Muhammad Ali: A Study in How to Become "The Greatest"

Muhammad Ali remains one of the greatest boxers of all time, but he was also a principled pacifist, Muslim and important to the civil rights movement. What drove this colorful, larger than life man?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Personology is a production of I Heart Radio. Muhammad Ali,
whose nickname was aptly the Greatest, is regarded as the
greatest professional boxer of all time. He was also a
celebrated celebrity figure of the twentieth century, known for his

(00:22):
political and social activism, humanitarian works, philanthropy, and champion of
the Muslim faith. My guest today is Jonathan ig Ig
is the author of five books, three of them New
York Times bestsellers. A former staff writer for The Wall
Street Journal, I has also written for The New York Times,
The New York are Online, and The Washington Post. His

(00:44):
latest book is Ali, a Life, which won the penn
ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing. Ali was also named
Best Book of the Year by Sports Illustrated, one of
the ten best non fiction books of the Year by
The Wall Street Journal, and one of the New York
Times Notable Books of two thousand and eighteen. Muhammad Ali

(01:09):
was born Cassius Clay January of two in Louisville. And
we will talk a little bit about his family of origin,
his father, who was a sign painter, and his mother,
who was a homemaker. But really what matters is the

(01:31):
kind of people that his parents were and the kind
of relationship that they had with their son. So let's
talk a little bit about his namesake. His father, Cassius, Yeah,
Cassius Clay senior, Cassius Marcellus Clay Senior. Everybody called him Cash.
Was a great character. Um, a womanizer, a very effervescent,

(01:56):
very popular guy, love to go out and drink, drank
a little too much, got arrested a few times for
public intoxication, and ran around on his wife. So um,
he was this very compelling, very dynamic figure that has
you know, in some ways his his two sons really idolized.
But he was also a troubled figure who brought violence

(02:17):
into the home and and you know, beat his wife
on occasion, came home drunk and and and beaten his
kids a couple of times too. So uh, you know,
I think this is one of the really key relationships
in shaping young Muhammad Ali, particularly in terms of thinking
about what Ali went on to do with his life.
That it's interesting to think about, as you said, he

(02:40):
this father who, in the kindest way you could say,
was maybe a scoundrel. You know, that he was a
womanizer and that he got into trouble, but people liked him.
But at the same time, as you said, there was
this dark side to him. He did hit his wife,
he did hit his children, and he had interactions with
the police because it got into fights, physical fights. And

(03:03):
this is important because when you think about children who
grow up in abusive homes, they have to find a
way to cope with the abuse of what's going on,
and often what they do, and this is why you
see this repeated pattern in families is they use a
defense mechanism called identification with the aggressor, which means basically

(03:24):
they've been the victim and they've been the powerless one,
and to cope with the trauma of that, they grow
into somebody who tries to have the power and be
the doer, not the one done to. And so we
often see this pattern of kids who have been in
abusive homes going on to become abusers themselves in domestic
abuse or in abusing their children. And of course, while

(03:49):
that is not what Muhammad Ali is known for, he
did go on to be a fighter, a boxer, and
um that would be an incredible sublimation of another defense mechanism,
of a way of taking urges to be the hitter,
to be the powerful one, and using it in a
way that is constructive. So and just in terms of

(04:12):
already right out of the gate, thinking about motivators for
young Cassius Clay to be interested in fighting and in boxing.
That's right. One of the things that really struck me
about Ali that I was so interested in is that
he was never a bully in school. He was much
bigger than the other kids in his class. You look
at the school pictures, the class photos, and he towers

(04:34):
over everybody in the class. He grew not only large,
but he grew early, and he um struggled in school.
Later discovered that he was dyslexic, but he really lagged behind.
And I was always kind of surprised that he didn't
lash out and become violent in any way. That he
didn't you become a bully, and he didn't. He was

(04:56):
the class clown instead. It wasn't until he was twelve
that he discus over boxing. He had some physical prowess
as a young boy. He as you said, was bigger, stronger,
and even in some ways faster. Already that he was uh,
not terribly engaged in the academics of school, to say
the least, but he turned his let's say, energies to

(05:18):
a lot of athletic pursuit. You tell this great story
of how he raced the bus to both entertain students
who were in the bus, but also because running and
being physical was was part of his makeup at a
very early age. That's right. He liked the idea of
getting in shape. He liked the idea of getting stronger
and being the strongest and the fastest um and the

(05:41):
fact that he could also um entertain the other kids
on the school bus was was key because he loved attention.
He desperately needed attention. His mother said that he used
to stand up in the stroller because he wanted people
to see him even as they were as he was
a baby walking down the street. And and that seems
to have really been a part of his d n
a that he just needed to be noticed all the time.

(06:02):
And that may come from feeling like he didn't get
the love of his father. He certainly felt like he
got the love of his mother. And his mother was
in many ways the opposite of Cash. She was this
sweet Her nickname was Bird because she had this sweet,
little high pitched laugh, and everybody loved bird. Bird was
was was stable and solid and and took care of

(06:22):
her family, took care of other families. Like so many
black women of the nineteen fifties, the only work she
could get was as a domestic cooking and cleaning for
white families. But she was the you know, the epitome
of a of a of a loving mother. So he
had the balance from his parents. Well, she was, as
you said, described as very angelic, churchgoer, a caretaker at

(06:45):
all costs, very selfless. And that's important because his model
for the first woman in his life, UM seems to
be pursue him, let's say, in terms of who he
chooses as wives and his girlfriends and what he expects
of them. Certainly you see as he moves through life,

(07:07):
definitely an expectation of caretaking. Definitely an expectation of selflessness
on the part of women. Um. Sometimes it seems that
he later takes a lot of advantage of that. But
clearly his model for a woman seems very much based
on his relationship with and the model that his mother said. Um.

