When boxer Muhammad Ali passed on in 2016, George Foreman, one of the sport’s fiercest demolition experts, was approached by CBS This Morning crew in the United States of America to speak on his old ring foe. Knocked out by Ali in their unforgettable Rumble in the Jungle duel in Kinshasa, Zaïre, in 1974, Foreman said what the sport had experienced of Ali defied all known approbatory allusions. It wasn’t enough to describe the man born as Cassius Marcellus Clay as the “best fighter,” he said. According to Foreman, “To say he (Ali) was the greatest boxer is a put-down…He was bigger than boxing. He was bigger than anything…I got into the ring with him…He didn’t have the best power, the best anything…But his presence…His greatest power was his presence…Nothing like him…’’
Since the death in December of another sports colossus, Pele of Brazil, the world is experiencing the same dilemma; a dearth of expressions to convey Pele into history. Is it adequate to see him as a legend? These days even flash in the pan celebrities get the tag.
But though these epithets aren’t semantically unfit for the greatness of Pele, we must, nevertheless, qualify them, upgrade them, dress them in robes that would drop the chaff so the wheat can stand out. For, as we say it colloquially, there are men and there are men. So, how do we shroud Pele, the Brazilian footballer named at birth Edson Arantes do Nascimento? How would history rate him? What superlative metrics, regardless of our subjective opinions, will history apply to settle him? History is said to be impartial; it processes our present and posts it back at the departure of man. It uses as raw resources what we pump or write into her. The enduring record you’ll finally have is your true past, no makeup.
The Australian writer, Steve Douglas, also trod that route in his 1976 book, Kings of Sport. He paraded 20 spectacular sporting ‘kings’ in history: Pele, Ali, Rocky Marciano, Jesse Owens, Vladimir Kuts etc.
The Brazilian truly posted a preternatural performance. At only 29, Pele had scored his 1,000th goal, breaking all known goal-scoring records. Of that goal on November 19, 1969, at Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, he said,” As I scored that goal I thought of all the poor children on earth, of those who have nothing, of the blind and the deaf whom I want to help during Christmas.’’
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