The bestselling biography of Muhammad Ali--with an Introduction by Salman Rushdie On the night in 1964 that Muhammad Ali (then known as Cassius Clay) stepped into the ring with Sonny Liston, he was widely regarded as an irritating freak who danced and talked way too much. Six rounds later Ali was not only the new world heavyweight boxing champion: He was a new kind of black man who would shortly transform America's racial politics, its...
The "Rumble in the Jungle," a momentous boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, took place on this day in 1974. Fourteen years earlier (almost to the day), Ali, then named Cassius Clay, won his first professional fight. Charismatic and controversial, bombastic and bodacious, Ali is widely considered to be one of the greatest boxers of all time—not to mention a serious influencer.