Boxing from 1900 to 2000 has an incredibly rich history. It's hard to believe that we can look at an entire centuries worth of boxing history now. After it was all said and done, we have such a rich stockpile of media content and memories. When you zoom out, think about how close boxing played a role in so many big issues in America in the 20th century. Jack Johnson during extreme racial tensions. Louis fighting Schmeling to symbolize important geopolitical tensions and issues between the Nazis and the US. The most famous and most written about person alive came from boxing, Muhammad Ali. He was integral in the civil rights movement. And became a world wide anti-war symbol. He also had arguable the most famous sporting event of the 20th Century, the Rumble in the Jungle. We also had Mike Tyson, who was globally famous as the baddest man on Earth. It felt like Tyson shook your TV screen with his punches. He is also world famous for his dynamic personality. And all these guys were special athletes. They do everything everyone else does, but have a few qualities where they go beyond. The amount of talent, symbolic importance, and overall greatness that stemmed from boxing in those 100 years were magical.
Lots of revisionist history going on there. What exactly was US policy towards the Nazis in June 1938 ? The idea that all good Americans got behind negro Joe Louis for political or geopolitical reasons, because the US and all its citizens were sworn enemy of Nazi Germany at that time, is unlikely and probably absolute nonsense. Yeah, sure, most Americans support the American fighter over the foreign fighter. That's usually the case. Muhammad Ali wasn't "an integral part of the civil rights movement". That's another HUGE revisionist myth. There are countless interviews out there where he explains that he wants nothing to do with that stuff because he's a follower of Elijah Muhammad, and they are not asking for 'civil rights', they want no involvement with American civil society, politics or changing those laws, they just want to be separated from white people. In fact, they favoured the status quo segregation. They were, more or less, striving to expand and improve the "blacks only" part of that.
The Civil Rights movement was as much a spiritual movement as much as a legal one. When black people were told they were lesser people, Ali said "I am the greatest!" His impact on Americas views on equality can't be touched by mere mortals. He was just as big, if not the biggest catalyst of them all for the civil rights movement.
Well, then, in that case, people have extended/stretched the meaning of "the civil rights movement" so that it no longer means what it means. That's a result of REVISIONIST history. I'd agree that Ali was a huge figure for "Black Pride" or even, loosely speaking, "Black Power". And if the term "civil rights movement" has come to include all that, then okay then. I think it's sad that people simplfying and dumb-down recent history so much, so soon, but that's what it is, I suppose. :good
Didn't they cut the fight broadcast in Germany? Seems more than just an innocent bout between two guys from different countries. Because the fight happened a couple years before the first bullet was cast, doesn't mean the fight wasn't politically symbolic at the time. And it was hugely symbolic after the war had started.
