Tag Archives: Muhammad Ali

Time revealed another side of Muhammad Ali

Muhammad-Ali-vs.-Joe-Frazier-in-Thrilla-in-Manila-Quezon-City-Metro-Manila-Philippines-1975-2

I guess you could say that time is no one’s friend.

It takes its toll on human skill. Of course, eventually it catches up to all of us for the final time.

These thoughts came to mind as I’ve been watching and listening to the tributes pour in to the late Muhammad Ali — yes, it’s strange to attach that word right before The Champ’s name.

Ali came to the world’s attention as young Cassius Clay, a boxer with tremendous hand and foot speed in the ring. He didn’t block punches with his elbows or gloves.

He dodged them with his head.

He’d pull his back while the big left hooks or straight rights would whistle by. Clay would dance out of the way, peppering his foe with lightning-quick jabs and multi-punch combinations.

Then he would pull away again.

Well, time does not allow the human body to perform like that forever.

After he changed his name to Muhammad Ali, the boxer lost more than three years of his prime athletic life. The U.S. government accused him of draft evasion, the boxing authorities denied him his right to box and he spent most of 1967 and all of 1968 and 1969 on the lecture circuit, speaking out against the Vietnam War and against racism.

Then he came back.

But he was a different kind of athlete.

Time had robbed him of a bit of that skill he demonstrated with his quick reflexes. He no longer was able to dodge and dance away with quite the flair and panache he demonstrated as a younger boxer.

No, the boxer then became a fighter.

Sure, he proved to be unafraid to fight against injustice in the world.

However, when he was able to lace the gloves back onto his powerful fists, he became a fighter. He showed the world that his quick feet and hands didn’t signify an unwillingness to fight. That speed merely was a demonstration of the rare skill he exhibited in a most-brutal sport.

He was able to lend an extra level of sweetness to the Sweet Science.

As time marched on, though, Ali was forced the absorb more punishment from foes who a decade earlier would have flailed in futility.

He demonstrated another skill that many boxing experts admitted at the time they never anticipated. The Champ demonstrated that he had a fighter’s heart.

He became a warrior in the ring.

The Thrilla in Manila — his third epic fight with rival Joe Frazier, provided perhaps the most graphic example of his fighter’s heart.

In 1975, Ali was the champion. He started out quickly, trying to take Frazier out. Frazier survived that early-round blitz. He came back in the middle rounds, punishing his adversary with body blows.

Ali then summoned something from deep within him to rally in the later rounds. By the time the bell rang to end the 14th round, Frazier’s face was a bloody, swollen mess. Muhammad Ali the warrior had shown he had the heart of a champion — of a fighter.

Frazier’s trainer, Eddie Futch, stopped the fight — a drama in three acts — and made a decision I am certain to this day well might have saved his fighter’s life.

Smokin’ Joe said it best after the fight. “Man,” he said, “I hit him with punches that would have brought down the walls of a city. Lawdy, he’s a great champion.”

So he was. The boxer had become a fighter and revealed that time at least can be stalled a little while longer.

The Champ would revel in this reception

ali home

Just how far have race relations gone in the past five-plus decades?

Consider what is happening in Louisville, Ky., the city where a baby named Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. came into this world.

It is getting ready for one of the most awe-inspiring salutes imaginable for the man that baby became.

Louisville didn’t react this way around, oh, 1960, when Cassius Clay came home from Rome with an Olympic gold medal in boxing. He returned from the Olympics and was met with overt racism in his home town.

This young black athlete who had ingratiated himself to the foreign press and to the other international athletes who gathered for the Olympics did not find such warmth when he came home.

His struggle for acceptance began.

That young man eventually grew into a gigantic figure on the world stage. He won the heavyweight professional boxing championship in 1964. Clay converted to Islam and changed his name.

He became Muhammad Ali.

Ali experienced plenty of wrath for becoming a Black Muslim. Then came his refusal to be inducted into the armed forces, citing his religious belief and his role as a Muslim minister. He couldn’t in good conscience serve his country during a time of war, in Vietnam.

More wrath came his way.

The boxing authorities stripped him of his title. They denied him the right to earn a living. He was banned from boxing.