(07:27):
Also important is his relationship with his younger brother. Yeah,
that's right, and the younger brother kind of serves in
that role of being the giving him even more attention.
His his younger brother is kind of like his Sancho Panza.
You know, He's there's there all the time to give
support and encouragement and to remind Ali of how great
he is. And Mohammed's hungry. The first thing he his brother,

(07:51):
you know, does his run to the kitchen without even
you know, being asked to go make him a sandwich.
He's obedient fan. He's the ultimate fan. And he stays
close with Rudy Ruddy, his brother. He stays close with
Rudy and involves him in all of his life ongoings
as his second mate throughout his life. So that remains
a very important relationship for him. But equally important to

(08:16):
the impact of this mother and this father and this
brother is the environment in which she's growing up in,
in the culture in the years of which he's growing
up where basically this is the Jim Crow South. He
grows up with tremendous race consciousness. His father has some
strong opinions about what it is to be a black

(08:39):
man in Louisville in those years and what he thinks
his son can and cannot accomplish. As a result. Yeah,
once again with everything around Ali. It's beautifully complicated because
he's growing up in the Jim Crow South. He's he's
you know, he's born into segregation. Um. But but he's
not poor. Most back there's tend to come out of poverty.

(09:01):
Ali lives in a middle class neighborhood where he sees
people going to work every day, um, including business owners,
people who own funeral homes and dentists offices, and school
teachers and principles. His family is a little bit sort
of on the lower end of that uh spectrum, but
still solidly within the middle class. So he sees this

(09:23):
proud community that he lives in. But at the same time,
if he goes downtown, he can't shop in the clothing stores,
he can't try on close in the department stores. He
can't um sit anywhere but the balcony in the movie theater,
and they're most of the city parks in in Louisville
are completely off limits to him. So he grows up
knowing that he's considered second class, and he can't understand why.

(09:46):
For example, Um, you know, they go to church and
they pray to a white Jesus. Um. You know, he's
he's puzzled by that, and he can't understand why, um,
skin color should make a difference, why should he be
categorized this way? And when he tells his father one
day that that he wants to be rich and famous,
his father laughs at him and says, you can't be
you can't be rich and famous. I'll tell you why.

(10:07):
He just points to his skin and says, look at that.
You know you're too dark. You're never going to be anything. Mhm.
So a couple of interesting psychodynamics are set up early
in the life of Ali, these models that are before him.
His clear temperamental set up to be an extrovert. I

(10:28):
mean that seems very obvious from his life and lifestyle
and what he seeks out that unlike introverts who gain
and need some time alone to re establish their energy,
he clearly gets his energy off of being with other
people and playing to other people, interacting with others. Very
very extrovert man. And that's something that probably he was

(10:50):
just biologically born with. Yeah, he hated being alone all
his life. So that's that's that's often what exactly what
a what a pure extrovert would say. Um, And they'll
go to great lengths to be around other people, so
that that desire for attention, you know, maybe some combination
of wanting to, you know, aspire as everyone does, and

(11:11):
having a father telling him he could never be special,
and so feeling insecure in that way and looking for
things that would shore up his self esteem or make
him feel that he was able to be special, and
being an extrovert wanting to be recognized therefore, and interacting
with other people. And then you take this whole milieu

(11:34):
and you plumped him into school, where as you mentioned,
he really struggled. He really struggled because, as it turned out,
he had dyslexia and could not read. That's right, and
I think that must have been incredibly frustrating for him
and it but but he again didn't act out in
a in a bullying kind of way as he might have.
He He just turned up the notch, turned up the levels,

(11:57):
and went even more extroverted and just tried to be hilarious,
trying to be the class clown. And then this miraculous
thing happens and he finds the perfect cure for all
of his problems. That's something that satisfies every bit of
his enormous appetite and that's boxing. At the age of twelve,
he stumbles accidentally into a gym where a white police

(12:19):
officers training kids how to box, and there are black
and white kids in the ring together. So, Son, I mean,
it had to be like a monstrous epiphany where he
suddenly sees that there's this place, a boxing ring, where
the normal world, the normal rules of the world, do
not apply. Here's a white police officer who wants to
help him, who wants to be kind to him, who's

(12:40):
working with black and white kids together, and there are
white kids and black kids in a boxing ring punching
one another. You know, his father has told him all
his life that if you get into a fight with
a white kid, you're going to jail. If you have
any kind of running with a white police officer, you're
in trouble, And here the opposite seems to apply. And
then best of all, he gets to fight in front

(13:01):
of crowds and on Friday nights, those fights are on television.
He can't believe it, like this is a dream come true?
What could be better than this? He gets to punch
white people and they'll put him on TV for it.
He brings to the mix, right this this background of
what he's been told. So this this is like a revelation,
as you point out. But also I think it's important
to understand when one has dyslexia, one often has another

(13:26):
diagnosis along with it, and the most common one is
attention deficit disorder, particularly attention depth is a disorder with hyperactivity.
And as you said, he seemed too many people who
interacted with him, particularly his mother, but others like he
was a very hyperactive kid, that he was in addition
to being trying to be the class clown and get attention,

(13:47):
that he was moving all the time, that he had
high energy and high movement all the time. And for
someone who feels hyperactivity, which feels kind of like ants
in your pants all the time, the eye idea of
being able to jump around a ring and box and
hit people and get feedback would be like phenomenal. Would

(14:09):
be an engaging, absorbing and actually physically relieving kind of
activity because it's so busy, because it really plays into
feeling hyperactive. So there were so many things that could
lead to and then of course having this moment where
actually it was there that really existed. Yeah, it was really,

