By Rebecca Gebauer

Last week the world mourned the loss of the “Greatest of All Time”, Muhammad Ali. Having grown up long after the great times of Ali as a boxer and generally being suspicious of superlatives being attributed to anyone, I observed the media coverage with some interest and surprise.

My memory of Ali is that of a man impacted by Parkinson’s disease who I merely remember lightening the Olympic Flame in Atlanta in 1996 and carrying the US flag at the Olympic Games in 2012. Additionally, as I was living in Germany at the time, even during those big events I did not get to see original interviews of Ali but only documentaries on him. Essentially, I had no idea why a boxer of the 1960s and 1970s was called “The Greatest of All Time”. Continue reading →