Muhammad Ali – My First Hero (apart from dad)
Yesterday the family returned home very late after watching one of USA’s last great icons on stage for nearly 4 hours. My wife and I both agreeing that they don’t make them like this anymore. I got to bed about 2 a.m., Born in the USA and Thunder Road still alive in my ears.
In the morning I woke about 6.40 a.m., made the short advanced middle-aged stumble to the toilet, grabbing my iPad (don’t ask!) on the way to see what was happening in the world. I then read the notifications after I punched in the security code, I saw the headline news and immediately burst into tears. Loud sobs, heaving sobs, empty sobs. I read that The Greatest had passed away overnight.
I went downstairs not wanting to wake anyone and turned on the TV wanting to see others who were similarly affected so that I could share my grief.
Cup of tea made (why do the English always console themselves with a cuppa?) I sat and watched the Saturday morning BBC Breakfast presenters trying to do justice to The Greatest. It was a valiant attempt, but you got the feeling that the presenters, who were ten or so years younger than me, didn’t quite grasp the enormity of the loss. Not their fault at all, blessed as they were by the ignorance of relative youth.
It did get me to wondering though, why had the news hit me so hard? Before that though, the inevitable need to post a tribute on Facebook and Twitter. But what to say? A couple of photos found via a web search and I posted the following without giving it a second thought;
“My first ever hero has died. RIP The Greatest”
Why my first ever hero? What did this mean to me? Why did I consider a black man from Kentucky whom I had never met a hero? Why did a white, working class kid of ten years old, along with many of his friends, pretend to be Muhammad Ali in the playground at school? Why did that same kid (now 52) remember watching Ali’s greatest fights, often late at night (thanks mum and dad), with such fondness?
Casting my mind back to this morning I remember the tears and the emotion of actually losing someone I knew. I have used the phrase “part of my childhood has gone”. Has it? Am I simply remembering a time when Ali’s bouts, or his interviews on Parkinson, brought mum, dad and me – and many millions more – together in a way that digital TV and the age of downloads doesn’t quite deliver? “Event TV” is now solely reserved for major sporting events, whereas in the seventies, pre-VHS and Betamax even, Rod Hull attacking Parky was event TV!
Maybe it’s down to the fact that boxing in the seventies was event TV because it was free to air, watched by millions, built up by the media months in advance, and also that the Heavyweight Champion of the World actually meant something. WBC, WBO, and WBS (BS?) and SKY TV didn’t mean anything to anyone then. Muhammad Ali simply was the Champion of the world. Undisputedly!
I realise I didn’t know much about his political activism. I realise that I didn’t know about his conscientious objection to serving in Vietnam. I did know back then about his conversion to Islam, but that meant nothing to a ten year old kid growing up in deepest South Yorkshire where the only brush with any religion was family funerals and driving through Attercliffe to get to Bramall Lane.
Muhammad Ali was colour-less to me. His beliefs and religion were a sideshow. He was a hero to me in the way he put himself across, his confidence, his command of language, his wit, his charm, but above all his dedication, skill and ability. Only later did I come to realise the wider significance he had had and the impact of his activism and support for communities in the USA and beyond. However, back then he was The Greatest in a time when being Great meant a lot to a ten year old kid. We all wanted to be Great and we all wanted to be Muhammad Ali.
Today, we all should want to be Muhammad Ali.
Like Bruce Springsteen who we saw last night, they don’t make them like this anymore.
RIP.
