Jun 6, 2016 3 min read

There will never be another Muhammad Ali.

And, in certain ways, we should be glad.

No, this is not meant to diminish the former heavyweight champion after his death last Friday at age 74 following a lengthy decline due to the ravages of Parkinson’s disease. The attention paid to Ali’s death, with the accompanying bumper crop of retrospectives and accolades, is warranted given the singular place Ali held in American culture as a symbol of black pride in the 1960s and an archetype of resilience after reclaiming the heavyweight title in the 1970s. He was an entertainer, and, later on, an object of sympathy for the evident toll Parkinson’s disease had taken, robbing him of the gracefulness and bouyance he once possessed in such easy abundance. Bob Dylan, a contemporary of Ali’s and another American maverick, posted a message on social media Saturday calling him “the bravest, the kindest and the most excellent of men.”

But there will also never be another Muhammad Ali because boxing no longer holds the primacy in our culture that it once did.

Turn the clock back 60 years, and boxing was at the heart of 1950s Hollywood spectacles like “Somebody Up There Likes Me” and “The Harder They Fall,” the latter of which had Humphrey Bogart as a down-on-his-luck sports writer working for a corrupt boxing promoter. Marlon Brando’s righteous dockworker wailed in “On the Waterfront” how he “coulda’ been a contender” had a fight not been thrown. And certainly, in Ali’s prime, almost everyone knew who the heavyweight champion was, and bouts were regularly featured on broadcast television. Now, boxing has largely become a niche interest. Most top-rank matches are pricey, pay-per-view events that attract the faithful who are willing to pony up to watch a clash that could be over in just a minute or two.

Let’s be frank: Anthony Joshua, the current International Boxing Federation heavyweight champion, hardly enjoys Taylor Swift-level name recognition. He could almost certainly walk down any street in the Pittsburgh region and be recognized by almost no one.

Let’s also be frank about another point: Although its fans will extol the strategizing and agility necessary to excel in the ring, any boxing match is fundamentally two opponents pummeling each other with the hope that the other guy falls over and can’t summon the will to get back up. The Australian Medical Association called for a ban on boxing last year after a 28-year-old was killed during a Sydney title fight, saying “we believe that a so-called sport where two people knock each other in the head as often as you possibly can to win a bout seems rather barbaric.”

Though scientists have yet to come up with a definitive link, some believe that the multitude of blows Ali took over a 20-year career could have led to the Parkinson’s diagnosis when he was still a relatively young man. Whether or not a link between boxing and Parkinson’s can ultimately be verified, boxing can clearly lead to head injuries that can be as devastating as anything a football player can acquire between the goalposts.

Granted, being in boxing brought Ali great fame and riches. Participating in it is something adults can choose to do. But that doesn’t mean it should be venerated.

So, by all means, honor Ali. The sport in which he participated? Maybe not.