Ali

70 today

http://newmanology.tumblr.com/post/16006273049/life-happy-birthday-muhammad-ali-across-five

News out there not sounding good right now.

damn. iirc, he was at one time the most widely recognized person in the world. Deservedly so. He is and will always be The Greatest. Nothing could ever change that, short of Armageddon.

rip

rip.

Making a secret shitlist right now of people I see referring to him as Cassius Clay.

RIP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbpSV3gBRfk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID3-vqADnRY

as a kid i remember my dad telling me story after story about CC/Ali. he talked to me more about Ali than any figure past or present except maybe Jesus. biggest man crush i've ever witnessed. RIP the Greatest

RIP The Greatest. Feel so sad about this.

brave dude. rip.

The importance of the man can not be overstated.

Muhammad (not) Ali(ve)

Just about word for word what I was gonna type rip van winko

Goddamn. RIP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddkLDJeeUbw

Saw him once at Radio City Music Hall in the '90s, after a screening of the Foreman fight documentary. Unforgettable.

RIP Ali. An amazing man. Bigger than boxing and bigger than sport. Literally the most famous human being on the planet in his pomp.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM8IP5d9GO8

RIP

https://scontent.fman2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/13335930_10153440791582811_6305777634333540575_n.jpg?oh=ca141101d4456a0c430297d837b20311&oe=580FE161

"Here's to a champ who will always be, people call him Mohammed Ali..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B392gZU5DFA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVU2Nq2VmvE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwdSRCb4nxE

I remember J0hn D (I think) posting a clip and saying I'm pretty happy with my choices in life, I'm good in general, but occasionally I think about what I'd give up to be this good at something for 10 seconds. RIP

http://i.imgur.com/LRZwzN5.mp4

Bah. http://i.imgur.com/LRZwzN5.mp4

I remember how the moment the lights went up on him holding the olympic torch took the wind from me

RIP

he always seemed like he was immune from being ground down by the bastards, not taking shit off anybody on this planet.

RIP

Even as a baseball fan, there's no moment in sports as epic as Foreman hitting the canvas in 1974. I've seen it dozens of times, and the pure shock of the moment never loses anything. (The whole fight is on YouTube.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTn9GeHs11I

Making a secret shitlist right now of people I see referring to him as Cassius Clay.

I think this is allowed though,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXpeg6REIbM

RIP, The Greatest

CNN just had a nice interview with Chuck Wepner. Didn't know he was one of only four guys to knock Ali down.

weirdly I was just listening to this interview with ishmael reed about ali (I say weirdly because I've never really sought out anything about him before, not liking boxing - obviously an important & fascinating figure tho)

http://tespodcast.com/e/the-eastern-shore-039/

“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality. If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years.”

Beautiful.

My dad was a conscientious objector, and it was a long time before I understood why Ali meant so much to him personally. We weren't a boxing household, but I remember watching both Spinks fights in 1978. (I also had that "Superman vs. Muhammad Ali" comic, which in its weird way was a pretty good introduction to him.)

I don't know how to convey what he meant to us as children in recently-integrated schools in the early 70s. When he beat Foreman in 1974 no one talked about anything else for days. He was like a superhero to us, except that he really existed. Worship is not too strong a word.

Classic fights, a brilliant and innovative fighter, but so much bigger than boxing.

the pure shock of the moment never loses anything

About fifteen seconds before unloading on Foreman, during the last clinch before coming out of the corner, Ali pulls George's head toward his own and appears to say something to him. I wish we could hear what he said.

You just don't see it coming... and neither did George.

And that fight helped to precipitate in George one of the most remarkable shifts in personality one could imagine (although George's well chronicled NDE didn't occur til 1977)

https://scontent.fman2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/13325697_10154027514646977_4891238742779018872_n.jpg?oh=002a89767fa5f85895c67cc20b31fb2b&oe=57D73B01

"I wish we could hear what he said."

Foreman said in an interview years later that he said "is that all you got?" Ali also said that Foreman's punches really, really hurt.

i have to admit that as much as i admire not only ali's bravery, wit, outspokenness, and general force of personality, but also his ingenuity as a fighter, i can't really reconcile myself to the gruesome spectacle of two black man punching each other's lights out, esp. knowing how many rich white folks' money is being put up for them to do so (although i know the 1974 fight is something of an exception to that pattern).

i mean ali himself was pretty frank about how the legacy of slavery could be seen in the boxing ring.

but for me that casts a lot more ambivalence over the "meaning" of his career than is often allowed

I haven't posted at all because I don't care for boxing, period. I admire him for the public face that boxing provided.

