Thoughts on Muhammad Ali and His Mental Decline

Man I watched about 3-4 hours of Ali interviews from 1964-2002, chronologically, last night and watching his mental decline is very disturbing and depressing for me to have watched. He was so outspoken and quick witted, he would have made a great politician or leader of some kind of movement, but he was silenced pretty much as soon as his boxing career ended, and it was very noticeable around 1978-9 between the Leon Spinks fights.  His speech was much slower and he just seemed mentally sedated, and it got progressively worse very quickly, after his final fight with Trevor Berbick.

He had talked about being an ambassador to other countries to negotiate peace when he was still in his mid 30's in an interview from 1974, and knew how intelligent he was and that he had tremendous potential to the world, but he lost his essential ability to communicate verbally at a very young age and it's really fucked.


He seems fine here in 1974 after the Foreman fight:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yByTH5QAFwg

And here is how he is less than 6 years later:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkM0v4lYEUc

After watching all those interviews with this man, I can't help but feel inspired about improving my own life and being as strong willed and determined as he was to accomplish what he wanted to accomplish.  He's definitely one of the top 3 athletes of the 20th century if not number 1, but his verbal assaults against the establishment and for civil rights and his anti-Vientnam War stance, and the massive public influence he had over most of the modern world, both at the time and to this day, was more than any other athlete ever did outside of their profession.