Then he became an iconic figure on university campuses during his three-plus years in boxing exile. He spoke out against the Vietnam War, against the racism that pervaded the nation and against injustice.

Then he became the world’s most famous person.

The court overturned his conviction for draft evasion. He returned to the ring. He won the heavyweight title twice more.

He retired from boxing in 1981 and in 1984 was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

Muhammad Ali died Friday at the age of 74.

Louisville, the city of his birth and the city where his neighbors formerly scorned him, now is preparing to say farewell to its most favorite son.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/more-sports/hundreds-pay-tribute-to-muhammad-ali-at-his-boyhood-home/ar-BBtT1G5?li=BBnb7Kz

Crowds are gathering at Ali’s boyhood home. People are flocking to Louisville. The mayor will speak at Ali’s funeral. So will former President Bill Clinton, who was among 80,000 spectators in the stadium who wept in the summer of 1996 as Ali emerged to light the Olympic flame in Atlanta. The noted comedian Billy Crystal also will eulogize The Champ.

The city isn’t the same today as it was when Cassius Clay entered it. It’s a much better place that will bid farewell on Friday to Muhammad Ali.

The Champ would revel in the sendoff he’s about to receive.

As for Ali’s anti-war protest …

muhammad-ali-refuses-army-induction

So much has been written and spoken for nearly 50 years about the time Muhammad Ali refused induction into the armed forces, I hesitate to mention anything about it here.

Awww, but I will anyway.

The Champ’s death Friday saddens me beyond measure. I’ll be grieving for a long time.

I do want to set the record straight, though, on what I believe has been a mischaracterization of Ali’s refusal to be drafted.

It’s been reported that he did so in 1967 out of conscience. He had converted just three years earlier to Islam. He told the Houston draft board he couldn’t serve in the armed forces because of religious conviction, that he couldn’t carry out orders to kill other human beings.

I get that.

What has not been discussed in all the commentary about Ali’s death, though, is that he could have filed as a conscientious objector and still served in the armed forces — in a non-combat role.

No Pentagon bureaucrat in his or her right mind ever would send the reigning heavyweight boxing champion of the world — especially someone such as Muhammad Ali, for crying out loud! — to any training center to be schooled in the combat arms: infantry, armor or artillery.

I served in a basic training company in Fort Lewis, Wash., with a young man who was a conscientious objector. When we completed our boot camp training in October 1968, he got orders for artillery school in Fort Sill, Okla. He hit the ceiling. The last time I saw him before I departed for aircraft maintenance school in Fort Eustis, Va., he was marching into the orderly room to file a protest over the orders he received. I hope he got them changed.

Muhammad Ali would have been given a special assignment, much as Joe Louis received when that former heavyweight champion saw duty during World War II. The Army was full of clerical jobs or other rear-echelon assignments that would have kept Ali far from harm’s way.

Now, having said that, I do not know what was in Muhammad Ali’s heart when he said “no” to being inducted. It well might have been a broader statement against the Vietnam War, that under no circumstances could he don a military uniform while the nation was engaged in all-out war in Southeast Asia.

If that were the case, well, I respect that, too.

Ali’s era: simple and complex all at once

Mohammed Ali

As I’ve spent the day pondering last night’s sad news about Muhammad Ali’s death, I was struck by a realization of the era in which he was such a dominant force.

It was that he flourished in a simpler and more complex time.

Ali died of Parkinson’s disease at the age of 74. He apparently had become quite frail in the final months of his life. But what a departure from the picture of strength he exhibited back in the day.

The simplicity of his era is marked by this fact: As the heavyweight boxing champion of the world, Muhammad Ali was the baddest man on the planet.

The night he stopped Sonny Liston after the sixth round to win the title the first of three times, he yelled, “I shook up the world! I’m a ba-a-a-a-d man!” Yes he was.

In those days, without the multitude of boxing commissions and sanctioning bodies we have today, you had an undisputed champ. Ali was that man.

Today, well, it’s far different. You’ve got at least three heavyweight champions of the world. There are times when you have something called “interim champion”; I don’t even know what the hell that means.

All these “world champs” are recognized only by certain governing bodies. If you’ve got the patience, you can slog through all of them.

I quit following the sport — certainly the heavyweight division of it — about the time Larry Holmes walked away from the championship.

