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I have never experienced anything in sports like the night of March 8, 1971.

We, my friends and I, were huddled around, waiting for news about what was going on in the ring at Madison Square Garden. Twenty thousand people were jammed into that building, paying anywhere from $20 to $150 for their seats. Millions more huddled around closed-circuit television sets, watching and waiting to see what would happen. They said more people worldwide were watching this event than had witnessed the moon landing nearly two years earlier. Whoever wasn't in the building or didn't have access to the fight, awaited some word, any word, of its outcome.

It was the sporting event of the century.

Muhammad Ali was fighting Smokin' Joe Frazier for the heavyweight championship of the world. Both fighters were undefeated. Both fighters were confident they would win. Each fighter couldn't have been more different from his opponent.

And all of that fed the drama.

Ali was bombastic and controversial, the fastest-talking boxer ever. He could smash opponents with his fists and his mouth. His version of trash talk was poetry, some of it clever, some of it cruel. He won the heavyweight title by beating Sonny Liston in 1964 and defended that title nine times … until it was stripped from him three years later, after he refused induction into the Army during the Vietnam War. His reasons were said to be religious, but bled into racial and societal, as well.

He once was quoted as saying: "I ain't got nothing against them Viet Cong."

That was back in the mid-'60s, before so much of the country had turned against the war. It was said by certain politicians of Ali that he was willing to fight in the ring for money, but was afraid to fight for his country. But that wasn't it. Ali, the former Cassius Clay, who became a Muslim and changed his name, had been offered an opportunity to join the military and put on boxing exhibitions far from the front lines. He declined on principle.

His brash style had already alienated some. Now, his strong position on induction and on the racial injustices of the day, absolutely divided his greater audience and the country as a whole. He was banned from boxing for more than three years, the span of his career that would have been his prime.

Before Ali was cleared of legal charges and allowed to box again, another fighter emerged, a fighter who was the antithesis of the smooth, dancing, colorful downright pretty Ali. Frazier was a quiet, dutiful, blue-collar puncher, trained in the gyms of Philadelphia, whose style had all the gracefulness of a road-grader. He bored forward and demolished opponents with his powerful left hook. The only public position he ever took was quite literally that of a crouched brawler.

I lived about 20 miles south of Philly on the big night of what was simply called "The Fight." Most of my friends naturally cheered for the local guy: Frazier. But I was intrigued and fascinated by Ali, despite being too young to fully grasp all — just some — of the issues of the day.

I knew this: I had never seen anyone talk or box or — as it turned out, as I later came to understand — transcend sports like Muhammad Ali. For what he believed, and the way he behaved, he became more than his self-proclaimed "Greatest of All Times." He became a global icon. He became perhaps the most recognized person on the planet.

Frazier won that night, while Ali beat Smokin' Joe in subsequent fights.

As the years went by, he made a thousand appearances, speaking to groups of all kinds, imparting what he had learned through those tumultuous earlier years, even after he started his battle with Parkinson's Disease in the 1980s. By that time, I better understood and appreciated the greater fights the man had fought. The only time I saw him in person was when he rode past me, within 15 feet, on a float in the 1988 Tournament of Roses Parade. I wanted to shake his hand, but couldn't get there in time.

The man helped, the way I figured it, move the world forward.

I once heard an anecdote about Ali comforting a nervous fellow passenger sitting next to him on a jet. Ali, as the story goes, told the man not to worry because Allah would not let the plane crash. Why? "Because I'm on it."

Don't know if that story is true, but it sounds about right.

The time, though, has now passed for Ali. He died Friday in Phoenix at the age of 74. The combination of the Parkinson's and a respiratory infection did him in. Allah permitted it.

When I heard the news, I thought of two things: 1) That night in 1971, when the whole world, along with a young teenager, hung on every punch that he threw, waiting to see who would stay undefeated, and 2) a quote from Ali that had stayed with me: "I am the greatest. I said that even before I knew I was. I figured that if I said it enough, I would convince the world that I really was the greatest."

It worked.

GORDON MONSON hosts "The Big Show" with Spence Checketts weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on 97.5 FM and 1280 AM The Zone. Twitter: @GordonMonson.