Float Like a Blow Fly, Stink Like a Manatee

Or

Prostrate in the Copper State

Former Cherry Hill, NJ resident Muhammad Ali, who liked to punch people in the face, but was too good to shoot them, has failed to awaken from the Coma in Arizona and died of severe sepsis at the age of 74, leaving Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the only acceptable Muslim remaining in the United States. Cassius Clay won the 1960 Olympic gold medal as a light heavyweight, then knocked off Sonny Liston in 1964 to become the world heavyweight champion (back in the days when there was only one) at the age of 22. Then things got interesting. Renouncing his “slave name,” he rechristened himself Muhammad Ali and stopped being one of the good ones. He asserted his conscientious observer status and refused to accept being inducted into the US Army during the Vietnam War, asserting that he had no particular beef with the Viet Cong. He was stripped of his boxing license and heavyweight title and convicted after 21 minutes of deliberation. Although the conviction was overturned, he lost more than 3 years at the peak of his career, and was expected to fade into obscurity. The Poet Laureate of the Squared Circle had other plans, quickly re-emerging as a heavyweight title contender, belittling the surly, unapproachable champion Joe Frazier at every opportunity with his trained pit bull Howard Cosell at his side. Frazier responded by handing Ali his first career loss in the Fight of the Century. Ali won the rematch, setting up the Rumble in the Jungle against new champ George Foreman, where he employed his Rope-a-Dope strategy to tire Foreman out and score the knockout to reclaim the heavyweight title. Ali fought a few tomato cans and inspired Rocky by letting The Bayonne Bleeder, Chuck Wepner, knock him down/trip him. Frazier and Ali met for a final time in the Thrilla in Manila, one of the greatest fights ever, where the two men bludgeoned each other for hours in sweltering heat with Ali scoring a TKO, but calling it “the closest thing to dying that I know.” Ali lost the title, regained the title and generally hung on far too long in a series of increasingly embarrassing fights before retiring in 1981. Parkinson’s disease, diagnosed in 1984, gradually debilitated him, replacing grace with shakes and his wit with mumbles, setting up his poignantly silent, trembling torch lighting at the 1996 Olympics.