The complexity of Ali’s prime time is reflected in the political climate of the era.

Ali got his draft notice from the Selective Service Administration. He had converted to Islam. He vowed never to take up arms against people. Ali refused to be inducted into the armed forces to protest the Vietnam War.

And by 1967, the political mood of the nation had turned against the war. We weren’t winning it the way to which we had grown accustomed. Ali’s refusal to serve rubbed many millions of Americans raw. How dare this brash, young fighter refuse to serve his country, many people said. Why, he had amassed tremendous wealth because of all that the country had offered him.

That didn’t matter to Ali. He stood on principle.

The boxing authorities — the few of them that existed at the time — stripped him of his title. They denied him permits to fight. He was denied an opportunity to do the one thing he did better than anyone on Earth: beat people up.

The Vietnam War raged on while Ali was denied permission to fight.

The champ did not recede quietly into the shadows. He spoke out against the war. He spoke against what he perceived to be the systemic racism that was denying him his right of free expression.

Muhammad Ali became “the most recognizable person on Earth.”

Who today can make that claim?

The U.S. Supreme Court finally would undo the injustice brought to Ali. It voted unanimously to throw out Ali’s conviction for draft evasion. He returned to the ring.

The rest became history … and what a story Muhammad Ali was able to tell.

Long live The Champ!

BBtPNxv

It well might be said in the next few days and weeks that Muhammad Ali was denied the greatest years of his boxing career because of his refusal in 1967 to be inducted into the U.S. Army.

There will be those who will bemoan the loss of those years because Ali had been stripped of his heavyweight boxing title because he chose to exercise his constitutional right to protest a government policy with which he disagreed.

My take on it, though, is that Ali’s refusal on religious grounds to take up arms against “them Viet Congs” and the punishment he endured by losing three-plus prime years of his boxing career only enhanced the legend that grew out of it all.

He would go on to become the “most recognized person in the world,” according to many surveys.

Muhammad Ali would stand for something far greater than just his blazing speed and power as, arguably, the greatest heavyweight boxer in history.

The Champ died Friday at age 74. Parkinson’s disease took him, finally. We knew this day would come, but oh man, this still hurts.

He was one of those sportsmen with whom I became enchanted as a youngster, dating back to the time before he won the heavyweight title — for the first of three times — in 1964. He boasted and bragged. He predicted the rounds his fights would end; the young man then known as Cassius Clay often would make good on his predictions.

Hey, the boxing world had never seen anything like him!

He beat the Big Old Bear, Sonny Liston. He then found Islam, changed his name eventually to Muhammad Ali. He kept fighting and winning.

Then came the day he was to be drafted into the Army. He couldn’t accept the order to report. It was a matter of religious belief. He made that statement that he didn’t “have anything against them Viet Congs.”

He was stripped of his title. Denied the right to make a living.

Ali didn’t go quietly. He became an iconic figure on college campuses, speaking out against the Vietnam War and against the racism that denied him his heavyweight title.

The U.S. Supreme Court would rule eventually in his favor, tossing out his banishment. Ali would return to the ring. He’d win some more. He lost The Fight of the Century to Joe Frazier, who then lost to George Foreman.

Then Ali showed the world how a “washed-up” fighter could regain the title. He knocked out Foreman in eight rounds a decade after winning the title the first time.

There would be more victories. Ali would lose his title once more, and then would regain it a third time.

Ali retired for good from boxing after getting thrashed by then-champ Larry Holmes and losing his final fight in 1981 to journeyman Trevor Berbick.

Then came the Parkinson’s diagnosis. Muhammad Ali would become a champion for another cause, becoming a spokesman for Parkinson’s awareness.

He kept fighting.

And who in this entire world could forget that electrifying moment at the 1996 Summer Olympics when The Champ stepped out of the shadows to light the torch in Atlanta? His hand was quivering, but he got the job done as the stadium crowd roared mightily. The swimmer, Janet Evans, who handed the torch to Ali said it was like “an earthquake.”

I will choose to remember Muhammad Ali as the vibrant young man who fought like hell with his fists, then fought even harder with his huge heart.

He wasn’t a perfect man. Ali merely was The Greatest.

Rest in peace, Champ. You earned it.

Video is funny … and also tragic

This video popped up on YouTube.

