Photograph: Neil Leifer/Sports Illustrated/Getty Images

I don’t have anything to say about Muhammad Ali.

The only thing I can say is that he was part of the collective consciousness. Even when I am not a boxing fan, even when I was born after he retired from boxing, I knew who he was.

He loomed large in the social and cultural fabric. He became an icon. He became someone to remembered because of what he said.

Because his words were power.

“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee”.

“Impossible is Nothing”.

So powerful that decades later, his “Rumble in the Jungle” speech still has the power to thrill, to inspire, to fear.

Muhammad Ali – a man of words that sting.