Taking a swing at The Greatest

Heady stuff, and the initial reaction is to agree with those who claim that Kram is after making a fast buck by the fashionable expedient of dismantling a celebrity's image.

Yet Kram is no newcomer to boxing. For 11 years, from the late Sixties to the mid-Seventies, he was the highly respected boxing correspondent with Sports Illustrated magazine, who made prose dance on paper just as Ali danced on canvas.

But if Ali's choice of company was sometimes open to question, so was Kram's when he left Sports Illustrated under a cloud in 1977 following allegations, never conclusively proven, that he accepted gifts, and more, from controversial promoter Don King.

Nearly a quarter of a century on, Kram's coverage of the historic Ali-Frazier trilogy, in particular the climactic "Thrilla in Manila", form the basis for his book. But there is emphasis, too, on the boxers' lives prior to those fearsome duels and afterwards in retirement. Kram offers a personal edge to Ali's story that is sharpened by his own relationship with the boxer, which was fostered in gyms, restaurants, during car rides and at fight arenas. In particular, he takes aim at other acclaimed writers such as Pulitzer Prize winner Norman Mailer who settled upon Ali "like a mollusk".

Kram maintains: "What was laughable, if you knew anything about Ali at all, was that the literati was certain that he was a serious voice, that he knew what he was doing; he didn't have a clue. Current hagiographers have tied themselves in knots trying to elevate Ali into a heroic, defiant catalyst of the anti-war movement, a beacon of black independence. The sad truth is that Ali was played like a harp by the Muslims."

One of those "hagiographers" is Thomas Hauser, the Pulitzer Prize nominee who penned Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times which is arguably the best book on this particular subject. Hauser counters the principal line expounded by Ghosts of Manila. "Muhammad Ali might not have meant much to Mark Kram," he says, "but he meant a great deal to a lot of people. He made an enormous difference."

He made a difference to people such as famed baseball slugger Reggie Jackson.

Hauser recalls how Jackson once urged him: "Think about it! Do you understand what it did for black Americans to know the most physically gifted, possibly the most handsome and one of the most charismatic men in the world was black?

"At times, I was ashamed of my colour and Ali made me proud. The entire experience of being black changed for millions of people because of Ali."

One wonders if Kram should have consulted some of those millions. Had he done so, perhaps those ghosts would have remained undisturbed.