What We Can Learn From Muhammad Ali
The man who taught us how to win
Today we lost the greatest fighter of all time. That’s a bold statement to make, and an even more audacious title to hold. I’m far from a world renown combat specialist, or an expert boxing analyst but I can comfortably say that Muhammad Ali was the greatest man to ever step in the ring. If you’re wondering why I, and so many others, think of Ali when we think of legendary fighters the answer is simple. He told us.
“I am the greatest”
-Muhammad Ali, 1964
The man declared himself the greatest fighter to ever live to the entire world right before his famous world title bout with Sonny Liston. Arguably the most important fight of his life. We couldn’t of known the fight was already over but Ali did. He told us how and when it was all going down and he did it poetically with a passion never before seen in a boxer. He had effectively decided failure was not an option. Ali was as much a master of self fulfilling prophecy as he was a master of the rope-a-dope. He won because he chose to, he was the greatest. The Greatest does not except defeat.
We can all learn more from his uncompromising, never say die philosophy than we can ever take away from his footwork, finesse or athleticism. His approach to being the best was a holistic one. He acted like a champion inside and outside of the ring. The man did not have an off switch. If he wasn’t training to be the best, he was projecting his eminence to the world at large.Winning was a full time job for him, and winning meant never submitting to the will of others in the face of adversity.
When his own government told him to fight for a cause he didn’t believe in he rejected conscription on the grounds of conscientious objection.
“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?”
Today we lost the world’s greatest fighter. Some will focus on the unstoppable boxer, and others the politicized revolutionary. All of us should commemorate the man who chose to fight and win without compromise.The one who taught us that being the greatest is never a right or a matter of circumstance but a conscious decision.
