Giant who thrilled us all (and had a tongue as quick as his fists!)

Mrs Odessa Clay was a small, stout, deeply religious lady who used to worry about her oldest son. 'His mind was like the March wind, blowing every which way,' she said. 'And whenever I thought I could predict what he'd do, he'd turn around and prove me wrong.'

As a remarkable American life unfolded across the decades, all manner of writers and thinkers have attempted to explain the endlessly complex nature of Cassius Marcellus Clay Jnr, aka Muhammad Ali. Mrs Clay, in her modest fashion, came as close as anyone.

Until it became cruelly confused and subdued, that March wind of a mind engaged and enthralled the entire world. We loved Ali almost unreservedly, yet we were never truly able to explain our affection. He could be cruel, arrogant, contemptuous and merciless, then he would turn a wicked phrase or smile a roguish smile, and the world would forgive him his trespasses.

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Relaxed: Muhammad Ali at his training camp at Deer Lake for his second fight with Joe Frasier in 1974

His rhyming skill, of which he was unreasonably proud, was no more than the banality of the greetings card: 'Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee / His hands can't hit what his eyes can't see.' Desperate doggerel, of course, yet it was quoted as if Keats himself had written the lines. It was the charisma, the charm, the nerve to trot out that kind of stuff, like a child wanting to impress his elders. Ali was a professional boxer, perhaps the greatest who ever lived, but he never lost that air of vulnerability, the feeling that he was just an unkind word away from lasting damage.

The story of how he started to box has passed into American folklore. At the age of 12, his new red and white bicycle was stolen in his home town of Louisville, Kentucky. In tears, he told a police officer, Joe Martin, that he intended to find and punish the culprit. Martin, who belonged to a boxing gym, said: 'You'd better learn how to fight before you go challenging people.' And so it began.

Boxing was his means of self-improvement. Academically, he was woefully inadequate – he graduated 376th out of 391 pupils at the local school. But his inborn athleticism, allied to nerve and speed, took him through the amateur ranks, and his first international impact was made at the 1960 Rome Olympics when he took home to Louisville a glittering gold medal.

Again, history records how he was turned away from a lunch counter in the brutally segregated South, and how experience helped to radicalise the young man. Mrs Clay's generation had been forced to accept their 'inferior' status, her son was set on a different path.

Clay's career now took him to the professional ring, and his talents were evident, even without his indefatigable self-publicity. 'I am the greatest!' he would insist, over and over again. And, slowly, America started to believe him. At least, a proportion of America saw the boxer, the consummate athlete, the fighter who had taken the world heavyweight crown by slaying a monster named Sonny Liston. Others saw only the young, black agitator, with far too much to say. 'Why are we called 'negroes'?' he asked. 'What country is called Negro?'

Laila Ali poses with her father after her 10 round WBC/WIBA Super Middleweight title bout with Erin Toughill at the MCI Center in Washington, DC

His refusal to serve in Vietnam only reinforced the anger of middle America. Clay, by now Muhammad Ali, was heavily influenced by the Nation of Islam movement, a swelling band of largely young black men who were inspired by the rhetoric of Malcolm X. Ali initially failed the intelligence tests for the American military – 'I said I was the greatest, not the smartest' – but when standards were officially lowered, he became eligible for national service. Citing his religion, he refused, having remarked: 'I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong. They never called me n*****.'

The response was furious, and was typified by a leading sportswriter named Jimmy Cannon, who wrote: 'Clay is part of the Beatle movement. 

He fits in with the famous singers no one can hear and the punks riding motorcycles with iron crosses pinned to their jackets and the boys with their long dirty hair...' At this distance in time, it reads like an artless spoof, but the absurd Cannon was actually speaking for many.

Ali continued to defy the draft, and was genuinely prepared to spend five years in jail for his principles. In the event, he was merely banned from defending his title and earning his living, and at a time when he should have been at his professional peak, he was forced to watch lesser fighters scramble for tainted titles.

When a kind of normality returned, he began to work his way back; heavier, a little slower, yet still gifted, still brave. Ultimately, he proved too brave for his own good, but that courage was seen in the epic collisions with Joe Frazier – 'This might amaze ya / But I'll destroy Joe Frazier' – and later with George Foreman.

By going outside America, to unlikely venues such as Zaire, Ali established himself as a figure of world renown. His personal life seemed a chaotic mess, as four marriages would testify. Those marriages, as well as two other liaisons, brought him at least nine children. One daughter, Laila Ali, followed her father into the ring and, in a shamelessly contrived contest in 2002, actually fought Jackie Frazier-Lyde, the daughter of Joe.

BOXING, THE VIETNAM WAR AND HIS OWN PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY: THE VOICE OF MUHAMMAD ALI

On his own greatness

I have wrestled with an alligator, I done tussled with a whale, I done handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail. I'm bad. Only last week I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalised a brick, I'm so mean I make medicine sick.'

'There's not a man alive who can whoop me. I'm too fast. I'm too smart. I'm too pretty. I should be a postage stamp. That's the only way I'll ever get licked.'

