Something to read .. Ali

[Evil ... Thy name is Orville Redenbacher!!]

Deadspin's The Stacks has put together about a dozen columns written by John Schulian. The columns, collected from an eight-year period, are about Ali, spanning from his (Spinks) fall, last great rise (Spinks), career crash (Holmes) and post-career.
When Muhammad Ali Was A Has-Been

Wow. Schulian was wonderful with his words.
My favorite overall is the "Its Ali" column from his '78 win over Spinks.

No matter. Ali was not going to be detoured. As if to prove it, he started the sixth by slamming a stiff left hand upside Spinks' head. No longer would he try to clinch with the 201-pound Spinks and use his 20-pound advantage to wrestle the sinking champion along the ropes. Ali was ready to punch, and as the bell rang to end the seventh, he and Spinks were slugging away in the middle of the ring. Ali danced back to his corner. He knew what was happening. The story was unfolding just as he had planned it. At the end of the eighth, he embraced Bundini Brown, the shaman of his entourage. In the 10th, he did the Ali Shuffle. In the 12th, with Spinks searching desperately for a knockout, he startled the kid from the St. Louis ghetto with a right to the chest and followed it up with a pair of left-right combinations that came straight from a textbook.

Now the final seconds were ticking off on the clock and the crowd was chanting, "Ali, Ali, Ali." Spinks was still stalking him, but the life was out of his movements. He knew what had happened. So did the mob in his corner and the mob in Ali's corner and everybody with any sense at all.

Muhammad Ali had become the greatest again.

But he has a lot of gems ...

The 38-year-old Ali did not fight back, for he could barely lift his gloves. In a city that knows all about show business and broken dreams, he was just another star who had wound up as a pathetic lounge act.

He endured through the 10th, endured until it was too painful to watch Holmes hit him anymore. And then Dundee, a kind soul in a brutal business, said Ali was finished, God willing forever. There was chaos in the ring—tears in the loser's corner, cheers in the winner's—but through it, you could see Ali slumped on the stool, silent and still except for his heaving chest. At last, after all these years, he knew the truth: He had run out of tomorrows.

 

[Riptide]

The headline sucks.