The heart of the champion is this: One never repudiates one’s deepest values, one never gives in.

Though Ali had risen to dizzying heights of fame in the 1960s, it was in the 1970s that his greatness was established. Who could have imagined that, being reinstated as a boxer after a lengthy suspension, Ali would expand the dimensions of the sport yet again; that, past his prime, his legs slowed, his breath shorter, out of an ingenuity borne of desperation he would reinvent himself as an athlete on whose unyielding body younger boxers might punch themselves out. He could no longer “float like a butterfly” but he could lie back against the ropes, like a living heavy bag, and allow an opponent like the hapless George Foreman to exhaust himself trying to knock him out.

What is the infamous Rope-a-Dope stratagem of 1974 but a brilliantly pragmatic stoicism in which the end (winning) justifies the means (irreversible damage to body, brain). The spectator is appalled to realize that a single blow of Foreman’s delivered to a non-boxer might well be fatal; how many dozens of these blows Ali absorbed, as in a fairy tale in which the drama is one of reversed expectations. In this way, with terrible cost to come in terms of Ali’s health, he won back the heavyweight title at the age of 32, defeating the 25–year-old Foreman.

Great as Ali-Foreman was, it can’t compare to the trilogy of fights between Ali and Joe Frazier in 1971, 1974 and 1975; Frazier won the first on points, Ali the second and third on points and a TKO. These were monumental fights, displays of human stamina, courage and “heart” virtually unparalleled in the history of boxing. In the first, Ali experienced the worst battering of his life, yet he did not give up; in the second and third, Ali won against an exhausted Frazier, at what cost to his health we can only guess — “The closest thing to dying,” Ali said of the last fight. Yet, incredibly, unconscionably, Ali was exploited by managers and promoters who should have protected him; his doomed career continued until 1981 with a devastating final loss, to the much-younger Trevor Berbick. Ali then retired, belatedly, after 61 fights, with 56 wins.

What does it mean to say that a fighter has “heart”? By “heart” we don’t mean technical skill, nor even unusual strength and stamina and ambition; by “heart” we mean something like spiritual character.