.
The answers depend on whose opinion you value. There were some who recognized ALI as a potential great long before he took the name "ALI".
.
Young Cassius Clay once sparred with then heavyweight champ Ingamar Johansson and embarrassed him to such a degree that the session was stopped. When Clay stated that he felt he could take the champ and the top two contenders, Liston and Patterson, he was asked to leave the gym.
.
Clay had fewer than 10 fights on his pro resume and it just wasn't acceptable for such a fighter to speak of the champ in such a way. However, just because it's not "acceptable" doesn't mean it doesn't hold some merit. That's part of the problem with society, especially then, certain people can say what they want and others couldn't.
.
Today, if you find anyone who even hints that Johansson would even be a match for ALI, you probably should get as far away from that person as possible. In fact, if you found any such person even one year after this sparring session took place, you probably should venture in the opposite direction.
.
There were those in boxing who recognized Clay's greatness even then. You would hear a lot of opinions against him because he was a bit "mouthy" and later changed his name to ALI, something that was frowned upon at the time. However, ALI has proven himself thousands of times over since then.
.
His greatness was widely recognized soon after he turned pro and he never stopped proving it.
Insiders considered him great when he won the national golden gloves,and then the Olympics.
Many did not like his public comments or actions but that does not mean they did not recognize his ability.
His race was not as much a factor as you might believe, boxing has always been ahead of the general public when it comes to equality.
His public persona made him the person people wanted to see lose a fight, it was not his race.
If race played that much in this image then why did his opponents who were also black become the fan favorite to beat Ali?
Before he was Muhammad Ali. When he was Cassius Clay he was great. He beat Sonny Liston in 1964 to gain the world heavyweight title. He was 22 at the time. And he converted to Islam after winning that title. There's always questions about fights, whether there were controversial wins. All I can say is he was a helluva boxer, whatever the case was, he was remarkable. And I didn't even like him, he was too full of himself, the big ego, but boy could he fight when he wasn't prancing around the ring playing his rope-a-dope. He could hit. The majority of wins by knockout.
And yes, when he converted to Islam, there was a lot of criticism, and then he refused to comply with the draft, became a conscientious objector because of his religion. That angered a hell of a lot of people. And racism, not so much because of his color, but his conversion to Islam. He made a lot of people angry on so many fronts, but he could still fight.
***EDIT: To answer your comment about a Black man having a harder time, well, forgive me if I'm laughing my head off. Ali never had a hard time with tooting his horn like the angel Gabriel announcing the second coming. As far as greatness goes, Ali had no difficulty whatsoever touting himself as the greatest. No hard time for him at all. He was the biggest ego the world had ever seen, and one great big PR event all by himself.
I mean no disrespect to your comment, just have to laugh because if you'd ever seen the man in action in front of a camera you wouldn't have asked that. If you haven't seen any of the videos of his press appearances, have a look at youtube, just search for "Ali I am the greatest" and you'll find dozens of videos. Here's two to look at. He would never have been accused of being a humble man, he was larger than life by 10.
Muhammad Ali ''shook up the world'' after beating Liston and with a couple of title defenses he was then considered an all time great. I remember seeing a clip of his last fight before his first retirement against Zora Folley; the announcer considered Ali a ''great great fighter''.
Muhammad Ali was later considered ''possibly the greatest'' after his upset win over George Foreman. Watch the post fight press conference in that fight.
common sense tells us that racism would of always played a part in fueling hatred towards such a successful black man in the 60's/70's but of course Ali's political/religious stance added to that hatred.i feel that his reasons were completely justified for not going to war but i also think that some of his religious views were messed up.then on top of that he had a huge ego that could sometimes come across as annoying and arrogant but for the most part i'v always felt it was mostly tongue in cheek and big act to entertain and attract the masses.obviously racist people and people who were against his political/religious stance would of found it easier to write his persona off as completely arrogant because it suited them and their views of him.
regarding what @Doc said as i mentioned i too think that many of Ali's religious views were unjustifiable and outright racist fulled by hatred.over time i have disillusioned with Ali in that sense.many of those views he held were just plain wrong.i think he just got too caught up in his religion.he also bought into his own hype and was down on many people.i think what he did with frazier was the work of a bully.still i have always maintained that Ali was still a good man deep down and that his pro's always outweighed his cons
ali was an olympic gold medal winner so he was always a class boxer .Ali said some quite terrible racist thing himself and wanted blacks and whites to be separated and Ali believed that white people were alien devils that came to earth in a space ship and that whites weren't human . so maybe you should rethink some of the question .
I've heard a lot of Americans weren't keen on him because of his politics and their racism.
Some people say some of his fights were fixed or at least he was unfairly favoured over his opponent did they think this at the time?
