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Muhammad Ali --The Greatest Has Passed (M.E.T.)

aREDSKIN

By aREDSKIN
in The Tailgate

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Spaceman Spiff

Spaceman Spiff

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You know, that fight always seemed like one where the story didn't match the facts. The story is Foreman rocked Ali, and Ali went to the rope-a-dope, took a pounding for 7 rounds, and then finally knocked out the exhausted and psyched out Foreman.

 

In watching that, it never really seemed to me that Foreman was remotely hurting Ali on the ropes. And he seemed like Ali would come off two or three times a round to dance to and hurt Foreman.

 

The part about Foreman being exhausted and psyched out is clearly true, but it seemed to happen a lot earlier than in the legend...and Ali was getting in big shots all fight.

 

 

 

I was always under the impression that during Ali's rope-a-dope that he covered up so well that nothing really hurt him.  Also, he deflected a lot of bad shots by leaning back over the ropes or adjusting his body so the punches were just glancing blows instead of flush shots.  

 

You are right, the Thrilla in Manilla is pretty damn brutal.

Damn, is that Cuba Gooding, Jr. sitting in the barber's chair!?!

 

Haha yes.  

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Barney B

Barney B

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But if you know it's Ali/Liston, you know that this is where Ali had started to solidify his legacy as Ali, not Cassius Clay.  All the while leading up to the fight Liston wouldn't use his new name and Ali made him pay for it.  

 

 

 

I think you're thinking of Ernie Terrell here. Ali hadn't changed his name yet when he fought Liston, but Floyd Patterson, Terrell, and Oscar Bonavena all angered Ali by calling him Clay. Before the Terrell fight, Ali said that he intended to torture Terrell in the ring, and that's pretty much what he did.

 

The story leading up to the Liston fight, including the Casino Incident, is pretty good reading, though. People who were present at the weigh-in said that Ali seemed terrified of Liston (as any sane person would be), and Ali admitted that "That big ugly bear scared me bad".

 

I guess the lesson to be learned was Never Anger Ali, and especially, Never Scare Him.   :)

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Zguy28

Zguy28

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Ali was one of the most, if not THE most famous non-political person worldwide in my lifetime.  Everyone loved him, everyone respected him, and anyone who saw him was absolutely dazzled by him, be it his boxing skill or his personality. I saw him fight as a kid, and saw him on TV a lot. Prior to Pay Per view a lot of the fights were either live or tape delayed, but shown on free TV.. ABC mostly. I remember Howard Cosell turning him into a star, and Ali turning Cosell into a star right along with it.

 

I grew up with him as The Champ, in every aspect of the word. I remember being as shocked as anyone else when Leon Spinks beat him. I remember him pummeling Ken Norton in the corner at Yankee Stadium. I remember his wars with Joe Frazier, although I was pretty young. I remember the rope-a-dope, I remember the plastic gorilla he taunted Frazier with.. (Could you imagine today if a boxer called another guy a gorilla at a press conference?)

Ali was friggin' HILARIOUSLY funny. A natural showman in and out of the ring. In the 70s they gave us a lot of variety shows.. hour long smile-fests with all sorts of different guests and stuff themed around some vacuous celebrity like Donny and Marie Osmond, or Sonny and Cher..  and Ali was on those shows all the time. he was a pretty natural comedian.

 

My friends and I were all boxing fans, even when we were younger.. and we argued over everything, except Ali. Everyone agreed on Ali. In my lifetime, he's one of the titans.

 

~Bang

I wouldn't say everybody loved him. Some folks in that day were put off by the name change and refusing to be drafted thing. My father to this day didn't care for him because of that (still calls him Cassius Clay even), and believed his conversion was not genuine and just an excuse. Kind of sill looking back, but for young guys in that day getting drafted for Vietnam, I'm sure there was more than just a little jealousy and/or racial aspect too.

 

RIP, greatest boxer of all time.

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Barney B

Barney B

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I wouldn't say everybody loved him. Some folks in that day were put off by the name change and refusing to be drafted thing. My father to this day didn't care for him because of that (still calls him Cassius Clay even), and believed his conversion was not genuine and just an excuse. Kind of sill looking back, but for young guys in that day getting drafted for Vietnam, I'm sure there was more than just a little jealousy and/or racial aspect too.

 

RIP, greatest boxer of all time.

 

 

Where I grew up in 1960's Redneck Suburbia, Ali wasn't popular. I remember a teacher in elementary school asking us who we were rooting for - Ali or Frazier. Very few kids raised their hands for Ali's name. Why? Because our WW2 veteran fathers didn't like him.