'It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.'

On his great rival Sonny Liston…

'Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, his hands can't hit what his eyes can't see.'

'The man can't talk. The man can't fight. The man needs talking lessons. The man needs boxing lessons. And since he's gonna fight me, he needs falling lessons.'

'I shook up the world, I'm the King of the World. You must listen to me. I am the greatest! I can't be beat!' (After beating Liston.)

The legendary boxer arriving at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada in 1963

…And Joe Frazier, at famous 1975 fight in the Philippines...

'It's gonna be a thrilla, and a chilla, and a killa when I get the Gorilla in Manila.'

'Frazier is so ugly that when he cries, the tears turn around and go down the back of his head…'

…And another famous rival

'I've seen George Foreman shadowboxing and the shadow won.'

On the Vietnam War

'Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people while so-called negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?'

'They say I have two alternatives. To join the army, or to go to jail. I say there is another alternative. That is justice.'

'I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong.'

On his conversion to the Nation of Islam

'Cassius Clay is a slave name. I didn't choose it and I don't want it. I am Muhammad Ali, a free name – it means beloved of God – and I insist people use it when people speak to me and of me.'

On his personal philosophy

'I am America. I am the part you won't recognise. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own: get used to me.'

'A man who views the world the same at 50 as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.'

'Silence is golden when you can't think of a good answer.' 

Down the years, Ali's finances were systematically plundered by all manner of vested interests. He never bothered, never complained. Certainly he never resiled from his Vietnam stand: 'The system was wrong,' he insisted. 'It said that rich man's son went to college while the poor man's son went to war.'

But always the serious stands were laced with humour. I once heard him asked about his lack of humility. He never paused: 'It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am,' he said, straight-faced. And the more he talked, the more we loved him.

In the weekend before he fought Larry Holmes in Las Vegas, a wickedly uneven match between an ageing, world-weary Ali and the strong, lethal pretender to the throne, he gave a string of press conferences. He talked and he laughed, he told his jokes and did his childish impressions. The whole performance went on and on, until I noticed that the tape in my recorder had run out and my notebook was full. 'When will he ever stop?' I wondered, then dismissed the thought, as his talk was so charming and his wit was so sharp.

In the event, the beating which Holmes delivered was terrible, its effects lasting. Better, perhaps, to glide over the later years; the trembling hands, the blurring voice, the ultimate surrender to a pitiless disease. Much better to remember the beauty of that dramatic face, the fluid ease of his movement, the splendour of his charisma, the eternal appeal of his personality.

Senator Robert Kennedy, one of the greatest Americans of that American century, used to define his philosophy in these words: 'Some men see things as they are and say 'Why?' I dream things that never were, and say 'Why not?' He was quoting George Bernard Shaw. But Muhammad Ali would have recognised their meaning. 

FROM THE RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE TO THE THRILLA IN MANILA: MAGIC MOMENTS THAT SEALED LEGEND 

Britain's near miss v Henry Cooper, 1963

Three years after winning Olympic gold in 1960, Ali, now a pro, took on Britain's Henry Cooper. 

Then known by his birth name Cassius Clay, Ali was floored by a huge punch at the end of the fourth round but recovered to win in the fifth when the referee stopped the contest after Cooper suffered a cut over his left eye.

Hitting the canvas: Muhammad Ali was knocked down by Henry Cooper in 1963 before coming back to win

Phantom menace v Sonny Liston, 1964 and 1965

Ali's speed frustrated Liston so much in the first fight, the world champion refused to get off his stool for the seventh round. In the second fight, Liston fell to the 'phantom punch' – a blow that few saw connecting.

Ali won the title on a technical knock-out when Liston failed to respond to the bell at the start of the 7th round of their fight in 1964

Rumble in the Jungle v George Foreman, 1974

For this famous fight in Zaire, Ali and Foreman shared a £6 million purse put up by the African nation's dictator, President Mobutu Sese Seko. Ali goaded the undefeated Foreman before knocking him out in the eighth.

Muhammad Ali, surrounded by Zaire soldiers, waves to crowds upon his arrival in Kinshasha in 1974

The Thrilla in Manila v Joe Frazier, 1975

One of boxing's most brutal ever contests. In the searing heat of the Philippines capital, the two boxing giants traded blow after blow before Ali was declared the winner by technical knockout when Frazier's coach refused to let his man box the 15th round owing to his swollen face. Ali was exhausted too, telling his trainers: 'Man, this is the closest I've ever been to dying.'

Ali and Frazier traded blow after blow before Ali was declared the winner by technical knockout in 1975

Just another ordinary Joe v Joe Bugner, 1975

Ali had beaten Bugner in Las Vegas two years earlier and the rematch in Malaysia was every bit as one-sided. Hungarian-born Brit Bugner, who the UK public had struggled to warm to, fought defensively but bravely in sapping heat but never looked capable of defeating the champion and lost the 15-round contest on points.

Brit Bugner fought defensively but bravely in sapping heat but never looked capable of defeating the champion and lost the 15-round contest on points