, you know, make up for some of the
Speaker 1: mistakes he'd made along the way. He tried to spend
Speaker 1: more time with his kids. He sort of apologized for
Speaker 1: the way that he treated some of his his opponents,
Speaker 1: been really cruel to people like Joe Fraser. He turned
Speaker 1: his back on Malcolm X, and I think he expressed
Speaker 1: some regret for those things. So he did live his
Speaker 1: last year's trying to do better. His kids have stated
Speaker 1: that he was much more of a father later in life,
Speaker 1: that he was a fairly absentee father early on for them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. And he was much better as a grandfather
Speaker 1: and loved to suspend time with the kids and the
Speaker 1: grandkids as he as he was older. And unfortunately at
Speaker 1: that time, you know, he didn't have as much to
Speaker 1: give because he was limited by his abilities. He did
Speaker 1: receive treatment, but ultimately, Parkinson's is a response to treatment
Speaker 1: for only so long and ultimately Parkinson's does take your life.
Speaker 1: And sadly that he died. He wasn't so old when
Speaker 1: he died, but he he really died of his Parkinson's disorder. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's right for boxer. He was old. Boxers don't tend
Speaker 1: to have long lifespans. And when I it to Ali's
Speaker 1: memorial service and I went to the private ceremony afterwards
Speaker 1: and saw his friends and family there, you could instantly
Speaker 1: tell who the boxers in the room were because none
Speaker 1: of them looked good and there were very few people
Speaker 1: even in their seventies. Boxers just don't make it very
Speaker 1: long when they especially if they have long careers, like
Speaker 1: Ali did, fighting, you know, dozens and dozens of times.
Speaker 1: But he still managed to keep his legacy I think
Speaker 1: in all our minds as uh as as moving like
Speaker 1: a butterfly and staying like a bee. Yeah, that's how
Speaker 1: we remember him in the ring, but I think, you know,
Speaker 1: his great legacy is as outside the ring as well,
Speaker 1: and maybe even more outside the ring than inside, because
Speaker 1: he's remembered as somebody who fought for what he believed in,
Speaker 1: stood up for his for his religious principles, confronted a
Speaker 1: country's um lies about Vietnam, and sacrificed for his beliefs.
Speaker 1: And I think that's how we'll always remember him. What
Speaker 1: shone through was his authenticity, his love of people, because
Speaker 1: that was clearly in that in some ways capacity for empathy,
Speaker 1: though he didn't always use it, was really ultimately his legacy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think it's really remarkable because a lot of
Speaker 1: people said to me after they read my book, Um,
Speaker 1: I really struggled with you know, how can I like
Speaker 1: this guy after the way he treated women, after the
Speaker 1: way he treated some of his opponents, people who were
Speaker 1: supposedly his friends. Um, But he kept winning me over again.
Speaker 1: There was this force about him, this this unbelievable charisma,
Speaker 1: this this charm that he somehow always managed to make
Speaker 1: me smile. And I think that was his great gift that,
Speaker 1: you know, it was almost impossible to stay mad at
Speaker 1: him for very long. He had so much love, fascinating life.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, This was terrific my pleasure. That
Speaker 1: wraps things up for this episode. Thank you to my
Speaker 1: guest Jonathan I. And if you'd like to know more
Speaker 1: about Muhammad Ali, you can check out his book Ali
Speaker 1: a Life. If you want to know more about the
Speaker 1: concepts in personology, take a look at my book The
Speaker 1: Power of Different The Link Between Disorder and Genius. For
Speaker 1: psychological advice, you can take a listen to my other
Speaker 1: podcast How Can I Help? Follow me at Twitter at
Speaker 1: doctor Gayl Saltz and until next Time. Personology is a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. The executive producers are doctor
Speaker 1: Gayl Saltz and Tyler Clang. The associate producer is Lowell Berlante.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.