My dad was a conscientious objector, and it was a long time before I understood why Ali meant so much to him personally. We weren't a boxing household, but I remember watching both Spinks fights in 1978.

mine too. this was in knoxville. and now, these years later, you know my dad!!

i mean ali himself was pretty frank about how the legacy of slavery could be seen in the boxing ring.

― wizzz! (amateurist), Saturday, June 4, 2016 9:34 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's a very US-centric view of boxing. But that's ILX for you.

in the US, boxing (which was for many years in the 20th century dominated by african-americans) is inextricable from the legacy of slavery.

you'll notice that muhammad ali is (was) american.

Ali also said that Foreman's punches really, really hurt.

You can also see him, just before he breaks out of the corner, test Foreman's defense with some quick jabs, to which Foreman has a slow, totally ineffective defensive reaction. Three seconds later Ali steps out to get separation and pours in the flurry of punches that KOs him. Masterly.

Ali said, in later years but before Parkinson's, that Foreman's punches were among the hardest he faced, along with Joe Frazier and above all Ernie Shavers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8gy5L6Ujuw

in that clip I love Ali's "yeah, man," because he knows he's talking to somebody who doesn't know jack shit about boxing - whose sense of what makes a good fighter is "does he get a lot of mainstream press." but one look at the Shavers fight and you see a declining Ali digging very very deep to beat a brawler who's not the most graceful fighter in the world but whose punches are utterly brutal and who can stand up to punishment

Watched parts of the Rumble and Foreman-Moorer back to back. Sort of hard to believe Foreman is the same guy separated by 20 years.

search YT for the HBO Legendary Nights special on the Moorer fight, it's great.

Remnick's book on Ali was really enjoyable. Maybe I'll reread.

yeah foreman seems to have changed into another personal entirely. his personality and physicality really transformed.

er, person.

yeah the remnick book is awesome, highly recommended even to those not in love with boxing

longtime friend, sportswriter Jerry Izenberg:

http://www.nj.com/sports/index.ssf/2016/06/former_heavyweight_champ_muhammad_ali_dies_the_gre.html

Taibbi:

It's not a terribly well-advertised fact, but the Pentagon has the single largest public relations budget in the world, annually spending billions to make sure that what happened in the Sixties does not happen again.

It's being said a lot in the wake of Ali's death that his counterparts today would never make the sacrifices he made. "Today's transcendent athletes are too busy protecting their bank statements to make a political statement," is how Christopher Gasper of the Boston Globe put it.

That might be true, but it's also true that today's athletes haven't been asked to do what Ali was asked to do. Nobody is asking LeBron James to step forward to any white line. Nobody tried to draft Randy Moss or Albert Pujols to fight in Iraq. Who knows what might have happened if someone had?

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/muhammad-ali-was-a-hero-but-his-enemies-have-a-legacy-too-20160605

I was listening to the public funeral on WNYC an hour ago; someone got political re Israel...

Good piece in NY Times sports today about how the paper called him Cassius Clay into the early '70s.

(as did many other media outlets)

I recently watched the Will Smith biopic of Ali. I could tell the fight scenes were done respectfully, to match old footage of the real fights as closely as possible, which I liked.

Despite it being your average Hollywood biopic, it made me tear up as much as, say, It's A Wonderful Life, because the very thought of Ali's courage both against the draft and in the ring always chokes me up. This guy was barely literate, but he was a folk hero to hundreds of millions, me included. Makes me choke up just writing this. RIP.

How the actual fuck did I not know about this? I only had to grow up there, knowing this might have made it seem (slightly) more interesting.

https://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/culture/theatre/scot-s-play-about-muhammad-ali-in-paisley-punches-above-its-weight-1-4660635

Ali was greeted by a ladies’ pipe band in Glasgow, where he also dropped into the city’s Oakbank Hospital, and he also visited the Ayrshire cottage where Robert Burns was born in 1759.

More about Ali in Paisley ... from my old mate Gary's dad, Norrie!

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/paisley-boxing-legend-norrie-sweeneys-8151659

Ken Burns doc starts tonight.

