The Tao of Muhammad Ali: The Man, The Legend - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Davis Miller's writing has appeared in Rolling Stone, Men's Journal, Esquire, Sport magazine, Sports Illustrated, and numerous other periodicals. His first published story, 'My Dinner with Ali' was voted by the Sunday Magazine Editors Association to be the best essay published in a newspaper magazine in the US in 1989.

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I first met him atop his Pennsylvania mountain in July 1975, though I had seen him thousands of times.

While pulling on a pair of blood-red Everlast trunks I'd bought for this occasion, I heard him through dressing room walls, exhorting the small crowd of spectators who'd each paid one dollar to watch him train. "I will prove to the whole world that I am not only the greatest boxer of all times," he said, "I am the greatest martial artist."

Even through the walls, his was the most elemental voice I'd heard; it sounded huge, melodic, eternal. Listening to him made me so nervous I shook a little and felt I needed to pee. The old guy standing in front of me, strapping a pair of rich-smelling red leather gloves on my arms, looked at me and laughed. "He won't hurt a little white boy like you," he said.

I was twenty-two years old, hard-bodied as a hornet and no longer thought of myself as "little" or as a "white boy." The old guy was stooped; his eyes were yellow with age. His long, serious face was hard and soft: there was streetlife all over his features, but also a gentleness.

"Naw, he won't hurt you," he told me again. "Not too bad, anyways."

He's standing in the center of his ring when I part the ropes and step through. Insect-looking splotches of dried blood dot the porous canvas under my feet. As I stare up at him, he comes into focus and everything else blurs. And I recognize once again that no one else on the planet looks quite like him. His skin is unmarked and is without wrinkles, and he glows in a way that cannot be seen in photographs or on television.

He introduces me to the crowd as a "great karate master," an accolade I don't merit. Then he opens his mouth steam-shovel wide, points his gloved left fist at me, and in a voice directed to no one in particular, but to the world in general, he shouts, "You must be a fool to get in the ring with me. When I'm through, you gowna think you been whupped by Bruce Lee.

"Are you scared?" he asks, looking at me straight and level. "How's it feel, knowin' you're in the ring with The Greatest of All Times?"

He turns from me and back to the crowd. "I am the center of the universe," he proclaims. I almost believe him.

The bell rings and he dances to my right around the twenty-foot square of taut canvas. Suddenly I'm no longer nervous. My thighs are strong and springy, there's looseness in my movement. The fine layer of sweat on my skin feels like something unnameable and elemental that has to come out. He bounces from side to side in front of me; I feel every step he takes shoot into my feet and up my legs. I bend to the right, toss a jab toward his belt line, straighten up, snap a tentative front-kick to his head. I figure it's the first kick he's ever had thrown at him, but he pulls away as easily as if he's been dodging feet his entire life. He stops dancing and stands flat-footed in front of me, studying my movements. God, what a big man.

I try to lever in a jab from the outside, where it's usually easiest for me to connect. His eyes are snappingly bright. His face is beaming and round and open. He waits until my punch is a half-inch from his nose and then pulls his head straight back. I punch nothing but air and dreams. He turns square toward me, teases by sticking out a long, white-coated tongue, steps back to the ropes, takes a seat on the second strand, where his head is only a little higher than mine, and beckons me in with a brisk wave of gloves.

I block out spectators' laughs and slide inside his arms three half-steps; he's so close I feel his breath on my shoulder. I dig a roundkick into his right kidney, feel his flesh conform to the shape of my shin, see the opening I'm hoping for, fake a jab, and explode from my crouch, rocketing a spinning backfist/jab/left-hook combination straight into the center of the right side of his jaw. The punches feel so good I smile.

People in the crowd ooh and aah.

He opens his eyes fried-egg wide in feigned disbelief. He has never thought of me before, will never think of me as a fighter again, but for two seconds I deserve his serious attention. For two long seconds we are inseparably bound, whirling in a circle of electricity, each seeing nothing but the other. For two weeklong seconds I am flying. Then he comes off the ropes and squashes me with one flyswatter jab.

I see the punch; it's a piece of red cinnamon candy exactly the size of a gloved fist. I try to slip to the side and can't -- it's that fast. The back of my head bounces off of my shoulders. A chorus of white light goes off behind my eyes. There's a metal taste in my mouth, then a second, heavier thump as he catches me with a hook I don't see. The spectators sound way, way off; my legs go to soup beneath me.

He knows I'm hurt and he steps back. It's obvious he could knock me out with a single punch. Many boxers would be pleased to do so. Instead, his eyes go kind, he slides an arm around my shoulders, we exchange hugs and smiles, and it's over.

But I've accomplished something I've never, yet always, believed I'd have opportunity to do.

I have boxed with Muhammad Ali