When boxing really mattered and Ali was champion of the world.

Question of the day: Who is the current world heavyweight boxing champion?

Someone asked me that recently and I had no idea.

Twenty or thirty years ago, this would have been unthinkable. For most of my life, world heavyweight boxing champions were some of the most famous people on the planet. You and I could probably name a few: Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Floyd Patterson, Sonny Liston, Muhammad Ali, Smokin’ Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, Lennox Lewis. And that’s where my interest pretty much ends.

Before we go any further, we should answer the first question. I Googled the answer: The current heavyweight champion of the world is Oleksandr Usyk of Ukraine. He won the undefeated title last month by defeating Britain’s Tyson Fury by split decision in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

I didn’t notice.

This would have been heresy in the 20th century, when boxing really mattered and the heavyweight champion of the world was instantly recognizable even to a small segment of boxing fans. I followed boxing avidly back then, and it wasn’t just the heavyweights. Smaller fighters like Sugar Ray Leonard, Tommy “The Hitman” Hearns and Roberto “No Mas” Duran were international celebrities known to everyone.

Boxing was often shown on the major networks. I grew up watching Friday night fights with my dad on NBC. The fights were sponsored by Gillette razors, which seemed very fitting to me as a young kid, because at least one of the fighters looked like he’d been defeated by a razor blade. I remember well one Friday night my dad pointing out a black boxer named Sugar Ray Robinson and saying, “That man is the best pound-for-pound boxer I’ve ever seen.” I don’t think I understood exactly what he meant, but I remember when the fight was over, it looked like his opponent had been defeated by a razor blade.

At that time, there weren’t many opportunities to see live professional boxing in Mississippi. The state Golden Gloves Tournament was held annually at a sports arena across Highway 49 from our house at what was then Mississippi Southern College. My brother Bobby and I decided we’d give the tournament a try one year, so my dad bought us 16-ounce gloves at Smokey’s Sporting Goods. About two minutes into our first sparring session, we both decided to stick with Little League baseball. Boxing hurt. It hurt. We said “no more” long before Duran said “no more.”

But we kept following the sport, especially when a young, fast-talking, hard-punching guy named Cassius Clay emerged as a contender for the heavyweight title then held by Sonny Liston. Liston was a muscular, fierce-looking fighter. A former inmate who learned martial arts in prison, Liston had won 28 consecutive fights, most of them by knockout. He had knocked out the great Floyd Patterson in the first round in his two previous bouts.

This was in 1964. Clay dominated Liston, converted to Islam, changed his name to Muhammad Ali, and then dominated Liston again in a controversial first-round knockout. Many spectators thought Liston had lost his nerve, and after watching the replay, I certainly thought so.

To make a long story short, Ali won several fights as a champion but refused to be drafted into the US Army as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War. He was stripped of his boxing licenses in all 50 states and Joe Frazier became the heavyweight champion. Ali didn’t fight for over three years, which should have been the peak of his boxing career.

Fighting fans everywhere were clamoring for an Ali vs. Frazier fight. The problem was, there was no venue to sanction the fight. What most Mississippians know is that Ali and Frazier had a brief agreement to fight at the Mississippi Coliseum on December 15, 1969. At a press conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Ali said he had been granted a license by the Mississippi State Boxing Association, but this was never made public in the Magnolia State. It turned out to be a very temporary license.

A few days later, the Mississippi State Boxing Commission released a statement saying that they had unanimously voted not to issue a license to Ali. “We had missed our chance to become the center of boxing history.”

But when the first of three All-Frazier bouts took place at Madison Square Garden on March 8, 1971, the Mississippi Coliseum offered closed-circuit television coverage of the game. Tickets ranged from $5 to $12. I traveled from Hattiesburg to watch the game. I bought a $12 ticket, a lot of money for me at the time, and sat near the screen on the lower level.

My guess is the crowd was over 4,000 people, almost all male, about half African American and half white. I remember very well that most of the black crowd was obviously rooting for Ali, and most of the white crowd (except for those who were there) was rooting for Frazier. I also remember missing the first two of the three rounds due to technical problems with the cable feed. Trust me, no one was happy about that, black or white. When we finally got a photo, there nearly was a riot.

Like all three of the Frazier-Ali fights, this one was a hard-fought classic, with Frazier dropping Ali with vicious hooks in the 15th round and ultimately winning a unanimous decision. As you probably know, Ali won a tough fight when they met again three or four years later.

I covered Ali’s September 15, 1978, decision victory over Leon Spinks at the Louisiana Superdome to reclaim his unprecedented third heavyweight title. In a twist of fate, I was seated in the VIP media section near the ring, right next to Ali’s former sparring partner Larry Holmes. Opposite Holmes was promoter Don King. Both men were openly rooting for Ali, perhaps anticipating his handily beating him in Las Vegas two years later for a huge payday. It was Ali’s penultimate fight. I was there, chillingly, when Ali, visibly shaking from Parkinson’s disease, lit the Olympic torch in Atlanta in 1996.

Ali died 20 years later on June 3, 2016. He outlived Joe Frazier by nearly five years. Boxing, after all, died a much slower death.

Starting in 2016, the state of Mississippi will remember Muhammad Ali.