THE heavyweight champion of the world has left the building, aged 74. Muhammad Ali was more than just a flashy boxer; he was the embodiment of an era — one of great change and tumult. He changed the way people of colour were viewed at the time in America by the mainstream; at a time when black folks were supposed to be seen and not heard, he turned this convention upside down, decades before the first African-American man would enter the White House.

Ali brought together sports, entertainment and politics like few others have done in one total package, and was especially adored in the Third World, from Karachi to Kinshasa. In an era much before social media, through which nobodies can become sensations overnight, with or without merit, Ali electrified audiences in both East and West with his witty remarks and deadly skills inside the ring.

Even for people with only a cursory interest in boxing, it was Muhammad Ali’s persona and charisma that drove them towards him. He was an American rebel, adored as a trash-talking superman they could cheer for by the wretched of the earth. What made Ali different was the fact that not only were his opponents in the ring mercilessly targeted by his acid tongue and lightning-fast hooks; he also spoke up against what he considered injustice, at a time when racism was still very much a part of mainstream American culture.

An example of this racism was observed in the fact that some of his opponents refused to call him Muhammad Ali, referring to him as Cassius Clay – a name he would come to despise after accepting Islam, terming it his “slave name”. Also, as he put it, he was “fighting for the little man in the ghetto”.

Ali’s rise to fame coincided with the era that saw rapid decolonisation in Asia and Africa; this was an intensely political era, one in which people of colour the world over began to break off the shackles of colonialism. This spirit of liberation and resistance was ably channelled by Muhammad Ali. He rubbed the American establishment the wrong way numerous times, perhaps most famously when he was punished for refusing to fight America’s war in Vietnam. Ali minced no words when he said: “No Vietcong ever called me a nigger.”

His personal spiritual journey was equally fascinating. By the mid 1960s Ali had joined the Nation of Islam, an American black Muslim outfit which, at the time at least, adhered to heterodox interpretations of the faith, mixing militant black nationalism with Islamic symbolism. It was during this period he would drop his ‘slave name’ and adopt the moniker that would become a household name across the globe. However, by the mid 1970s Ali would come to join the Muslim mainstream, and ever since has been quite vocal about his beliefs.

In his twilight years, Ali’s struggle with Parkinson’s would perhaps be his toughest challenge, tougher than any pugilist he had faced in the ring. Seeing the ‘greatest’ slowed down considerably by the ailment was tragic; it showed that the champion was fallible, human. However, he spent the last years of his life with grace and dignity.

Muhammad Ali was and is a household name in Pakistan, a country he would visit after hanging up the gloves. On his visit to this country in 1987 he was feted by the state and the people alike. At a dinner hosted in his honour in Rawalpindi-Islamabad, then justice minister Wasim Sajjad referred to him as a “great son of Islam”.

This writer was fortunate enough to have interacted briefly with the champ as a schoolboy. It was an event in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, held in Ali’s honour that my father had taken me to, sometime in the early 1990s. Here, in front of me, was the heavyweight champion of the world, in the flesh – a legend I had only otherwise seen strutting across the TV screen with panache and skill. As I meekly handed the champ my autograph book, he shook my hand warmly, and returned the autograph book with a smile.

This was the warmth and charisma of Muhammad Ali the man, behind all the trash talking and flamboyance, the charisma that had endeared him to millions across the world.

Rest in peace, Champ; you will be missed.

Published in Dawn, June 5th, 2016