Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay), looking from a different angle

By Ahmet Abdulaziz….

We all know Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay) very well, most particularly those who were young during the 1970s and 1980s. His two decade long boxing career has made an everlasting impact on the boxing world. Right from the point when he entered into the world of professional boxing, way back during early 1960s after winning gold medal in the Rome Olympics, he remained a thriller, who ultimately became known for his unique boxing style.

I was just going to write about him on the (25^th May 2021), just because on 25^th May 1965, he had sensationalised the whole world, the boxing fans in particular, by knocking down the hot favourite, Sonny Liston in just 1 minute and 57 seconds. That was his first title defence, after being crowned as world heavyweight champion 15 months earlier, by stopping the then World Heavyweight Champion Sonny Liston in the sixth round. Liston had refused to come out for the seventh round, due to a shoulder injury.

However, what in fact made me more interested is the fact that the date of both of these two important fights in the career of Muhammad Ali was the 25th. The first one was fought on 25^th February 1964, where the 22 year old Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay) had become the champion. The re-match against the same Sonny Liston was arranged on 25^th May 1965. I do not know if it was just a coincidence, or the organisers had considered the date of 25th playing some role in the outcome of the match? Nothing can be said with certainty.

After noticing the above interesting information, I went through the list of 62 fights of the professional career of Muhammad Ali. I was trying to find if any other fight of his career was also held on the 25^th of any month, but there was not any. Thus the initial suspense that I was passing through subsided.

However, just for your information I went through the dates of his all 62 fights. (Though technically his career is made up of 61 professional fights, but I have included his gold medal winning fight at the 1960 Rome Olympics also in his career). So I made a date-wise chart of his 62 fights, to know how many fights he had fought on one particular date on the calendar (without considering the month). So here I go, with that list as under:

So throughout his career of 62 fights, he had fought on different dates of different months and different years, but never fought on 3^rd, 4^th 9^th and 12^th of any month of any year, throughout his career. That’s a coincidence indeed.