(14:30):
like I said, almost miraculous. Because he tried basketball and
football and baseball and he hated those things. There was
there was too much time standing around, and you know,
in football, he said, you got to wear a helmet.
Nobody can see you. And this was really serendipity. He
had basically had a new bicycle that his family had
given him and it was stolen and he was enraged

(14:51):
and he marched down to the police station to really
report this. And this is when he comes upon this
white police officer who happens to be the boxing coach.
That's right, and the white police officer says, if you
want to learn the box, come back and all. He
comes back and in fact finds another gym and starts
training at two gyms at one time because he just

(15:11):
can't get enough of this and it absolutely transforms his life.
And he starts almost immediately telling everybody, I'm going to
be the heavyweight champion of the world. He starts, you know, imagining, daydreaming,
sitting in class, imagining that the principle comes on to
make the announcement that Muhammad Ali has just won the
gold medal in the Olympics. But then he's still castis
clay at this point, um he starts sketching pictures of himself,

(15:32):
you know, in a boxing robe with the words World's champion,
you know, across across the back. Um as he once said,
you know, the years later he said, I was calling
myself the greatest before I knew it was true. So
he is in basically middle school and then high school,
and he's he's boxing already. He's boxing for crowds, he's

(15:53):
getting positive feedback, he's finding that he's good, and that's
giving a sense of self esteem and why is he good?
Because and this becomes actually the hallmark of who only
becomes as a boxer. He doesn't use typical boxing techniques. Yeah,
that's right, it's really fascinating. He Um again seems to

(16:15):
just get lucky that he's got these this, this, all
these things lined up perfectly for him. He never really
takes the coaching seriously. You know, in boxing you're supposed
to keep your hands up to protect your head at
all times. You throw a punch and you put your
hands right back to protect your head, and you duck punches.
You know, you don't just um like, lean back because
if you lean back, you're gonna get tagged eventually. But

(16:37):
Ali develops this style all of his own, where he
he keeps his hands down low, doesn't protect his head,
just moves his head out of the way, and his
reflexes are so fantastic that he gets away with it.
And everybody keeps saying, well, when he gets to fight
some real opponents, when he when he moves up to
some some serious boxers, he's gonna get clawbered, But that
never happens. He somehow manages to consistently find a way

(17:00):
to win. And and some of it is because he's
he's just got these natural gifts. He's so fast and
he's so big, and this kind of a combination of
speed and strength it's really unusual. Today we can look
at the neuroscience and the data that support this. He
has some actually other special talent in his pocket, if
you will. And that is when a person has dyslexia,

(17:24):
their brain is wired a little bit differently, and that
is the reason that actually they can't process parts of
words um called phonemes, and that's why it's so difficult
for them to learn to read. But this same difference
in wiring also seems to confer a strength, and that
is a wider net for spotting visual and auditory and

(17:49):
cognitive material, but wider spatial attention. And what does that
mean visual spatial attention, It means that their ability to
see what's in the per referee of their visual field
is greater than someone who does not have dyslexia. And
that means, as a boxer, right, your ability to see

(18:11):
and process and use the information that's coming from a
wider lens, from a wider view than someone who doesn't
have that would be better and that you might see
that and process it more quickly. And also another strength
of people with dyslexia is an increased ability to discern patterns.

(18:32):
And often as sports of all kinds, but particularly in boxing,
there are patterns to boxing styles. So this combination might
have been what allowed at that time cash As Clay
to use a different tchnique because he would be faster
and he would see more and he would see punches
coming or moves coming before someone else might. Absolutely, and

(18:56):
when you're talking about elite athletes, you know a split second,
a hundredth of a second makes a huge difference. And
when you're a boxer and you can move, start moving
your head out of the way of a punch, just
a split second sooner, and when you can discern where
the other fighter's head is moving as he's throwing that
punch and prepared to counteract it, you have an enormous advantage.
And Ali could never really quite explain it, but he

(19:17):
would say, I don't know how it happens. It just
happens that my chin is always just a little bit
out of the way when the punch lance, like I
can just make that that punched glance off my chin
in a way that other fighters would have been hit
full on. And he sensed that he had this ability
and he didn't really know how because it was just
completely native to him. Let's take a quick break here,
we'll be back in a moment. Sadly, even though this

(19:47):
was amazing and he was doing more and more boxing,
getting more and more accolades, that he was able to
make money, he had people start to back him to
end help him with the management of that money. He,
as you pointed out, loved the fame. He never learned

(20:07):
to read. He never I mean, he was now traveling
so much for one in high school. Um, but in
those days they didn't have the kind of schooling that
they have now to help children who have dyslexia learn
different techniques and different styles so that they can read.
And it was really that his high school principle ultimately said,
you know, we could see this guy's going somewhere, and

(20:29):
we're not going to be the ones to have not
graduated him. We would like a superstar to have graduated
from our high school. So he graduates, but he really
doesn't get the academic tools that say would have probably
benefited him in life, and and that ends up being
important simply. I think in the world of later on,

(20:51):
when he could be taken advantage of financially, sometimes his
ability to say, read a contract for himself or or
manage any of the finances was was not so good. Yeah,
that's true. Although I suspect that even if he had learned,
and he did eventually learn to read um slowly, but
he got better at it. I suspect even if he

(21:13):
knew how to read, there was something else in his
personality that made him vulnerable to two con men and
shady managers. He was just so trusting and he just
always believed that everything was going to work out fine
for him. He had this incredible sense of confidence that
he would always have money. He would always make more
money and if he needed, if he lost some of
it to some shady con man, well that shady con

