A group of artists in Los Angeles revealed their newest project yesterday, a massive memorial to boxing legend Muhammad Ali.
The artists used over five miles of steel cable and hundreds of speed bags to create the mural, which shows Ali's face on a massive white background. When you get close to it, or look at it from the side, nothing quitelooks right on it, but as you step back, the greatest of all time's face comes into focus.
While the monument is impressive, and a real feat of creativity and skill, that's not why it's important. It's because, even now, Ali remains the Greatest Of All Time, the man whose fights have transcended both time and place and become myth.
Consider this: Ali's last fight was in 1981, 30 years ago now. He hit his prime in the early 1970s, a time even further removed from our own. In 2011, Ali's body has been wracked by Parkinson's Disease, believed to have been caused by repeated head trauma. His voice is no longer the brash, loud call we knew; instead, it is seldom heard, although the words are ascocky as ever.
Despite this, despite the fact thatAli has been retired for 30 years, artists continue to build monuments to his greatness. Adoring fans continue to flock tohim, and he continues to enthrallall of us.
When Ali traveled to Ireland to commemorate his distant Irish roots in the town of Ennis, County Clare, he was met by thousands of adoring Irishmen and women, who had come to witness the man who was a living legend.
Muhammad Ali is an icon, a man in a class apart from the rest of us. His prose inspired us, his politics divided us, his fighting skill enraptured us, but no matter what, he delighted us likeno one has before or since.
No one will be greater than Ali. No one has been, no one will be. This monument is proof enough of that.
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