AS I look forward to celebrate my 70th birthday in five weeks time, March 2, permit me to lionise six sports icons for whom my adulation borders on hero worshipping. My first hero was Teslim “Thunder” Balogun, who in my personal opinion, was the greatest footballer Nigeria have ever produced, having been watching Nigerian football from the 1950s up till today.

Next was the Lagos school boy table tennis prodigy, popularly called M.B. (Mudashiru Bamidele) Alagbala, whose supremacy in the ping pong game held sway in West Africa for several years. In the 1960s another prodigy, Pele emerged from the football crazy Brazil and grabbed world wide adoration as a footballer.

About the same era, Muhammed Ali stormed the boxing ring, dubbed himself THE GREATEST, and up till now nobody can contest that claim, and probably no one till the end of time.

In the 1980s, Diego Maradona of Argentina laid a solid claim that made FIFA to rank him along Pele, and he also became my hero, and in the 2000s Lionel Messi also from Argentina has now become unarguably the most gifted footballer that nature may find difficult to duplicate.

But out of all these six heroes, Muhammed Ali stands out. He has been influential inside the ring as he has contributed to the emancipation of the black in the United States of America.

Ali used boxing to fight discrimination in the USA, his religious and political rhetorics to hasten the end of Vietnam War, and his personal razzmatazz, to make boxing, indeed sports, very popular all over the world. The legend turned 70 last Tuesday and here’s wishing him many more years on earth.

Sometimes I feel emotional when talking or writing about Muhammed Ali. Even before he became popular, I had been following his boxing exploits after winning the Olympic gold for USA at the Rome Olympic Games in 1960. From the boxing magazines which cost me a fortune in those days, I had read how he became an amateur boxer after his bicycle was stolen.

I had read how ten American millionaires formed a consortium to manage his professional boxing career and by the time he challenged boxing bad boy Sonny Liston, I was the only one among my Lagos peers who believed that the then Cassius Marcello Clay had a ghost of chance against much dreaded Liston.  The rest is history.

How can I forget the early morning trip I made to the Piccadily Hotel, London in 1965 just to get Muhammed Ali’s autograph?

He scribbled MUHAMMED ALI, WOOD CHAMPION and when I got to school and showed my class mates, I became an instant celebrity for meeting Muhammed Ali.

Several years later. when Ali toured Nigeria, the day I interviewed him for WNTV Ibadan, marked the highest point of my professional career.

After the trinity with Joe Frazier, and his spectacular Rumble in the Jungle with George Foreman, Ali should not have come out of retirement to attempt to wrest the title from his former sparing partner, Larry Holmes, who inflicted on Ali, the harshest beating of his life in 1979.

For every trunk-like punch, Ali received from Holmes, Ali’s fans all over the world felt the hammer.

The last time I saw Muhammed Ali in flesh was at the closing ceremony of the boxing tournament of the All Africa Games in Cairo in 1991. Battling against Parkinson Disease, Ali was huddled into the state box and I didn’t know when tears began to drop from my eyes.

Similar feelings overcame me when at the 1996 Atlanta Games, Ali was made to undergo the strains of lighting the Torch.

Some said it underlined the undying spirit, courage and strength of Muhammed Ali, the GREATEST. Happy birthday, my GREATEST Hero.