Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali was always bigger than life. He conquered the world and left the world in awe in the process. From the beginning there were many nay sayers, though Ali ended up by confounding them all. Ali's greatest opponent, Joe Frazier in 1996, at the opening of the Atlantic Olympic Games, famously expressed the wish that Ali would throw himself into the Olympic fire after lighting it!

Boxing afficionadoes sometimes insist Louis or Marciano were better, but a great fighter must be judged by the quality of the opposition he dominated. Ali was fighting in what must surely be considered the golden age of boxing and defeated opponents of the calibre of Floyd Patterson, Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Ken Norton and Oscar Bonavena as well as a host of lesser luminaries such as Jerry Quarry, Ernie Shavers, Al "Blue" Lewis, Henry Cooper and Michael Spinks. His final humiliation at the age of 37 at the hands of Larry Holmes was just a case of age catching up with the great man (enabling his former sparring partner--later a fine champion himself--to defeat him).

More than being a great champion, Ali was a great man. He gave hope to the hopeless and showed that someone with true talent and a lot of self belief to back it up, could conquer an often hostile world.