"Drama in the Bahama" - a complete failure

Absolutely it was a cluster in every single way.

But it was not an NOI promotion with them using the guy as a front.

There’s a good book on the fight (I think it’s titled Drama in the Bahamas) that is well-researched and goes into great detail.

To say it was an ‘NOI promotion’ is like saying some other fight was a Christian promotion because the promoter was a Baptist, lol.

 

Oh, could it be in the dimension where Ali beat Superman?

I have a Japanese poster of that fight on my wall.

Also one from Creed-Balboa I.

(Talk about being robbed of a trilogy, think of the money Rocky and Apollo bypassed having their rubber match in a basement gym!)

 

What about Tyson?
Could he have beaten the green version in 86 maybe.
A tight fight for Ali but I'd say he Buster Douglas s him in 10 .

 

The Nation of Islam was an organization with about 20,000-30,000 members in 1981. The founder of the organization made his son, Herbert Muhammad, Ali's manager. When the founder died, the organization split. Herbert's brother led half the faction until he disbanded it a few years later. Louis Farrakhan took the other. Herbert took half of Ali's pay for every fight. When Ali couldn't get a boxing license in the US, or the UK, or anywhere else that issued boxing licenses, the Nation had one of their members promote the fight in the Bahamas, and the organization took the money. James Cornelius was a promoter in name only. His bio distributed around the fight was a fake. The LA Times did basic research and found he was in and out of prison for much of the previous decade. I have the book you referred to.

Comparing them to the Baptists in the US, with tens of millions of members and centuries of history, is a bad comparison. The founder of the Baptist church didn't appoint one of his sons Ali's manager.

The Nation of Islam was started as a prison organization. The leader was in prison when he started it. The founder gave Ali his name. Most of his followers learned about it in prison. It was a quite violent organization. In the mid 70s, they murdered some people in Kareem Abdul Jabbar's home (when Kareem wasn't there). A relative of the murder victims later took hostages and wouldn't return them unless Muhammad Ali was delivered to him, because he was going to murder Ali in retaliation.

The former leader of the Philadelphia mosque #12, Jeremiah Shabazz, considered the most violent of the mosques, was the guy Don King gave the briefcase with $100,000 in cash to after the Holmes fight, and it only had $50,000 in it by the time Ali got it. Shabazz was a longtime member of the Ali entourage.

They weren't a church group hosting pot lucks who decided to promote a fight.

James Cornelius, a lifelong criminal, was just a front. Most of what was known or printed about him at that time to make him appear legit, after newspapers did a brief investigation, proved to be false.

A random, habitual US criminal with a long string of arrests didn't just decide one day to promote a Muhammad Ali fight in the Bahamas.

And when Don King showed up to complain they were using his fighter Trevor Berbick, King didn't get pummeled by some random security guards. The Nation of Islam guys beat him up and put him back on a plane and sent him home. And they weren't taking orders from James Cornelius. He was a nobody.

 

If he had fought Dokes,Thomas or Coetzee he'd have gotten knocked out. All 3 of those guys knew how to land big punches unlike the crude style of Berbick..

 

If anyone could have done it, I'd place my dough on Ali!

 

No dispute about Ali’s manager and really don’t see what the history of Nation of Islam has to do with this particular fight.

Yes James Cornelius was in and out of prison.

So was Don King. Does that mean he wasn’t a real promoter, lol?

Bob Arum was a nobody in boxing before he promoted his first fight.

Cornelius was at least to some degree was a con man. That doesn’t make him not the promoter of the fight.

Rick Elvis Parker was a con man. And a promoter. Don King was a con man. And a promoter. Harold Rossfield Smith was a con man. And a criminal. And a promoter.

Did the fight take place in the Bahamas because other places wouldn’t license Ali? Sure. The Bahamas are not now, nor were they ever, governed by the NOI. Anyone promoting an Ali fight — Don King, Bob Arum, James Cornelius ... anybody — was going to have to find a venue that would allow it to happen. Duh.

Can you cite sources that Cornelius was a promoter of the fight in name only at that NOI was the real promoter? Being in any organization, religious or otherwise, does not make one an agent of that organization. Did they protect their asset, Ali (whom they managed)? Of course. (As in maybe loan a couple of thugs to beat up Don King and make sure he didn’t interfere with Ali’s fight.) Did they promote the fight? Not according to any account I have seen.

