ALI at 50 : He Battles Declining Health, but in Retrospect, It’s Been a Wonderful Life for the Self-Proclaimed Greatest Boxer of All-Time

He called himself The Greatest, and many people believed he was. Still do.

“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,” was his battle cry, and it is the image of Muhammad Ali that is woven into the sporting and social tapestry of the second half of the 20th Century.

“I’m getting old,” Ali said, slowly and softly, during a recent telephone conversation.

There was a pause.

“I might come back.” Ali chuckled.

Muhammad Ali will celebrate his 50th birthday Jan. 17.

“Hey, just tell him, ‘Happy Birthday,’ ” said Joe Frazier, who was 48 Saturday. Smokin’ Joe seemingly still views The Greatest as the arch-rival he was in the 1970s.

Ali, the fastest heavyweight ever, now appears to be walking through life in slow motion. But to his legion of fans he’ll always be the the brash, fast-talking fighter who floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee.

“The biggest wish I have for him is that he accepts his age and enjoys what he has and doesn’t worry about what he doesn’t have,” said George Foreman, who came back and fought unsuccessfully for the heavyweight title last April at age 42 and who will turn 43 Jan. 22.

What Ali must accept is life with an illness that has weakened one of the most dynamic personalities of his--or any--time.

“I say this prayer every day,” said Angelo Dundee, who was Ali’s trainer. “Dear God, find a way to cure Parkinson’s Syndrome. The guy does not deserve this. He’s too fine a human being.”

Many blame boxing for Ali’s physical state, particularly opponents of boxing. But he has no regrets.

Discussing his health at a news conference in 1984, Ali said, “What I suffered physically was worth what I’ve accomplished in life. A man who is not courageous enough to take risks will never accomplish anything in life.”

What Ali, who lives with his fourth wife, Lonnie, on a farm in Berrien Springs, Mich., has is a sense of accomplishment, a feeling of contentment and a purpose in life -- “working for Islam, propagating Islam.”

“The first 50 years of my life were a preparation for the next 50 years,” Ali said over the telephone.

He continues to travel the world -- “I enjoy seeing people everywhere.” His travels, however, are anything but those of a tourist.

Ali traveled to five African nations in 1980 as an envoy of President Carter, who was calling for a boycott of the Olympics at Moscow that year.

Ten years later, he went to Iraq on his own initiative and met with Saddam Hussein in a bid to promote a dialogue that would forestall a war in the Middle East. He returned to the United States with 15 American hostages.

One of the hostages, Harry Brill-Edwards, is quoted in Thomas Hauser’s 1990 biography, “Muhammad Ali -- His Life and Times,” as saying: “I told my family when I got home, ‘I’ve always known that Muhammad Ali was a super sportsman; but during those hours that we were together, inside that enormous body, I saw an angel.”’

Draft dodger, big mouth, hot dog. Champion of the ring and of causes. Funny, outrageous. Ali has been called all of that and more since he burst into public consciousness as an Olympic champion in 1960.

Webster’s New World Dictionary defines “legend” as: “a notable person whose deeds or exploits are much talked about in his own time.”

That defines Ali.

This past week, Ali appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated for a record 32nd time. He is the most known, most talked about and one of the most successful athletes of his time. More than that, he is one of the most influential personalities of any time, impacting on the antiwar movement, the civil rights movement and the spread of Islam among black Americans.

“He’s given people all over the world a sense of pride,” said former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, who was also U.S Ambassador to the United Nations. “Oppressed people and people of color have been able to identify with him.”

To some, Ali’s shadow could be a ray of sunshine.

“The thing I remember about Ali is the day in 1971 when I sparred an exhibition with him for the Reading (Pa.) PAL,” said 42-year-old Larry Holmes, who handled a no-win situation with class when he kept a 38-year-old, and inept, Ali from becoming heavyweight champion a fourth time in 1980.

“He gave me a black eye and they wanted to put ice and stuff on the eye. I wouldn’t let them put anything on it. I wanted to show everbody Muhammad Ali gave me a black eye.”

“Dear Muhammad, I want to thank you for what you did for boxing,” Dundee said in his birthday wish. “You changed the whole format. You made boxing a world sport.”

He is the only man to win the heavyweight title three times. He amazed with his fast hands, quick feet and incredible reflexes in the 1960s, and he demonstrated adaptability and courage in the 1970s in fights like the Rumble in the Jungle against Foreman at Kinshasa, Zaire, and the Thrilla in Manila against Frazier.

