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Into Darkness
ESB Addict
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: SS Enterprise
Posts: 2,743
vCash: 500 |
The plan:
The man called Joe Frazier The Frazier-Ali feud The sad tale of Patterson I The sad tale of Patterson II The man called Muhammad Ali The sad tale of Patterson III Mike Tyson goes to war The Frazier-Foreman fight The build up to Manila The Thrilla in Manila The sad tale of Teddy Atlas Frazier: life goes on Of the various levels of contempt, two are of interest in relation to Ali-Frazier. The contempt that Ali held for Frazier during the final third of his career and in retirement was at the level of “Hobbesian indifference,” which William Ian Miller, author of The Anatomy of Disgust, points out, is designed to render the target invisible or nonexistent. But Ali was not always Hobbesian. Early on, as Cassius Clay, he had an insolent contempt, a promiscuous spray of disrespect that indicates someone trying to secure rank by mere display; a rather mean fool. When he became champ, he accelerated the contempt that shames and humiliates, especially against those he saw as threats to his superiority and rank among blacks, particularly the much-loved Floyd Patterson and later the implacable challenge of Frazier. Joe’s contempt, ceaseless and unsparing, was a different sort from the outset. His was that of the “blood-feuder,” and remains so today. Besides responding to the pain and humiliation Ali caused him, he wanted and wants to reduce his rank, to show him that he failed, that he never measured up, that he claimed much more for himself than he was. Ali has sat in Frazier’s gut like a broken bottle. The Frazier Ali-feud 1-2 The Heavyweights A series of threads about Frazier, Ali, Patterson and Tyson [IMG]********scrapetv.com/News/News%20Pages/Sports/images-3/frazier-ali.jpg[/IMG] Frazier For a good period, Joe Frazier seemed as if he had been born at the age of twenty-one. No one knew much about him. In many conversations he was agreeable enough, but there was a strained cheerfulness, and just below a restrained hostility. Or was it? Perhaps it was just a matter of confusion within that was behind his vague remoteness, a distrust of white people, a frustration with his ability to articulate or know how to act confidently, or that he hadn’t come to accept himself as a contender. He never looked you in the eyes, never seemed to want to be there. Gypsy Joe was asked about his pal’s demeanor and said: “He just a warrior. He afraid to say much.” Most likely, all of the above was true about Frazier then; he left the personality of himself up to his manager, Yank Durham, who gladly obliged. He was seldom without Durham by his side, and over the years it become discomfiting and eerie how the manager seemed to think he was the fighter, how he even ended sentences for him, like: “I don’t think this fight will go long. You won’t see any lumps on my face after this one. I wanna do some dancin’ with the girls tonight.” It wasn’t until Ali began to humiliate Frazier about his blackness, tried to turn him into a white pawn, that he started to respond about his youth and bleak times. The last of eleven children, Joe was raised in Laurel Bay, not far from Beaufort, South Carolina, the otherworldly low country that was the oldest and most historical settlement of the slave culture in the nation. The people there were perjoratively called Geechee, but they were actually Gullah and they spoke a language of their own. They had their own way of living, had a silent contempt for whites, and were suspicious of other blacks, who viewed them in turn as backward and dangerous, a people who had not moved beyond slavery. They were in fact a proud, independent people who clung to African ways (to assimilate was to lose their souls) with small adjustments for reality. Once there, you could never forget the people or the land, filled with large trees weeping Spanish moss, thousands of whispering, steaming waterways that easily concealed bootleg stills and smuggling. “I don’t think Frazier knew the term Uncle Tom,” says Ricki Lights, a poet and medical doctor in Philly who was raised there. “You never heard it. To call a Gullah an Uncle Tom would be asking to die. I mean it.” Slave history of the low country supports that view. Class distinc tion based on skin color was drawn almost from the beginning of the settlement. Mulattoes, the fair-skinned progeny of white slavers and African women, were the emerging group and favored by owners. They got the better jobs and a big share of the largess (such as it was) that was handed down on the whim of their masters. Purebloods from Africa, seen as nonadaptive, resented sharply the superior airs of the mulattoes, who were too eager to conform to white culture. In various rebellions that were often chronic, the mulattoes were rarely included in conspiratorial plans; the blooded didn’t trust them. While Frazier would later call Ali a “half-breed” in Manila, the phrase was not just a passing comment of frustration; it leaped out from a tribal flash of racial memory. Always able to feel the lancing invective with which Ali assaulted him, Frazier began to see it as an orchestrated campaign to crush any respect he had in the black community. Blacks who understood the mulatto and pureblood equation winced. On display every day in the streets, it was now being played out in a large public way. The Muslims, it should be pointed out, mirrored the age-old divide of color. Their leader, Elijah Muhammad, was “color struck.” He taught his followers that they were descended from “Asiatic blacks,” meaning that they were from Arab stock, not from the sub-Saharan Africa. Elijah was a light man, and so were a large part of the Muslim hierarchy; the so-called sub-Saharans in the movement had subordinate roles. When Malcolm X established contacts with newly independent African nations, he was admonished for associating with “these people.” Unlike Malcolm, Elijah would avoid travel to sub-Saharan Africa during his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1959. During at least two later visits to Africa, Ali himself would remark that African women would be more attractive if they had a little white blood in them. Ali: Frazier first met Ali the night following the Zora Folley bout in the Garden, his last before he exiled for evading the draft. Durham recalled, “Somebody takes Joe over, `Champ, this is Joe Frazier,’ and I’m sayin’ I don’t want this happening. I want Ali remaining a face, a name, nobody important now. I’m training a dog, you see, to eat a dog.” Ali sized Frazier up and said, “I know who he is. Stay healthy, Joe. I’ll be back. We gonna do some business.” He then snapped Joe’s suspenders, saying, “These won’t keep you standin’. You not big enough for me. But we’ll make some money anyway.” Joe gave him a big smile and said, “Could be.” Sensing too much softness in Joe, Durham broke in, saying, “Clay, you ever need some money, we’ll always have some sparring work for you.” Ali just looked at Yank, then turned away, with his aide saying to him, “Can you believe that country ******?” Yank pulled Joe aside and said, “You best get some sense in your head, boy. You too impressed by him. You’re somebody. Got a big future. Get them stars outta your eyes, else he’ll pick the gold right outta your pocket Next The Frazier Ali-feud 2-2 [IMG]********ballertainment.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/ali_frazier_sepia.jpg[/IMG] |
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#4 |
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Journeyman
ESB Jr Member
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 244
vCash: 950 |
I won't claim to have seen all of Ken's fights but the Laguna fights can't be over looked. Laguna was a great boxer and Panama's boxing hero before Duran. Being Scottish - also Jim Watt lol.
I'll keep an eye out for the rest of your articles. Just read the other installment. A lot of stuff I've never heard before. |
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#7 | |
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Into Darkness
ESB Addict
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: SS Enterprise
Posts: 2,743
vCash: 500 |
Quote:
A lot of stuff gets hidden due to the image people now have of Ali as some kind of saintly figure |
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