The Guardian view on Muhammad Ali: a life of bravery

Whether it was in the ring in his fights with Liston and Foreman, or in his defiance of the Vietnam draft and his public battle with Parkinson’s, Ali was the bravest of men. The tributes paid since his death was announced on Saturday have confirmed that for more than half a century Muhammad Ali was many things to many people in many lands. But if there was one quality that ran through his life like an unbroken thread, it was his bravery.

Bravery is one of those ancient virtues that we confer as accolades too easily in the celebrity age. Bravery can be foolhardy as well as exemplary. The word is especially ambiguous in a sport as tawdry, crooked and harmful as professional boxing was then and still is. Perhaps there were moments in Ali’s life when he was less than great. But it is hard to think of a moment when he was ever less than brave.

He was certainly extraordinarily brave in the ring. When he first became world heavyweight champion, he was cocky Cassius Clay, the Louisville Lip, a slim ex-light-heavyweight whose encounter with the reigning champion Sonny Liston in 1964 looked to many like a match of a bumptious boy against a murderous man. But Clay refused to walk into Liston’s trademark piledriving hooks. Instead he danced, taunted, confused and exhausted one of sport’s most chilling figures with his jabs. After six rounds, Liston was completely spent.