“I remember the first time I saw him in person,” said 80-year-old Eddie Futch, who trains heavyweight contender Riddick Bowe and who worked in Frazier’s corner for his three fights with Ali. “I had heard a lot about him, but I wondered if the guy could really fight. So I went down to the Main Street Gym in Los Angeles when he was getting ready for a fight at the Olympic Auditorium (where Ali fought twice in 1962).

“He sparred with Curly Lee, a good young heavyweight with a good career until he got in with Cleveland Williams. Ali played with Curly Lee. I was highly impressed with him because he handled a seasoned pro like he was an amateur.”

Much to the dismay of boxing trainers, the success of Ali, the natural, encouraged a host of imitators.

“I told Bowe I don’t want you to be a second-rate Muhammad Ali, I want you to be a first-rate Riddick Bowe,” Futch said.

While a 20-by-20-foot ring was a suitable platform on which to display his boxing prowess, it was the world outside the ring that became Ali’s stage.

“Ali helped to internationalize black consciousness as much as anybody,” the Rev. Jesse Jackson once said.

In doing so, he also outraged and disturbed many white Americans.

After winning the title by upsetting Sonny Liston in 1964, he announced he was a member of the Black Muslims (the Nation of Islam) and would be known henceforth as Muhammad Ali because Cassius Clay was his slave name.

Then after being reclassified 1-A from 1-Y (below physical or mental standards), Ali refused induction into military service in 1967. He was stripped of the title, convicted and banished from boxing even though he was appealing the conviction on the grounds he was a Muslim minister.

“I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong,” said Ali, who, still facing a prison term, was allowed to resume boxing in 1970.

There is a videotape of an on-the-street interview with an unidentified man before the first Ali-Frazier fight.

“I have no interest in this fight at all,” the man says. “In fact, the reason is this fellow they call Clay or Muhammad Ali, or whatever he wants to call himself, is a disgrace to the nation. When I have to see young kids run up to Canada to avoid the draft ... and this bum flounces along and is running round and people admire him ... this championship fight is a disgrace.”

Ali suffered the first loss of his professional career at the hands of Frazier in The Fight March 8, 1971, at Madison Square Garden.

On that day Capt. Ernest L. Medina, commander of an infantry company accused of over-running the hamlet of My Lai and killing at least 100 South Vietnamese civilians, was ordered to stand court-marital on charges of premeditated murder and assault with a deadly weapon.

On June 28, 1971, the Supreme Court, on a vote of 8-0, with one abstention, overturned Ali’s draft conviction.

“They did what they thought was right, and I did what I thought was right,” Ali said of the government’s long effort to send him to prison.

Doing what he thinks is right and doing it his way is what Ali is all about.

“He was the first superstar of our era,” Dundee said. “He was the first to be available to the public and especially to the media.”

If a writer couldn’t get a story on the Ali beat, he or she was in the wrong business.

-- There was the time he put his arm around Susan Ford, daughter of then President Ford, and sang “If you knew Suzie like I knew Suzie” while reporters scribbled and Susan blushed.

-- There was the time he was told his gloves were to be kept in prison because the boxing commissioner in charge of the gloves for the Ali-Joe Bugner fight at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, was a warden.

“My gloves are going to jail,” said Ali, his eyes wide. “They ain’t done nothin’ ... yet.”

-- Or how about the time he told the man, “You’re not as dumb as you look. I saw your wife.”

The man was Ferdinand Marcos, president of the Philippines.

In the last few years, Ali, understandably, has become increasingly less available to the media. He, however, obviously remains pleased with attention the public showers on him any chance it gets and with his public stature.

There is in Hauser’s biography an anecdote related by Howard Bingham, Ali’s close friend:

”. . . We were in a car talking and he asked, ‘If I walked down one side of the street, and Larry Holmes, Joe Frazier, George Foreman and Mike Tyson walked down the other, which side would get more attenton?’ I told him his would. Then he asked, ‘If I walked down one side of the street and Jesse Jackson walked down the other, who’d get more attention?’ And I told him the same thing.

“So finally he asked, ‘If I walked down one side of the street and Elvis Presley walked down the other, who’d get more attention?’ That one was harder, and I told him, ‘Overseas, you’d have more people, but in the United States it would be pretty close; maybe even a little for Elvis.’ That didn’t bother him. All he said was, ‘I guess that’s right. Elvis has been dead for a lot of years, so people would want to see if it was really him.”’