Drama in the Bahamas: Muhammad Ali's Last Fight

On December 11, 1981, Muhammad Ali slumped on a chair in the cramped, windowless locker room of a municipal baseball field outside Nassau. A phalanx of sportswriters had pushed and shoved their way into this tiny, breeze-blocked space. In this most unlikely of settings, they had come to record the last moments of the most storied of all boxing careers. They had come to intrude upon the grief.

“It’s over,” mumbled Ali. “It’s over.”

The show that had entertained and wowed from Zaire to Dublin, ...