Sparring with Ali: Atlanta boxers remember ‘The Greatest’

Gant, former owner of The Art of Boxing training gym in Midtown, was a younger man then, working with Ali’s trainer Angelo Dundee at his Deer Lake gym near Reading, Pa., and occasionally sparring with The Greatest.

“He was bigger than life, very sociable, very playful,” said Gant, 67, who works training students at Tri-Cities High School.

“I copied his style,” said Gant. “Hit, and don’t get hit.”

Gant was among the Atlanta boxers and former boxers reminiscing about the late Muhammad Ali this week and planning to attend Ali’s funeral Friday in Louisville, Ky. “I was jogging in Stone Mountain today,” said Gant Monday, “and I thought, if I don’t go (to the funeral), I won’t forgive myself.”

Xavier Biggs, 59, who co-owns the Decatur Boxing Club, said Ali “was just was way bigger than boxing. Boxing was just his platform for him to do everything he was destined to do. He was one of our greatest warriors and our greatest messengers.”

Biggs, a Philadelphia native, also remembers watching Ali train in Deer Lake, and said when Ali hit the heavy bag “it sounded like pistol shots going off.”

Said Biggs, “he was such a big beautiful man; he just had a presence that was radiant.” Biggs’ father, who loved boxing, and took his sons to the fights in Philadelphia. The father was not an immediate fan of Ali. “At first he didn’t like him, because he said he talked too much. Then he fell in love with him, more than any other fighter.”

Gant had a boxing career that included a place on the undercard during an Ali fight at the Baltimore Civic Center and a Landover, Md., bout with Sugar Ray Leonard in 1979.

When Gant ran into Ali at the Denver airport in the early ’80s, he made a point of telling Ali how much he had changed his life. Gant moved to Atlanta in 1988, and was in the Olympic stadium in 1996 when Ali lit the torch during the Opening Ceremonies of the Atlanta Games. “I was so shocked and surprised and happy, it brings tears to my eyes even now.”