When I was put to the challenge of painting this icon, initially it was not his face and fights that came to mind but rather his lyricism. I started to hear all the clever rhymes, intelligent quotes, wild antics, and laughter that came out of his mouth…

I had to portray the barrage of audio bytes bouncing around in my head as part of the visual message. To capture this, each of the vacillating orange/yellow lines behind him represents a collage of his quotables. Above these lines is one sound byte in quotations that resonates the most. The quote reads “I am the greatest” in morse code. His words in some cases were stronger than his punches and this single quote has been the striking blow that no one has yet to defend against.