The Heart of a Champion (part 1)

Throughout the years, society has been so intrigued by what a champion truly is. From Sports Figures to Average Joe’s; we all love a champion.  If you’ve ever watched a Super Bowl or any sort of Championship game featuring an assortment of opponents, there’s always that one correspondent that gets down to the field to ask that one question to the winner(s) of the game – “SO HOW’D YOU DO IT?” They want to know what it took to be a champion.

Being a champion takes a lot of hard work & dedication.  Even the mention of that word “CHAMPION” shares many memories within history of men & women who have taken the long road to keep the Heart of a Champion continuing to echo through the speeches of today.  Men like Bill Russell of the Boston Celtics who won 11 NBA Championships in his 13-year career. Joe Montana, who many consider to be the greatest football Quarterback of all-time, who won 4 Super Bowl Championships. Lance Armstrong, who won the Tour De France a record-breaking seven consecutive years (which by-the-way covers over 2,200 miles of France).

And of course, how could we not mention Babe Ruth who pretty much defined a whole sport by which more than just winning 4 World Series.  Babe Ruth was one of the first 5 men to be inducted into Baseball’s Hall of Fame and is the whole reason why the Yankee pinstripes go vertical,

rather than horizontal.  Legend has it that Babe Ruth, being a bigger than average man, didn’t like the way the Yankees pinstripe uniform’s went horizontal.  If the Yankees were going to accept his trade they needed to make the pinstripes go vertical so it didn’t make him look “fat.”

But the man they call “The Greatest of All-Time” was made in the sport of boxing – Muhammad Ali.  Ali defeated every top heavyweight in his era, which has been called the golden age of heavyweight boxing.  Well known for his fighting style, which he described as “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee”, Ali was involved in several historic boxing matches. Notable among these are three with rival Joe Frazier and one with George Foreman, whom he beat by knockout to win the world heavyweight title for the second time. He suffered only five losses (four decisions and one TKO by retirement from the bout) with no draws in his career, while amassing 56 wins (37 knockouts and 19 decisions).  In all those matches, he was only knocked down 4 times out of 61 fights……AMAZING!  It’s not how you get knocked down, it’s how you get back up.

You know what else is amazing, Ali won a gold medal in the light heavyweight division at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome.  Just like a true champion from the streets of Hayward, CA – Andre Ward.  He also won a gold medal in light heavyweight division at the 2004 Summer Olympics.  It’s not so much where you’re from, as it is what you have. And what we have here is the “Heart of a Champion.”