I am reading the book “Who Is Muhammad Ali” by James Buckley Jr. which is part of the “Who Was” series. The book is about Muhammad Ali, the world’s greatest heavyweight boxer. He is famous for his great boxing skills. He was born January 17, 1942 and is now 74.

One big event was when he changed his religion from Christianity to Muslim. His original name was Cassius Clay but when he switched religions, he changed it to Muhammad Ali. It was a big event because the christian fans were angry with him. More importantly, he refused to be drafted because he didn’t believe in the Vietnam war. Muhammad Ali was convicted for refusing to go to the war and had to give up his championship belt and boxing until the court dismissed the case. One of his biggest fights was against George Foreman in Zaire, Africa. He wanted to earn his belt back to regain the heavyweight title which meant he had to beat George Foreman. Ali knocked him out in the 8th round and took back his championship. In 1984, he was 42 years old and diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease which affects the central nervous system. He had trouble speaking and walking and over time his face became frozen. Doctors felt that being hit in the head so many times caused the Parkinson’s disease. This was his new fight.

Muhammad Ali was a super talented boxer. He had 61 professional fights. He won 56 fights and won 37 of them by KO. KO means Knock Out. He was also a bragging poet to all his competitors. Here are  2 of his famous poems. “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, his hands can’t hit what his eyes can’t see.” The second one is “I have wrestled an alligator, I have tussled with a whale. I have handcuffed lightning, and put thunder in jail… Only last week, I hospitalized a brick. I’m so mean I made medicine sick.” Muhammad Ali was an activist and a peacemaker. He was on a mission to help the poor and the hungry. Also, after traveling through Africa, he realized that black people were not treated like second class citizens, like many black Americans. Many black Africans held very important jobs. Ali fought for equality in America.

I really enjoyed this book because I like boxing and because Muhammad Ali is a great boxer and funny with his poems. In boxing history, only a few men had ever won back a championship title they had lost. On October 30, 1974, Muhammad Ali did. Muhammad Ali always predicted how many rounds the fights would last and he was usually right. He said this in 1963 against Doug Jones: “Jones likes to mix, So I’ll let it go to six. If he talks jive, I’ll cut it to five. And if he talks some more, I’ll cut it to four!” I would recommend this book because Muhammad Ali was confident, talented, loved the sport and he was passionate about his career. The book teaches you about his life as a boxing champion, a family man and his life as an activist. Muhammad Ali reminds me of Rocky Balboa. Muhammad Ali and Rocky Balboa were both great boxing champions. In 1986, doctors found out that Rocky had suffered significant brain damage from all the blows to the head and in 1984 Ali was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. His brain was not making the right connections to some of his muscles anymore. I really enjoyed the book so I give it a rating of four stars. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️