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THE ABSURD TIMES
Mohammed Ali v. Lies
By
Jack Hammer
So many times during the last few days I've seen people talking about Ali after he died and shouted "Bullshit …", that the times asked me to comment. I wanted to just say it outright, but this is a written forum. So here it is.
Most of the coverage of Ali has been by sportswriters who are almost all very stupid about everything except sports. When Ali began, sports commentators at best had high-school educations. There were a few notable exceptions back then and a few now, but it is not an area where social consciousness is ripe.
Before Ali's first fight with Liston, someone told me "Liston'll kill him." I made a bet and it was one of the most lucrative bets I ever made.
The guy who said that was a baseball player on the same team as me. However, I was a pitcher and hence smarter.
People had not seen Cassius Clay in Rome at the Olympics. He won first place and was overwhelmingly a better boxer than the rest of the team and competition combined. The Polish opponent had nothing but praise for him. People didn't get the rules either. At least at that time, fighters scored points for hitting the opponent, no mater whether lightly or hard. Clay was fast and a light heavy weight. His speed was unmatched. JFK was President.
When Clay went back to Louisville to eat in a white only restaurant (after all, he had represented the United States) he was refused. Soon after, he threw his gold medal away (not much later and you hear on the media, even today).
When the guy made the bet, he had no idea of what he was talking about. I told him "He won't even see him." The amount increased.
That time I brushed him back first.
At that time, the fight game was run by organized crime, large and small. The fighters got almost nothing. J. Edgar Hoover liked it that way. After all, the Mob knew about his cross-dressing.
Also at that time, Malcolm X was doing the radio broadcasts for the Black Mulsims, or the "Nation of Islam" and he was an amazing speaker over, I think, WEEW radio in Evanston, Illinois. Later, when the "Nation" started to mess with him, Elijah Mohammed took over those broadcasts and it was clear how strange he was. Malcolm had gone to the Pilgrimage in Mecca and changed greatly. Ali did not, but Malcolm had recruited him.
After Clay won the fight against Liston, the Nation or Black Muslims moved in and took control and that was what started the real trouble. The FBI had already been tapping Malcolm's phone and now they tapped Ali's as well. Organized crime lost control of the business and this upset a lot of people and the propaganda started.
All but a very few sports announcers still called him Clay. Other than a few black reporters, only one of not called him "Mohammed Ali," and that was Howard Cosell. People still like to hate Cosell. However, he graduated from law school and hence knew a bit more than the others, perhaps an unfair advantage.
After that, he had several Championship fights, not avoiding anyone as most champions did. He continued until they drafted him. The first time, he could not pass the "IQ" test for the Army. I knew an utter fool who bought beer by the case (quarts) who was nearly mindless and who reported that he had "one of the top three tests" for the marines, meaning he was third. This was when Ali tested even lower, much lower.
As his reputation grew, JFK was assassinated and the war grew as well. People started to avoid the draft, especially people like Dick Cheney. Ali was reclassified. Only Howard Cosell put him on the air as Ali refused induction. Freedom of religion. He also said "Aint no Viet Cong never called me nigger."
Just about everyone was attacking him or, as one reporter put it a day or so ago, "except for black youth and a few people in the counter-culture". Well, I guess I was a part of the counter-culture because I thought he had the right. So did Cosell.
The case went to the Supreme Court, after three and a half years, and he won unanimously, 8-0, and was informed of this by, you guessed it, Howard Cosell, who had also predicted it.
The rest of the story becomes more accurate. Ali later became a Sunni Muslim like Malcolm did, although after Malcolm was assassinated, just as were Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy.
There is no time now to refute all the garbage about his "cruelty," other than to remark that trash talk is rampant in sports and always has been. Some say he carried Floyd Patterson and kept yelling what's my name and would not knock him out because he would not call him Ali. However, in a later fight, lang after Ali should have retired, he fought Larry Holmes. Holmes kept telling the referee to stop the fight as Ali was being seriously hurt. The referee did not, but he could have, easily. The same applied to the Patterson incident. The referee could have stopped it if he thought it best.
Right now, there are only two sportscasters whom you can trust to talk about this: Kieth Olbermann and Bob Costas.
Ali was and is known around the world and widely seen as a hero. He had Parkinson's and that is constantly referred to as caused by boxing. Maybe. However, Michael J. Fox was never a prizefighter. At any rate, boxing has not been a major sport for some time now.
So, on Thursday, and the Friday, there will be a funeral and a burial for Ali. Just remember the truth as the "reporters" talk.
