Blanchette: Ali shook up the world

John Blanchette’s tribute column to Muhammad Ali captures what we most loved about The Greatest:

The first person to expose my limited insight into sports was my older sister, Michelle. Well, her and Muhammad Ali. I was 8. I knew everything there was to know about boxing from Gillette’s Friday Night Fights and Ring Magazine, which I would scan each month at a downtown newsstand – before inevitably settling on a comic book. So I was convinced, along with 90 percent of America, that in their heavyweight championship fight of 1964, Sonny Liston was going to take out a vainglorious clown named Cassius Clay in one round, providing the challenger didn’t puddle beneath Sonny’s glare at the weigh-in first. My sister, who I’m not sure ever watched a fight before or since, bet me otherwise. I never inquired about the tenets of her faith. The news that I would be a dollar poorer that February night – no comics for a couple of months – was delivered by transistor radio as I fudged my school-night bedtime. More here.

Question: What do you remember most about Muhammad Ali?