 

I think it was after the Vietnam War ended - when we all got to see that the war was a mistake - that Ali slowly turned into the the beloved figure he eventually became.

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DM72

DM72

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The fight where the Legend is 100 percent accurate is the Thrilla in Manila. I've watched that fight a few times over the years, and it's almost painful to watch. Ali looks like a dead man in the face after the 8th or 9th round, but he continues to hit Frazier in the head with just ungodly shots. Even today, you don't understand how Ali is still standing, and you think that Frazier might actually die from blows to the head.

Legend has it that if Frazier's corner didn't call an end to the fight, Ali's was going to. Neither fighter was ever the same afterwards.

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Lombardi's_kid_brother

Lombardi's_kid_brother

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I wouldn't say everybody loved him. Some folks in that day were put off by the name change and refusing to be drafted thing. My father to this day didn't care for him because of that (still calls him Cassius Clay even), and believed his conversion was not genuine and just an excuse. Kind of sill looking back, but for young guys in that day getting drafted for Vietnam, I'm sure there was more than just a little jealousy and/or racial aspect too.

 

RIP, greatest boxer of all time.

 

In the late 60s, Ali's popularity with white people was about the same as polio.

 

And it had little to do with Vietnam. That was an extraordinarily convenient excuse that came out of nowhere and seemed like an attempt to teach him a lesson.

 

This is the partially the doing of Ali and his handlers in the 70s and his 80s, but Ali of the mid and late 60s was a truly revolutionary figure and that has been largely whitewashed. Mike Wallace more or less introduced The Nation of Islam to the nation in 1959 with "The Hate That Hate Produced." Malcolm X was a national figure who always seemed to stop just short of calling for an armed insurrection.  Three months before Ali beat Liston, Malcolm X said that Kennedy's assassination was the "chickens coming home to roost."

 

The NOI was (and remains) something that seems to be 1/3 Islamic, 1/3 black separatist, and 1/3 a bunch of nonsense that Elijah Muhammad came up with. And Ali was a strict adherent at times, though he eventually seemed to back away and - to be totally honest - I don't know where his relationship with them stood when he died. The last 25 years or so, it's not clear if he was making his own decisions all the time.

 

The Ali of the mid-60s was arrogant and charismatic and cruel and complicated and seemed fully capable of being a transformative political presence.

 

In some ways, the Vietnam thing did him favors later on. It allowed him to recontextualize himself into a "social justice" figure when he was truly a black nationalist figure. And it made the fight "Ali versus a right-wing power structure" when the original fight was Ali versus a "White power structure."

Legend has it that if Frazier's corner didn't call an end to the fight, Ali's was going to. Neither fighter was ever the same afterwards.

 

Ali has said he wanted to quit. I don't think Dundee would have let him though.

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Spaceman Spiff

Spaceman Spiff

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I think you're thinking of Ernie Terrell here. Ali hadn't changed his name yet when he fought Liston, but Floyd Patterson, Terrell, and Oscar Bonavena all angered Ali by calling him Clay. Before the Terrell fight, Ali said that he intended to torture Terrell in the ring, and that's pretty much what he did.

 

The story leading up to the Liston fight, including the Casino Incident, is pretty good reading, though. People who were present at the weigh-in said that Ali seemed terrified of Liston (as any sane person would be), and Ali admitted that "That big ugly bear scared me bad".

 

I guess the lesson to be learned was Never Anger Ali, and especially, Never Scare Him.   :)

 

 

You're right.  I thought Liston had refused to call him his name, too. 

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Lombardi's_kid_brother

Lombardi's_kid_brother

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I was listening to Hang Up and Listen this morning, and they had an interesting segment on all the writers that Ali made famous and how he changed sportswriting forever. It was along the same line of my idea that if you were close to Ali, you became famous.

 

If you wrote about Ai, you won awards and got book deals.

 

In case anyone here knows how to read, Ghosts of Manila is probably the best overall read and may be the most honest and accurate portrayal of Ali as Kram uses it to do some serious reassessing of Ali after he became one of our Living Saints.

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Predicto

Predicto

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I just had an interesting couple of minutes reading what the thought about Muhammad Ali over a Free Republic.  Holy smoke.

 

 

I'm beginning to suspect that Ali wasn't a real person at all.   He was just a mythical vehicle for everyone in America to project their views on social change upon.  

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