(21:34):
man must have needed it, must have must have needed
the money more than he did. And he just had
this very like um Leisa Fair about a relationship about money.
What time was it when the whole issue of the
Olympics presented for him? He won the Olympics, the gold
medal in nineteen sixty when he was still in high
school one the the light heavyweight division, and came back

(21:55):
and to the United States and was suddenly a star.
And in fact, even in the Olympics even are there,
um the newspaper reporters all before he even won the thing,
before they even knew whether he could box, they all said,
we really hope this kid wins because he's got such personality,
such charisma, and the sports world really needs a needs
a kid like this to brighten up the boxing universe,

(22:16):
which had become you know, kind of dull and was
losing popularity. So people recognized his star power even when
he was a kid. So he's in high school, he's
an Olympic gold medalist. He is outgoing and handsome and charismatic,
and he likes girls. He really likes girls. Talks about

(22:37):
how much he likes girls. But he's shy, which is
so interesting. It's the one environment that he seems to
be really socially inhibited in. He definitely describes himself as
shy around girls. And so even though you think this
must be a high school boy who's definitely, you know,
having girlfriends, he really didn't. Yeah, it was interesting. When

(22:59):
he turned pro a few years later, a lot of
the sportswriters who covered and thought he was either he
was certainly a version in their opinion, and that he
might have been gay because he was so nervous around
girls and seemed to, you know, have no swagger whatsoever.
And I talked to a girl who went out with
him once in high school, and she told this hilarious story.
She was a year older, She was a senior, and
he was a junior. He was already somewhat famous because

(23:23):
he'd won all these amateur tournaments. And he walked her
home from a play at the at the school, and
when they got up to the top of the stairs,
he asked if he could kiss her good night, And
when he leaded for the kiss, he fainted and tumbled
down the stairs. Um foof rolled down the whole flight
of stairs, and when he got to the bottom, he

(23:43):
looked up at her and said, I ain't I ain't.
Nobody gonna believe this. You won't tell, will you? Uh?
And uh and and I really do think he was
terribly shy. Um. It's not clear to me whether he
may well have been a virgin until he met his
his first wife. Uh. It seems that after that he
more than made up for it. Um. He a man

(24:07):
with the four wives and many, many, many other women.
Even when he was married, he would be with other women.
He expected his wives to accept that the woman that
you describe or in that story was actually she was
a little older than he was. She actually had a child,

(24:29):
she was being a single mother. He really liked her.
I guess, I guess it worked out after the initial fainting.
He kept her in his life actually even when he
got married. And um, that was something that was part
of this man. He felt that people who were important

(24:50):
to him, everybody should understand that they were important to him,
and he would be very loyal and he would keep
them in his life for long, long periods of time. Yeah,
he sort of had say a battitude about women that
he had about money. He's like there would always be
enough of him to go around and and that he
would these women would would would be so happy to
have his company that they would be willing to put

(25:11):
up with anything, including sharing that was his. You know.
He viewed himself as being, you know, a magnanimous in
that way. One of his managers told me this story
of like finding Ali in the hotel room sleeping with
the with the with the chamber me the woman who
had been cleaning his room, and it wasn't older, heavy
set woman. And the manager said, you know, they are

(25:32):
all these gorgeous models waiting for you in the lobby,
like you could have your pick up any one of
those gorgeous women down there. Why are you sleeping with
with this maid? And Ali said, because she's going to
appreciate it more and she'll remember this for the rest
of her life. That's fascinating to me. It is um
It certainly is at that point amazingly self preferential. And

(25:55):
we could definitely consider the word narcissism in there. Right,
he's making love to himself the most there. Essentially he
is saying this is I am so amazing that she
is having this amazing experience. And uh, he definitely had
a grandiosity about him. Now, I will say this, when

(26:17):
people are surrounded by others and are told seven that
they are the greatest, and they are lauded with not
only not only kinds of compliments all the time, but
essentially told they can do no wrong and they are
the center of attention, they do develop over time a

(26:38):
certain amount of hubrists. You see this in world leaders
and in high level sports figures, and they come to
sort of drink their own tea, as it were, and
feel that the actually, yeah, they can do no wrong.
And so whether Cashus was a young person who already
had a good dollop of narcissism and carried that through

(27:01):
or whether that's something that developed more as a young
man by starting to be told already in high school
you are the best and you can do no wrong
and development more of hubris is hard to know, but
there is a lot of evidence, as he is a
man at least, that he has a tremendous amount of grandiosity.

(27:23):
It's hard to call grandiosity actually when you are the
greatest at something. But he was doing it before he
was the greatest, you know, But when he was a kid,
when he was boxing in high school, he would enter
these amateur tournaments and sometimes there'd be thirty year old
amateurs that he'd be fighting against, so he'd be twice
his age, and he would go into the dressing room
before the fight and mock these people who had far

(27:45):
more accomplished careers, who had one way more about, who
were bigger and stronger than him, and just tease them
and say, you've got no chance. What are you doing here?
Why are you fighting me? That the cockiness was there.
Maybe it was a compensation, Maybe it was, you know,
that that was his way of dealing with the feet,
or maybe it has something to do with, you know,
having been an abused kid and not being willing to

(28:06):
show his vulnerability. I don't know, but it was definitely
there before he was truly great. After the Olympics, he
takes off on his career. He is boxing, he's winning,
he comes into contact with the Nation of Islam, and
this becomes all important really to him. Let's talk a

(28:29):
little bit about that and his relationship with Elijah Mohammad.
What happens there. In some ways, this is like his
discovery of boxing. It's something that will absolutely change his life.
And it somehow seems like this is exactly what he
needed or what he was waiting for, because, as we said,
he grew up with this very conflicted feeling about his father.