The first time I saw it, I laughed out loud.

I’ve seen comedians impersonate Muhammad Ali. Billy Crystal’s perhaps is the most famous. But then I watched this brief snippet, featuring the late Jerry Quarry, a former heavyweight fighter — and a very good one at that.

So help me, I didn’t know Quarry had that kind of wit and charm.

Then my thoughts turned to what happened to Jerry Quarry. He became terribly disabled because of the profession he chose to pursue. Quarry won a lot of fights during his fighting days. He also lost some fights. And in all of them he took a lot of punishment. To the head. The result of that punishment resulted in Quarry’s death.

He suffered complications from something called dementia pugilistica. He was punch drunk. He suffered irreparable brain damage.

Another YouTube video, which is attached to the link shown on this blog, shows Quarry being inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame. He didn’t understand the event where he was being honored. He needed help from his brother to dress, to feed himself, to do anything.

I once was a huge fan of boxing. I once couldn’t get enough of the Friday Night Fights. I cheered for Jerry Quarry and occasionally against him, such as when he fought Muhammad Ali twice — in 1970 and again in 1972.

The price that these men pay saddens me. Yes, I know they choose to do this for a living.

Seeing this video and knowing how it all ended for the man it features offers a serious lesson to anyone who wants to take up this line of work.

 

Boxing has lost its allure

The question came to me today at work from my young friend Travis.

“Are you going to watch the fight?” he asked.

Nope. Not a chance. Zero.

Then I launched into a mini-tirade about the state of professional boxing today. In summary: It’s a joke, but a not-funny one.

“The fight” will be between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao for the world welterweight championship. Fight fans have been waiting for this one. It’s been called “The Fight of the Century.”

Yeah. Whatever.

My tirade to my young pal consisted of a walk through memory lane and about how pro boxing has developed multiple “champions of the world” in every weight class. Back when I used to watch boxing religiously, you had heavyweight, light-heavyweight, middleweight, welterweight, lightweight, featherweight, bantamweight and flyweight champs. These days you add “super” and “junior” to almost all those weight classes and the number of classifications is multiplied by a factor of 10 … or maybe 20. Hell, I don’t know.

Add to that the number of governing organizations that recognize these champions of the world. You have an alphabet-soup list of organizations claiming their piece of the world championship pie.

It’s a joke.

Back in the day, I told my friend, the heavyweight champion of the world was considered the “baddest man on Earth.” Yep. I refer to Muhammad Ali — who really was the baddest cat on the planet. And he was unafraid to proclaim it. Before him, well, the list is lengthy.

Boxing used to be fun. It is no longer of any interest to me.

Who’ll win “The Fight of the Century”? I don’t know … or care.

 

Let's call it 'Deflate-gate'

 

You’ve heard it said that “Where there’s smoke there’s fire.”

The New England Patriots won the American Football Conference championship in a rout over the Indianapolis Colts. Now it turns out they might have, um, cheated just a bit.

How? It’s those footballs they used. Eleven of the 12 balls the Patriots used were deflated by 2 pounds of pressure, making the balls a little easier to catch in the rainy and cold weather conditions that plagued the game in Foxboro, Mass.

http://espn.go.com/blog/boston/new-england-patriots/post/_/id/4776756/patriots-should-be-held-accountable

This isn’t the first time the Pats have been caught and/or accused of cheating. Remember “Spy-gate,” when the Patriots reportedly spied on the New York Jets’ practice sessions prior to a game?

What should the NFL do?

Well, you can’t replay the game.

But the team ought to pay a price monetarily. Fine the coach, or whoever was responsible for the deflating the balls. Perhaps you can force the Patriots to surrender a significant portion of their earnings from the sale of “AFC Champs” gear or the proceeds from whatever they earn if they win the Super Bowl.

***

This all kind of reminds me of the controversy that ensued after Muhammad Ali knocked out George Foreman in October 1974 to regain the heavyweight boxing championship. The “rope-a-dope” tactic, in which Ali leaned against the ropes and allowed Foreman to wail away while Ali covered up, worked to perfection partly — it was alleged — because someone loosened the ropes, forcing Big George to lunge a little farther to throw his haymakers. The late Angelo Dundee, Ali’s trainer, denied messing with the ropes.