Cornelius worked out deals with people who were established in PPV/closed circuit to get the fight carried at locations (for money) far and wide. He worked out a deal with the government of the Bahamas. Did NOI send Herbert Muhammad to the Bahamas to work out that deal, and to the offices of the PPV/CC guys? I don’t think so.

I’ll leaf through the book again to refresh my memory. The promotion was absolutely a ****-show, but it wasn’t an NOI operation.

You seem to be suggesting that they were running the show behind the scenes with Cornelius as a puppet … are you also suggesting that Don King and Bob Arum were puppets to the NOI when they promoted Ali fights? Just having Ali managed by the organization doesn’t mean they promoted his fights.

I am open to any sourcing you can provide.

 

C'mon Seamus, you gotta be kidding!
Ali was DAMAGED by Parkinsons disease.
Some say he did not get it from boxing; this seems very unlikely.
The hellacious shots he took & allowed himself to absorb, especially from Shavers on, were very damaging.

He both would NOT have done very well against top fighters, & it would have been absolutely terrible for his health.
He had tremors even before Shavers I believe, how much more brain damage should he have absorbed?

He should not even have had his last fights SANCTIONED.

 

You meant Berbick?

 

A good trajectory for 80's Ali would have been beating Tex Cobb in 81 and quickly climbing the ranks thru Tillis, Snipes and then getting a second shot at the lackadaisical Holmes by 83. This was eminently doable. With prudent, not overly cautious but prudent, matchmaking I can see Ali holding onto a title well into Tyson's reign. 5 time, 6 time, 7 time heavyweight champion? It boggles the mind.

Oh, what could have been...

 

Ah yeah, a formerly great fighter could be competitive against a very good fighter.
Edit: he was not really very competitive.
He could absorb a lot of punishment.
Besides that his abilities would have declined further, neurologically he was in *very bad shape*.

His risk of absorbing further & serious damage was exponentially greater than a normal HW.
Can't you see how bad it would be for Ali to continue?
And how wrong to allow him to indulge his delusions & have his fights officially sanctioned?

 

Dude, he was already destined to be toast. As are more boxers than most "fans" would ever acknowledge. You play this game, you get dinged.

But Ali still had the goods.

 

We do not know what percentage of boers are "toast" whatever that means.
And we do not know if the public over or under estimates the damage.
But maybe the damage is greater than most think.

Ali was not "destined" to be so damaged.
Let us say that somehow all the huge beatings he took did not add to his terrible health.
Which you do not know.

It is just wrong to expose a man who is already terribly damaged to more damage.
There are calculated risks, what level is acceptable is debateable.
But "dinged: could mean anything-no indication most boxers get anything like the harm he absorbed & suffered.

Either way, it is easy to know that anyone already in terrible shape is gonna do much worse absorbing more punishment.
And he was long past preventing such beatings-or minimizing them.

Do a thread & see if *anyone* would approve of or want to see Ali, a great champion & a hero to many-or ANY boxer in the shape he is in, for whatever reason...
Have Ali fight on, let alone justify having te dights SANCTIONED.

 

The debate at the time was really over freedom of choice of what one wants to do with one’s life.

People make bad decisions all the time — smoking, drinking, drugs, bad eating habits … but also entering high-risk professions like boxing, military, logging (apparently the job with the highest work-related mortality rate).

In the U.S. and throughout the free world, most people fall on the side of ‘if it doesn’t harm anyone else and you know the risks going in, you should be allowed to do it.’ Nobody goes into boxing for their health. You can make a very reasonable argument that it should be outlawed given CTE and all that. But society allows it.

 

You are an excellent poster & make a good argument.
However what most believe does not establish what is right.
Although there is no indication that most believe there should be no limits for anyone, regardless of the risks.

It is an extreme argument that regardless of condition or risk everyone should be allowed to do anything.
Maybe especially such a public spectacle.
Would you say that you &/or most people think it is an unjustified invasion of personal freedom to have *any* screening or licensing, any safety standards in work, sport, any effort to mitigate harm as long as it only effects the one who chooses a hobby or profession?

We can have corporations allow desperate people to take a job where there is a 50% chance of dying per year if that is the case.
And on the other side where risk is SO much lower, most people support seat belt laws, & the vast majority comply.
Even if the higher rates of crippling & death did not effect society, costs traumatize innocent others, from the other car to family of the victims...

Most believe in *some* level of protecting the individual from themselves let alone corporate & individual exploitation.
Certainly that needs to be balanced against the right of people to take many risks & make stupid decisions.
But not anything regardless of harm & effect under any & all circumstances.