"Liniment In The Eyes"

It was Angelo Dundee that said he put a Clay "tear" on his finger and touched it to his own eye & said it "burned".

And Dundee never manipulated the situation in the Cooper I fight either.

 

i beg 2 differ : [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1f09-ZI_24[/ame]
also notice doink's footwork and mindgames near d end .

 

There are many people on this board who regard Clay-Liston in Miami as some sort of great performance and epic victory.
That's the mainstream's revisionist version too.

I think it was an unsatisfactory farce at best.
90% of the commentary at the time seemed to have similar feelings on it.

 

These anti-Ali threads get more bizarre and surreal all the time. An unsourced, unsubstantiated claim that pretending to have liniment in the eyes was something they sometimes did in professional wrestling and this is supposed to be proof that such a thing could never happen in real life?

Still not as funny as the one about a loss when he was a 15 year old amateur - "he was a seasoned, experienced 15 year old!"

 

How is this an anti-Ali thread ? :huh
And surely discussing minor details of Ali's boxing career (amateur and pro) is more a sign of how highly he is regarded.

I don't think young Cassius Clay was pretending. But I know he was highly influenced by professional wrestling. And I know that it was Clay who originally made the claim that it was deliberate 'dirty tricks' from the other camp. A few reporters were quite convinced that it was something that had happened in his own corner. Make of it what you will.

 

Gotta love Ali. 30 years after his retirement he still he provokes the crazies.

What a gathering for the tin-foil hats on ESB.:blurp

 

This entire thread is bizzaro world stuff.

First, show me ONE reference or video of "linament" in the eyes ever being used in professional wrestling.

I've seen heels throw "salt" or produce flash-bang "fire" to blind opponents. I've seen them splash "ink" and rake the eyes with their fingers.

The idea of invisible linament on the bad guy's body ending up in the eyes of the babyface hero is inane -- it's not visual enough to get across to the audience to sell the point of the heel cheating to win.

"Blinding" the good guy is an old wrestling trick. Doing so with linament that the audience cannot see is not.

But beyond that, does anyone really think a young Cassius X would have the foresight to say, "Hmmm, if I faked like I was blinded by linament on Sonny's body getting into my eyes and waited until several rounds into the fight to do it, then I ran around acting like I couldn't see him and kept blinking, years down the road after I have become 'The Greatest' people will look back at his as epic and it will only enhance my legend." Really? Seriously?

Did he or did he not tell Dundee to cut off the gloves, claiming there was "dirty work afoot"? I believe he did. And if Dundee had taken that order and cut off the gloves, boy wouldn't that fake linament trick have backfired! Quite a risk to take, unless you want to say the corner was in on it and said, 'Yes, that's a good idea. You're fighting one of the most feared heavyweights in history, a guy people think is going to kill you -- it's brilliant to fake like you've been blinded. It will make a great chapter in your autobiography.'

Why didn't the linament get in his eyes earlier? That's not so hard to answer. Maybe Clay didn't wipe above his eyes earlier in the fight. Maybe he didn't get enough linament on his gloves earlier. Or it could be that the simplest solution, as is most always the case, is the correct solution -- Sonny was getting old, his shoulder or whatever was stiffening up during the fight and it wasn't applied until this happened. So perhaps there was no linament in the first or second rounds but it was applied later.

Or it was applied before the fight and didn't start to seep out of his pores until he worked up a good sweat. Try this -- rub on some icy hot, wait about an hour or two, then go for a run and start sweating. You'll find it starts to come out. I know a guy who fought in the late 1970s and early 80s who rubbed cocoa butter up and down his arms on the afternoon of a fight. He did it over and over and it soaked into his skin. He did this so when he got sweaty it would come out of his pores and make his arms slick -- which he figured was an advantage in working his arms free from clinches.

If this fight is a set-up, what part would the linament play into it?

 

In the aftermath of that fight, the whole country thought it was fixed. Liston was even hauled before a Congresional investigating committee.

Clay didn't want his victory tainted.

The linament story was designed to show that Liston didn't take a dive.
After all, if Liston wanted to lose, why did he cheat to win?


Several years later, Ali claimed he was approached by a shadowy figure, prior to the Terrell fight, who tried to sell him a vial of liquid guaranteed to blind his opponant. He claimed he had seen the same person in Liston's corner during the first fight.

I believe that is a lie. It sounds just like one. It makes me question Ali's credibility regarding the whole incident.

 

I don't care so much what was real or fake about the fight because, either way, I think it was an unsatisfactory event. Even if it was 100% real it leaves a bad taste in the mouth of real fans.
And just about everyone at the time agreed with that.

I don't understand the hostility to this thread. How can people not see that Cassius Clay (and/or his backers) at that time was purposefully injecting 'phoney wrestling antics' into the world of professional boxing ?
Whether or not the fights themselves were tainted, it cannot be denied that the Clay side-show was straight-up wrasslin' ham !

I think people need to take a step back sometimes, away from the myth and legend that has become all too serious, and enjoy the Clay/Ali show for what is was.

 

Yep. This is the craziest thread I've seen yet on my four and a half years on this forum. The good thing, though, is that it shows you which posters not to take remotely seriously in any discussion.