(28:51):
His father was was a drinker and a rabble rouser
and had a very unsteady income. And then here's this religion,
the Nation of Islam, with this leader named Elijah Mohammed,
who's this tiny mousey uh man who conveys this enormous
sense of strength by saying that we don't drink, we
don't carry on with women. We will build our own nation.

(29:14):
We don't need white people to give us permission to exist.
We don't need white people at all. We can build
our own country. We will carve out our own land,
and we will build our own businesses, and and black
people will prove that they are the greatest race of
them all. This sense of discipline and this sense of
something bigger than himself, the fact that this this tiny

(29:37):
little man could be so powerful really intrigue Dolly. He
decides that, you know, he's not really a Christian man.
That was something that was forced upon him by not
just his family, but really by the culture and by
the history of black people that they were told, you

(29:58):
will be this religion, you will be this sort of educated,
you will have this name. He decides, Cassius Clay is
not is not the name that I choose. It's the
name that was given to me. Clay is a white
slavery owner's name, and I don't accept that any longer.

(30:20):
So he has this real shift in identity, sort of
an awakening as you describe it to him, that that
this this resonates for him, and it's important not only
for his personal identity in terms of changing his name,
in terms of who he aligns with and what he believes,
but it's also important because at the same time this

(30:43):
is going on, the civil rights movement is also going on,
and most black people and white people are hearing that
the civil rights movement is about desegregation, it is about
being together, It is about equal rights together, and that

(31:03):
is not what the Nation of Islam says. The Nation
is Islam is saying, we are entitled to at least
the equal rights, and they should be separate. We should
have our own and we shouldn't be together, which which
clashes with culturally, what's happening at the time. That's right.
And it's so interesting because Ali grows up um steeped

(31:25):
in the early days of the civil rights movement. You know,
he's the same age as Emmett till he knew what
happened to Emmett till then he saw the Montgomery bus
whitcotts breaking out, he saw the sit ins, the Freedom Rise.
He never really participated in any of that. It didn't
seem interesting to him. He had no seemed to have
no interest in politics, no interest in joining the movements.

(31:46):
He even sort of made fun of the some of
the segregation protests, the integration protests that were going on
in Louisville during his school days, saying that he didn't
want to go there and have people yelling at him.
He just wanted to box and that was all he
was in dressed it in. And then along comes Alijah
Mohammed and suddenly, Um he goes even more radical than
than Martin Luther King, even more radical than the mainstream

(32:08):
civil rights movement. And I think part of what appealed
to him was that it was different, that it was
rebelling even more than Martin Luther King. It was saying that,
you know, integration isn't the answer. Um, He's going to
take an even more bold and radical approach and say
that that we should remain segregated. Black people should just
have their own way of doing things, their own independence.

(32:30):
Separatist notion really appealed to him, and in some ways,
I think it's the same kind of discipline that he
found in boxing. But the threat of being himself anti authoritarian,
which is evident since early life. You know, he isn't
going to do something just because his father told him
to do it. He isn't going to do something just
because the teacher said to do it. He's going to

(32:52):
do what he thinks is best, what he thinks is right. Yeah,
when Elijah Mohammed split with Malcolm X, Ali had to
make a choice. Do you go with the young rebel
who has become your friend and your mentor or do
you stick with the authority figure who who started it all,
the man at the very top, Alijah Mohammed. And this

(33:13):
was one of the most difficult decisions of Ali's life
because he loved Malcolm X like a brother, but Alijah
Mohammed was more of a father figure and he had
to choose, and he chose Alijah Mohammed and and and
in some ways he may have written the death warrant
for Malcolm X because Malcolm was soon after assassinated it

(33:33):
and he did not have the protection of the Nation
of Islam. Both of these men wanted Mohammed Ali with them,
so that even though Elijah Mohammed is the is the
leader of the movement, he still he wanted Mohammed Ali
to be with him, right because at this point Ali
is it's such a huge name and influencer, that's right. Um,

(33:56):
it meant the world in terms of promoting the Nation
of Islam, in terms of getting new members. The fact
that they could brag the heavyweight champion was one of theirs.
And this is after Ali beats Sunny Listen, and that's
when he announces to the world that he is not
a Christian anymore. He's a member of the Nation of
Islam and he's joining Malcolm X and and Elijah Mohammed.
And this was incredibly radical and it's fascinating for a

(34:18):
guy like Ali who wants to be loved to think
that at the moment of his greatest acclaim, when he
finally wins the heavyweight championship. He's willing to risk it
all by joining the Nation of Islam and and and
throwing away the popularity, throwing away the potential endorsement contracts
from Coca Cola and all the TV appearances. Uh, he's

(34:39):
willing to risk all of the fame and celebrity that
he's built up to that point because of this new
belief of his he loves fighting um in terms of boxing,
and as you said, he's now heavyweight champion following his
his match with Sunny Listen, and as you said, it's
nineteen sixty four. But because of his affiliation with the

(35:00):
Nation of Islam, the draft comes up and he feels
that he cannot do it. He will not do it.
He will not go to Vietnam. And he's essentially the
first of the most famous, let's say, of conscientious objectors.
Yet this really more than affects his popularity, to say

(35:21):
the least. He people are very angry. They're saying he's
doing it because he's afraid to go. You know he's
saying I mean, not only is he saying I'm not
afraid to go. I believe this is wrong, but he's
even willing to give up boxing, his beloved boxing, and
his career possibly forever. Didn't end up being forever, but

