Boxing great Muhammad Ali, who died late Friday night, had several ties to the NFL. Among the biggest:
THE PLAYER WHO GOT IN THE RING WITH ALI
This story is almost as crazy as the late Lyle Alzado’s reputation on the football field.
Alzado, a defensive end for the Denver Broncos who had quite the reputation as a wild man on the field, was coming off back-to-back Pro Bowls seasons and in a contract dispute with the Broncos.
"Lyle Pedersen called me and said, ‘Would you like to fight Muhammad Ali?” said Alzado, according to a United Press International report leading up to the fight. "I thought it was a joke. But it wasn’t. We’re going to fight."
And they did. On July 14, 1979, at Mile High Stadium in Denver. An eight-round scheduled exhibition match.
Ali was 37 and retired. Alzado was 30 and, well, a football player who was days away from being scheduled to report to Broncos’ training camp.
It was easy to see Ali did not train for the fight. It wasn’t pretty. But Alzado hung in there under a blistering mid-day sun and even received some praise from Ali after the fight.
“For a non-fighter he’s great,” was how an Associated Press story quoted Ali. “He’s got the potential to be a world champion in the next two years if he continues to improve. For a man to come into my league and almost master me was a surprise.”
Alzado might have taken Ali a bit too seriously. He reported to training camp a few days after the fight, but left soon after saying he was going to pursue a boxing career.
The Broncos traded him to the Cleveland Browns. Alzado played three seasons for the Browns before going to play for the Raiders, where was part of a Super Bowl championship team.
Alzado died in 1992. He was 43.
THE MAN WHO ALMOST FOUGHT ALI
Boxing trainer Bob Arum told si.com of the time Cleveland Browns legend Jim Brown, after retiring from the NFL in 1965, wanted to get in the ring with Ali.
"So I went to talk to Ali," Arum told si.com. "He says, 'Jim wants to do what? Bring him here.' So I took him to Hyde Park in London, where Ali used to run. Ali said, 'Jimmy, here's what we're going to do: You hit me as hard as you can.' So Brown starts swinging and swinging, and he can't hit him. He's swinging wildly and not even coming close. This goes on for, like, 30 seconds.
"Then Ali hits him with this quick one-two to his face. Jimmy just stops and says, 'OK, I get the point.' "
ALI AND THE 2012 RAVENS
Ravens coach John Harbaugh had his father Jack tell the team the story of the Ali-Ernie Terrell fight in 1967.
Terrell referred to Ali as “Cassius Clay” before the fight. As Ali was pounding on Terrell during the fight, he kept taunting him, yelling, “What’s my name?”
As Jack Harbaugh was telling the story, a surprise guest showed up at Ravens camp.
"My dad was in the middle of telling the story when Muhammad and Lonnie drove up in a golf cart, and the players went crazy, ‘The champ! It’s the champ!’” John Harbaugh said during Super Bowl Week that season “We had a chance to get pictures. The really neat thing about Muhammad Ali is that he spent a lot of time with the kids. We had a lot of players' kids there and coaches’ kids were there and he spent a lot of time with them.”
The Ravens were in awe.
“When I saw him, I was just shocked,” Ravens fullback Vonta Leach told The New York Times. “Just to be able to shake his hand was awesome. Just spending a lot of his time with us, that was really special.”
The Ravens, by the way, went on to win the Super Bowl that season.
