Who was the bigger sore loser? Floyd Patterson or Ernie Terrell

Floyd did admirably well in that rematch...fighting a determined, spirited fight, and even mildly protested the stoppage....though I guess that makes him a "sore loser" too, eh?

 

Nice point. It is strange to me how often that it ,and others like it, need to be made in a forum for admirers of the game. Men who dedicate and often to varying degrees sacrifice them should get more respect.

 

Thank you, and I agree with your point.

 

I don't doubt Ali went on to give further interviews, once the klingons of the NOI got to him. For all his talk Ali was basically a gullible attention seeker, easily manipulated by those who chose to do so.

I have no doubt they told him he really won, and it was the white man who had robbed him, and Ali's ego made him more than ready to accept those views.

But as stated the day after the fight he told it the way he felt it was. That he was beaten, it was only a fight, and there were far more important things going on in the world.

 

Ali was driven by ego. That ego (and being a great competitor) allowed him to acomplish what he did. Whatever suited him to say what he said was what he said at the time. His ego allowed him to say conflicting things about the same subject in order to control or to suit a situation. Winning the next fight and saying what he felt needed to be said to suit the situation is what he would have said. I would not personally lay any blame on the conflicting things Ali said on the NOI influence over Ali because IMO Ali was more than capable of contradicting himself without anybody's help. If he needed to believe he won he believed it. If he needed people to believe he was gracious he would be gracious. When he was genuinely gracious he was gracious and when he was bodacious he was bodacious.

 

I won't accept if I've heard him say the exact opposite.

 

In the "Facing Ali" video, you can see what appears to the the thumbing. Terrell is slumped against the ropes, leaning back. Despite his height, Ali actually has to punch down at him because he's slouching. Terrell's complaint seems reasonable.

 

I would say it was naive at best to think Ali was not hugely influenced by the NOI between 1964 and 1975. Particularly Elijah Muhammad whose example he copied in 67 by " dodging the draft " I believe it is called, as the leader had himself done in WW2.


Ali said that he first heard of the Nation of Islam (NOI) when he was fighting in the Golden Gloves tournament in Chicago in 1959, and attended his first NOI meeting in 1961. He continued to attend meetings, although keeping his involvement hidden from the public. In 1962, Clay met Malcolm X, who soon became his spiritual and political mentor, and by the time of the first Liston fight NOI members, including Malcolm X, were visible in his entourage. This led to a story in The Miami Herald just before fight disclosing that Clay had joined the Nation, which nearly caused the bout to be canceled.

In fact, Clay was initially refused entry to the Nation of Islam (often called the Black Muslims at the time) due to his boxing career. However, after he won the championship from Liston in 1964, the Nation of Islam was more receptive and agreed to recruit him as a member. Shortly afterwards, Elijah Muhammad recorded a statement that Clay would be renamed Muhammad (one who is worthy of praise) Ali (fourth rightly guided caliph).

Only a few journalists (most notably Howard Cosell) accepted the new name at that time. Ali later announced: "Cassius Clay is my slave name." Ali's friendship with Malcolm X ended as Malcolm split with the NOI a couple of weeks after Ali joined, and Ali remained with the Nation. Ali later said that turning his back on Malcolm was one of the mistakes he regretted most in his life.

Aligning himself with the Nation of Islam, its leader Elijah Muhammad, and a narrative that labeled the white race as the perpetrator of genocide against African Americans made Ali a target of public condemnation. The NOI was widely viewed by whites and even some African Americans as a black separatist "hate religion" with a propensity toward violence; Ali had few qualms about using his influential voice to speak NOI doctrine. For example, in a press conference articulating his opposition to the Vietnam War, Ali stated, "my enemy is the white people, not the Vietcong". In relation to integration, he said: "We who follow the teachings of Elijah Muhammad don't want to be forced to integrate. Integration is wrong. We don't want to live with the white man; that's all." And in relation to inter-racial marriage: "No intelligent black man or black woman in his or her right black mind wants white boys and white girls coming to their homes to marry their black sons and daughters." Indeed, Ali's religious beliefs at the time included the notion that the white man was "the devil" and that white people were not "righteous".

Writer Jerry Izenberg once noted that, "the Nation became Ali's family and Elijah Muhammad became his father. But there is an irony to the fact that while the Nation branded white people as devils, Ali had more white colleagues than most African American people did at that time in America, and continued to have them throughout his career."

Conversion to Sunni Islam
Ali converted from the Nation of Islam sect to mainstream Sunni Islam in 1975. In a 2004 autobiography, written with daughter Hana Yasmeen Ali, Muhammad Ali attributes his conversion to the shift toward Islam made by Warith Deen Muhammad after he gained control of the Nation of Islam upon the death of Elijah Muhammad in 1975. Later, in 2005, he embraced the spiritual practices of Sufis.