It will be good, if only because it is a literal impossibility to make a bad documentary about Ali. His story, no matter how it might get played or twisted around, would always shine through whatever distortion anyone tried to impose on it.

he's managed to do tedious and appallingly wrong documentaries on a broad range of subjects including the worst jazz one that ever could have been made and that Vietnam travesty. I dunno ... he probably could do a bad Ali one you know.

First episode was quite good, particularly the framing done for the Liston fight.

I'll be disappointed if Norrie Sweeney isn't interviewed.

This was very entertaining. I wasn't planning to watch it, but I got hooked, especially by the lead-up to the Liston fight. It would've been easy to frame Liston as a villain, but he comes across as oddly likable. The doc treads the morally ambiguous line of decrying the brutality of the sport and allowing that this is inseparable from why it so riveting to watch. Ali/Clay radiates a kind of innocent joy that stands out all the more against the corruption and violence inherent to the sport.

i watched ep 1 tonight
love the long sections of fight footage, especially for the liston fight… i mean, he’s a boxer ffs, let’s *really* see him box!
and having the irl boxer talking about those fights, technique. its a good mix of sports doc and cultural history doc

i’m all for non boxing fans celebrating him too bc he did so much in his life outside of boxing & he IS a cultural figure … but i have always had a love for boxing because of him, boxing was his magic & i like that it gets center stage. i know it killed him & it sucks as a concept but … he really was the greatest <3

it’s mindblowing to realize how young he is through that first episode. his personality makes him seem so much older than his irl age, i had to keep checking myself like “he won that gold medal at eighteen ffs!”

hmm ok i sounded kind of dumb there, like duh ali docs always feature boxing .. i didnt mean burns is doing anything new, just enjoy the way it is letting things, esp the bouts, breathe more because of longer runtime

boxing was his magic

Young Ali did things in the ring that no one ever did before (Sugar Ray was closest) and the fact he was a heavyweight made his matchless agility all the more miraculous. Old Ali also did things in the ring never done before, too, but it makes me weep to think how Ali was evicted from the ring just as he was reaching heights of skill undreamed of.

otm

VegemiteGrrl i feel the exact same way re:the depiction of the boxing and really enjoyed the way those fights were allowed to play out at length on screen. I don't know very much about boxing and feel like it was really good just as a way of getting a useful Idiot's Guide-level working knowledge of Ali as an actual athlete.

i gotta watch this. got it recorded

Still loving this, finished ep3 tonight.

From ep 3: Don King handed George Foreman three blank pieces of paper for him to sign, saying he’ll add the contract later.

… The audacity.

It is incredible to me that that cockroach mfer is still alive & able to talk out of both sides of his mouth.

finished the final episode

cried my face off ;_;

i think this might be the best thing Burns has done. (But I am a fan of pretty much everything.)

those stupid “would you live on this island cabin with no devices for 30 days for a million dollars” posts should be “would you fuck with sonny liston for 30 billion dollars” because no sir I would not https://t.co/x6JORq6YSU

— kilgore trout, cryptopolice chief (@KT_So_It_Goes) January 24, 2022

Would have been 81 today.

https://phildellio.tripod.com/attention.jpg

(Got that quote from the post-Foreman interview.)

If you're someone who likes playing the game of this decade really started here or that one really ended there--I do--the first Ali-Frazier fight on March 8, 1971, is as good a launching point for the '70s as any. In attendance at Madison Square Garden (from The Big Time: How the 1970s Transformed Sports in America): Frank Sinatra, Burt Lancaster, Miles Davis, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Isaac Hayes, Duke Ellington, Joe Namath, Sammy Davis Jr., Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford, Diana Ross, Bobby Orr, Bob Dylan, Diane Keaton, Walt Frazier, Woody Allen, Dustin Hoffman, Hugh Hefner, Billie Jean King. Sinatra took photos for Life, Lancaster called the fight for the closed-circuit feed. Elvis watched in Memphis, Nixon watched in the White House.

Sinatra took photos for Life, Lancaster called the fight for the closed-circuit feed.

This kinda blows my mind. Any recording of the latter?

Sure enough:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKUz751Ln1I

Something worth having:

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6636016/2025/09/18/muhammad-ali-vietnam-war-draft-card-auction/

Muhammad Ali had given the card to Rasheda Ali Walsh's mother, Belinda Boyd, who took the name Khalilah Ali. Khalilah handed down the card to her daughter. Rasheda never expected to part with it, but now, Rasheda and her sons are selling that heirloom through Christie’s in an online auction.