Neil Leifer // Homage to Ali // Ali Invents the Double-Clutch Shuffle, 1966

Ali Invents the Double-Clutch Shuffle, LIFE magazine studio, December 1966: Muhammad Ali, poised for battle on the eve of his title defense against Ernie Terrell, demonstrates the double-clutch shuffle in a multiple exposure sequence engineered by Neil Leifer. When the champ first announced this new move in his fighting arsenal on the Tonight Show some months earlier, he whispered to Johnny Carson, ‘I’ve got a secret weapon. I'm going to call it the double-clutch shuffle.’ “It was as though he wasn’t on camera with an audience watching,” says Leifer. The dance became so essential to his repertoire it would go on to be called the Ali Shuffle.

Native New Yorker Neil Leifer began photographing sports events as a teenager. Over 160 of his pictures have appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated and over 40 of his photographs have graced the cover of Time. He has published 17 books, and was one of two principal photographers in TASCHEN’s tribute to Muhammad Ali, GOAT—Greatest Of All Time and the illustrated edition of Norman Mailer’s The Fight.