Like a lot of kids growing up in the 1960s, I idolized Muhammad Ali.
Not just because he was heavyweight champion of the world. Or that he was The Greatest of All Time. He was from Louisville, like me.
I was not yet 4 when 22-year-old Cassius Clay upset Sonny Liston to win the heavyweight title. But even then, I was aware that the Champ and I shared a hometown. In TV interviews after his fights, he always would say hi to his mother, Odessa, and “all my kin in Louisville.”
By the time I became fully aware of his status as the most famous man in the world, he had changed his name, become a lightning rod for the Vietnam War, was vilified for his refusal to serve on religious grounds, stripped of his title and not allowed to box.
I read every word of every story in The Courier-Journal tracing his comebacks and victories, from training camp in Deer Lake, Pa., to “the Thrilla in Manila” and beyond.
Sometime around 1975, fresh from his victory over George Foreman in “The Rumble in the Jungle,” Ali came home to Louisville to promote a new boxing school that would bear his name and to stage an exhibition with sparring partner and former champion (and fellow Louisvillian) Jimmy Ellis.
His bravado was on full display, even in an exhibition. He put on a show using his still-considerable skills, moving, dancing and jabbing. Of course he demonstrated the Ali Shuffle and the “rope-a-dope” that helped him reclaim the title.
The other memorable moment from that night may or may not have been a stunt. At one point, Ali went down to the canvas. Was it a slip, or did the Champ take one on the chin? We’ll never know because despite a photo array and screaming headlines in the next day’s paper, Ali played it off as part of the show, falling down in dramatic fashion several more times in a matter of minutes.
Flash forward some two decades. In June 1997, I’m in Chicago, walking down my street when I see a wedding party taking pictures on a patio just off the street. The man in the morning coat is the Champ himself, Muhammad Ali. His daughter, Rasheda, was getting married, with her twin, Jamillah, as her maid of honor.
For a few precious minutes, I was the only one watching. By the time I came to my senses and ran the block and a half to my apartment to grab my camera and come back, a crowd had gathered on this small section of Dearborn Street.
I still was able to go up to the wrought iron fence and shoot some photos. Between wedding photos, Ali would leave the group, come over to the low fence and greet fans. Cars were stopped in the middle of the street and fans were crowding the sidewalk as they recognized the man in the formal wear, shadowboxing and clowning with the wedding party and the crowd. "Ain’t he ugly?” Ali joked in a barely audible rasp while boxing with a man in a morning coat.
After screwing up my courage, I shook his hand and immediately felt like a little boy again. I managed to blurt out “You’ve been my hero my whole life, and I’m from Louisville…” The Champ whose Parkinson’s made him nearly silent by choice, didn’t respond verbally. But I saw his eyes light up.
A minute later, a member of the wedding party, smiling behind his shades, said: “So you and the Champ are homeboys, huh?”
“I guess we are,” I said proudly.
A year or so later, as an editor for USA TODAY in the Washington, D.C., area, I was invited to a book-signing event for Powerful Prayers, a collection of Larry King’s conversations on faith with celebrities including Ali.
I had brought along photos from the wedding in case I got to meet the Champ again. I introduced myself to his wife, Lonnie, who accepted my photos “to give to the girls.”
She also brought her husband over to see me. I don't recall that we had a conversation, but he looked at a photo I took of him, and signed “Muhammad Ali” in block letters at the bottom.
Now, Ali, who died Friday at 74, is forever silent. But he will always be The Greatest. And we will always be homeboys from Louisville.
Jim Cheng is a copy editor at the Gannett Design Studio in Louisville.
