Many people know Muhammad Ali as “the Greatest,” and this novel shows that the boxer’s charisma has always been a part of his personality. However, the illumination of his childhood and the years that he spent training—years in which he always rose again but still struggled at times—provides more of a context for what shaped the great boxer. Throughout most of the novel, he is Cassius Clay. The book narrates the moment he first begins boxing with Joe Martin and his journey from there to winning his first Golden Gloves championship in Chicago.

Patterson and Alexander use the novel in verse to portray Cassius’s inner thoughts and sense of self. Round 1 describes Cassius’s loss in his first national Golden Gloves tournament, after which he sets out his goal immediately: “’Cause Cassius is courageous, / tenacious / and one day / he’ll be / the greatest” (19). There is no doubt in Cassius’s mind of where he is going. Though the novel’s chronology is not strictly linear, beginning with this fight lays the groundwork for where Cassius plans to end up.

Outside the ring, Cassius encounters the racial tension rampant in the 1950s, and he sees boxing as a way out of this, imagining “how boxing / was gonna set me free, / set us all free” (12).