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So how did Muhammad Ali's skill as a speaker affect his legacy as an athlete?

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public, to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

So, folks, by the time you're watching this program or listening to it, it's been a respectful month and a half or so since the passing of Muhammad Ali. I'm not trying to trash a man just as he's been buried or about to be buried. I do want to dissect his career because it's fascinating from a rhetorical standpoint, not just his athletic career at several levels. The starting point I want to look at is you say Muhammad Ali to most people. They say, oh, great. Greatest athlete of the 20th century. Greatest athlete ever. And he certainly was a great athlete. I in no way want to minimize his accomplishments. But one question is, was he the greatest boxer of all time? Forget the question of was he the greatest athlete of all time? Just stick to his niche, because that's very subjective. Let's stick to his niche. Boxing. Was he the greatest boxer of all time? Before we look at the facts, the data, let's look at the history of how he promoted himself. He very famously, before the 1964 heavyweight battle, the title round with Sonny Liston, he told reporters, I am the greatest. Muhammad Ali, of course, very fiery, great speaker, great at interviews, always quick with the rhyme. He attacked his opponents not just with his fist, but with words and was very, very memorable. And he went around telling people he was the greatest. I am the greatest. He said it way back in 1964 when he was a very young man and was not yet the champion of the world. He went on to win that bout and became the champion. Now, there is a website, and I'm not a boxing expert, ladies and gentlemen, but there is a website called bleacherreport.com and I've seen this in other places from time to time over the years as well. Did an analysis of Ali's career before he passed away, and here's what they concluded. Ali had a highly respectable career of 56 wins, five losses, and he had very prominent opponents. It was the golden age of boxing, according to some. He had victories over six different inductees into the hall of Fame. So it's not just that he beat a bunch of patsies. So obviously a very, very respectable career in boxing. However, Henry Robinson holds 13 wins over 10 different hall of Famers. And if you're saying to yourself, who's Henry Armstrong? You're in good company, I don't know who Henry Armstrong was, but he was apparently a fantastic boxer who had many, many more wins over significant boxers than did Muhammad Ali. Sugar Ray Robinson had 21 wins over top 10 competitors. So when you look at it by the numbers, Sugar Ray Robinson, a name that is familiar, had 173 career wins. Harry Greb, again, another boxer I've never heard of, had 262 wins compared to Muhammad Ali's 56 wins. When you start to look at the numbers, the idea that he could be the greatest of all time doesn't really add up. Again, I don't mean to knock him, but other boxers have had more championships in different weight classes, multiple weight classes. Muhammad Ali did initially start out as a light heavyweight, switched to heavyweight. So why am I doing this? Is it just to be a contrarian? Is it just to beat someone who's recently died out of sport? No. The point I want to get is that Muhammad Ali built a reputation for himself as the greatest because he constantly told everyone he was the greatest. And I sincerely believe that he sincerely believed he was the greatest. There is power in your words now. It doesn't work all the time. I can't just run around telling every person I meet I have the greatest head of hair of anyone in the history of the world. Those of you who've only listened to this program on audio might not know what I look like, but those of you who see me on video would say, well, tj, you just don't have the greatest head of hair in the world. You can say it a billion times a day. You're not going to convince anyone. That's true. I'm not going to convince anyone. But when it comes to issues that are subjective and the greatest athlete of all time, the greatest boxer of all time, is inherently a subjective matter, then how you talk about yourself can genuinely frame public opinion in a powerful way. More on Ali in a moment.

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Ali is not someone you think of as standing behind a lectern and giving a formal 45 minute keynote speech on a regular basis, but he certainly was a speaker. Every press conference, every weigh in before a fight, comments after a fight, he's speaking and getting tremendous coverage. And of course he's appeared in numerous TV shows, documented, even movies over the years. So he has a huge, huge presence. Again, I would contend that one of the reasons that so many commentators even before he. This isn't just something that happened because he died. For decades, people have said Muhammad Ali is the greatest boxer of all time. Again, if you talk to experts, look at the empirical evidence, they would say, no matter how you slice it, dice it, no, he was not the greatest boxer of all time. Was he great? Sure. Was he top 10? Sure. Maybe top 3? Sure. But what puts him over in the public opinion realm is the fact that he just told people again and again and again, I am the greatest. And he did it in clever, interesting, funny ways. I float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. The rhyme, the constant poetry out of his mouth captivated people in an extraordinarily profound way. I grew up not a boxing fan and not in a family where they were boxing fans. My father was not particularly a boxing fan. But of course I saw the thrill in Manila in 1974. I was nine and a half years old. It was just something everybody saw. There just wasn't a way of not watching something like that. It was such a big, huge cultural event. And by that time, Muhammad Ali, who was at that point named Muhammad Ali, his birth name was Cassius Clay. He famously denounced his so called slave name and adopted a new name. By that time, he was already pretty popular across the United States. And that isn't how it always was. He did a great job of rehabilitating his image in the media. More on that in a moment.

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It's hard to imagine now into many people under the age of 45, you say Muhammad Ali. They just think of this nice old guy who held a torch at the Olympics. Somebody everybody loves. A pop cultural icon. It was not always that way. In the late 60s, he was a strong, forceful critic of the United States, of its policies in Vietnam, of the Vietnam War itself. And he famously said he refused to serve, was stripped of his titles and punished by the government. His approval ratings plummeted, especially in white America. And back then he was 80% plus white America. He was considered, held in very low esteem and stripped of his title. Had massive financial problems by the early 70s, unable to work, unable to gain acceptance, considered a traitor to his country by many. How did he go from there to someone who is the most recognizable name and by some estimates, the most popular person on the planet, and certainly in the United States. Well, for one thing, public opinion shifted against the Vietnam War. Many people quickly saw him as being on the right side of history. That helped. That was part of it. Part of it is just by not giving up, getting back into the ring, finally finding an organization that would sanction him, allow him to fight. And winning, being a winner does change people's opinions of you quite often. And part of it forgiving his enemies, forgiving the people who are after him, and just constantly coming up with a new stream of ideas, new content. Now, one area, and I want to be careful about equating the two, there are parallels between Ali and Donald Trump. Donald Trump is basically always running around telling people he's the greatest, he's the most wonderful businessman in the world. If you talk to anyone who actually knows much about business, I've never met someone like that who didn't think Donald Trump was a horrible business person and essentially a fraud. No one really thinks that Muhammad Ali was a horrible boxer. He was a great boxer. But it's similar in that both men just told everyone in the world they're the greatest. And people bought it. Because I have seen polls, not just since Trump announced for president, but for many years now. He is considered around the world as the leading businessman in the world, and he's nowhere near that. But he plays one on TV and he says it all the time, so they do have that in common. But what Ali did really well is just radically, radically rehabilitate his image by doing new things, putting out new ideas, new streams of controversy sometimes, but new successes, always having a new story. And piece by piece, he went from one of the most divisive, hated people in the country to one of the most beloved. So the lesson there really is, if you do find yourself in a jam, if you do find yourself in a scandal, a crisis, the wrong end of public opinion, you can change it around. You may have tough times, you may have financial difficulties, but if you still have something you're good at and you still have some ability to succeed in whatever your primary craft is, keep talking about it, keep telling people about it, you can rehabilitate your image. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. May all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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