A Very Touching Tribute To Muhammad Ali by Billy Crystal

ladies and gentlemen Billy Crystal thank you ladies and gentlemen we are halfway there I was clean shaven when this started dear family friends Loni sr. president clergy members all these incredible people here in Louisville today this outpouring of love and respect shows that 35 years after he stopped fighting he is still the champion of the world last week when we heard the news time stood still there was no war there was no no terrorists, no global catastrophes, the world stopped, I took a deep breath inside ever since, my mind has been racing through my relationship with this incredible man, who is now 42 years old, I know him e

very

moment I can think of his beloved and while others can tell you.

If his achievements wanted me to talk and tell him about some personal moments we had together. I met him in 1974. He was just starting out as a comedian and was struggling, but he had a good routine – it was a three-minute conversation. between Howard Cosell, Muhammad Ali, where he would imitate them both. Ali had just defeated George Foreman and regained the heavyweight title. The sports magazine made him man of the year and Dick Schaap, a wonderful writer and a great man, was the sports editor and he was going to host this televised dinner in honor of Muhammad Ali, so Dick called my agent looking for a comedian to do sports material because fate would have it that comedian was unavailable and she wisely said it's fate, man and she wisely said listen, I have this kid and he does this great Ollie impression and it's constantly perfect for him, I don't know why, but Dick said okay, I'll try it if you think I can remove it from the show.

I couldn't believe it my first time. television and it would be with Ali. I prefer that the Plaza Hotel the event was packed. I met mr. Shap would let him become part of my family and said well, how should I introduce you? Nobody knows who you are and I was like, just say one of Ali's closest and dearest friends and I thought, I'll go right to the microphone. My Howard Cosell and I will be fine and then I will never sleep live in the packed ballroom and that's when I first saw him in person. It's

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difficult to describe how much it meant to me.

You had to live in his time. It's great to see the clips and it's incredible that we had them, but to live through his time watching his fights is to experience the genius of his talent, it was absolutely extraordinary, each of his fights had a Super Bowl aura. . He did things that no one would do. he predicted that in the round he would knock someone out and then he would do it, he was funny, he was beautiful, he was the most perfect athlete you have ever seen and those were his own words, but as time went on he was much more than a fighter. with Bobby Kennedy gone Martin Luther King turned into Malcolm was rapidly fueling the war machine but he was an ally who defended us by defending himself and after he was stripped of the title and the right to fight anywhere in the world, he gave speeches at universities and on TV, that totally blew me away, he seemed as comfortable talking to kings and queens as he did the lost and unrequited, he never lost his sense of humor, even when he lost everything else, he was always willing to give up everything for what he believed in. . and his passionate rhetoric about the lives and plight of black people in our country resonated strongly in my home.

I grew up in a house dedicated to civil rights my father was a producer of jazz concerts in New York City and was one of the first to join bands in the 40s and 50s jazz musicians refer to my dad as the Branch Rickey of jazz my uncle and my family Jews produced strange fruits Billie Holiday's classic song describing the lynching of African Americans in this country and that's how I felt and now there he was just a few meters from me I couldn't stop looking at him and it seemed like he liked to shine and it was like in slow motion his incredible face smiling and laughing I was sitting a few seats from him on the stand and in the all these athletes in their great individual sports, Gino Marchetti, the Baltimore Colts, Franco Harris and the Steelers, Archie Griffin would win the Heisman of the Ohio State literary legends, Neil Simon, George Plimpton, all in the days when fawned over Ollie, who then looked at me with an expression that seemed to say what is Joel Gray doing here, sir?

Shap, introduce me is one of Ali's closest and dearest friends. Two people applauded. My wife and the agent. I got up. Ali keeps looking at me. I passed right behind him. I went up to the podium. I went directly to Cosell. Hello everyone. Howard Cosell comes to you live from Zaire. some would say it's air, they're wrong, they laughed a lot and then I walked into the alley, everyone's talking about George Foreman, they're talking about George Foreman, george farmers, ugly guy is so slow, george was slow, I can't boo and then I make a rope . -dope a robot with George I'm so fast at 33 I'm so fast I can turn on the lights in my bed before the room gets Howard the dog.

