R.I.P. Muhammad Ali

“I’ve wrestled with alligators. I’ve tussled with a whale.
I done handcuffed lightning and thrown thunder in jail.
You know I’m bad. Just last week, I murdered a rock,
injured a stone, hospitalized a brick.
I’m so mean, I make medicine sick.”
— Muhammad Ali

I wrote a longer piece about this legend, this hero, this kind and brilliant and generous man, and it’ll go up later today on Rogerebert.com. I’ll post a link when it’s live. Update: Here it is: Always The Greatest: Remembering Muhammad Ali.

In the meantime: Kindred spirits. Good friends. They had a lot in common.

Elvis and Ali

I found this article, about the tributes paid to Muhammad Ali in Ennis, Ireland, his ancestral town, extremely moving.

And this clip, which I have linked to again and again, and watched it even more, because I can’t get enough of it. It’s sheer electric happiness and affection, palpable, an energy field … it rubs off on me every time I watch.

Juan Felipe Herrera, United States poet laureate, pays tribute to Muhammad Ali with a poem: “You Can’t Put Muhammad Ali in a Poem.”

Ali celebrating victory over Cleveland Williams, 1966. Photo: Neil Leifer. Voted the best sports photo ever in 2003.

Thank you for all you did, and thank you for who you were.