Exclusive
West Ham co chairman Davd Sullivan is a huge fight fan – a love developed in his very eariest years – and today he has spoken exclusively to ClaretandHugh of his memories of ‘The Greatest’ – Muhammad Ali.
We are grateful to David for taking the time to add his memories of a man who is becoming widely and rightly regarded – in our view – as the greatest figure of his generation.
David writes:
“I saw four or five of his fights, I went to Vegas to see him fight Joe Bugner as one of them.
“My one meeting was being in a lift with him. He pointed his finger at me and said “ARE YOU COMING TO SEE MY FIGHT TONIGHT ?” He was always a fantastic salesman !
“I was just a very young man, with not a lot of experience of life at the time and ‘meeting’ if you can really call it that ,stood in my mind forever.
“He was the first and possibly the ONLY Boxing SUPERSTAR that presidents, dictators, world leaders wanted to know.
“His fights were huge and countries wanted to stage the fights to put their country on the world map.
His fight with George Foreman in Zaire, which I watched live at the Oden Leicester Square, was possibly the greatest fight of all time.
“Whether it contributed to Parkinson’s in later life nobody really knows.”
The man was a true legend.Not like some sportsman who are called legends for very little reason these days.
RIP The Greatest
https://youtu.be/ejE-Do9PeJw
“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee”.
R.I.P. great man.
The man was sheer class , in and out the ring ,
God bless , the best ever .