(35:45):
he didn't know that at the time. To be part
of the nation of Islam and to not go serve
in Vietnam, that's right. A lot of people would question
whether he was true to his religion, whether this was
a sincere belief, or whether he was really doing this
for political purposes, for personal reasons. But he believed so

(36:08):
firmly in the teachings of Elijah Mohammed that he was
willing to give up his the thing that he wanted
most in the world, his boxing career, his heavyweight championship,
And as you pointed out, he didn't know that he
was going to be giving it up for a few years.
He believed that he was giving it up forever, and
he said he would be willing to die before he
would serve in Vietnam, before he would fight, because his
religion forbade Uh fighting on behalf of an of a

(36:32):
nation fighting in any kind of of a of a
secular war. So I think there's there's no question that
he that his religious beliefs were legitimate. In fact, his
religion entered when it came to marriage as well, he
got a lot of pressure to be married to another
member of the Nation of Islam. He did ultimately marry Belinda,

(36:54):
who was much younger than he, who was Muslim, his homemaker,
but continued to have many affairs. In fact, cruelly asked
Belinda or told Blinda that she was going to arrange
some of these meetups that you know, she should make
the hotel room and she should leave at the appropriate
time because he was going to be with other women.

(37:16):
I mean, this became a point of contention really right
between he and the Nation of Islam. Yeah, the Nation
of Islam always talked about marital fidelity but didn't follow
through so well. And Ali I can have the attitude
that that maybe, um, you know, Islam allowed multiple wives
and that Americans couldn't quite embrace that, so he would

(37:38):
kind of keep it on the down low. But he
acted as if he were entitled to having multiple wives.
And in fact, there were a couple of women that
he he married an unofficial ceremonies who also believed themselves
to be his wives. And at one point, um, you know,
he was maintaining relationships with at least three or four
of these women. At the same time, women who all
believed that she was his wife or would be soon.

(38:00):
And uh, you know, this is an incredible um juggling act,
an incredible act of hubrists. Whether it has anything to
do with your religion or not, I think it probably
predates the religion. I think this is just something that
Ali had convinced himself he was he could handle and
was and was deserving of. Let's take a quick break here.
We'll be back in a moment. Yea, he took this

(38:28):
what ended up being this three and a half year break.
It was actually during his prime. These would have been
important I guess I'll say years for him as a boxer.
Absolutely these were arguably the best years of his career.
Nineteen sixties seven, he's, you know, six years old. This
would have been absolutely prime. And when he comes back

(38:50):
finally three and a half years later, he's clearly slowed down.
And not only is that bad for him as a boxer,
it's bad for him as a human being, because he
starts getting hit a lot more at his ability to
avoid those punches is severely diminished, and you start to
see him realizing that he has another talent that he
didn't really know about, and that talent is one to

(39:12):
remain standing after he's already been concussed, after he's taken
hundreds and hundreds of punches, he does not fall down
and this becomes one of his great strengths as a boxer,
which is unfortunately not a great strength when you want
to look at preserving your brain for your later life.
Very little was known at that time about the impact

(39:35):
of head trauma in terms of developing Parkinson's disease. But
he missed this time period which was probably good for
his brain. But when he comes back, he comes in
with this renewed vigor. He he changes his tactic a
little bit as he feels that he's a bit slower
and he needs to remain standing and that that is

(39:55):
the way that he will, you know, later, come back
and win the match. But it is around his fight
with Joe Frasier, a very big and important fight which
he manages to stay in even though he's sustaining unbelievable
blows and is knocked down and it's fifteen rounds. But

(40:20):
it is after that fight that one starts to see
some brain changes already, no doubt about it. And Ali's
doctor told me that he saw changes right there. And
Ali would go on to fight ten more years. And
I said to this doctor, you know, how could you
let him keep fighting? And he said, our job was
to keep him in the ring. Our job was to
help him fight, not to help him not fight. And

(40:43):
those you know, I felt bad for the doctor because
he was clearly torn about this that he contributed in
some way to this damage. But Ali's friends, his family,
his wives all said you gotta stop. You know this
is bad for you. And they can see it. They
could hear it in his voice that his words were
becoming slower and and slurred, and um, you know, I
worked with speech scientists to actually count the number of

(41:04):
syllables per second that Ali was using, and you can
you can track it over the course of the decade,
and you can see that he lost a significant portion
of his speaking ability, and after each fight, you can
see dips um in his ability to speak coherently. And
everybody around him knew it, and he just couldn't stop.
He he loved the sport. He loved the easy money.

(41:24):
You know, he would say, how else am I going
to make three million dollars in one night? How can
I give that up? Not only were people hitting him
in the ring and he was he was staying up
and taking these this tremendous amount of head trauma. But
in his practicing he would, unlike other boxers, he would

(41:46):
spar with people that he would ask to actually hit
him in the head so that he would sort of
toughen up and be able to take it. And he
would do that without protective headgear. And that was not
tip goal of a lot of boxers. But clearly, you know,
more repeated, perhaps lower level, but still trauma to the brain.

