| 17th January 2007 07:14 PM |
|
|
| Gazza |
quote:
PeerQueer wrote:
An amazing story - the single most important American athlete - EVER.
all you need to do to correct that statement is to remove the word 'American' |
| 17th January 2007 07:17 PM |
|
|
| PeerQueer |
quote:
Gazza wrote:
all you need to do to correct that statement is to remove the word 'American'
_____________
I thought about that very thing - and agree 100% |
| 17th January 2007 07:21 PM |
|
|
| fireontheplatter |
boxing is not a very nice activity.. |
| 18th January 2007 10:06 AM |
|
|
| TampabayStone |
65 Things You Didn't Know About Muhammad Ali
By Charles Jay
-- Cassius Clay originally changed his name to Cassius X, then, very quickly, it went to Muhammad Ali.
-- Ali fought in 12 different countries during his professional career.
-- Ali did not exactly take the world by surprise with his announcement that he had joined the Black Muslims. The story was actually broken 18 days before the first Liston fight in the Miami Herald by reporter Pat Putnam. He had gotten the scoop from Ali's father, who claims his life was threatened by some of the Nation of Islam members.
-- Ali was originally declared mentally incompetent and ineligible for military service, and was classified as 1-Y.
-- In July 1970, Ali came close to putting together a deal to fight Joe Frazier in Toronto. Despite not having a passport, he was trying to get a waiver to go to Toronto for 24 hours. The Ontario commission agreed to license him, but a circuit court judge would not allow him to go.
-- One of the judges for the second Ali-Liston fight was one James Dougherty, known best for being the first husband of Marilyn Monroe.
-- The city of Louisville dedicated Muhammad Ali Boulevard in 1978. Shortly thereafter, twelve of the 70 street signs related to it were stolen, presumably by memorabilia collectors.
-- Ali, in effect, kick-started the promotional careers of both Don King and Bob Arum, who remain arguably the two most dominant figures in the game more than 30 years later.
-- In 1961, Ali (then Clay) sparred with former heavyweight champion Ingemar Johannson, who was preparing for a fight with Floyd Patterson. Ali handled Johannson so easily that Angelo Dundee had to put a stop to it because he thought the two might have to meet for real one day.
-- When Ali fought Jimmy Ellis in July of 1971, Angelo Dundee worked Ellis' corner, because while he was Ali's trainer, Dundee was Ellis' trainer AND manager.
-- Ali was a two-time North American Boxing Federation heavyweight champion.
-- Ali knocked out only two opponents in the first round - Sonny Liston in their second meeting, and Jim Robinson, which occurred in Ali's fourth pro fight.
-- The young Cassius Clay was knocked out in two rounds by Kent Green in the 1957 Chicago Golden Gloves. As a pro, Green would beat Amos Johnson, who also defeated Ali as an amateur.
-- Ali is probably the only heavyweight champion to be mentioned in the title of a Top 40 hit. In 1975 Johnny Wakelin and the Kinshasa Band went to #21 on the Billboard charts with "Black Superman: Muhammad Ali." The record also reached #7 in the UK and #1 in Australia.
-- In 1975, Ali converted from the Nation of Islam to become a Sunni.
-- Senator Richard Russell of Georgia actually came to Ali's defense after Ali had originally converted to Islam. Of course, he had ulterior motives, like most politicians. Russell, a staunch segregationist, was trying to illustrate that there were also black men who advocated separation of the races.
-- Although Ali had been denied exemption from military service, his nemesis, Joe Frazier, did indeed receive an exemption from serving in Vietnam, because he had a wife and kids.
-- Ali was floored just once as a heavyweight champ, that questionable official knockdown he suffered in the ninth round of his bout against Chuck Wepner.
-- After the deal with the original Louisville sponsoring group ran out, Ali was managed by Herbert Muhammad, son of Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam.
-- Ali is known to have been cut only once in a fight - his left eyelid was cut in his November 1972 fight against light heavyweight champ Bob Foster, who went down seven times before being counted out in the eighth round.
-- Ali played someone other than himself just once in a motion picture. That was 1979's "Freedom Road."
-- Ali was enlisted as a "special enforcer" by the World Wrestling Federation for the first Wrestlemania at Madison Square Garden in 1985.
-- Upset and frustrated with being treated, in his words, "like a nigger," Ali (then Clay) threw his 1960 Olympic gold medal into the Ohio River.
