Following in the footsteps

The Great British-Pakistani-Muslim Hope

Pat Jordan in the Times magazine: Amir Khan is a slender 19-year-old with smooth skin the color of café con leche. His handshake is weak, his long, delicate fingers as easily crushed, it seems, as the stem of a flower. He began boxing when he was 8, in the tough old mill town of Bolton, in northern England. He is a British citizen of Pakistani descent and a practicing Muslim. At 11, he was a boxing prodigy. By his teens, he was the best young amateur boxer in the United Kingdom. In 2003, when Khan was 16, he won a gold medal at the Junior Olympics, which were held in the United States. One opponent at the event told him that if he fought at the Olympics the next year in Athens, he would "shock the world."

So, Khan says: "I went home and looked at the rules. You had to be 18 to compete in the Olympics." He petitioned the British Amateur Boxing Association to make an exception, but the A.B.A. refused. Khan threatened to fight for Pakistan. The A.B.A. relented, and that summer Khan was named the sole member of the British boxing team. "It would have been an embarrassment to have no boxer on the British team," he says.

Khan advanced to the gold-medal bout by, as the press variously put it, "outclassing," "demoralizing" and "hammering" his first four opponents. His graceful style elicited comparisons with Sugar Ray Leonard and Muhammad Ali. Khan said that his goal was to show British Asian youths that they could achieve whatever they wanted. A British paper claimed Khan was "fighting for all of us" — for white Brits and their countrymen in the immigrant communities.

In the final, Khan faced Mario Kindelan, a 33-year-old three-time world champion from Cuba, who was considered the best fighter in the world, pro or amateur, in the 132-pound weight class. Kindelan had fought hundreds of senior amateur bouts, Khan a mere handful.

Millions of viewers in the U.K. watched on TV as Kindelan outpointed Khan 30-22 for the gold medal. Afterward, the 17-year-old Khan was the toast of Britain, besieged by TV and print media, lawyers, promoters and sponsors who asked him what kind of after-shave he used. And he was the subject of a national debate: should he turn pro and become rich now, or should he remain an amateur until the 2008 Olympics and seek glory for the U.K.?

The debate was effectively settled in May 2005, when Khan met Kindelan in Bolton for an amateur rematch. "The kid took the Cuban to school," Frank Warren, a boxing promoter known as "the Don King of British Boxing," told me. After the fight, Khan, with no amateurs left to challenge him, turned pro and signed with Warren's Sports Network. Warren, in his 50's, had a plan to make Khan a world champion and a millionaire by his 21st birthday.

People like Khan are becoming more and more commonplace. Michelle Kwan, Tiger Woods, Michelle Wie, Apolo Anton Ohno.... Like all of them, Khan seems like a great person, someone with good parents who gets it and is playing the game on his terms. Regardless of what others want him to do.

It's interesting that whites who still think of anyone non-white as somehow foreign have such a sense of entitlement, even ownership, when it comes to non-white athletes. It's almost like they feel like they're the arbiter of whether that athlete's behavior is acceptable or not.

The infamous example of this, of course, is Muhammad Ali. Whom some whites still refer to as Cassius Clay (like Yusuf Islam will always be Cat Stevens to some). I'm not sure people appreciate how important Ali was and is... he was the first athlete to truly transcend sports, not because of what others made of him (like Jackie Robinson) but because of what he forced others to make of him. His independence didn't stem from overwhelming wealth or ability; it was from pure force of ideas.

I'm not sure any athlete anywhere has ever done what he did--in addition to dominating his sport, he became one of the most influential political figures of his time. Because he was an American, maybe billions in the 3rd World knew of his stance against the Vietnam war and racism and in a very real way he became their spokesman at the tables of power.

Khan has to stand up for a few million Muslims in an island nation of 60 million, a second-tier player on the world stage whose whites are still struggling to come to terms with all the non-whites who have come 'home' to the mother country. It's a tough task, but it's not quite like being black in 1950s America--to be frank, the rest of the world isn't looking to the UK for leadership on anything anymore so the impact of how Khan ultimately plays will be mainly felt by the British.

Ali, on the other hand, shook the world.

Photo of Amir Khan by unidentified photographer via BBC website.

Photo of Muhammad Ali knocking out Sonny Liston in 1965 by Neil Leifer via Sports Illustrated's Tribute to Muhammad Ali gallery.