PERFORMER AND CULTURAL HERO

Ali's skills as a fighter included lightning-quick hands, a razor-sharp jab, agile footwork, and especially in the later part of his career, the ability to absorb punches from bigger and stronger opponents. As important as these physical skills were to Ali's success, what distinguished him as an athletic performer was his use of the boxing ring as a public stage. "It is Ali," suggested American scholar and baseball official Bartlett Giamatti, "who brought to the surface the actor in every athlete." A brilliant showman and provocateur, Ali made use of the media—especially television—as an integral part of his competitive strategy.

Jack Johnson, the first African American heavyweight champion, introduced boasting and the taunting of one's opponent into the culture of boxing; Ali elevated the language of ridicule to an art form. A master of rhyming insult and a seminal contributor to the African American tradition of "signifying" or “playing the dozens,” Ali transformed the prefight weigh-in from a procedural formality into an occasion for a display of creative verbal warfare.

In the days leading up to his championship match against Foreman in 1974, Ali regaled the international press corps on hand in Zaire with this exercise in matching couplets: "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. His hands can't hit what his eyes can't see. Now you see me, now you don't. George thinks he will, but I know he won't." In the fight itself, Ali flustered the physically imposing, harder-punching Foreman with a stealthy defensive maneuver he dubbed the "rope-a-dope."

Ali's celebrity status and instincts as a performer did not diminish his religious convictions or his defiant independence. His affiliation with the Nation of Islam came at a time when many Americans, and many of his fans, considered the Nation a subversive and dangerous organization. Because of his religious convictions, Ali refused to serve in the American military. "I have searched my conscience," he said, "and I find I cannot be true to my belief in my religion by accepting such a call." Similarly, he recited:

Keep asking me, no matter how long On the war in Viet Nam, I sing this song I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong.

Such sentiments led some critics to portray Ali and the Nation of Islam as anti-American. In the sports arena, Ali's flamboyance and self-promotion challenged a traditional, unwritten code under which black athletes were expected to be dutiful, modest, and respectful of white authority.