Taking a swing at The Greatest

So, what is your take on Muhammad Ali? One of the greatest boxers of all time? Or, as he would have had us believe, thePerhaps your video collection includes treasured recordings of Ali's interviews and fights, and your bookcase contains at least one of the many biographies offering the conclusion that he was, and remains, a genuine hero who has touched the lives of millions.If, indeed, you count yourself among the multitude who regard Ali with awe, a new retrospective by Mark Kram will come as the lowest of blows.Ghosts of Manila: The Fateful Blood Feud Between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier has just been published by HarperCollins to acclaim and criticism in equal measure in the United States and it will reach bookshops here in September.Fans of Ali, even those who acknowledge his genius to be flawed, will discover that Kram pulls no punches.«Seldom has a public figure of such superficial depth been more wrongly perceived,» he says. «Ali was no more a social force than Frank Sinatra.

The politically fashionable clung to his racial invective as if it were the wisdom of a seer.»Today, such are the times, he would be looked upon as a contaminant, a chronic user of hate language and a sexual profligate."Heady stuff, and the initial reaction is to agree with those who claim that Kram is after making a fast buck by the fashionable expedient of dismantling a celebrity's image.Yet Kram is no newcomer to boxing. For 11 years, from the late Sixties to the mid-Seventies, he was the highly respected boxing correspondent with Sports Illustrated magazine, who made prose dance on paper just as Ali danced on canvas.But if Ali's choice of company was sometimes open to question, so was Kram's when he left Sports Illustrated under a cloud in 1977 following allegations, never conclusively proven, that he accepted gifts, and more, from controversial promoter Don King.Nearly a quarter of a century on, Kram's coverage of the historic Ali-Frazier trilogy, in particular the climactic «Thrilla in Manila», form the basis for his book.

But there is emphasis, too, on the boxers' lives prior to those fearsome duels and afterwards in retirement. Kram offers a personal edge to Ali's story that