Cassius Clay did not need a publicist.
He was his own best endorser.
Calling himself "The Greatest" and "The Prettiest" of all time, he liked to be in front of camera.
Even on his first televised amateur bout when he was around 15, he knocked on his neighbors' doors to make sure people got to watch him perform as a boxer.
And the interesting part about Clay was that he lived up to his own hype.
Boxing night after boxing night, he did his job almost always with exclamation marks, and fans conceded that he was good as advertised.
Born To Be A Star After having been crowned as the Light Heavyweight champion in the 1960 Rome Olympics, Clay would broke himself into the limelight as he outclassed his opponents in the professional ranks.
He splattered media interviews with rhymes, like "They all fall / In the round I call.
" By 1963, big names like Archie Moore, Henry Cooper and the upcoming Billy Daniels had been caught in a whirlwind that Clay was.
At 24 his numbers were already quite impressive: 19 straight wins, 16 of them by knockout, along with probably thousands of clowning antics before the media.
And yet, as he faced Sonny Liston for the heavyweight crown on February 25, 1964, boxing fans still hardly saw him as a serious contender.
And Liston had a lot to do with it.
Like Mike Tyson who would succeed him a couple of decades later, Liston evoked fear in his opponents that they looked defeated even before a fight started.
On two occasions Liston had knocked out Floyd Patterson, from whom wrested his title, in the first round.
But Clay would have none of Liston's intimidating credentials.
Instead, he vowed to finish Liston inside 7 rounds.
And he delivered.
In an instant, he converted thousands of unbelievers.
Eyes followed him wherever he went.
He was, by now, a star.
Celebrity With A Cause? It turned out his playful mien was cover for a serious racial and political advocacy that raged at the core of his being.
On the night he won the heavyweight title, he announced his conversion to Islam.
He called himself a Black Muslim, and answered back only when called by his new name-Muhammad Ali.
In time he would defy America.
He slammed the American-Vietnam war in the 60s and refused, on religious grounds, to be enlisted for military service in that war.
Times were tough for his otherwise booming boxing career.
His social beliefs were getting in the way of his rise in stock as a celebrity, like humps on the road to greatness.
That was how his fans saw it.
On the other hand, fame helped get his message across.
This was how Ali saw it.
In any case, he lost his heavyweight crown in 1967 due to the political conflicts he created.
It took him three years to navigate back from virtual marginalization to the boxing mainstream.
On March 8, 1971, he faced a future arch-rival in Smoking Joe Frazier in a bout dubbed as "Battle of Champions" at the Madison Square Garden, New York, USA.
Also an Olympic Gold medalist and so far unbeaten as a professional fighter like himself, Frazier on fight night bobbed and weaved, braving a continuous assault of jabs and straights from Ali, all in the hope of sending one left hook of his own to the chin of the other guy.
One did find the addressee towards the middle of the 11th round.
Ali crashed backwards against the ropes before finally hitting the canvass, like a chopper that lost three of its four blades.
Frazier won by decision.
Three years later Ali and Frazier would clash again (1974), and again (1975), with Ali coming out victorious on both occasions.
Ali recaptured his crown when he dethroned George Foreman on October 30, 1974 in Kinshasha, Zaire (now Congo).
After seeing his defeat to Frazier, who had KOd 22 of his 26 victims at the time they first met, fight fans were back at not taking Ali too seriously.
Apparently for good reasons.
Foreman had, 2 years earlier, dethroned Frazier with a single blow to the head in the second round of their championship bout.
He made short work of most other guys too.
Coming to the Ali fight, Foreman had an unblemished record of 40 wins, 36 of which inside the distance.
And yet, as in the Liston fight, Ali silenced the doubters.
He used the ropes to cushion the impact of Foreman's thunderous gloves.
It was "rope a dope," another grain of science brought to boxing by Ali, said the boxing scholars.
Sensing the dissipation of aerated blood in Foreman's muscles, Ali went for the kill in the 8th round.
Lefts and rights from all directions landed on Foreman's face.
Foreman fell; his feet almost touching the roof of the boxing venue as his back settled on the floor of ring.
He appeared relieved, nevertheless, when the referee counted him out to end the fight.
Ali reigned for 4 more years before a 12-round decision loss to the upset-minded Leon Spinks dislodged him from his perch.
Although a former Olympic champion himself like his predecessors, boxing experts did not give Spinks much of a chance against the two-time undisputed heavyweight champion, owing largely to his relative inexperience.
He fought a total of only 7 times (6 wins and one draw) before he faced Ali.
Ali recaptured his title (WBA side only; the WBC stripped Spinks of his title when he opted to fight Ali instead of Ken Norton, its top challenger) for the third time when he beat Spinks in their return bout on September 15, 1978 (7 months after their first fight).
Ali retired after the second Spinks fight, only to return 2 years later.
He got clobbered in succession before finally retiring for good, first by Larry Holmes, then by Trevor Berbick.
Now 67, he lives a modest life in Berrien Springs, Michigan, USA, with his family.