The Bite Magazine - issue 16

only thing I ever did like drugs was twice I took the cap off a gas tank and smelled the gas, which made me dizzy. Boxing kept me out of trouble.” At the time of Clay’s birth in 1942, into a middle-class family, in the town of Lou- isville, in Kentucky, USA, segregation was in operation.The area where he grew up was exclusively black and had its own schools, own parks and own shops. It is said that Ali got his ‘loud mouth’ from his dad, Cassius Clay Senior who was described as a rascal and his gentleness from his mother, Odessa Grady Clay whom Davis Miller, author of several Muhammad Ali books described as “absolutely the sweetest human being anyone could ever meet.” Even during his young teenage years, Clay would train vigorously, a trait that he would carry throughout his career. For example, instead of riding the school bus, he would race it in his work boots for twenty blocks (five miles) waving and grinning at the other kids on the bus. “When he arrived at school, he’d break two eggs into a quart of milk, shake the cartoon, drink it and say that he was now ready for school, shouting ‘I am the baddest man in Louisville,’” Davis Miller recalled. The aspiring boxer would also get his brother Rudy and their friends to throw stones at him while he stood still in front of them.“He would move his head, shoul- ders and torso and, by shifting his weight forward and backwards, he avoided the rocks,” Miller added. “Probably no-one else in the history of boxing has ever done anything like that.” However, in school, Clay was so quiet and focused, that his fellow students always thought he was meditating while sitting in class. “In between classes, he’d skip down the halls shadow-boxing, dancing past his classmates, stopping to throw a flurry of punches inches from another guy’s nose, then he’d duck into a bathroom to con- tinue shadow-boxing in front of a mirror. He carried a bottle of water with garlic in it around his neck all day long saying that he drank it to keep his blood pres- sure down. He was utterly obsessive,” Miller concluded. The Muhammad Ali: I Am The Greatest exhibition showing at the O2 in North Greenwich from 4 th March to 31 st August 2016 truly captures the story and spirit of one of, if not, the greatest boxers of our time. After ascending up a long esca- lator, you are met by a series of quotes made by Ali throughout his career such as “I was the Elvis of boxing”,“I’m so fast that last night I turned the light switch off in my bedroom… and I was in bed before the room was dark” and “I figured that if I said it enough, I would convince the world that I really was the greatest.” Perhaps the most powerful of them all is, “I’ve never let anyone talk me into not believing in myself” and the most famous of all his quotes, the simple “I am the greatest!” Another powerful speech that seemed to clarify his life in a nutshell is,“Every man wants to believe in himself, and every man wants to be fearless. We become heroes when we stand up for what we believe in. Before I won the Gold Medal at the Olympics, before I became the heavy-weight champion of the world, before I stood up to the United States government for my religious beliefs, before I was named a United Nations Ambassador of Peace, and before I became the most recognised person in the world, I was just a kid from Kentucky who had the faith to believe in himself and the courage to follow his heart.” Along the corridor you’ll find a series of pictures of Ali in different settings, some of which were showing at the Serena Morton II Gallery in Ladbroke Grove earlier this year: running miles at dawn, the reflection of the boxer posing in a mirror, sitting on planks of wood looking as if he’s in deep meditation and in the boxing ring with his white robe. You will also come across one of his quotes which at first seems to contradict his rig- orous training regime that goes beyond the normal requirements of a boxer. It says,“I hated every minute of training, but I said,‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.” At least we know that Muhammad Ali was indeed human and not a machine, doing what he needed to do in order to achieve his status. As you walk through the exhi- bition, a big screen captures the boxer sparring in the ring with some rather fancy footwork and him being inter- viewed. It is here you’ll witness some of “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” – Muhammad Ali bite exhibition review