Great though he could be, Sonny Bill Williams lacks Muhammad Ali’s capacity to inspire.
Muhammad Ali, 1964, photo Getty Images
For those who saw Muhammad Ali in his mesmerising prime, his 70th birthday last week was a discomforting reminder of what the great crime novelist Ross Macdonald called “the roaring traffic of time”. More importantly, it prompted a re-evaluation of the Ali phenomenon: what elevated him above every athlete before or since?
It’s a pertinent question, given the similarities with the most intriguing and enigmatic Kiwi athlete of recent times, Sonny Bill Williams. As Ali was, Williams is a handsome fellow and a remarkable physical specimen, a Muslim with instant name recognition who marches to the beat of his own drum and seems to thrive on the controversy he generates.
SBW’s propensity for playing hard-to-get and his management’s manipulation of the media and the market create the impression of a star who still hasn’t found a stage big enough to accommodate his galactic talent. There’s little evidence, though, that he possesses Ali’s capacity to inspire, a product of character, personality, achievement and commitment to a cause above and beyond the pursuit of fame and its trappings.
Ali wasn’t a sage, nor was he always on the side of the angels. He allowed himself to be a frontman for the separatist and sometimes sinister Black Muslims. Stuck in Zaire for the “Rumble in the Jungle” with George Foreman, he was an obliging booster of President Mobutu Sese Seko, as grasping a kleptocrat as ever stuffed a Swiss bank account with international aid money and CIA retainers.
But Ali became the most potent symbol of Black American pride. His refusal to serve in Vietnam made him a hero to a disaffected generation and together with his humanity, which negated the Black Muslim connection, enabled him to bridge the racial divide. A significant part of Ali’s appeal was his determination to have fun along the way. He took delight in amusing others and being amused.
In Last Tango in Vegas, Hunter S Thompson’s account of the first Ali-Leon Spinks fight, he tells of winning Ali over by bursting into his hotel suite wearing a red devil mask – “a thing so fiendishly real and ugly that I still wonder what sort of twisted impulse caused me to even pack the goddamn thing … The moment I saw the expression on Muhammad’s face, I knew my mask would never get back to Woody Creek. His eyes lit up like he’d just seen the one toy he’d wanted all his life.”
YouTube has some priceless footage of Ali on a chat show with English comedian Freddie Starr (immortalised in the Sun headline “Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster”), who spins a preposterous tale of the supernatural that has the champ literally on the edge of his seat. Ali’s reaction to the punchline shows that although he was too brave for his own good in the ring, outside it he had a childlike susceptibility to manufactured frights.
Playfulness doesn’t seem to be part of SBW’s make-up. His public persona is bland, if not artificial; his utterances unenlightening, if not evasive. He may be a laugh a minute in private, but his one public attempt at humour – the excruciating press-conference byplay with Ali Williams during the World Cup – suggests his talents don’t include a gift for comedy.
Both were banned from their sports, Ali for refusing to join up and SBW for walking out on his contract with the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs. But whereas Ali lost the best three years of his career and his livelihood, Williams transferred to rugby union where the rewards included a World Cup winner’s medal. Speculation abounds that when his ban expires at the end of this year, the NRL will welcome him back with open arms and a multimillion-dollar package.
Ali’s life has an epic and tragic sweep that, for a host of reasons, is already beyond Williams, not that he’d to want to replicate it. But he could observe that Ali’s legend is founded on his quest to be The Greatest. SBW may be just as driven, but we can only wonder: the greatest what?