I mentioned that to my wife this morning. Her answer? “George is a big, tough guy. He should have just stepped in a little closer to throw his punches.” Holy crap! I never thought of that. Good call, honey.

***

AFC loyalist that I am, I plan to root for the Patriots against the Seattle Seahawks in the Super Bowl. However, you won’t hear me hoot and holler if they win. It’s hard to cheer out loud for cheaters.

 

Space flight video chokes me up

I am not prone to weeping openly. That is, I don’t just start sobbing when something pushes my emotional hot button.

But I tend to swallow hard, get a little choked up at sights. Historic videos do that to me.

I cannot, for instance, watch Muhammad Ali light the 1996 Olympic torch in Atlanta without getting teary-eyed; the same thing happens when I watch video of Secretariat winning the Belmont Stakes in 1973 and the announcer says he’s “running like a tremendous machine!”; ditto for watching Sen. Robert F. Kennedy say “on to Chicago and let’s win there” moments before the gunman wounded him mortally in Los Angeles.

So … I’ve been choking back tears this week watching CNN’s series on “The Sixties.” The segment this week dealt with the space race. The United States competed with the Soviet Union to be the first nation to land someone on the moon. We won that race. It was a come-from-behind victory, you’ll recall.

The segment that does it to me every time I see it is the launch of Apollo 8, the first lunar orbit mission that blasted off from Cape Canaveral on Dec. 21, 1968. The launch itself is an emotional moment for me. It reminds me of when my late mother and I would get up early to watch the countdown of those Mercury and Gemini launches. The thrill is something that has never left me.

The CNN series, though, takes you through the launch and quickly to the point where Apollo 8 commences lunar orbit with astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders aboard.

Then, on Christmas Eve 1968, Borman pulls out his Bible as he trains the TV camera on the Earth-rise over the moon’s horizon and he starts reading from the Book of Genesis … reminding us of our world that God created.

Yep, that chokes me up.

1968 was a hideous year. The Vietnam War was going badly; assassins killed Martin Luther King Jr. and RFK; our streets were erupting in chaos as Americans protested the war.

Then, to have the commander of a space mission read on Christmas Eve from the passage in the Bible that takes us back to the beginning of our very existence in the universe …

As Tom Hanks says on the CNN segment, “Who wrote that script?”

So long, champ

My pal Jon Mark Beilue hits it right on the button — like a left hook to the jaw — when he laments the passing of a great heavyweight fighter and the decline of a once-great sport.

http://amarillo.com/blog-post/jon-mark-beilue/2013-09-19/when-boxing-was-relevant

Ken Norton died this week at the age of 70. He’d been in declining health and he died of congestive heart failure.

What made Norton so special? Well, in the spring of 1973 he broke the jaw of another pretty good fighter, Muhammad Ali, and handed The Champ the second defeat of his legendary boxing career. Ali would go on to reclaim the heavyweight title the following year and would fight Norton twice more: later in 1973 and in 1976, when he was still the heavyweight champ. Ali won both those fights.

Boxing meant something back then. There was an unwritten code that to be heavyweight champion was to be deemed the baddest dude on Planet Earth. I heard someone once say that title Heavyweight Champion of the World was the most honored of all sports titles.

No more.

Ken Norton wore that crown for a time in 1978. The World Boxing Council bestowed it on him when it took it from Leon Spinks, who had defeated Ali for the title in 1978. Norton would lose the title to Larry Holmes in a grueling 15-round fight.

Norton was a very good fighter. Was he great? Did he attain the level of some of his peers, such as Ali, Joe Frazier, Holmes or George Foreman? Probably not.

However, he fought at a time when being champion meant something. These days, with so many governing bodies granting titles left and right, with so many weight classes — super and junior middleweights, welterweights, lightweights, featherweights, etc. — no one can name any of the champions in any of these classes. They’ve even added a super heavyweight division — on top of the “normal” heavyweight class. Heck, I remember when the late heavyweight champ Floyd Patterson, who weighed all of 185 pounds, would fight guys 30 or 40 pounds heavier … and would beat them like a drum!

Yes, Ken Norton represented a much-missed era in professional sports. It’s been cheapened and become almost farcical now.

Rest in peace, Champ.