I dedicate today's column to Muhammad Ali, the greatest boxer that my eyes
have seen in and out of the ring, on the occasion of his 70th
birthday, which will be celebrated in a grandiose ceremony and dinner next
month at the MGM which is becoming the cathedral of boxing in the world
today, just as Caesars Palace was last century.
I let my mind fly towards those great years of my youth, when I was still a
resident in the province of Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas, Mexico, when a
young fighter, Cassius Clay, came out to the sport to win an Olympic light
heavyweight gold medal in the Rome Olympic Games of 1960, the same medal
that he threw into a river when he felt that far from recognition and
applause of North American society, he had found discrimination and
rejection. With his heart of a warrior and his pride hurt, he invaded
professional boxing with a passion to fight for his race and show all that
he would conquer glory as a social action to demonstrate the injustice
thrown at him by this discriminatory sector of the society of his world -
and do it with the power of his fists, the heart of a lion, and the satire
of his tongue. This war of Ali against discrimination won me over
immediately, as I had learned in my country the sense of human equality.
Muhammad Ali never fought only for victory in the ring; his ideal was his
struggle for human dignity. He knew that it had to come from reaching glory
through the masses, and built a controversial personality to fill arenas
even when many would go to see him lose; he composed boxing poems to show
the round of his KO and did it for the happiness of his followers and the
hate of his detractors. The hate that was shown by many of the media in his
country when he met Elijah Muhammad and became a Muslim with the name of
Muhammad Ali, the religion that my hero Ali took with a passion of absolute
faith and the depth of his heart, an authentic humanitarian Muslim at once.
Being at my home in Mexico City, away from the outside world, he asked me
for a lonely place for his prayers at noon looking at the East (The Mecca);
my son Mauricio, an adolescent, showed him the place at home. Later on, we
found out that he had signaled the north to Ali instead of the East, but we
were too embarrassed to let him know.
To talk about Muhammad Ali, not only about his great boxing career, would
take me pages, which was done eloquently by my friend Eduardo Lamazon, so I
would rather ratify what was said before of a man that stood on his
greatness to fight for equality and the good of mankind. One of his greatest
victories was objecting to fight in Vietnam for being against his principles
and for his religion, even when the abuse of power left him three and a half
years inactive when he was only 25 years old; the fairness of American Law
ruled him free that sent a message to the very poor people of the world
never to give up even to the immense powers in the world.
Ali and I became very good friends in the past and I sincerely love, respect
and admire the man - he used to call me "brother." I was at many of his
boxing matches and have countless anecdotes, because he was never a dull
individual but one of admirable extroversion as well as an immeasurable
charisma. He was the diamond among countless champions back in 1983 at the
United Nations for the 20th year WBC anniversary. Once, at the bar of the
coffee shop at Caesars Palace, three beautiful ladies at different times,
dropped the keys of their rooms in front of him. He paid little attention,
but asked me, smiling, if I wanted one of those keys.
He visited me many times in Mexico, one for the convention in 1980, when he
met and played around with the late Cantinflas, the greatest
Spanish-speaking comedian of all time, in photos shown in every meter of
Mexico. One other time was at the convention of 1988 as well as other times
in between, once when he came with his wife Lonnie to Ciudad Valles, the
hometown of my sister Nelly, the area of the legendary millennium Mexican
Indians, where he would take the children into his arms to show them his
affection and respect, making all people crazy about his presence including
my father, who still lived. Another time when Drs. Madrazo and Drucker saw
him at my home for a medical surgery that was having success for the
treatment and cure of the Parkinson's syndrome, but which never took place,
because a hundred of the media - ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Televisa and so many
others - were waiting for our car to approach the Humana hospital where the
medical examinations would take place in a previously agreed absolutely
secret and private visit. Ali just asked me to go back home. It would take
me many pages and much time to describe the countless nice anecdotes about
this glorious man.
During our times of closeness, Muhammad Ali used to like to preach to me.
Once he told me that mankind was usually indifferent, ungrateful and
uninterested about our own earth and who have built it. So for him to
understand the time of our earth in the universe, he went to a desert where
he considered every grain of sand as a year of our planet having been a part
of the universe and concluded that he was an infinitesimal part of it. He
thought of about 80 years that Allah would give him and decided that he
would paint 80 grains of sand in such a brilliant way with his total
devotion to live with heart, body, and soul for the benefit of others as an
example of future generations. He would throw those grains at his feet on
the desert until the wind of time would come to blow them into oblivion.
My dearest champion and brother, the 70 grains of sand that you will hold in
your hands on the 18th will shine forever as a brilliant show of your
passing through life. May Allah give you many, many more with happiness and
pride for the people of the world who think of you as our hero.
