Athlete as moral crusader: Is the Muhammad Ali model lost?
There are four people in the world Kilbert Pierce says he’d like to have been able to meet, shake hands with, and thank. One is Muhammad Ali.
And it isn’t just because the boxing icon, who passed away last Friday, inspired Mr. Pierce to become a boxer himself. Pierce, now a trainer at The Ring boxing club in Boston, says he was inspired by “the full monty” of Mr. Ali, specifically everything he did outside the ring.
One of his favorite Ali tapes, for example, isn’t of a fight. It’s of Ali talking to white college students during his three-year ban from boxing, a ban imposed after he was convicted of dodging the Vietnam War draft. (That conviction was later reversed unanimously by the Supreme Court.)
“They were firing questions at him, and he had an answer to everything,” says Pierce. “He wasn’t some … boneheaded athlete. He was smart.”
Leaning back in a chair in The Ring’s air-conditioned office, he shakes his head. “The athletes today, everything is ‘me, me, me,’ ” he adds. “I think money has gotten involved. There’s too much now. I just think everything is money, money, money.”
He is not the only one who thinks the model Ali epitomized has waned…
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