Muhammad Ali, Forever The Greatest (1942-2016)
Every great fighter needs his trilogy to reserve his seat in the pantheon. Even The Greatest.
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So when the world asked why on earth, in 1975 at 33, he was going all the way to the Philippines for a third world war with Joe Frazier, he knew the answer.
In search of the holy grail
Twice before these two sworn enemies had gone the murderous distance with each other in New York's Madison Square Garden. Smokin' Joe beat him to the most championship punches in 1971. Ali took revenge with a 12-round non-title decision three years later.
King smelt gold in the Orient. The world-title decider was a symphony of pain and endurance. After 14 rounds of unremitting hand-to-hand combat Frazier's wise and humane trainer Eddie Futch knew that the man he cherished as a surrogate son could see little or nothing through eyes swollen like a gargoyle's Before Smokin' Joe could explode in protest, Futch threw in the towel. Frazier forgave him eventually, admitting: 'I thought I was going to die.'
Ali said: 'So did I,' confessing that he was on the precipice of quitting himself.
The world saluted both gladiators. Not until years later, when Ali was asked to join the oft-heated debate as to whether all the punches were responsible for his plight, did he hint at a suspicion that the Parkinson's might have been triggered back then.
'I left something of myself in that ring that night,' he said. 'Something important.'
Yet he fought on, losing and regaining his championship in back-to-back fights with Leon Spinks.
Another retirement was followed by one comeback too far. We watched in dismay as Larry Holmes - Ali's sparring partner before he became a formidable champion in his own right - reluctantly inflicted the most terrible beating of all.
Round after round Holmes begged the referee to stop it. Not until the 11th did that myopic official listen. It was too late. The damage was done.
The brightest light on the sporting planet grew dimmer thereafter. Now that is has been extinguished, the world is a duller place.
'Oxford, that's a big university
Wants me as professor of poetry'
In the 70s a consensus of progressive undergraduates campaigned for Muhammad Ali to succeed W.H. Auden as professor of poetry at Oxford.
The notion intrigued him. Not least because he experienced reading difficulties for much of his life.
The brilliant couplets he started rattling off the top of his head grew into a substantial anthology of verse.
Its sources were his vast reservoir of natural-born intelligence, a kaleidoscopic mind infused with a deep sense of humanity, that famous shaft of arrogance, humour as quick as his trademark shuffle and that intangible gift of the poet for communicating ideas in literary
code.
That chair beneath Oxford's dreaming spires was not bestowed in the end, perhaps because his writings had not yet matured to the point where, some years later, he could invert metaphors this extraordinary.
'I can drown a drink of water
I can kill a dead tree
Don't mess with Muhammad Ali'
To read or listen to the man was to gain an insight into his lateral thinking in the prize-ring. The mind was as fast as those hair-trigger reflexes which enabled him to dance with his hands by his side as he swayed micro-seconds and split centimetres away from potentially decapitating punches.
Ali stands at the centre of sport's timeless debate as to who was The Greatest of them all.
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There are lobbies of boxing purists who insist upon Joe Louis as the supreme heavyweight or Sugar Ray Robinson as the Einstein of the sweet science. The global constituency of football will argue the case for Pele as the greatest sportsman. Citizens of Olympia will press the claim of Carl Lewis as the ultimate athlete.
But no-one in all sanity can deny that Muhammad Ali was the most dazzling entertainer, the most majestic presence, the most electrifying personality, the most colossal talent ever to bestride the stage of world sport.
All that and the most beautiful to behold.
Where so many modern
sportsmen seclude themselves in their ivory towers of false self-importance, an audience with this ebony Adonis awaited all who cared to come calling and invariably lasted for several captivating hours.
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The first bout between Ali and Frazier was dubbed the Fight of the Century, with Smokin' Joe knocking Ali to the canvas in the 15th On the morning Mike Tyson was released from three years in an Indianapolis state penitentiary I went with him to the nearby mosque. Ali was there, waiting to take freedom's breakfast with his fellow Muslim and brother champion.
He counselled Tyson to moderate his rage at the injustices and iniquities of life when it is arrived at via the meanest streets. He explained how he had come to terms with the brake Parkinson's had applied to his racing tongue by accepting it as part of his destiny, as his tool for quieter contemplation of the black man's struggle and the meaning of our existence.
It was one of those days when he was having more difficulty than others steadying his hands. So as they sat at the table talking softly - one in his whisper, the other with his lisp - Tyson fed Ali by gently raising spoonful after spoonful to his lips.
Muhammad smiled his thanks and the whole room lit up.
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Like Tyson, whenever Ali travelled to Las Vegas he was in the custom of visiting the final resting place of the tragic beast of a champion he slew to become king of the world.
A simple headstone in that graveyard beneath the airport flight-path is starkly inscribed: Sonny Liston - A Man.
Ali's first win over Frazier came in 1974 - this picture shows the pair in the closing stages of the epic battle The last occasion I spent time with the most impressive being ever to climb the roped scaffold was at a banquet in London on the eve of his poignant appearance at the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympic Games. It took place amid the elegant grandeur of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
The Greatest, of course, outshone even the most regal exhibit and he basked in the adulation.
The time before that came in the first month of the same year when I was privileged to be the only British journalist invited to his 70th birthday dinner party in Louisville.
Our man Jeff Powell was there when Ali celebrated his 70th birthday in 2012 and was the only British journalist invited He knew as well as we did that it was a miracle for him to be there more than a quarter of a century after he was diagnosed with that disease which proves terminal for almost all sufferers in less than a quarter of that time-span.
He made the most of this celebration of his defiant endurance. He was at his most animated during a mesmerising performance by a long-time magician friend from Las Vegas.
The last time he spoke in my company was a couple of years earlier, again in Louisville. It was Muhammad Ali Day, a state holiday in Kentucky. They held a youth boxing tournament in his honour and he sat happily at ringside watching every bout.
As he did so I asked him what a man who took up fisticuffs as a boy so he could chase down the bullies who had stolen his precious bicycle would choose as his own epitaph.
He pondered a while, then leaned forward like a priest in the confessional and whispered in my ear. As ever, and not least so far as our purposes here, it gives him the last word:
'Float like a butterfly
Sting like a bee
If you wanna fly high
Remember me'