Status quo?_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Status quo?

- Barack’s border battle: President Obama must win immigration reform, NYDailyNews.com, April 10, 2009.

2. There was no way to tell what Muhammad Ali would become when Walter Beach first met him at the Fifth Street Gym in Miami over four decades ago. Beach was playing for the Cleveland Browns and they happened to be in Miami. He stopped by the gym to see Ali work out.

“He was training for a fight against Sonny Liston. He was calling Liston “The Bear” and he was wearing this denim jacket that had the words “Bear Hunting” on the back,” Beach said.

There was no way to tell that the boastful young man, who changed his name from Cassius Clay shortly after that fight with Liston, would become a revolutionary figure, a lightning rod who empowered and awakened the consciousness of an entire generation of African-American athletes.

By the time Beach saw Ali three years later he knew exactly what Ali had become. Beach was a member of a group of black athletes who gathered in Cleveland in the summer of 1967 to support Ali, who had been banned from boxing because of his refusal as a conscientious objector to be drafted into the Army to fight in the Vietnam War.

“I think more than anything else he is defined by courage,” Beach said. “He had the courage to resist abandoning his principles and not succumbing to the pressure of other aspects of society and culture. He had a strong determination on how he was going to live as a moral individual with integrity and honor.”