Voices: A 40-year-old memory of meeting The Greatest

The truth is, I wasn’t a Muhammad Ali fan.

At least not in my New York City junior high school in the 1970s, where the Ali-Frazier chasm gaped as wide and personal as the Mets-Yankees divide.

I was a shy kid who saw in Ali the same attention-getting antics that I resented among my vocal classmates.

And I wanted Smokin’ Joe to pound the loudmouth.

I’d like to say that meeting Ali when I was 13 converted me. But it didn’t.

That came later.

The photograph here was taken in September 1976, a week or so before Ali’s third and final fight with Ken Norton. One Sunday afternoon, I was in the CBS Sports studio, where my father was working. Ali and Norton were on hand to promote their upcoming fight in Yankee Stadium. The two fighters sat in a lounge-type setting with sportscaster Brent Musburger in the middle.

During a break, someone told me to go shake their hands. Norton was dutiful, Musburger was friendly, and Ali was magnificent in a way that took me years to appreciate.

The loudmouthed act, Ali has said, was fashioned after his childhood hero Gorgeous George, a 1950s pro wrestler whose obnoxious braggadocio Ali sought to emulate.

But the genius was authentic. Ali’s most brilliant sparring was not with Frazier, Norton or George Foreman — but with Howard Cosell. His most agile feature was actually his mouth, which he could shape into a wild array of expressions that made everyone smile. Even a shy 13-year-old.