Welcome back to the Edge of Sports podcast. I'm Dave Ziron. This is our special week of coverage and remembrance of the champ, the king of the world, Muhammad Ali.

A fight for the prestige, not for me, but to uplift my little brothers who are sleeping on concrete floors today in America.

Black people who are living on welfare, black people who can't eat, black people who don't know

no knowledge of themselves, black people who don't have no future.

I want to win my title and walk down the alleys, set on the garbage camp with the wineheads.

I want to walk down the street with the dope addicts, talk to the prostitutes, so I can help a lot of people.

Today on the Edge of Sports podcast, we will be talking to Bob Lipsight, the legendary New York Times reporter who covered Muhammad Ali back in 1964 when he was just Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. preparing for his fight against Sunny Liston in Miami.

The reason I had been sent to cover that first Liston fight was the Times felt that, as did

most everybody else, that he'd be knocked out in the first round.

They didn't want to waste the time of a real reporter.

So send a kid from that rewrite.

That was me.

We will also talk to Bob Lipside about his remembrances of the champ over the course of a 50-plus-year

relationship. And later in the show, we are going to hear from Kavitha Davidson, sports writer and

social commentator about her thoughts and remembrances of Muhammad Ali, including a discussion

of Parkinson's and CTE. But let's get started with the man who wrote the definitive obituary of Muhammad Ali in the New York Times,

and truthfully he was the only choice to write it, Bob Lipsight.

You've been associated with Muhammad Ali.

I was thinking about this for 55 years almost.

I mean, what of the days since his passing been like for you? You know,

what's interesting, Dave? I've gotten hundreds of emails since the Obed ran, and I would say

the overwhelming number of them are kind of offering consolation for my grieving process

...