Tale of the Tape
British professional fighter and 2012 Olympic medalist Anthony Ogogo on what the great Muhammad Ali meant to him.
I was 10 years old. My mum was asleep. I was up past my bedtime.
I watched a documentary on TV that night called Clash of the Titans about Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. I didn’t know anything about boxing. I don’t come from a family of boxers.
The next morning, I walked in my mum’s bedroom and told her, “I want to get into boxing.” She said no. Ugh. You didn’t ask my mum questions twice. That was it. So I went back to playing football.
Two years later, I walked into a boxing gym with my friends. There was a big yellow promotional poster on the wall. I asked the boxing coach, “Who’s that guy?”
“That’s Muhammad Ali,” he said.
All the memories of that documentary started coming back to me.
The next day, I cycled into the town near my home. I went to a video shop and looked in the sports section and found a documentary about Muhammad Ali called “I Am The Greatest” on VHS. I must have watched it 300 times. I watched it so much that the tape inside the VHS broke.
I kept going back to the boxing gym. I never stopped.
Since Muhammad Ali passed last Friday night, I’ve watched so many of his fights, so many of his interviews — and I’m inspired by him all over again. He’ll continue to inspire me forever.
Everyone knows about Ali’s biggest fights. He beat Sonny Liston in ’64 to win the world heavyweight title in a fight he was never supposed to win. Ten years later, after three years in exile, he beat the odds again to defeat George Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle. And then the Thrilla in Manila, against Joe Frazier, in 1975. Legendary.
But my favorite was against a guy named Cleveland Williams in 1966, which he won with a third-round TKO. That was, for me, his best performance. I’ve watched the fight on YouTube hundreds of times. He was unbeatable that night. He absolutely schooled Williams in the art of boxing. He was no-nonsense; he went to town on a world-class fighter. And he destroyed him.
Ali was so big, yet so graceful and effective. That’s unique for any boxer. Plus, his speed — he was so much faster than other boxers. He didn’t get hit much early in his career because he was so fast. When he got older and slowed down a bit, he showed how much of a warrior he was. Whenever he did go down, he always got back up and carried on. That’s a testament to his character. He embodied everything you’d want in a fighter.
He stood up for what he believed in during the late ’60s, when he was exiled from the sport for three years. He had his whole life taken away from him. He had his boxing career stripped away. He lost almost all of his money in court battles. Everything he worked his entire life for was gone, stolen away because he stood up for what he believed in. That’s somebody you can look up to.
I had a chance to meet him seven or eight years ago. I’m friends with Ricky Hatton — a really famous former boxer from the UK — and he invited me over to a boxing gym while Ali was on a tour here. I made a really tough conscious decision not to meet him. I could’ve gone there and met him, but in this stage in his life he was quite frail, quite weak, in a wheelchair, not talking much, and I didn’t want to meet him like that.
I thought of that VHS videotape I bought all those years ago. I didn’t want to see him in an old, decrepit state. I wanted my memory of Muhammad Ali to be what I saw on that videotape: loud, exuberant and colorful.
I’ve still got that tape — obviously it doesn’t work anymore. But I’ve got it up in my loft, stowed away. I still think about it. It still brings me inspiration.
