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Here's a moment, from some time around 1974. Ali is in a studio, on a stool in the middle of a pretend boxing ring. The audience is asking him questions. A middle-aged white woman tells him she doesn't like his arrogance. She says she's a minority in America, too, because she's from England, and she doesn't act this way.Ali says this: "You white. You can go anywhere in this city you wanna go. You can go to town, move into neighborhoods, buy things, you can open a business downtown Chicago… and I can't, but you from England! You got some nerve to get mad at me because I'm proud, and I want to fight and be confident and get my people to be proud… We been the minority for four hundred years; you freer than me, and you're from England."
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Ali's great ability was to antagonize, to infuriate; proof of a man's ability to alter the tone of a moment all by himself. To make Foreman come unhinged, to reduce an audience or a nation to haters sputtering with anger, to incite something, and then stand back and watch people reveal themselves. He is the idea that you can be the most delusional version of yourself, and no one can stop you, as long as you win. He seemed driven not by impulse or rage but by a need to disrupt and embarrass. Arrogance is not toxic; it is just brilliance + a vendetta. "Arrogance" is a word used by people who've had their own smallness magnified by the presence of something large. It is hypnotizing to watch a man who has acknowledged your rules, your steadfast obedience to them, and who then tells those rules he does not care about them.The only Ali I saw growing up was silent, fragile, a figure to wince at, thick sunglasses, someone next to him holding his arm. I only saw Real Ali when he was being used as montage fodder, a signifier of either defiance, playfulness, resilience, or victory, depending on whether I was being sold a sports drinks, life insurance, or a new ESPN network. His life was sanded down until all that remained were the theatrics and slow-motion. Biography, though, is always more complicated than montage.His religious and political views fluctuated from radical to pragmatic to sympathetic to diplomatic. He could seem gracious and docile, sitting next to Joe Namath delivering sanitary anecdotes about fighting Joe Frazier in a cemetery if he had to. And then, surrounded by college students who called him a traitor for refusing to be drafted, he could unleash scorching, unpunctuated sermons about racial hypocrisy and the myths of patriotism.He preached kindness but viciously degraded Joe Frazier. He claimed to be a family man but carried on affairs throughout most of his life. He said of women in 1977, "These independent women that don't have any children, they get weak and sickly. Look at [his children's nanny] Miss Elly. Fifty‐eight grandchildren, and strong as a horse. Stand up Miss Elly. Lots of babies—breast fed—that's what women need." He spoke against the races mixing. He spoke about the need for religious tolerance.We want unambiguous superheroes, easy obituaries, stories with tidy morals. But he also said this, just after changing his name from Cassius Clay: "I don't have to be who you want me to be. I'm free to be who I want." This, for all his contradictions, all his defects, was a truth. This is why some men get only memes and others get their faces on the walls of freshman dorms. Ali was impenetrable. He was unshakable. He could hit us, he could move us, but we could never get our hands on him.Follow John Saward on Twitter.He is the idea that you can be the most delusional version of yourself, and no one can stop you, as long as you win.