“I’m gonna whup him,” an outraged 12-year-old Cassius Clay cried out from the steps of Louisville’s Columbia Auditorium. It was 1954, and somebody had just pinched the young Clay’s red Schwinn. A passerby, a police sergeant named Joe Martin, happened to be heading into a basement boxing gym in that auditorium, where he was a part-time trainer. He asked Clay pointedly: “Do you know how to fight? You should know how to fight if you’re going to whup somebody.”

Turned out to be a truly inspired question.