I just had to ask this strange question: ” Who Really Crowned Muhammed Ali as The Greatest Boxer Of All Time? ”
Mohammad Ali is generally accepted as the greatest boxer that ever lived. Everyone seemed to be agreed on the point, and if you tried to argue otherwise, people would ridicule you.
Just ask anyone older than 40years old: ‘who is the great boxer that ever lived’ and virtually 100% would tell you without having to think about it that Muhammed Ali was the greatest of them all.
Even my wife, Olunike Ajoke, who hated the sport of boxing with a passion, and hardly even watched the game, would tell you with confident knowledge, that Muhammad Ali was the greatest boxer of all time.
In my quest to make a point, I even asked my mother in law, who probably thought Evander Holyfield was a basketball Player, and she looked at me like I was dumb.
She then told me confidently, with a hint of condescension,‘Of course its Muhammed Ali now’. When Ali died, I watched in amazement, all over the newswire, as people dissected his life and times.
There was NOT ONE SINGLE Commentator who challenged the widely held view that Muhammad Ali was the greatest… and this were people who should know. After all, they cover the sport of boxing event for a living.
Now that Ali has died, it would be even more difficult to argue the ‘self-evident’ fact, as one Ali fan told me. Yet, the astounding truth is that there was no formal objective basis on which the whole world arrived at this ‘indisputable fact’. NONE!
There Was No Election; There Was No Voting By The World.
There Were no objective measurable Criteria that would bear out the evidentiary ‘truth’ in this Universal Acceptance.
Ali was not the best in any particular boxing statistics that counted. He didn’t win the most fights. He didn’t win the most titles. He didn’t way the heaviest. He didn’t his title the the longest
In fact, if anyone cared to think about the reality, the TRUE facts would reveal how ridiculous the claim was…
1. Ali was NOT the Strongest, even in his prime – Mike Tyson in his prime was stronger than Ali could ever dream of.So was George Foreman. So were many boxers before him and after him.
2. Ali was NOT the FASTEST Boxer that ever lived. I saw Sugar Ray Leonard in action many times and he was definitely faster…. and many more fighters have come and go who were much faster.
3. Ali was NOT the FITTEST Boxer that ever lived. I have seen some real Adonis specimens in my time wearing the boxing shorts.
4. Ali was NOT the most SKILLED Boxer that ever lived. The world has definitely seen better boxing skills
than rope-a-dope or ‘float like a butterfly, sting like a bee’, whatever that meant in real boxing.
5. Ali was NOT the boxer who won the most world titles in the same category of boxing. Manny Pacquiao did it 8 times, and in different weight categories too!
6. Ali was NOT the most complete boxer of all times. That distinction would probably go to Sugar Ray Robinson who dominated in several categories and defied every weight thrown at him.
Yet, and somehow without any distension, most people in the world accepted Muhammed Ali as the greatest boxer that ever lived!! Even those who were old enough to watch the Ali-Holmes fight where Holmes basically beat the pathetic looking Ali back into retirement.
They still agreed he was the greatest. How did this happen? How did Ali manage to convince the world to disregard the facts and believe the hype?
He simply claimed the title and beat it down everyone’s throat. His title as the greatest that ever lived was a title he created for himself even BEFORE he won the world title.
Muhammed Ali probably understood one of the truest maxims of marketing –When you repeat something enough, eventually, the market will accept it as the truth.
MUHAMMED ALI believed with all his heart that he was the best thing that happened to boxing and he kept repeating it and KEPT DECLARING HIMSELF AS THE GREATEST. Eventually the world accepted it as fact. Even the Bible tactically endorsed this tactic by declaring that as a man thinker in his heart, so he will eventually become.
You transform to whatever you believe.
Credit: Dr. Ope Banwo