Does the Morality of Champions Matter?

Quite, but to what extent is effort and intention alone the guiding factor in this?

 

I agree...it's always nice to read of someone who acknowledges the importance of a nice mustache...I think it was the ultimate equalizer as far as Mohandas is concerned. Remember, a full head of hair and a nice mustache is what keeps Stalin from being considered as bad a man as Hitler.

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If I'm understanding you correctly, I would merely say that the truly moral would do their damndest (regardless of upbringing) to live their lives in the best manner possible, and that if they're going to extend the effort to anything in life, they'd better make it that. Just like anyone else.

 

I recall reading quotes from Ali back in the 60's where he would say stuff like "I'll never let my children shake the hand of a white man", and other silly **** like that. Hey,....he belonged to the

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...does that name ring a bell with those of you who think Ali was a saint? The "Honorable Elijah Muhammad" and all that garbage...come on. Don't be suckered by the do -nothing, white washing media which wants to anoint Ali as a saint...he used to be a screamin' racist. To be fair, I think he toned it down and mellowed out quite a bit in the mid to late 70's however.

 

From Ali's Playboy Interview- 1975

ALI: A black man should be killed if he's messing with a white woman. And white men have always done that. They lynched ******s for even looking at a white woman; they'd call it reckless eyeballing and bring out the rope. Raping, patting, mischief, abusing, showing our women disrespect—a man should die for that. And not just white men—black men, too. We will kill you, and the brothers who don't kill you will get their behinds whipped and probably get killed themselves if they let it happen and don't do nothin' about it. Tell it to the President—heain't gonna do nothin' about it. Tell it to the FBI: We'll kill anybody who tries to mess around with our women. Ain't nobody gonna bother them.

PLAYBOY: And what if a Muslim woman wants to go out with non-Muslim blacks—or white men, for that matter?

ALI: Then she dies. Kill her, too.

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Ali was thick as ****.

 

During the 1960s, the NOI was partnered with the American Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan. Ali was involved in that, too.
He was the NOI liaison to the Klan. He spoke at their rallies and urged them on in lynching Blacks who mingled with White women.

Ali was the scum of the Earth. He should have been stripped of his title then and totally have lost his license to fight.

 

I think people tend to give boxers a lot of slack. They earn a living beating up other human beings. NONE of them are choirboys. NONE.

Punching wives and girlfriends. Doing drugs. Making racist comments. Brawling with the public or police. Molesting women - if there's a question as to whether "he" realized what he was doing was wrong (see Tyson) - all seem to get a pass.

Tony Ayala, who broke into homes and brutally beat women and ****d them ... and was sent to prison ... was hailed as a returning hero when he began his comeback. Latino fans loved him. Priests stood up for him. But when he was shot after breaking into a woman's home with the intent of raping her ... everyone ran from him. When he died recently, most of the responses were good riddance.

Carlos Monzon, who, after he was retired, killed his wife and threw her off a balcony, seemed to get a pass because there was some debate on whether it was "an accident" or not.

That said, Edwin Valero was a fighter who was highly praised ... but after he killed his wife and hung himself ... there were a few articles immediately afterward that were (unbelievably) kind of sympathetic toward Valero and the past he came from ... but those were immediately shot down and he was quickly vilified and is rarely mentioned anymore.

So MURDER seems to be the cut-off point.

Anything short of murder ... and some will give you a pass. And, in the case of Valero, even that warranted a few writers who initially tried to find a way to try to separate what he'd done in the ring with what he did outside it, but the majority shouted them down.

 

Dempsey was a vicious pimp and slacker and no one seems to care.

 

What does that have to do with the point Im making about fighters. It takes a certain kind of person who can become a boxer and be in the fight business and most come from difficult backgrounds where their actions are learned by their peers. Its no cop out its real talk.

 

Randy Turpin shot his toddler daughter three times (rumor was she looked white, so he thought his wife cheated) and then killed himself. (His daughter lived.)

And no one seems to care.

Turpin apparently intended to kill his daughter. Since he was unsuccessful, he seems to get a pass.

Some actions are far worse than being a pimp and avoiding the draft.

 

Monzon's out of ring activities have been posted already in the thread, but to recap it appears the guy was hoodwinked by scumbags, who he thought were as patriotic as he was in the fight for his country against the Sandanista's. The guys he hooked up with had more interest in personal gain .

Robinson was a genius in the ring, more than probably the best fighter ever. But apparently he used to go home and use his wife and kids as involuntary sparring partners, it would seem.

 

Come on ffs.

If you stripped away the livelihood of every big mouthed pea brained Murican, their income tax rate would have to increase to 85% a week later to pay for them all to do nothing.

Anyone with half a brain could tell Ali was merely parroting what his " leaders " were feeding him. If he did 6 interviews in the course of a month every one of them were exactly the same word for word. Obvious to everyone he had sat down and memorised it. He might have been a genius inside the squared circle, but the guy was incapable of thinking on his feet intellectually. Interviewers used to bait him because they were only too well aware of that fact, and they also knew if the fired a few alternative questions at him, he would lose the plot, and start shouting and hollering making himself look an idiot.

As you rightly pointed out in the end he saw the error of his ways and denounced racial violence, and the N.O.I. My guess is it must have been one of his wives, or a genuine close friend that explained it all to him, and made him change his outlook.