(42:07):
It was tremendous trauma. These are two men, and they
weren't going easy on him. Ali believed that it was
kind of like building up callus is that if you
got hit often enough, your brain would become tougher. And
he would encourage these giant men just hit him in
the head and he would keep his hands down on
purpose to prove that he could take it and to
build up his resistance. And this was just tragic, and

(42:29):
there's no other word for it. We now know, of course,
that you know, knocking your brain around within the cavity
that the skull holds it in means that essentially the
brain isn't is having repeated hits against the bone. We
know that even deep brain structure is influenced by repeated trauma,

(42:50):
that they're shearing of tissue inside the brain. And we
know from other sports, even like football, that repeated concussions
cause cognitive decline, cause ultimately mood disorder, terrible depression long term.
Basically we're talking about organic brain damage. And in boxers,

(43:13):
unlike other sports where like football, where there's probably organic
brain damage, in boxing there was this specific area from
taking hits in the face that was affected, the substantial nigra,
which is an area where basically, when there's decline in
the amount of dopamine that can be produced, you see
the development of Parkinson's disease. And there were, you know, sadly,

(43:37):
at a fairly young age, there was already evidence of
Parkinson's in Muhammad Ali, this flat facial expression that you know,
somebody who had looked unbelievably animated as we've described him,
you know, tremendously electric and with a lot of facial
expression and talking quickly and gesticulating key Over time, right,

(43:58):
his face gets less and less emode of appearing. He
slows down in his language, he uses fewer words, his
body movement slows down. He developed what is called pill
rolling tremor. He developed the stiffness in the limbs that

(44:18):
is consistent with Parkinson's. So he really for many many
years lived with Parkinson's. But um, it starts to become
obvious really towards the end of his fighting career, which
is part of what essentially ended his fighting career. That
he continued to fight through the nineteen seventies, um into
the early eighties. That correct, that's right. He was. He

(44:40):
was about forty when he when he stopped fighting finally,
and some of those symptoms were showing themselves already. And
his wife at the time was saying, you know, you've
got this tremor in your hand, and you're not walking right.
You know, how can you how can you box? How
can you step into the ring with some of the
toughest men on the planet when you can't even really
navigate walking across the living room rug And And yet

(45:00):
his his doctors and his managers were throwing him in
the ring, and Ali was doing so willingly because he
had money. He managed his money so badly. He still
needed to earn and he just couldn't quite picture another
life for himself. You know, he was he was offered
parts in movies and he would sit there in the
in the dressing room waiting for his turn to go

(45:21):
out and act, and he'd be bored out of his mind.
So he was the star of a movie, and he
was it wasn't enough to satisfy his need for attention
because it had to be all the time. And he
really had a difficult time imagining something other than boxing
that would satisfy all those urges that he felt and
pay him that's right, people, you know, sadly took a
lot of his money, used a lot of his money,

(45:42):
put his money into schemes or created sham companies that
said they need the money for so he really became
very depleted. And his last couple of fights were really tragic. Actually,
I guess you could say they sound incredible sad. They
were brutal, they were disasters, and watching them today is

(46:06):
just um, really tragic because he shouldn't have been in
the ring. The people who loved him and cared about
him shouldn't have allowed him to be in the ring.
Boxing officials should not have allowed him in the ring.
There's just no reason any of this should have happened,
and the only reason was money. What did he said
was his greatest fight. I think his greatest fight was
the one he lost to Joe Frasier, the first Fraser

(46:28):
fight in because he came back, he wasn't the same guy.
He found a way to survive. He lost the fight,
got knocked down, but he got back up and and
finished the fight. And I think that's the moment that
fans went from thinking that he was a pompous jerk
to seeing how tough he was and began to show
some some sympathy and some some empathy with him. You know,

(46:51):
the Vietnam War was over, we could see that he
was right. We could see that he'd sacrificed all of
this for his religion. And when he gets back up
off of them at we see the true champion in him.
At about that time, the public gets to see evidence
of the resilience of Cassius Clay that he you know,

(47:14):
up until that point, maybe we have the impression that,
you know, this all came easily to him, and he
sailed through and boom, he's he's the greatest, and everything
just happens and he doesn't have to suffer very much,
but we at that juncture start to see that, in fact,
he's willing to dig in and try to overcome and

(47:34):
sacrifice in these middle years of his life. That's right.
And at the same time, he's moving away from the
Nation of Islam a little bit. Alijah Mohammed is getting
old and losing control of the organization. So Ali seems
to mellow in the public's eye. He shows this toughness.
He comes back from getting beat by Joe Fraser and
starts working his way towards another shot at the championship.

(47:54):
And he's not talking politics as much. He's not talking
about of you know, space ships. They're gonna come and
destroy all the white people and black people are going
to own the earth. He's he's, he's appearing on TV shows,
he's sitcoms like different Strokes, Um, He's he seems like
a lovable guy all of a sudden, and and the
public begins to embrace him in a whole new way.

(48:16):
But it is about this time that he really ends
his boxing career. Yeah, he comes back and he wins
the championship again. He beats George Foreman in Africa, and
that's when he should have retired, but instead it winds
down slowly and painfully, and then finally, after losing his
last two fights, he quits and and um in the
nineteen eighties after that are really um sad and hard

(48:40):
time for him. He's out of the spotlight. He doesn't
like the way he looks on TV, so he avoids interviews,
and he doesn't know what to do with himself. He
drives around just looking for for something to do. He
shows up at trade shows, he'll he'll sit and sign
autographs in the airport. He'll go to the airport early
just so he can sign more autographs because he has
nothing else to do. It was people forget about this

(49:01):
phase in his life. But the eighties were really depressing,
I think for him, and then in the nineties he
he sort of finds a way back, or at least
a place to to feel that he's contributing. Yeah, and
this is kind of the beautiful coda to the story.
He's invited to light the Olympic torch in and people

(49:23):
have really kind of forgotten about him because he's been
out of the spotlight for so long, and when they
see him, when he emerges from the shadows with his
torch in his hand. You hear this collective gasp from
the crowd, like, oh my god, that's alien and he's old.
Look at him, he's he's he's only forty five at
this point, but he looks like he's sixty five or
seventy five, and he's his hands are shaking, and it

