Found this little story fascinating

great thread lots of interesting stuff, how can you not be a Frazier fan I've always prefered Frazier to Ali.

 

Yoiu Can't Blame Joe For Hating Ali. Some Of The Things He Said Were Just Criminal

 

While I obviously respect Ali as a boxer, as a person he was lacking a lot.
Some of the things he said about Frazier were awful, but what I found really bad was the fact that Frazier lent him money and was a friend when he needed one.
Terrible way to treat someone who helped you out.

 

Absolutly!

I have tremendous respect for Ali as a fighter and for what he did in the ring but as a person there are few people i dislike more.

 

I gotta admit...As a fighter....Muhammad is one of my All-Time favourites.Right back from the day I watched him(on film of course) school Sonny Liston for the tiltle,I was hooked on the man..

And I believe...there is no HW in history who could catch to that version of Ali..IMHO.He would go on,of course,to be the icon that we know him to be today.

But....even back in those title winning days,it was no secret that Ali was a player...hell even after converting to Islam he was still playing around....

And so I understood the man for who he was...Easily the most famous Black man of all time...he wa still a man.Ali liked getting to his opponents verbally...so they can get mad and make mistakes in the ring.....**** he did it to Liston years before meeting Joe...Nothing more than a psychological bantering on Ali's part....

But I agree with a lot of cats here...that the **** in Manila went way beyond pre-fight banter.IMO,Ali was still sore...from the FOC loss...and he was trying to inflict as much pain as possible on Joe....while also deraililng Joe's psyche at the same time.Joe and his family suffered a lot of pain...his kids in school...things that should have never happened...if Ali could have exercised a little bit of empathy....Especially for a cat who...when the whole world was against Ali...was the only one prepared to give him a fight...Did'nt I hear that he gave Ali some money or somethin?

Ali will always be my Top5 all-time favourite..As a fighter he was unbelievable...as a man,he had his demons....and what he said to Joe in Manila is unexcusable IMO...Smokin' Joe,however,does himself a disservice for holding on to that hate for this long.Back then,yes...but now??He sometimes comes off as a sour sore loser who hates Ali for his fame....

But yes,Ali was and is never a God...but easily one the most people on the planet.Period.

 

I actually have Frazier and Ali at the 3 and 4 spots in my top 10 favorite list.

 

in alis defense..joe wouldn't hae made any where near the mone he dd without ali's bull****

 

No one in this corner either dismissed Ali's kindness, excused Frazier's very public cruelty towards the ailing Ali, or looked at Terrell's beating as anything less than quid pro quo.

I have a problem with the whole American Saint image of Ali -because again, he was all-too human as both your post and mine illustrate.

 

Let's clarify something here. Ali's unwillingness to go to Vietnam had little if anything to with politics or the perception that his people weren't full citizens. That's hype, Bokaj. First of all, Black Americans were full citizens by the mid-60s. That is beyond debate unless you are an ideologue who will bring up mistreatment by a minority of rapid white American racists -all of whom should have been tarred and feathered and then flogged by white and black alike.

If you would excuse anyone from a draft because of the faults of a certain segment of American jerks -which there has never been a shortage of, then I don't know what to tell you. What a shame that the thousands of other Black Americans who went through a far rougher time in ghettoes than working class Cassius Clay ever did were not afforded the same excuse.

 

Trust no autobiography. It's a legacy document written by the subject's biggest and most unapologetic fan.

Whatever Ali's actual reasons were behind his decision not to step forward and serve his country, I do not believe that they were as promoted by him, his fans, or the ideologues using him.

I believe that the truth is just not so heroic.

 

Ok. Then we're on the same page.

As big an Ali fan that I am, it annoys me when they try to make a saint of him. Actually, I think that his less than pleasant sides is what makes him so interesting. Here we have a guy who genuinly seemed to love people in general, spewing all that Nation of Islam hate speech... Also, his cowardly way of acting towards Malcolm X was deplorable, but he was, of course, very young then.

 

Well, he had grown up as a de facto second class citizen in segregated Kentucky. And even if the Jim Crow laws had been abolished by the mid 60's, blacks in general hardly had equal opportunity to whites, especially in the south.

We can of course only speculate about Ali's reasons not to go to Vietnam. But it seems perfectly reasonable to me that you don't want to die in a war that don't make sense to you, for the benefit of a system where the colour of your skin has made you be treated as someone of less worth than others.

And yes, it is a shame that blacks from the ghetto was sent to Vietnam en masse while college kids were often exempted.