Muhammad Ali

Me too mate....spent the last 2 hours laughing and greetin' watching the coverage and reading comments and tributes from all over the place!:smiley-laughing002:

 

Spot on. Couldve waited some time. The momentum for criticism is *. Nobody is perfect and a saint. Certainly one of the better sportsman and character he was.

 

Absolutley brilliant. At 3.55 ,the speed was amazing.

 

I never said his whole character was flawed, I said he was a nasty * and preached divisiveness and hatred for a fair chunk of his life, all of which is true.

A lot of what he said and did back in the day has been whitewashed by the media, meaning that a lot of people think today that he was some sort of Martin Luther King figure, which simply isn't the case.

He was closer to being a Louis Farrakhan than an MLK.

 

Black man hates white people in mid 20th Century America.

Imagine that...?

RIP.

 

To be fair to Dáibhí he has offered condolences, and much like myself rejects that he is some kind of hero outside of the ring.

 

I never really had an issue with that, it was more the "black man who should know better uses racial slurs against fellow black man in order to further his own popularity" that bothered me.

Especially when said fellow black man went above & beyond to offer support during his time of need.

 

Well sometimes it is maybe best saying nothing if you have nothing good to say. Offering condolences for someone you dont have a lot of time for is a hollow gesture.

You can see and feel the tone in this thread....why lob spanners in on such a day?

 

A lot of that was showmanship though, Ali was the first guy to bring showbusiness to boxing. Did he go too far sometimes? Maybe, but it sold fights and made all of them rich people.

The Frazier stuff is a bit crass to say the least but most of it will just have been grandstanding.

 

Most of the criticism launched at Ali is when he was subject to indoctrination from the Nation of Islam, "A black man should be killed if he's messing with a white woman" being such a claim he made whilst under their control as it effectively was. He was young and impressionable, and the dispensation in America at that time made it easy for him to believe the Nation of Islam's ideologies.

 

Ali was such a great counter boxer so it suited him to have his opponents fired up and hating him, it meant they would come after him in the ring and maybe come into the fight too emotional and that leads to mistakes.

 

You of all people dismissing what was basically racism and manipulation of a sensitive situation as simply "grandstanding" and "showmanship"? Christ, talk about moving the goalposts to suit your argument.

I never saw you as someone who'd go down that road, Sean.

Anyway, I'm obviously bringing down the tone of the mourning, so I'll leave it be. I don't want MGM to get upset any more than he already is.

 

Can you be racist of your own race?

 

:smiley-laughing002:

That must stick in your craw that he was in the NOI.

Keep trying to distance him from it though, if it makes you feel better for liking him. :smiley-laughing002:

 

I'd say so, yeah.

In fact, I'd say that it was even worse what he did, as he grew up in the south just like Frazier did and he knew the * that guys like them had to put up with throughout their early lives.

He went ahead and did it anyway, resulting in Frazier getting death threats and his kids being victimised.

Still, it sold some PPV's and helped make a lot of (predominantly white, funnily enough) people wealthy.

 

I'm not dismissing anything, I'm saying he wont have believed half of what he said to Frazier. It was said to sell the fight and most importantly, to have Smokin' Joe going into the fight with hatred for Ali. An emotional fighter will make mistakes.

 

I am upset at his passing, as are many others, but more irritated by you trying to draw people into a debate or discussion regarding negativity about the man, when he only died hours ago.

 

Well, don't reply. Simply ignore what I say.

 

He was no saint, many newspaper outlets have been reporting on the 'tangled web' he has left behind with regards to his family and how he has ostracised his only son since 2004 etc.

His political views were of course controversial at the time..this was in 1960s USA where racial segregation was still rampant and he was challenging the most powerful establishment in the world, when the war & propaganda machine was in full flow. He helped a whole generation in America question the status quo and ask why they were being sent to fight the Vietcong in a war which ultimately had unclear objectives to the common man.

He did mellow politically in his later years and became more inclusive and less racially charged, although because of his disease many people unfairly judge his character by a time where a lot of * was going in politically and socially, when he was still a young man.

 

It's a stain on his career, yes, but I'm not trying to distance him from it, I'm literally the only one acknowledging the fact that he was a part of such a group. What I'm saying is that the criticisms of racism and anti-Semitism were all during his time as a member of this group, I believe later in his life he saw the error in his ways, and since embraced less exclusive, less divisive and ultimately less racist forms of Islam.