Wednesday 8 June 2016 00:32, UK
Muhammad Ali was the reason Glenn McCrory started boxing - and a chance meeting with 'The Greatest' inspired him further...
My Muhammad Ali moment came on April 30, 1984 at The Grosvenor House Hotel in London. It was my fourth fight and I was boxing Frank Robinson.
I fought Robinson again in the following fight and knocked him out in a few rounds, but the first time I was rubbish because I was so taken away that Ali was there. I got in the ring and had known nothing of it, but then I saw on the top table that Ali was the guest of honour.
He will forever be my hero and he is the reason I was in boxing in the first place. He changed my life. I adored him as a kid. To see him on the top table at one of my fights was just amazing.
I thought to myself: "This is probably going to be the best night of my life." All I wanted to do was reach out to him and let him know how much he meant to me and how much I loved him... so I did the 'Ali Shuffle' and kept winding my arm up during the bout.
I didn't fight well, but I won on points. I went up the stairs and was thinking that I had just made a mug out of myself in front of my hero. I thought: "Oh no. What have I done? What an idiot!" Then Jarvis Astaire popped his head around the corner and said: "McCrory. Fasten those boots up. Ali wants to meet you..."
Those were the greatest words a kid could hear. I ran downstairs and in my mind I was still fearful of what he was going to say, but he was just fantastic. Just The Greatest. He told me I was going to be a world champion, put his arm around my shoulder and pulled a face. He was just a lovely, lovely man.
It turned out to be a very poignant moment in my career. When I went through a really bad patch, I remembered that Ali had said I was going to be a world champion. I thought to myself: "If Ali says I'm going to be a world champion, I know I'm going to be a world champion." It meant a massive amount.
The mark of the man was that he could take time out to speak to a nobody. I was just a little kid from Stanley. It really changed my life. It was the most amazing thing.
Three years later in 1987, I was sparring with Mike Tyson and I met him again. When I'd met him the first time, he was Ali in his prime and pomp. Then I saw him those three years later and it was a high-profile place with the top people there, but he still recognised me and came over.
We were in the Town Plaza in Atlantic City. When he came over, he was shaking and Parkinson's was setting in. It was the worst I had seen him. In just a few years, I had seen him in his prime and then I had seen the disease take hold. Regardless, it takes a special calibre of person to be that big and bother with someone like me.
He wasn't perfect. He was very outspoken. He stood up for what he believed in in a radical way. He was just an amazing human being.
Ali will be remembered like Martin Luther King and Gandhi. The sort of people who really shook up the world. He was just the greatest sportsman of all time.
It's funny but Ali didn't invent the 'Ali Shuffle'. It was Jersey Joe Walcott. He took things from people and adapted. He looked at Joe Louis' jab and he looked at Walcott's movement. He took the best he could find.
It's amazing he asked to meet me that time. I've got a photo of him with his arm around my neck. It meant more to me than world titles andany amount of money. It was just the best.
I don't think he's the greatest fighter of all time - that's Sugar Ray Robinson, in my opinion. But as a sportsman, although he said it himself, Ali will always be 'The Greatest'.
