Muhammad Ali

[seafoid]

probably not the place for it today but it always bothered me the way he treated Joe Frazier before there first fight.  RIP

I know what you mean but I've read quite a few biographies of Ali and he repeated on many occasions of his regret about his treatment of Frazier. I got the impression that at times when Ali felt he was genuinely going to have a war with someone he had to build the fight into more than a boxing fight. He wasn't perfect by any means but he was definitely one of the iconic figures of a generation, who in my opinion was the most influential sportsman of all time. Below is a passage from one of the biographies...

Agree with this. Perhaps the most (and first) influential and iconic sportsman there's been.
But The Greatest? At what? Don't think anyone who really knows boxing regards him as the greatest fighter there has been - this accolade often reserved for either of the Sugar Rays. Some have said his avoidance of the draft was self-serving and his conversion to Islam convenient. As shown above, he didn't always treat his opponents with respect, and was a serially-unfaithful husband.

So, charismatic, yes hugely, but I don't entirely buy into this Greatest malarkey which I think was often a profitable cover.

The Islam thing was of its time. Minority groups had the space in the 60s and 70s to get organised and make waves. In Ireland Raidio na Gaeltachta came out of this process.

[rrhf]

Don't count the days, make the days count.
So simple but so true.

I like it.

Who said that.

[J70]

probably not the place for it today but it always bothered me the way he treated Joe Frazier before there first fight.  RIP

I know what you mean but I've read quite a few biographies of Ali and he repeated on many occasions of his regret about his treatment of Frazier. I got the impression that at times when Ali felt he was genuinely going to have a war with someone he had to build the fight into more than a boxing fight. He wasn't perfect by any means but he was definitely one of the iconic figures of a generation, who in my opinion was the most influential sportsman of all time. Below is a passage from one of the biographies...

Agree with this. Perhaps the most (and first) influential and iconic sportsman there's been.
But The Greatest? At what? Don't think anyone who really knows boxing regards him as the greatest fighter there has been - this accolade often reserved for either of the Sugar Rays. Some have said his avoidance of the draft was self-serving and his conversion to Islam convenient. As shown above, he didn't always treat his opponents with respect, and was a serially-unfaithful husband.

So, charismatic, yes hugely, but I don't entirely buy into this Greatest malarkey which I think was often a profitable cover.

How could the draft dodging be self-serving when it meant he faced a possible five year prison sentence and it robbed him of his boxing career, for all he knew at the time, possibly for good?

And if Islam was just a matter of convenience, why would he stick with it?

A person can be a great man even if he is unfaithful to his wife or whatever. The label is not "perfect human being". MLK played around on his wife FFS.

[muppet]

probably not the place for it today but it always bothered me the way he treated Joe Frazier before there first fight.  RIP

I know what you mean but I've read quite a few biographies of Ali and he repeated on many occasions of his regret about his treatment of Frazier. I got the impression that at times when Ali felt he was genuinely going to have a war with someone he had to build the fight into more than a boxing fight. He wasn't perfect by any means but he was definitely one of the iconic figures of a generation, who in my opinion was the most influential sportsman of all time. Below is a passage from one of the biographies...

Agree with this. Perhaps the most (and first) influential and iconic sportsman there's been.
But The Greatest? At what? Don't think anyone who really knows boxing regards him as the greatest fighter there has been - this accolade often reserved for either of the Sugar Rays. Some have said his avoidance of the draft was self-serving and his conversion to Islam convenient. As shown above, he didn't always treat his opponents with respect, and was a serially-unfaithful husband.

So, charismatic, yes hugely, but I don't entirely buy into this Greatest malarkey which I think was often a profitable cover.

Pound for pound greatest maybe for the Sugar Rays.

But heavyweight is the blue ribband of boxing and Ali was the greatest heavyweight imho. What is the criteria for 'greatest'? Who knows. It is entirely subjective, but in my opinion you would need to be fortunate enough to fight in an era of other great champions and beat them all. No ducking anyone, and for me Ali ticks these boxes.

Dodging the draft was far more damaging to him than doing, for example Special Services, which was offered to Elvis (6 weeks training and then the odd performance for the troops - which Elvis turned down) or he could have done time somewhere like West Germany, as Elvis did. To refuse to go, while at the absolute top of his earning days was hardly money driven. He became box office poison and was detested by most whites in the USA.

He was considered semi-literate and as having a low IQ, from a very poor background, in a country where racism towards his people was rampant. Out of that he became an Olympic & world champion, which had been done, but also a Nelson Mandela figure, which if it had been done before, then I missed it.

So what was he the greatest at? Take your pick.

Here is what Sugar Ray Leonard said:

[Syferus]

Being a heavyweight shouldn't come into it. What was remarkable about Ali as a boxer was his speed and footwork, like a massive middleweight. Makes the yokes we've had the last two decades look like plodding tanks by comparison.

[omagh_gael]

Forgive my ignorance, but what was the jist of his poor treatment of Joe Frazier?

[Boycey]

Forgive my ignorance, but what was the jist of his poor treatment of Joe Frazier?

There are many different slants and opinions on the subject and I don't like quoting Wikipedia but this is a simple enough explanation of the whole thing...

