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Friday, June 10, 2016

Aah Muhammad Ali

Well OK this is type of Obituary rather than Eulogy
 I was remembering when M Ali was going to fight that giant world heavy weight champion Sonny Liston. At that time nobody in the world had the courage to challenge this man I liked the British HW Champion but he clearly said no he wont challenge Sonny Liston. It needs to be clearly understood the fear of Sonny Liston was so prevalent that everybody sort of laughed when this young man Cassius Clay who had just gotten Olympic Gold medal and was full of enthusiasm, was bubbling with it and saying awful things he is going to destroy this champion. By looking at him you could not but sympathize with this youngman
 So when I woke up to watch TV at 6 am in Bishop Auckland there should be no surprise. Yes I watched Cassius Clay winning the world HW championship He entered the arena with a crown on his head declaring himself a king (I was later to learn the real American Culture) He really promoted himself well and then saying "See How pretty I am?" no mark of beating on his face.
 That is how I got introduced to this great champion and a great man and then followed his fights and change of name and humility came in the enthusiasm changed and instead of saying
" I am the greatest?" he started saying NO Allah is the greatest. I remember one of his interview when he was being questioned about his faith after he had changed to Islam. The questions were being asked to mislead him and even provoke him (I believe the journalist was Jew) and he stood firm and told clearly that there is no special ting about black or white and  Allah is God for all muslims not just black etc. I came away after that interview with a firm understanding that Muhammad Ali has good teachings of Islam and is following the truth.
 The other thing about his Parkinson's disease I can say as a neurologist that his is a true form of Parkinson's and Boxing most likely had nothing to do as its cause. There may be a faint possibility of some contribution but this is one champion with least amount of hits to head and I do not know if there was any complete knock out in his professional bouts. So what is called "punch-drunk" is slightly different picture but has some similarities to Parkinson's disease. The signature I got from him on the book in 1986 his disease was minimal but I could see it. Signature does bot show the disease in which patients tend to write smaller words called "Micrographia" He became more well-known actually through his goodwill mission travelling all over the world as he was a truly global citizen and everybody loved him Muslim or no Muslim


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