Why Was Muhammad Ali Disrespectful To Joe Louis, But Respectful Of Rocky Marciano

Excellent post.

 

In many ways, Joe Louis was the Jackie Robinson of Boxing, though Jackie came later.

 

What was the thing with the Olympic torch again?

 

the other part of this is that Rocky died young in airplane crash. Out of respect Ali wouldn't say negative things about Marciano.
Joe Louis pick Ali's opponents to beat him quite often. That was/is a racket that still goes on. The promoters bring in the old legend to pick the underdog to drum up interest. They took care of Joe.

 

Well, now keep in mind that Mo-hammed wasn't exactly the brightest bulb in the drawer....."oops",.....sheer sacrilege!!!...the "Ali-Deacons" will be after me now!!!
P.S. I've spent some time laughing myself silly at Joe Louis's subtle crack at Ali..."well, you'd have been on the tour"....the Brown Bomber owned Ali at that point ...plus in my opinion, he dispelled any notion that he (Joe) was "slow" in any way....slipped that subtle zinger in on ali like a comedic pro.

 

Where the hell did my post go?

 

Maybe the mods dislike you?

 

Plausibly, most do. But I don’t think they would delete only my post about Ali of all the things I’ve posted.

 

Another part of it night be that Ali and Louis were competing for the same turf.

Two claimants to GOAT status. Both African Americans, both cultural icons.

Ali responded to Frazier in the same way. Again, Frazier was a widely popular black heavyweight champion encroaching on Ali's strip of public relations territory.

Marciano was a tough, Italian-American white guy who was never considered the absolute best heavyweight ever. Nor was he after Ali's throne. He wasn't a direct competitor.

 

Somebody mentioned it. When Ali had a match Joe was always showing up in the camp of his opponent.

 

The first thing is, aside from personality, most champions have respect for one another since that they all have more in common with each other than anyone else. Louis and Ray Robinson were the natural hero’s of Ali’s boyhood.

I think initially Ali liked Louis a lot more than Louis liked him.

It was quite a conservative world back then.. and everyone was expected to know their place. Ali was quite the outspoken braggart. And he probably expected everyone he liked to approve of him and reacted badly to criticism and Louis’s reaction to him, whilst still respecting the old champ as a fighter.

It wasn’t just Louis who didn’t warm to the young Ali.

But despite their differences, as Ali began to live up to his own talk, Ali grew on Louis as time went on.

The world was not yet really ready for Ali in the 1960s. As a personality He was ahead of his time.

 

From the clips I've seen, I've always thought him making fun of Louis was all in good fun. They did work together too.

There's a clip of Ali speaking to Louis after Louis suffered a stroke and you can tell it really affected Ali.

In this clip of them making fun of each other, I don't think there's a hint of genuine animosity.

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