Ali...What will it be like when we finally lose him

Schmeling 99 passed in feb 2005

 

You won't be among them Pilate!

 

I grew up watching his fights .It will be a very sad day for me ,but in a sense he has already gone.

 

Oh yes, I remember now the Klitschkos (been based in Germany) saying how much they were inspired by talking with him.

 

I shed a tear every time I watch one of his DVDs of when he was young - in a class of his own. I did not agree with everything he said or did but I am a big fan. I'm always sad when one of those guys pass from the era when became a boxing fan.

 

Who will be the first to say that Frazier will be wailting for him outside the pearly gates for Ali/Frazier IV?

 

It would be nice to think they get together,who knows?

 

He'll be given his just dues as the remarkable fighter/personality that he was...and then ad nauseum...as the truly embarrassing, over the top, and to be expected type of overdone stuff will truly happen, ...I expect Thomas Hauser to he hospitalized..where he will see a vision of Ali in the clouds...and start a new Ali religion...exceeding all previously known celebrity worship,...all kinds of similar excesses will bring out the iconoclasts of every stripe as a sort of backlash.

 

It will be sad day of course, but all men must die. When I think of him I do not think of the broken and sick shell of man of these last few years, but of the young man that danced rings around Cleveland Williams and who for a while made the most uncompromising and brutal of sports seem beautiful and poetic. I hope that is what we will remember, the triumph of will and talent and not the tradegy. In that way he will live forever. His body might die, but in our memory he will be forever dancing.

 

To be honest, to me, it's like Ali has been dead for a long time now. What we have today is not the Ali that became an icon, unfortunately parkinsons took that Ali away from us a long time ago. It makes me sad seeing Ali the way he is now, because he was such a great boxer, but more than that, he was such a great character. I just wish Ali and his family and closest friends the best, because it must be hard for them to witness such a decline in a really great man.

 

I also think that after the initial wave of tributes and accolades, we'll have the inevitable backlash of revisionist historians who can't get past the things he said, chirping that he wasn't all that great to begin with.

 

kingfisher3 put it well. I did not expect such a post about it on n internet boxing forum + BillB's post + chariots of lightning and war elephants of fire will be seen escorting him over clouds of dignity and heroism to heavens where god sr. himself will embrace him and a thunder will be heard saying : "he is the GREATEST" and then a storm of fire will decend and his successor will be born out of the holy spirit. _ _ _ _ I always imagined it this way.

 

Well he's my all time hero and i've never ever shed a tear over someone's demise i've never met, but i suspect I will in Ali's case.