Approaching Muhammad Ali: the tell-all book by a voyeur turned confidante

Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. or Muhammad Ali as he is better known, was 46 years of age when Easter weekend of 1988 came around. Living with Parkinson's syndrome, which he was diagnosed with four years earlier, Ali had an unassuming visitor at the porch of his house.

Thirty-five-year old Davis Miller, a struggling writer and movie store clerk, was there to seek conference with the man who had helped him get through some of the hardest periods in his life. The curious part? Muhammad Ali and Davis Miller had never met before.

You wouldn't notice Miller if you walked by him, but his meeting with the American boxing's colossus that night has rendered him one of the greats of sports writing today. The meeting between the two blossomed into a friendship, and while Ali continues to battle his debilitating Parkinson's, Miller took it upon himself to provide an almost voyeuristic insight into his life in his soon to be launched book 'Approaching Ali: A Reclamation in Three Acts'.

The Background

One could say that Miller was a voyeur long before he even met Ali, his "spiritual constant" as he says. The first time he saw him was on a black-and-white TV set when he was 11 years old. After losing his mother unexpectedly at an early age, Miller says it was the inspiring and larger-than-life figure of Ali which gave him the strength to live life again. Thereafter, he set off on being the authority on everything Muhammad Ali.

There are examples aplenty of individuals who occupy their lives with those of prominent figures in their fields. Sudhir Kumar Choudhrie, the obsessive Sachin Tendulkar fan who has been painting his entire torso in the tricolour to attending every home match that the Indian cricket team has played since 2003 comes to our mind. Across the border, another cricket fan 'Chacha Pakistan' has the same passion, though his love is not limited to one individual but for the Pakistan cricket team in general.

Miller's obsession however, was not voluntary. It stemmed out of a child's natural response to a figure who captivated him. Neither was he patriotic. He was just lucky enough to find, in Ali, a lighthouse during a storm at sea.

The Book

In 'Approaching Ali', Miller "reclaims" the life of the greatest boxer of all time, by talking about his personality and life with the intimacy that only someone with close access can. His public image, weaved over the decades by media, hardly managed to scratch the surface of Ali's persona. Miller's fly-on-the-wall account does just the opposite of that. It is a tribute, as well as a simultaneous attempt to really get to know the phenomenon that Ali was, and how he lives his life now.

The 'Three Acts' in the title of the book is a reference to three interconnected anecdotes about the author's first meeting with Muhammad Ali. It also formed the basis of "My Dinner with Ali", a piece of sports journalism that was anthologised in The Best American Sports Writing of the Century.

Ali the man

Ali was fearless and tenacious. In 1964, he won the World Heavyweight Title by defeating Charles "Sonny" Liston at the age of 22, in what was one of the biggest ever upsets in boxing. But even more than his skill in the boxing ring was his persona away from it. In the words of writer Joyce Carol Oates, he was one of the few athletes in any sport to "define the terms of his public reputation". His press conferences were not restricted to discourses about boxing; he spoke freely about issues unrelated to it. His embrace of his racial identity liberated a generation of African Americans as well.

It was perhaps this that drew the impressionable Miller to him like a magnet, captivated by this polarising figure.

File photo

At least in Ali's post-boxing career, the closest and most intimate voice that one can get to represent the boxer is that of Miller's. And the book promises to reveal facets of Ali's personality that were tucked far away from the public eye.

Deep down however, he is a man of simple joys, as portrayed in the book. To truly know and understand one of the greatest sportsmen of the 20th century, it is as close as one can get. And all told through the eyes of a fan who was fortunate enough to forge an ever lasting friendship with the legend.