I'm not really interested in boxing but that's what Muhammed Ali did: took boxing beyond two blokes hitting each other and decked it out with poetry, religion, politics and stuff. Plus, although Basil is probably exaggerating, how could a man whose job it was to get bruised and beaten be so good looking? Odd.
And of course he had the best boxing name (apart from Tyson Fury) twice over. Cassius Clay, a case of nominative determinism surely; and a name I misheard when I first heard it as My Hammer Dali, which is also what he did, even though at the time I'd probably never heard of Dali.