-- Ali's brother, Rahman Ali (Rudy Clay) was a heavyweight boxer as well. Career highlights - wins over Levi Forte, who fought the likes of George Chuvalo, George Foreman and Floyd Patterson, and Joe Byrd, father of former IBF heavyweight champ Chris Byrd.
-- Someone who was billed as a cousin of Ali - John Ali - fought once as a pro, losing on a second-round KO to Otis Bates in Las Vegas in August of 1981.
-- When Ali fought Larry Holmes for the WBC title in 1980, he weighed in at 217.5 pounds - his lowest since beating George Foreman six years before. In his next bout, the career finale against Trevor Berbick, he scaled 236-1/4, his heaviest ever.
-- Ali's January 1963 opponent, Charlie Powell, not only was a professional football player with the San Francisco Forty-Niners, he was a rarity in that he went right from high school to the NFL in 1951.
-- Ali's rematch with Sonny Liston was originally scheduled for Boston, but Ali pulled out when he had to have emergency hernia surgery. By the time the fight was to be rescheduled, Massachusetts had refused to sanction it, so the bout had to be moved to Lewiston, Maine.
-- Ali's February 1976 opponent, Jean-Pierre Coopman, freely admitted to drinking champagne between rounds of the title fight.
-- Even though many depicted George Foreman as a monster, when Ali fought him in Zaire the two men were virtually the same size. Foreman was 6'3" and 220 pounds, while Ali was 6'3" and 216-1/2.
-- Ali wore white trunks for all but three of his fights: the first Joe Frazier fight, the first Henry Cooper fight, and his fight against Oscar Bonavena.
-- Ali is the last heavyweight champion to have defended his title twice within a 30-day period. In 1976 he scored the controversial 15-round decision over Jimmy Young on April 30, then on May 24 he knocked out Richard Dunn in five rounds.
-- The whereabouts of Ali's fourth pro opponent, Jim Robinson, have been unknown for years. No one knows if he is alive or dead, and Ali memorabilia collectors have hired private investigators to find out about him, to no avail. Every one of Ali's other opponents can be accounted for.
-- Elijah Muhammad initially warned Malcolm X to keep his distance from Cassius Clay because he did not think he could beat Sonny Liston and didn't want the Nation of Islam to be embarrassed.
-- On June 28, 1971, when the Supreme Court reversed Ali's conviction for refusing military induction, the vote was 8-0; Justice Thurgood Marshall had to abstain, because he had served as solicitor general during the time Ali was being prosecuted.
-- George Foreman, Leon Spinks (in the rematch) and Billy Daniels are the only fighters Ali beat who were undefeated coming into the match.
-- The 15th round of Ali's September 1977 fight with Earnie Shavers, one of his finest, was also the 500th of his career.
-- Ali engaged in a computerized "Superfight" with Rocky Marciano that was shown by closed circuit in theaters on January 20, 1970. The fight was filmed in a studio with every conceivable ending, and neither of the participants knew what the final determination of the computer would be. Marciano wound up prevailing with a 13th-round knockout.
-- The people in Britain were so outraged by the result of the Ali-Marciano "Superfight" that the BBC wound up showing the fight again a week later with a different ending, this one having Ali the winner on cuts.
-- Marciano, who was 52 years old, was fitted with a toupee for the filing of the "Superfight" scenes. He died a few months before the show finally aired.
-- The career of Ali's first pro opponent, Tunney Hunsaker, ended when he lapsed into unconsciousness during a fight with Joe Shelton and later fell into a coma.
-- Heavyweight champions Jimmy Ellis and Larry Holmes both served as sparring partners in Ali's camp.
-- In an interesting bit of turnaround, Ali served as a sparring partner when Ellis was prepping for a 1969 fight with Henry Cooper that never came off. Ali, who was banned from fighting, was paid around $100 a day for his work.
-- Floyd Patterson was so anxious to take the heavyweight title away from the Black Muslims that he publicly offered to fight Ali for no purse. He eventually fought him twice - both for a purse, as far as we know - and was defeated both times.
-- Oscar-winning actor Burt Lancaster was one of the commentators for Ali's first fight with Joe Frazier in 1971.
-- Jim Brown and David Frost were commentators for Ali's fight against George Foreman.
-- Will Smith (playing Ali) and Jon Voigt (playing Howard Cosell) both garnered Academy Award nominations for their performances in the 2001 movie "Ali."
