ult of this conversion that Clay, Jr. would choose the name by which he is most known, Muhammad Ali. Ali would continue to punch his way through any potential challenger over the next three years. Few could handle Ali’s speed and strength, his famous rope-a-dope and ring banter. Ali ability to move around the ring and knockout opponents became captured in the motto that symbolized his skills, Float like a butterfly and sting like a bee, “Ali would continue his trek in boxing and, ultimately, social dominance in the coming years. His professional career began with a victory over Tunney Hunsaker on October 29, 1960, and would end some twenty-one years later with a loss to Trevor Berbick on December 11, 1981, only his fifth loss in more than two decades of professional boxing. Always inspired by the toughest of challenges, Ali would face many of history’s greatest fighters, almost always leaving the ring victorious. He would win the world heavyweight championship three times” (The boxer 2).
However, Ali himself would be stung in 1967 more harshly than he had hit any of his opponents in the boxing ring when he was unceremoniously stripped of his boxing title and banned from the trade of boxing. Ali’s crime? He refused to be inducted into the U.S. Armed Forces during the Vietnam war, the same action taken by current President Bill Clinton. Ali’s argument for evading the draft was that fighting in combat went against his newly found religious convictions. Ali nonetheless was convicted of draft evasion, but after a protracted legal battle which went all the way to the Supreme Court, Ali’s conviction was overturned eventually and he was vindicated. Three years after his suspension from boxing, Ali once again returned to the ring in
...