Muhammad Ali died last night.
I heard the news from a friend. He called me when he saw it on TV, and
I'm glad it happened I found out that way. It makes a little more sense to me, it's a
little more human, to find out that someone died from talking to a person rather than through a text message or Facebook post.
For more than a decade, Ali lived less
than 20 miles from my house in Berrien Springs, Michigan. On Facebook
countless people I went to high school with posted pictured of themselves with
the boxer. Ali still made appearances at bank openings and
community college events in my hometown even though he was deep in the fight against
Parkinson's disease.
One of the coolest stories I read was by a woman that went and saw the Will Smith movie “Ali” and noticed the
man himself walk into the theatre just as the film started. He
signed her movie ticket afterwards.
I never met Ali, but my dad did and got
him to autograph a pair of boxing gloves to my brother and I. The
signature is faded now, but my mother still has those gloves, and if
I had to grab a handful of things out of a burning building, those gloves
would be one of the items.
My father was one of the guys that
would buy PPV boxing fights and have a couple of friends over for beers when I grew up. I still remember being
able to stay up late and watch Tyson-Holyfield I and II with them, and my dad
told me he had a collection of fights he had taped (on a VCR) from
over the years.
My junior and senior year in high
school I started training as a boxer, with a man who had won
several “Toughman” competitions. We trained in a barn in the
summer in and I jumped rope and sparred in 100 degree heat.
Later I trained to fight in Holland at an
abandoned church and in Benton Harbor at a community center for
troubled youth. I fought in a Golden Gloves tournament in Grand
Rapids and lost.
Ali was never far from my, or any other
boxers in the area's mind. We all knew he lived in Michigan. My trainer in Benton
Harbor had told me Ali had come and watched people work out in the
old building before. Every kid hitting the heavy bag hoped he would
stop by again.
One thing you learn when you box if
what it's like to be hit. The first few times it happens you can't
help but close your eyes and flinch, but eventually you get used to
taking a punch.
Ali will be remembered for his speed,
for his humanity and for his charisma. However whenever I think about
the fights he had both in the ring and outside the ring in his life,
I think what set him apart was how he took a punch.
He was knocked down, but he always got back up. He had the heart of a champion, not just the talent.
Follow Nicholas Grenke on Twitter @NickSJ86.
