Newfound images document the time when Muhammad Ali, 65 this week, began to transform sports and popular culture

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	The 21-year-old Clay had his hands full against Jones (black trunks) in the 1963 bout 11 months before his title shot with Liston. Neil Leifer/SI

By Karl Taro Greenfeld

Muhammad Ali, who turned 65 on Wednesday, is a man of superlatives. He is the greatest, vainest, loudest, most beloved (after having been the most reviled) and most admired athlete in history. The most quoted, photographed, written about and discussed. The most inspiring.

So it is a surprise to come upon previously unpublished photos of the man taken at the moments when those adjectives began to be uttered, first by him, of course, and then by the rest of us. It is hard now to separate Muhammad Ali from the mythology that surrounds him. As he has been reduced by Parkinson's disease to a dignified epigone of the beautiful athlete he once was, we resort to the recollections -- the images, the stories, the voice -- that have become ingrained in our consciousness. Episodes of his life are part of our national saga, up there with George Washington at Valley Forge and Elvis Presley walking into Sun Records, the legend obscuring the man. Yet Muhammad Ali is that rarest of heroes, a man who, as you remove the gauzy layers of praise, the haze of hagiography, reinforces your best notions of him.

These photos of the boxer then known as Cassius Clay, from negatives lost for 40 years, present a few of those crucible moments from startling new angles and with revealing humanity. The photographer, Neil Leifer, is best known for capturing iconic images later in the heavyweight's career -- the scowling champ standing over the sprawled Sonny Liston in their second fight and, with arms triumphantly raised, walking away from a floored Cleveland Williams at the Astrodome. Leifer may have added to that canon with this collection of shots from Clay's 10-round win over Doug Jones in 1963 and the weigh-in before his title shot against Liston the next year. Clay's victory over Jones in a disputed decision reinforced the notion that going into the first Liston fight the impudent Louisville Lip had no chance.

It was in the maelstrom around the first Liston fight, starting with the weigh-in, that Clay began his transformation of sports and popular culture. The weigh-in for heavyweights was generally a pointless affair, and the photographers and writers gathered in the freight area of the Miami Beach Convention Center on the morning of Feb. 24, 1964, anticipated nothing more than the usual Joe Louis sort of posed square-off. But what Clay did caught even his cornermen by surprise. As he emerged from the dressing room, arms linked with Bundini Brown and Sugar Ray Robinson, accompanied by trainer Angelo Dundee, Clay danced through the crowd chanting, "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. Rumble, young man, rumble." He seemed so manic that several reporters speculated he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Clay taunted Liston, calling him a "big, ugly bear," and then predicted that Liston would go down in "eight, to prove I'm great."