With the unsteady stroke of a pen, Muhammad Ali has earned more money in five seconds than in 21 years of "floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee."

The recent, highly-publicized signing, a $50 million deal with New York marketing firm CKX Incorporated, may have secured much of the financial future of Ali's seven children and his wife, Yolanda. Ali's name, image and likeness will be marketed exclusively for five years by CKX, which also owns the rights to Elvis Presley -- for which it paid $100 million -- and "American Idol."

Now 64 and suffering from the clearly visible and damaging effects of Parkinson's disease, which has robbed him of many of his speech and motor skills, Ali is far less able to capitalize on his fame and celebrity as lesser figures have done.

In 1967, although the cost was enormous, Ali, despite advice from concerned relatives and friends, refused to throw off his unpopular religious beliefs, political consciousness, loyalty to movements for equality and opposition to the Vietnam War. In refusing to step forward, raise his right hand and repeat the oath of induction into military service, he became an almost-overnight symbol and emotional support for thousands of resisters and millions around the globe who admired his courage.
 
But his fierce determination cost three years of ring dominance, youthful skills and millions of dollars.  
 
Three decades ago, Howard Cosell, the late boxing analyst, television and radio commentator, paid tribute to Ali's symbolic and historic roles.  "There are are many men that are affected by the times in which they live, but there are few who actually shape them."

Ali, in signing with CKX, said Timothy Povtak, an Orlando Sentinel writer, may have blazed another trail in finding a vehicle to market his star power.
 
The signing, according to Povtak, "may have marked the beginning of a new era in sports marketing for most elite athletes." Now, he said, "instead of working for a sports star -- as IMG does with Tiger Woods and Vince Carter, taking a percentage of their earnings -- burgeoning entertainment company CKX paid Ali cash for the exclusive rights to market him and his image."
 
"They essentially bought the rights to sell the rights," Daniel Migala, editor of The Migala Report, a sports marketing trade publication in Chicago, told BlackAmericaWeb.com. "It's a new way of looking at things in sports. It has taken an old concept used in other businesses and applied it to a new area."
 
In real estate terms, Migala said, "Instead of an agent getting permission to sell a house and take a small percentage of the sales price, CKX has bought the house outright and can now sell it for whatever price it wants and pocket most of the profits." 

Funds from the deal may be sufficient to provide some income for the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Kentucky. The center promotes peace, racial harmony and justice and is almost as close to the three-time world heavyweight boxing champion's heart as his wife and children.

When it opened in 2000, the $60 million center was reportedly experiencing difficiculty in raising funds. Only one boxer, former Jamaican world heavyweight champion Lenox Lewis, contributed to the center then, according to news reports.
 
If Ali, who's renowned for his generosity and goodwill, was disappointed over a lack of reciprocity by so many who used his largess and drawing power, he has never publicly expressed it.

Telephone calls to the center for comment for this article were not returned.
 
Reportedly an all-cash arrangement, the understanding between CKX and Ali, whom many boxing and sports authorities believe was the greatest athlete of his generation, means that he will receive $500,000 in the first 12 months of the five-year contract.

According to a statement released by CKX, the Manhattan-based company, headed by chairman and chief executive Robert F. X. Sillerman, will receive 80 percent of the revenue generated by a new company created by the contract, The Greatest Of All Time (GOAT). Ali will receive 20 percent and has the option to buy CKX's 80 percent share after the contract expires.

CKX, Sillerman said, "will have creative control" over GOAT. "We intend to market him in a methodical and impactful way," he said. "It is not our plan to involve him in any way personally," Sillerman added. CKX cannot not use Ali's name, image or likeness to promote tobacco or alcohol products, according to the contract.

Ali initially rejected Sillerman's advances when he proposed the deal last year. In a statement from CKX, he now says, "I am honored to be able to partner with CKX as they continue to grow. This relationship will help to guarantee that for generations to come, people of all nations will understand my beliefs and purpose."

Sillerman, in a reference to Ali's apparent concern, said, "we are so pleased that we will be working with Muhammad Ali and his wife, Lonnie, to ensure that his message continues its global reach."

That global reach was Ali's aim in 1986, when he planned the center. He had already left the ring for the last time in 1981, well beyond his prime at 39, with a 51 and 5 win-loss record. 
 
"He had to strike while the iron was hot," says Black Enterprise editor Alfred Edmonds of the Ali-CKX contract. "This is a deal which will provide a revenue stream for his heirs for generations to come."  

Edmonds said he isn't concerned that CKX might tarnish Ali's image, name and likeness by placing them on "lowbrow" products.
 
"CKX will market him well, not because they're nice people, but because they do not want to ruin the brand, any more than we would expect the firm marketing the Rolls Royce name" to destroy that asset with a strategy based on coarse, tawdry tactics.
 
Raymond Boone, Sr., editor of the Richmond Free Press, says that "we finally have a principled person, the most well-known man across the globe, getting some money." Ali's wife, Boone said, "is a highly intelligent woman who wouldn't have allowed him to sign a contract that's not to his advantage."           

In Los Angeles, where Ali lived, trained and celebrated for at least a third of his 64 years, Jacqueline Dupont Walker, executive director of the Ward Economic Development Corporation, spoke cautiously.

"I'm happy for him," she said, "I only hope the marketing company presents him as who he really is and has been. He was fearless in defending his convictions and the poor and struggling. He was not afraid to go down for the count, inside and outside the ring."

Skip Cooper, president of Los Angeles' Black Business Association, was more pragmatic than Walker.

"How much time does he have left? Not many people his age in good health are in a position to sign such a contract," Cooper told BlackAmericaWeb.com. "It was an excellent business decision."