Muhammad Ali at the end of round 2 in his fight against George Foreman 

                                   Ali watching Foreman fall in round 8 of their fight in Zaire

A different post today. 

It is appropriate, once in a while, to put in this space some examples of real life heroes that we can all learn values from. Muhammad Ali has always been one of my heroes. 

For those who do not understand boxing, this may seem a paradox. Why would a man like me, who claims to be a man of peace and to hate war, admire and respect the most famous professional fighter of all time? 

You have to get that boxing is a sport. It is not jungle blood lust run wild. There is a referee in that ring. There are rules. But if you are even for the time being willing to allow that those things may be true, then there is a deep lesson here. 

Muhammad Ali was an intelligent and sensitive man. His poems may have sounded childish at times, but he did make them rhyme, they did scan, he did amuse people, and he did raise public awareness of his sport, his causes, and himself, all exactly as he intended. 

"The fans didn't know when they laid down their money, 

They would witness the total eclipse of the Sonny." 

He was also a man of enormous personal discipline. People who knew him as a teenager said that at the beginning of his boxing career there were boys even in his own boxing club that could beat him. But he trained with fanatic intensity, like a man driven by some larger destiny. And gradually, he became that man. 

He was a man of character and conscience. At a time of moral crisis for the US, he stood against the war in Vietnam and against the US government policy of drafting young men into an army they did not believe in anymore. He stood up for his people, the African Americans, as an effective promoter of civil rights. A champion for all, but especially for his people. 

His face was the most recognized face on the planet for over twenty years. It would still rank high, I think. It is known to boxing fans everywhere. Nearly all folk in the developing world know that face. Partly because he was the champ, but also partly because he stood against the war in South East Asia, which among the developing nations, was a huge point in his favor. He was also known across the Muslim world because of his converting to Islam and all over Africa because he was black. In short, he could have lived anywhere after his falling out with the US government, but he chose to stay in the US and fight for his beliefs. 

He faced the racist slurs and hatred of millions of whites in his country for years, but he stuck with his court battle against the government, and in the end, he won. The court found that the government did not have the right to force him to serve in the army because he really was a lay preacher for his faith. Finally, they allowed him to box again, but by then he had lost some of the best years of his or any boxer's career, namely those between the ages of 25 and 29. 

On returning to professional boxing, at first, he had mixed success, but due to the business acumen of Don King, who knew Ali would be a big box office draw, Ali got a fight against then-reigning world heavyweight champion, George Foreman, in 1974. 

Ali found Foreman to be even tougher than his reputation, but he came up with a tactic of challenge and provocation that caused Foreman to lose his temper completely and punch himself exhausted by the eighth round. Ali took some punishing blows, but he blocked or slipped most of them, and then when Foreman was so tired that he could barely hold up his arms, Ali unleashed a sudden attack that caught Foreman by surprise and put him down for the ten count. Foreman was out and Ali was champion again. 

His friends at ringside could not believe it. But it was true. The hero of millions who had opposed the Vietnam War and stood against all war and for the rights of all people of color and all of the world's poor was back as the holder of the most prestigious title in sport: heavyweight champion of the world. 

Foreman himself has said, now that he and Muhammad are both getting older and are sinking into their golden years: “Muhammad Ali is a true hero, and the fact there's something wrong with him is his badge of valor. He's a great man.”

For most readers, all of this material will probably be at least in some degree familiar. What I wanted to add briefly today is this: I ask you to look carefully at the pictures at the top of this post. They were taken during Ali's fight with George Foreman in Zaire. 

You see in the first the fear in Ali's eyes when he realized, after round 2, that he was facing a man who was younger and stronger than he was and who did not fear him in the least degree. There is real fear in those eyes, but Ali kept his head and thought out a strategy that just might work, namely the one I describe above. 

But first he had to have courage. Courage gave him that bit of time and room in which to think and devise a plan. Then, because he really had courage and also wisdom - ring generalship, it is called in boxing - and he balanced these two virtues well, he won that fight. 

But even more, study that second picture. It hasn't been analyzed enough in the years since that great fight. George is stunned. He's going down. Ali's right is cocked. He could have hit George once more on the way down and done much greater damage. But he didn't. He knew George was beat. It was enough. He had no desire to really physically damage another man -- out of political ideology or personal vengeance or anything else. You don't do things like that to another human being. The whole point of boxing is that it lets men test themselves against one another physically but in a restrained and controlled way. It is sport that gives us the outlet we need, as men, to keep from backing up our primitive anger until it has to erupt in an uncontrolled form and wreak havoc.   

Strong men can be good men. Or to be more complete, I think only strong men can really be good men. They know intimately what suffering is because they have risen above it themselves. They can stick by their values when the going gets rough because they've had to endure in similar ways in other contexts. Finally, they know what restraint can mean in human relations because they've known times when they were down and out and needed some compassion too. 

We don't get many real life heroes anymore. Now and then, when you're feeling low, close your eyes, and let your mind drift to these two images. They say a million times what my words ever could.