Headline December 21, 2016/ ''' GIANTS & EARTH & !WOW! '''

''' GIANTS & EARTH & !WOW! '''

ON THE MORNING OF Sept 6, 1960, Cassius Clay was having breakfast with a few buddies inside the Olympic Village in Rome.

The night before, Clay, 18, had defeated 25-year-old Ziggy Pietrzkowski, of Poland in the  light-heavyweight boxing gold medal match, igniting the flame of his magnificent pugilistic career.

As Clay sat in the dinning hall with a few members of the U.S. contingent, heavyweight world champion Floyd Patterson entered the room.

''Watch this,'' Clay told his friends, and then, in Rome 1960 by David Maraniss, he grabbed a knife and fork and leaped on the table.

''I'm having you next!'' the brash teenager bellowed at the heavyweight champ as everyone, including Patterson, burst into laughter. ''I'm having you for dinner.''

Mohammed Ali, born Cassius Clay, died in Phoenix on Friday, June 3, at age 74 from complications related Parkinson's disease. 

Some King's wear crowns. The Greatest simply wore a heavyweight championship belt.

Few athletes have been as dominant in their chosen sport: Ali was a three-time heavyweight champ whose career spanned three decades. He had a 55-2 record before losing three of his final four bouts.

Ill-advised fights he accepted long after he should have made his egress from the ring. 

Of those first two blemished on his career record, though, losses to Joe Frazier and Ken Norton, Ali would find redemption by later beating each of those men  -twice.

[He beat Patterson too, five years after he stood atop that table]

*Boxing was his occupation, but Ali was a colossus of culture*. He was by far the most charismatic athlete of the 20th century: passionate and ebullient, articulate and garrulous, self-absorbed but self-aware.

He was undaunted by the stature of his opponents or by the divisive racial years during which he entered his prime.

At a time when leaders of the civil rights movement were marching peacefully, locking arms and singing:

''We Shall Overcome.'' 

Ali was standing defiantly over the prone figures of boxers he had dispatched and unapologetically proclaiming:

''I'm the Greatest of all time!''

He was introduced to America during those 1960 Summer Olympics, in the waning hours of the Eisenhower era, a time when athletic vainglory was intensely frowned upon, particularly if it emanated from a ''Negro'' athlete.

All repeatedly declared that he was  pretty   -and he was. He said he was gonna  *whup*  whomever he fought and he did. As early as 1964, before his heavyweight title bout, versus Sony Liston, he proclaimed himself  ''the Greatest.''  And he was.    

Outspoken and untamable. All rocked everyone who dared meet him inside the ring  - he won his first 31 pro bouts before succumbing to Frazier in 1971  -and anyone who dared to do so outside it.

*He was equally at ease releasing a flurry of jabs with his mighty fists or his tongue.

Listen to Ali, armed with only a  high school diploma,  in 1967, as he refused induction into the  U.S. Army during the  Vietnam War and went toe to toe with a group of white college students.

*''I'm not gonna help nobody get something my Negroes don't have. If I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die right now, right here, fightin' you.

If I'm gonna die, You my enemy. My enemy's  the white people. not the Viet Cong..............

You my opposer when I want equality. You won't even stand up for me in America for my religious beliefs, and you want me to go somewhere and fight, but you won't even stand up for me here at home.''

[Ali was also, as an aside, the nation's first rap star. Soon after turning pro by signing with a consortium of white millionaires from his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.

Ali explained. ''They got the  complexions and connections to give me good directions,''  described his  MO  in a couplet.

''Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,'' and later to his in his career branded his bouts with a flourish, e.g-

*The Rumble in the Jungle''  and  ''The Thrilla in Manila.'' 

No one ever made boxing less grim and more poetic].

The Honour and Serving of the Operational Research on World Icon's continues. Thank Ya all for reading and sharing forward. And see you on the following one.

With Most Respectful dedication to the loving memory of Muhammad Ali, the Giant. 

!WOW!  -the World Students Society has already availed itself of the honour of naming a  *Master Module*   in his name.

And then also with respectful dedication  to the   Leaders, Students, Professors and Teachers of the World. 

See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society and Twitter-!E-WOW!  -the Ecosystem 2011:

''' The Greatest '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless