So much has already been written and spoken about ever since the news broke of the passing of Muhammad Ali two days ago, that there is hardly anything I could add more.  But I feel impelled by the force of my emotions to say something.  Muhammad Ali's life was a brilliant example of the fact that you don't have to be perfect to be great.  He was arguably the greatest sportsman is a given, but very few people in history have transcended their chosen profession in life and become something larger than the sum of their whole, and he was one of them.  It was as if the whole world was not big enough to contain his manic energy.  So much of our life is about direction, the relentless momentum, in fact, he said that if you are the same person at fifty as you were at twenty, then you have wasted thirty years of your life.  He was a fighter to the core when he refused to be drafted for Vietnam war which he considered to be unjust on the ground that the poor Vietnamese thousands of miles away posed no threat to the United States, and he was a conscientious objector.  He suffered a grave setback to his professional career when his licence was revoked for three years for dereliction of national duty, until his suspension was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1971.  If anyone else would say I am the greatest, you would think of him as a deluded braggart, but Ali had this immense self belief to walk the walk and talk the talk.  

   He had the choice to keep his head down, follow the straight and narrow, in other words, remain non-controversial, and he could have minted millions.  But not him,  instead he decided to become a tireless advocate for the rights of his people and an uncompromising critic of racial prejudice widely prevalent at the time.  The man was a true showman, he loved the theater of the boxing arena where he literally floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee, at least during the first half of his career.  There was a time when a vast section of white America practically hated him, but he didn't care because what was more important was to stand by your conviction.  If Dr. King provided a peaceful resistance to the racial bigotry, then  Ali along with Malcolm X gave the whole thing a radical edge.   In the end, a grateful nation did make up and some more when he was given the highest honor of the land, The Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005.  It remains one of the most moving sight in sports history when Muhammad Ali, his body badly shaking due to the ravages of Parkinson, lighting up the Olympic torch at the Atlanta games in 1996 with so much dignity and solemnity.  We will not have another Muhammad Ali.