I Shook Up The World

I Shook Up The World

In 1964, Cassius Clay beat Sonny Liston.

Didn't just beat him, annihilated him. He was 22. I was 2.

After the fight, there was bedlam in the ring. Liston was the meanest mofo on the planet, a really, really unpleasant individual from ghetto roots and determined to adminster ghetto retribution. Clay simply made a fool of him and delighted in his ritual humiliation. There followed some wonderful self-aggrandisement which set the tone for boxing interviews forever. The post-fight interviews and celebrations lasted longer than the fight. The entire posing canon of boxers who followed would copy it.

I had that picture on my wall for years.

It symbolised all my own fights, all my own fears and how to overcome them, my own self-belief. I went to many boxing matches; became a kind of amateur boxer; was fascinated by the combined brutality and nobility of the sport.

In this early pre-digital, pre-Sky, pre-everything era, when I was a little boy, sporting events from America were not available live - adding to the mystique of America for me - but broadcast days, maybe weeks later on the legendary Sportsnight.

Sportsnight was a kind of extension of the BBC's saturday sports show, Grandstand, but somehow more exotic to young boys because a) you had to stay up to watch it and b) it brought events you had literally never seen before: Clay v Liston. Real Madrid v Brian Clough's Derby County in the European Cup. The FA Cup final replay between Chelsea and Leeds. An era of The Damned United, which all of we 40-something little boys remember nowadays like our lives depend on it.

That's because they do.

My Dad would put me to bed at 8pm, but I didn't sleep, only pretended. Because he had promised me that if I went to bed he would wake me up and let me watch Sportsnight. Compliantly, as all children in that era were, I did. And so it was that I would be allowed to watch these wonderful events, now cynically available 24/7 on any digital channel you like, as if they were the most magical, mysterious events I'd ever seen - certainly since the moon landings. School the next day would buzz and crackle with thrilled post-match conversation.

Children Of Today: there is really nothing left to amaze you - is there? You are bored of everything almost as soon as it happens; cynical about everything; impatient about everything; want everything now without working for it.

That's why Clay - when I was asked during some poxy management training session in a nonedescript plastic hotel - about heroes; was my choice and will always be my choice. When he dies I will mourn the passing of possibly the greatest human being outside of Mandela still alive.

He exists in black and white, like my childhood, and belongs to an age when people were kind and noble, uncynical and never, ever bored.

And he shook the world, like I wanted to but only managed the slightest undulation. Still, I wouldn't've even disturbed the ripples without him.