I was an ardent admirer of him as a child and cried when he lost Frazier. A great beyond description . May His Soul R.I.P.
Debunking the myths that have glorified Muhammad Ali
By
Phil Mushnick
June 5, 2016
Muhammad Ali connects with a punch to Joe Frazier in 1975.
I realize I’m spitting into the storm here, but there are popular, entered-as-fact myths about Muhammad Ali perhaps worth addressing:
1. Cassius Marcellus Clay, as Ali often shouted, was “my slave name.”
Nonsense — and from the day he was named.
Cassius Marcellus Clay, 1810-1903, was a Kentucky planter, politician and newspaper publisher who, at enormous risk, was a devoted abolitionist in a state — Ali’s home state — where anti-slavery activism could and did leave one dead.
In 1843, Clay survived a bullet fired by a hired gun of slavery proponents. The founding publisher of an anti-slavery Lexington newspaper, Clay’s shop was wrecked by a mob. Undeterred, he published from Cincinnati.
When Abraham Lincoln was elected president, Clay, appointed minister (what we now call ambassador) to Russia, was among the first and most relentless to urge Lincoln to act to end slavery. Clay donated the land on which Berea College, in 1855, opened — for all races.
The father of baseball Hall of Famer and Ohioan George Sisler was Cassius Clay Sisler, named in honor of this brave abolitionist. As “slave names” went, Ali’s was antithetical.
2. Ali for years suffered from Parkinson’s disease.
Wrong. Parkinson’s disease is mostly a mystery affliction associated with aging. Its syndrome mimics the disease’s symptoms but is both explainable and preventable. Ali’s Parkinson’s syndrome is known as dementia pugilistica — mental and physical debilitation from being hit in the head too often.
When asked about Ali’s health, Don King, who made a fortune from Ali being hit in the head too often, eagerly claimed that Ali has Parkinson’s disease, as if King had nothing to do with it.
Likely the worst beating Ali received was in 1980, at 38, when King was paid to match Ali, his speed and reflexes gone, against Larry Holmes. Requiem for a heavyweight.
I met Ali once, at Pele’s farewell game, 1977, in Giants Stadium. Even then, he appeared glassy eyed, slightly vacant. That he’d fight four more times — 50 more rounds — seems criminal. Ali then lived in a darkening, thickening fog for the next 30 years.
And after King, no one used Ali — until he was all used up — more than the Black Muslims, who would hop on his gravy train and line up for background photo ops until, inevitably, Ali ran low on cash. That’s when his co-religionists were no longer in his picture. Ali, smart as he was, was easily had.
Muhammad Ali stands over Sonny Liston during their bout in Maine. Ali won the fight with a first round knock-out to claim the heavyweight champion title.
3. As read in books, spoken in documentaries and now written in obituaries and spoken in eulogies, Ali was a champion of the young political left and legions of anti-Vietnam War activists. Ali vs. Joe Frazier remains characterized as American counter-culture vs. establishment.
A gross over-generalization. As a long-haired, hippie-uniformed college student in the early 1970s, I was among many of similar appearance, apparel and politics who backed Frazier. We didn’t like the way Ali cruelly baited Frazier, taking advantage of Smokin’ Joe’s inability to spar verbally and intellectually with Ali. Many of us, raised to dislike bullies, showboats and braggarts, pulled for Frazier.
Sure, Ali, aside from his boxing talent, was often charming, mug-for-the-cameras funny. But when he called Frazier “a gorilla” — a racial slur even spoken by a black man — many of us figured Frazier the better gentleman and sportsman.
Jesse Jackson at Joe Frazier’s funeral, in Philadelphia in 2011.Photo: Reuters
That Jesse Jackson grandstanded at Frazier’s funeral, eulogizing him as a man of “great dignity,” was appalling. Where was Jackson when Frazier needed him?
And now we’re told that Ali, who denigrated gracious, dignified Joe Louis as an “Uncle Tom,” represented and even created great, upward social change in America. I’m unsure of that, but I know he helped change American sports.
Ali was pandered to by a mass media that suddenly seemed unwilling to see, hear and report wrong from right, choosing to weigh matters as cases of black or white, a dubious method to promote racial equality.
Ali was able to — allowed to — popularize and commercialize trash-talking, name-calling and chest-pounding — something we’ve never recovered from — as few in the media wish to be identified as uncool, to knock something not in society’s best interests, applauding acts of bad-is-good they’d never encourage in their own.
And so, in Ali’s rise, pandering flowered and remains in full, no-upside bloom. “Hah, hah, ain’t he/wasn’t he great?” Well, it depends. He was a great boxer, a world-beater. But a world-changer? For the better? Where? How?
Quickly, boxing promotion news conferences demanded obligatory threats, vile invective and hassles. A part of Ali’s boxing legacy. Modesty, once considered a fundamental attribute, has been TV-conquered by immodesty grown more severe, widespread and ugly in all sports. Ali and the “We’re cool, too!” pandering media broke that ice best left frozen.
And our sports now are even deeper stuck in the morass that Ali and his pandering, give-us-more indulgers introduced as good when they had to know better. Sorry, but that’s the way I saw it, the way I still see it.