(49:44):
doesn't look like he's gonna be able to light the
torch because because he can't control the movement of his arm.
And then when he gets the thing lit, this the
sense of relief and the crowd starts to chant his name, Ali, Ali,
and that's a moment of reinvention for him. Really. He
says the very next day that I'm going to be
bigger than ever. I'm They're gonna love me more than
ever now because they can see that I'm old and

(50:06):
I'm weak, and we all get old and we all die,
and people are gonna love me more now that they
see that that I'm just like them. He invests himself
at this point in basically, I guess we'll say, sort
of philanthropic work. That's right. He spent pretty much the
rest of his life preaching Islam, preaching in America that
Islam is nothing we should fear and hate, going overseas

(50:30):
to Middle Eastern countries and saying that America is a
country of love and peace and brotherhood. He raises money
for Parkinson's disease. Um. You know, he still likes to
have a good time, but um. And he also says
that the Kuran teaches that you will go to hell
if you have more sins than good deeds. He calls
it's a tallying angel, he says, as a tallying angel

(50:50):
who's keeping track of all of his good deeds and
all his bad deeds. And he's got He's done a
lot of bad things, and now this is his chance
to try to get on the right side of the score.
So he really continues to feel invested in his religion.
He is a Muslim. He tries to bring the communities together,

(51:11):
that we can tolerate each other. He moves from his
original feeling of we should be separate two we should
be together. But everybody be able to be what they are,
that's right. He embraces Sunni Islam. He's no longer a
member of the Nation of Islam as it's rebuilt under
Lewis Farakon. He abandons that and he he learns to
really study the Kuran. He learns to read better than

(51:32):
he's ever read before by by learning to read the Koran,
and he absolutely embraces the principles of the of the
religion in in the best way. He gives up the
vanity that he had for so long. I mean, he
doesn't have a choice if he wants to be in
the public eye, because at this point he is exceedingly
symptomatic with Parkinson's, which at this young age is is

(51:55):
clearly directly related to the years of head trauma from boxing.
He talks about that, He talks about the fact that
boxers have to think about it. He he understands that
this is what's happened to him, and he tries to
highlight and raise money for research in the field of
Parkinson's disease. Yeah, that's right, He'll He'll go on saying

(52:19):
that he's not sure that that this has anything to
do with boxing. He he never really liked to admit
that he may have brought this on himself. Really, he
thinks he just had. I thought that he was he
understood that what he did had something to do with
what has happened. I think he was in denial about that.
I think he went on saying that, like, you know,
Janet Reno had Parkinson's and nobody punched her, So it

(52:40):
could be that this just was something I was, you know,
the cards I was dealt, and I think that, you know,
he remained in denial about that. But but he did
try to, you know, make up for some of the
mistakes he'd made along the way. He tried to spend
more time with his kids. He sort of apologized for
the way that he treated some of his his opponents,
been really cruel to people like Joe Fraser. He turned

(53:02):
his back on Malcolm X, and I think he expressed
some regret for those things. So he did live his
last year's trying to do better. His kids have stated
that he was much more of a father later in life,
that he was a fairly absentee father early on for them. Yeah,
that's right. And he was much better as a grandfather

(53:23):
and loved to suspend time with the kids and the
grandkids as he as he was older. And unfortunately at
that time, you know, he didn't have as much to
give because he was limited by his abilities. He did
receive treatment, but ultimately, Parkinson's is a response to treatment
for only so long and ultimately Parkinson's does take your life.

(53:48):
And sadly that he died. He wasn't so old when
he died, but he he really died of his Parkinson's disorder. Yes,
that's right for boxer. He was old. Boxers don't tend
to have long lifespans. And when I it to Ali's
memorial service and I went to the private ceremony afterwards
and saw his friends and family there, you could instantly
tell who the boxers in the room were because none
of them looked good and there were very few people

(54:10):
even in their seventies. Boxers just don't make it very
long when they especially if they have long careers, like
Ali did, fighting, you know, dozens and dozens of times.
But he still managed to keep his legacy I think
in all our minds as uh as as moving like
a butterfly and staying like a bee. Yeah, that's how
we remember him in the ring, but I think, you know,

(54:31):
his great legacy is as outside the ring as well,
and maybe even more outside the ring than inside, because
he's remembered as somebody who fought for what he believed in,
stood up for his for his religious principles, confronted a
country's um lies about Vietnam, and sacrificed for his beliefs.
And I think that's how we'll always remember him. What
shone through was his authenticity, his love of people, because

(54:57):
that was clearly in that in some ways capacity for empathy,
though he didn't always use it, was really ultimately his legacy. Yeah,
And I think it's really remarkable because a lot of
people said to me after they read my book, Um,
I really struggled with you know, how can I like
this guy after the way he treated women, after the
way he treated some of his opponents, people who were
supposedly his friends. Um, But he kept winning me over again.

(55:20):
There was this force about him, this this unbelievable charisma,
this this charm that he somehow always managed to make
me smile. And I think that was his great gift that,
you know, it was almost impossible to stay mad at
him for very long. He had so much love, fascinating life.
Thank you so much, This was terrific my pleasure. That

(55:41):
wraps things up for this episode. Thank you to my
guest Jonathan I. And if you'd like to know more
about Muhammad Ali, you can check out his book Ali
a Life. If you want to know more about the
concepts in personology, take a look at my book The
Power of Different The Link Between Disorder and Genius. For
psychological advice, you can take a listen to my other

(56:01):
podcast How Can I Help? Follow me at Twitter at
doctor Gayl Saltz and until next Time. Personology is a
production of I Heart Radio. The executive producers are doctor
Gayl Saltz and Tyler Clang. The associate producer is Lowell Berlante.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I

(56:23):
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.