Cassius Clay

I consider an idol someone that has done great things and someone that I admire. Some of the things that I consider great are, accomplishing seemingly impossible goals, standing up for your own rights and doing things that are extraordinary. Muhammad Ali is someone that I consider to be a "significant other" because I admire him and strive to have the same type of conviction that he has.

At first Cassius Clay had no intension of boxing. After his bike was stolen, in the month of October 1954, when he was twelve, his whole life destiny changed in an instant. Upon finding out that there was a police officer in the basement of a gym, Cassius went down in a horrendous state of mind exclaiming a "state wide bike hunt," and said he was going to beat up the person that stole his bike.

The way his life changed was that the police officer asked him if he knew how to fight and he said "no." The policeman offered Cassius lessons in how to box so that he could seek out the bike thief. This was the starting point in Muhammad Ali's boxing career. In the late fifties, Cassius Clay rules Golden Gloves And the AAU national champion. A quick fight at the Rome Olympics in 1960, Cassius Clay a teenager, beat a Polish fighter by the name of Zbigniew Pietrzykowski to a "bloody pulp." Muhammad Ali took home the gold.

After the Olympics he started training at the fifth street gym in Miami Beach, Florida. His trainer Angelo was very impressed by Cassius's work in and out of the ring. "Never a beef, never an argument, first guy in the gym, last guy to leave, these were his qualities he had a lot going for him" (Angelo Dundee). These were the qualities that he had, he was a very hard worker, which is why he became the boxer that everyone wanted to face, but no one could beat. These are also the qualities that made people look up to him as an example of what it takes to become a success.

This is when Clay got into the professional ranks of boxing. At the young age of eighteen Clay stepped into the ring for his first professional fight in which he easily beat Tunney Hunsaker by a unanimous decision. Lennox Lewis said, "Clay showed the sweet science of boxing of hitting with out being hit." This was a testament to Clay's lightning quick speed, someone once said that Clay was the only boxer that could go backwards and never be hit by a punch. Along with speed Clay also had an uncanny knack with words. "I'm young, I'm handsome, I'm fast, I'm pretty, and I can't possibly be beat" (Cassius Clay). He routinely predicted what round he would knock out his opponent, often using complex poems to tell exactly how the fight would go before it happened. It was this cockiness that made people realize what a good fighter Clay was and what I great fighter Clay would turn into. Even though Clay talked a lot of trash he had a lot to back it up with. "Ali was an entertainer, but he could back it up which was great" (Tom Jones). By the time he was twenty-two, on February 25th, 1964, Clay was already fighting for the heavy weight championship of the world against Sonny Listen. Clay won the fight to become the youngest heavy weight champion in history. After this fight people started to see Clay as a great fighter, and he was well on his way to his ultimate icon status.

The morning after he won the title he met with the press to discuss his new name. He told the press that he was a member of the Nation of Islam and that he would no longer go by his slave name, Cassius Clay but by his new name Muhammad Ali. The fact that he professed his faith to Islam shocked the world. Even though the people didn't understand the reason behind the conversion of Ali they still didn't stop feeling the way they did before, that he was the greatest. Ali heralded a new era in black pride. He

became very close with Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X. Malcolm went to all of Ali's

matches, discussed The Nation of Islam, and ate breakfast together frequently. Ali used his new religious beliefs to raise pride in the African-American community, in a time when racial tension was high. African-Americans respected him as much as they respect Martin Luther King. This belief in Islam would cost him three and a half years of his boxing prime and ten thousand dollars for draft evasion.

He refused to be draft and fight in Vietnam and quickly moved from a beloved man to one of the most hated men in the U.S. He did not want to fight because the more troops we sent in, the more we lost. His reason for not going in was religious beliefs. Although they excused him from the war, it wasn't on very good terms. The Boxing association striped Ali of his title because of his crimes and they took away his Boxing license for three and a half years. Many people say that the three and a half years that he didn't box would have been Ali's best years. His view during the war cemented his place in history as the best fighter in the ring and the best fighter outside of the ring. He had a belief and he stuck to it. He wasn't afraid to say what he thought and for this supporters of the war hated him for many years. This fact alone tells of the depth of his icon that he could go for years as hated as he was and then turn it all around and become one of the most beloved figures in sports