I announce tonight that I have new religious beliefs starting now. in I want to be known as the easiest gu is that I am now an Orthodox Jew is he so good? I'm the best of all. The audience exploded when they saw that no one had done it before and here was a white kid from Long Island imitating the greatest of all time and he loved it when I finished, he gave me a big bear hug and whispered in my ear you're my little brother , which is what he always called me until the last time I saw him, we were always there for each other, if he needed me for something I was there, he would come to anything I asked him to do, the most memorable thing, was honorary chairman of a very important dinner and event in which I was honored by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. all this promotion so he came to dinner he sat with my family all night he took pictures with all the most famous Muslim men in the world in honor of his Jewish friend and because he was there because he was there we raised a huge A huge amount of money and was able to use it to fund the University in Jerusalem was something I talked to him about and it was something he loved the theory of and thrives on to this day.

It's called peace through the performing arts. It's a theater. group where Israeli and Palestinian Arab actors, writers and directors work together in peace creating original works of art and that doesn't happen without him. I had so many fun and unusual moments with him. I said the next time at Howard Cosell's funeral it was very somber. That day, just to make sure, the closed coffin was on stage. Mohamed. I was sitting somewhere next to each other and he whispered to me softly, little brother, do you think he's wearing the hairpiece? So I said, uh, I don't think that well, so how is he going to do it?

God recognize it so I said champion once I open my mouth God will know so we started laughing, at first it was a chuckle but then we couldn't contain ourselves here we were at a funeral me with Muhammad Ali laughing like two little kids I heard something Dirty in church, you know, we were just laughing and laughing, then he looked at me and whispered that he was a good man, one time he asked me if I would like to run with him one morning, work with him, I told him. Will it be amazing where you run?

He said I run at this Country Club and I run on a golf course early in the morning. He is very private. Nobody bothers me. We are going to have a very good time. I said champion. I can't run there. the club has a reputation for being restricted, it was restricted to me, they don't allow Jews there, they don't have Jewish members, he was outraged, I'm a black Muslim and they let me manage their little brother, I'm never going to run. There again and he didn't. My favorite memory. My favorite member was maybe 1979. He had just retired and there was a retirement party at the Los Angeles Forum for Muhammad and 20,000 of his closest friends in Los Angeles.

I performed a piece that I had created. The imitation had become a life story called 15 rounds and I played from the age of 18 until he was 36, ready for the rematch with Leon Spinks. Last week I posted footage on the Internet that no one had ever seen before of me playing Ali. Making his life for him all those years ago in 1979 there were 20,000 people there but I was doing it just for him. It's one of my favorite performances I've ever done in my life. I kind of got lost in it. I did not do it. I don't even know where I was at the end of the performance and suddenly I'm backstage with another heavyweight champion, Richard Pryor, and Pryor is clinging to me crying and then I see Ali coming and his head is full of steam, I just look at me and he pushed mr.

Pryor stepped aside and whispered in my ear with a big bear hug, little brother, you made my life better than it was, but didn't he make all of our lives a little better than they were? That my friends are my story with a man. I have worked to find a way to describe the legend that it was a tremendous lightning bolt created by Mother Nature out of nowhere. A fantastic combination of power and beauty. We have seen photographs of lightning at the moment of impact. fierce and his magnificent strength and his elegance and at the moment of impact he illuminates everything around him so you can see everything clearly Muhammad Ali struck us in the middle of America's darkest night in the heart of its most threatening storm his power brought down The most powerful of enemies and his intense light shone upon America and we could clearly see the injustice, inequality, poverty, pride, self-actualization, courage, laughter, love, joy and religious freedom for all.

Ali forced us to look at ourselves, this brash young man who excited and angered us. We were confused and challenged, we finally became a silent messenger of peace who taught us that life is better when you build bridges between people, not walls, my friends, my friends, only once every thousand years or so can we listen to a Mozart. I'll see. a Picasso read Shakespeare's Alley was one of them, and yet deep down he was still a kid from Louisville who ran with the gods and walked with a cripple and smiled at the silliness of it all.

He is gone, but he will never die. my older brother thank you