By Kalle Oakes,Staff Writer

Paul Levesque watched Muhammad Ali then and met him now.

He was a 17-year-old dabbling in amateur boxing when he sat in Central Maine Youth Center and saw Muhammad Ali defend the heavyweight championship with a first-round knockout of Sonny Liston.

Thirty-seven years later, Levesque found himself on a flight from Atlanta to Las Vegas with his wife, Ida, when a tall, dapper figure floated like a butterfly through the first-class curtain and stung the travelers like a bee with his incomparable sense of humor.

“Muhammad Ali walked through the divider and just got the people laughing with nothing more than a lot of hand motions and facial expressions,” Levesque said. “That’s Muhammad Ali. I tell everybody now that he may be physically handicapped, but there’s nothing mentally wrong with that man at all.”

Parkinson’s disease has robbed Ali of most of his speech and some of his mobility and stamina, but he remains as witty and approachable as he was during his brief visit to Lewiston-Auburn as a brash, 23-year-old champion.

After the in-flight entertainer returned to his seat, Levesque vowed to his wife that he wouldn’t get off the plane until he spoke with Ali.

Levesque said nobody was alarmed when he crossed through the curtain in pursuit of an autograph, and that Ali’s eyes lit up when he mentioned his hometown.

That led to what Levesque recalls as a 20-minute conversation about the Liston fight.

“I asked him if he ever really expected to knock out Liston that early,” Levesque said. “He kind of hesitated, but then he held up three fingers, as if to say he thought he’d take him out in the third round.”

Ali told Levesque he was daring the challenger to get up in Neil Leifer’s famous photo of the knockout.

“He was standing there, I think, not in an arrogant way, but as if to tell the world, I just dominated Sonny Liston,” Levesque said.

Levesque learned that Ali was flying to Las Vegas that week in 2002 to watch his daughter, Laila, in a women’s bout.

He also met Ali’s wife, who gently apologized that her husband had difficulty communicating. Ali looked at Levesque and shook his head repeatedly.

“He’s as sharp mentally as he was that night in 1965,” said Levesque. “It was an honor to meet him. It’s something I will cherish forever.”