Frazier and Ali were initially friends. During Ali's enforced three-year lay-off from boxing for refusing to be drafted into the US Army, Frazier lent him money and testified before Congress and petitioned U.S. President Richard Nixon to have Ali's right to box reinstated.[28] Frazier supported Ali's right not to serve in the army, saying "If Baptists weren't allowed to fight, I wouldn't fight either."[29]

However, in the build-up to their first fight, The Fight of the Century, Ali turned it into a "cultural and political referendum", painting himself as a revolutionary and civil rights champion and Frazier as the white man's hope, an "Uncle Tom" and a pawn of the white establishment.[30][31] Ali successfully turned many black Americans against Frazier. Bryant Gumbel joined the pro-Ali, anti-Frazier bandwagon by writing a major magazine article that asked "Is Joe Frazier a white champion with black skin?" Frazier thought this was "a cynical attempt by Clay to make me feel isolated from my own people. He thought that would weaken me when it came time to face him in that ring. Well, he was wrong. It didn't weaken me, it awakened me to what a cheap-shot son of a bitch he was." He noted the hypocrisy of Ali calling him an Uncle Tom when his [Ali's] trainer (Angelo Dundee) was white.[30]

As a result of Ali's campaign, Frazier's children were bullied at school and his family were given police protection after receiving death threats.[32] Ali declared that if Frazier won he would crawl across the ring and admit that Frazier was the greatest. After Frazier won by a unanimous decision, he called upon Ali to fulfil his promise and crawl across the ring, but he didn't.[33] Ali called it a "white man's decision" and insisted that he won.[34]

During a televised joint interview prior to their second bout in 1974, Ali continued to insult Frazier, who took exception to Ali calling him "ignorant" and challenged him to a fight, which resulted in the two of them brawling on the studio floor.[35] Ali went on to win the 12 round non-title affair by a decision. Ali took things further in the build-up to their last fight, The Thrilla in Manila, and called Frazier "the other type of negro" and "ugly", "dumb" and a "gorilla"[36] At one point he sparred with a man in a gorilla suit and pounded on a rubber gorilla doll, saying "This is Joe Frazier's conscience... I keep it everywhere I go. This is the way he looks when you hit him."[37] According to the fight's promoter Don King, this enraged Frazier, who took it as a "character assassination" and "personal invective".[37] One night before the fight, Ali waved around a toy pistol outside Frazier's hotel room. When Frazier came to the balcony, he pointed the gun at Frazier and yelled "I am going to shoot you."[38] After the fight, Ali summoned Frazier's son Marvis into his dressing room, and told him that he had not meant what he had said about his father. When informed of this by Marvis, Frazier responded: "you ain't me, son. Why isn't he apologizing to me?"

[omagh_gael]

Cheers Boycey. That's pretty intense trolling by Ali!

[Asal Mor]

Interesting stuff Boycey. I knew that Ali had gone to extremes to humiliate Frazier, but didn't know the full extent of it, or that Frazier had previously been a very good friend to Ali.

http://indianexpress.com/article/sports/sport-others/hero-legend-villain-muhammad-alis-ugly-feud-with-joe-frazier-2835761/#sthash.u6uS5pBz.dpuf

In his autobiography two decades later, Frazier laid bare his resentment, suggesting that Ali's Parkinson's disease was divine retribution. "People ask me if I feel sorry for him. Nope. Fact is, I don't give a damn. They want me to love him, but I'll open up the graveyard and bury his ass when the Lord chooses to take him," he wrote.

In 2001, though, Ali apologized during a New York Times interview. "In a way, Joe's right. I said a lot of things in the heat of the moment that I shouldn't have said," Ali reflected. "I apologize for that. I'm sorry."

By the end of the decade, Frazier's bitterness had finally begun to subside. "I forgive him, sure," Frazier told Britain's Daily Telegraph in a 2008 interview.

[Asal Mor]

Agree with this. Perhaps the most (and first) influential and iconic sportsman there's been.
But The Greatest? At what? Don't think anyone who really knows boxing regards him as the greatest fighter there has been - this accolade often reserved for either of the Sugar Rays. Some have said his avoidance of the draft was self-serving and his conversion to Islam convenient. As shown above, he didn't always treat his opponents with respect, and was a serially-unfaithful husband.

So, charismatic, yes hugely, but I don't entirely buy into this Greatest malarkey which I think was often a profitable cover.

He said in one of his books that Sugar Ray Robinson was the greatest pound-for-pound fighter ever.

[AhNowRef]

Ali was some boxer and for me the greatest sportsman sportsperson ever .... Still think all the talk about beautiful boxing etc.. would mean bugger all against Mike Tyson in his prime .. No one was gonna beat that  .. yeiks !!!

[Orior]

Ali was some boxer and for me the greatest sportsman sportsperson ever .... Still think all the talk about beautiful boxing etc.. would mean bugger all against Mike Tyson in his prime .. No one was gonna beat that  .. yeiks !!!

Hypothetical, but would Ali in his prime not have danced around Tyson?

[under the bar]

Foreman was the Tyson of Ali's day, except considerably bigger and more powerful again. 

[Minder]

Dunno if it's been mentioned but sad how he was totally exploited the last few years, by his family I take it. He hated flying apparently but was wheeled out all over the world at various appearances

[02]

Foreman was the Tyson of Ali's day, except considerably bigger and more powerful again.

Agreed, and also Ali lost 3 and a half years of his prime...