Episode 41: Ali (2001) (Guest: Dave Zirin)

Muhammad Ali is widely recognized as one of the greatest athletes of all-time and one of the most important figures of the 20th century. In addition to his long and celebrated career as a boxer and three-time heavyweight champion of the world, Ali changed the conversation about race, religion, and politics in America. Ali’s refusal to be inducted into the U.S. military during the Vietnam War on religious grounds—a profound act of resistance that resulted not only in Ali’s three-plus-year exile from professional boxing, but also a criminal conviction and five year-prison sentence that Ali almost had to serve until it was reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court—represented a pivotal moment of the 1960s. Ali has been the subject of numerous books and documentary films, including the Oscar-winning When We Were Kings (1996) and The Trials of Muhammad Ali (2013). He is also the subject of the 2001 Hollywood biopic, Ali (co-written and directed by Michael Mann and starring Will Smith as Ali), which focuses on the ten-year period from Ali’s capture of the heavyweight crown from Sonny Liston in 1964 to Ali’s fight against George Foreman in Zaire in 1974 (the famed “Rumble in the Jungle”). Once a sharply polarizing figure, Ali became one of the most celebrated and eulogized individuals in America, whose rich, if not incomparable, legacy reverberates around the world today. Guest: Dave Zirin Dave Zirin is the sports editor at The Nation magazine. He also hosts Edge of Sports Television on The Real News Network and the Edge of Sports podcast. Dave is the author of eleven books, including Jim Brown: Last Man Standing and two books about Mohammed Ali: Muhammad Ali Handbook, which surveys Ali’s career, and What's My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States, which looks at Ali and sports and resistance in the United States. Dave has been called “the best sportswriter in the United States,” by the New York Times icon Robert Lipsyte. He has spent his career probing the intersection of sports, politics, and society. Timestamps: 0:00 Introduction2:22 Formative experiences 5:00 From Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali10:26 Opposition to the Vietnam draft13:16 Ali’s loss of his prime years15:42 The broader significance of Ali’s opposition to induction18:08 Ali’s legal challenges and the U.S. Supreme Court22:48: The Fight of the Century24:06 From a symbol of resistance to reconciliation27:50 Becoming a global icon: The Rumble in the Jungle35:30 Ali and Howard Cosell 36:57 Ali and Malcolm X41:08 Some problems of the Ali biopic44:12 Ali’s post-boxing career47:53 Sports and resistance: Ali's legacy Further Reading: Hauser, Thomas, Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times (1991) Kindred, Dave, Sound and Fury: Two Powerful Lives, One Fateful Friendship (2006) Lederman, Marty, “The story of Cassius Clay v. United States,” SCOTUSBlog (June 8, 2016) Lipsyte, Robert, Free to Be Muhammad Ali (1978) Marqusee, Mike, Redemption Song: Muhammad Ali and the Spirit of the Sixties (2017) Remnick, David, King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero (1998) Zirin, Dave, Muhammad Ali Handbook (2007) Zirin, Dave, The Kaepernick Effect: Taking a Knee, Changing the World (2022)