By Bolish Gudgworth: Muhammad Ali; three-time Heavyweight Champion of the World, Olympic Gold Medallist, 1999’s Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Century and one of the youngest and oldest Heavyweight Champions of all time. The list, of course, is endless. The man at one point was perhaps the most recognized person on the face of the planet. His influence was so global he was invited to speak with Brezhnev at post-détente Cold War tension; he even became a diplomat despite proclaiming himself “I don’t know nothing about politics.”
Truly, no boxer, or even sportsmen became so important to popular culture as Muhammad Ali. In the 1970’s despite being years detached from his prime, Ali became the crown of a heavyweight division going through its golden age. The division was overloaded with talent such as Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Earnie Shavers and Ken Norton and Ali was the centrepiece.
Of course, it is not hard to see why all this was possible for a country boy from Louisville. Muhammad Ali was witty, extravagant and always lively at press conferences. It also helps that Ali was handsome, tall (at 6 ft 3 “) as described by Neil Leifer as a “photographer’s dream…a photographer couldn’t miss with Ali”. But even with all this hype, it is impossible to mention Muhammad Ali without talking about Joe Frazier. And now we have the crux. Almost everyone who knows anything about boxing knows of the devastating, brutal and yet classic trilogy of Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali. People know about how Ali degraded, humiliated and ridiculed Frazier over more than a decade and especially at Manila, and yet people seemed to gloss over that quite conveniently: No, Muhammad Ali was far from perfect.
I am going to attempt to explain why. Muhammad Ali was Muhammad Ali, and there is nothing wrong with that. But when I see article after article of “junk documentary” constantly building and creating the “Ali Myth”, I feel sorry not only for the generation today who see Ali as world figure and human rights champion, but also for Ali himself. His accomplishments are obscured and hidden behind the growing canvas of celebration for all the wrong reasons. “Respected” journalists try to convince us (and people unfortunately believe them) that Ali was a heroic fighter and representative for the Civil Rights Movement in America throughout the 1960’s, and ranks side by side with Dr King. Although Ali’s brashness, confidence and extravagance did assert a feeling of pride in young black men and women in America, I don’t think Ali had the depth and understanding of his revered colleague.
Furthermore, Ali’s treatment of Joe Frazier, while entertaining and perhaps comforting to him, wrecked Frazier’s sense of identity, confidence and pride. For this, I have a hard time conforming to the new millennium’s adoration and “love in” with Muhammad. If he was so perfect and ideologically sound, then why did he do that to Joe Frazier?
Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier met sometime in the late 1960’s. Frazier, while indifferent to the “Ain’t got no quarrel…” statement, and Ali’s stance on the Vietnam war, he financially supported Ali through that period where the government banned Ali from fighting. And in return? Ali humiliated Joe. Even in 1971, when Joe defeated Muhammad in the Fight of the Century, it was still Ali who got the publicity. He called Joe ugly, stupid and uneducated. But what is so unforgivable in my eyes, is how Ali robbed Joe of his identity as a proud black American. Ali’s constant dissection of Joe, calling him an Uncle Tom, split America in half. Joe wound up becoming the white man’s champion and was booed and slighted even in his hometown of Philadelphia. Later in 1975, to promote the “Thrilla in Manila”, Ali called Joe a gorilla, and screamed about to anyone who would hear that Joe was too ugly to be a champion, and other nations would laugh at the USA!
Don’t get me wrong. Muhammad Ali is a great, extravagant personality that made boxing exciting and enthralling for us to watch. His greatest achievement in my mind was how he successfully smashed the race barrier that had opposed many black sportsmen in the 20th Century. After all, characters like Joe Louis were diligently and constantly trained to conform to the white man’s image of what a heavyweight champion should be, whereas Ali made his own image of a champion.
But on the other hand, Muhammad was in many ways a flawed personality, and one that has been given far too much credit over the last two decades.
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