-- Terrence Howard, Oscar-nominated last year for "Hustle & Flow," played Ali in a 2000 movie called "King of the World."
-- Promoter Harold Smith perpetrated the largest bank embezzlement scheme in U.S. annals when he ripped off Wells Fargo Bank for over $20 million as chief executive of a company called Muhammad Ali Professional Sports, in which Ali had an interest but by all accounts no knowledge of the day-to-day operations.
-- The Beatles visited Ali at the Fifth Street Gym before the Miami beach fight between Ali and Liston. They were actually supposed to visit Liston first in his Surfside camp, but somehow their transportation arrangements got botched.
-- Ali customarily did ten rounds on the floor before stepping into the ring for sparring sessions. He wanted to be a bit winded while sparring, because it made him work harder.
-- A fighter named Greatest Crawford once threatened to sue Ali for using the nickname "The Greatest." Nothing really came of it, and Crawford later died as a result of ring injuries.
-- Ali, who always claimed to be the "people's champion," officially retired from boxing on February 1, 1970, which cleared the way for his stablemate Jimmy Ellis (the WBA champ) to fight Joe Frazier (the champ as recognized by New York) for the "undisputed" title.
-- Even though Ali stayed out of prison for his conviction on charges of refusing military induction, he did spend a few days in jail in Miami for driving without a license.
-- Ellis claims that he knocked Ali down with a right hand in sparring while he was preparing for a May 1971 fight with George Chuvalo. Ellis wound up fighting Ali in July of that year.
-- Although he made his 1970 comeback fight against Jerry Quarry in Atlanta, Ali actually was turned down the first time he sought to fight in Georgia. The city of Macon refused to allow its arena to be rented for an Ali fight, at the direction of mayor Ronnie Thompson, who said, "This man has refused to fight for his country, but he wants to fight for the dollar under a free enterprise system that other Americans, both black and white, are fighting and dying to preserve. I would prefer that he not come to Macon."
-- Ali became a friend and benefactor of sprinter Houston McTear, a destitute Florida high schooler who was once the "fastest man on planet earth." Faster than Ali?
-- Nelson Rockefeller, former vice-president and then governor of New York, reportedly directed the New York State Athletic Commission to refuse Ali a license. Rockefeller was known as a liberal Republican, but was a supporter of the war in Vietnam.
-- Sonny Liston actually had a financial interest in losing to Ali, at least in a sense. Liston was a major shareholder in Inter-Continental Promotions, which held an option on Ali for a rematch against Liston in the event he won. Liston therefore became, in effect, Ali's promoter.
-- The Louisville sponsoring group originally tired to get Archie Moore to train Ali, but nothing could be worked out. Moore, of course, went on to be knocked out by Ali in November of 1962.
-- Ali fought no less than 12 world champions - Archie Moore, Sonny Liston, Jimmy Ellis, Floyd Patterson, Ernie Terrell, Joe Frazier, Ken Norton, George Foreman, Leon Spinks, Bob Foster, Larry Holmes and Trevor Berbick. He beat all of them except for Holmes and Berbick.
-- When Alfredo Evangelista fought Ali in May 1977, he had a 14-1-1 record, was coming off a defeat to Lorenzo Zanon, and had to be moved into the world ratings very suspiciously to qualify for the bout.
-- Some opportunistic people started something a fast food business called "Champburger" in 1968 that was intended to sell franchises to black entrepreneurs in black neighborhoods, using Ali's name. The project folded in 1972.
-- Allegedly Ali has Irish roots. His great grandfather was a man named Abe Grady, from County Clare in Ireland, who came to the U.S. in the 1860's and married an African-American woman.
Hey Gazza maybe you and Ali are kin somewhere along the line. Do you know of Abe??
|
| 18th January 2007 10:10 AM |
|
|
| TampabayStone |
 |
| 18th January 2007 10:28 AM |
|
|
| Gazza |
LOL..No I dont...but when he fought Al 'Blue' Lewis in Dublin in 1972 I do remember him making a big deal about his roots.
The 'People's Champion' reference reminded me of the time that Elvis gave him a robe with that title inscribed on the back. He wore it into the ring at the first Norton fight - and lost.
Another thing I found weird yesterday was when I was looking up stuff about him on Wikipedia. As everyone knows, he changed his name because he considered Cassius Marcellus Clay a 'slave name'. Ali was named after his father, who in turn was named after this guy - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassius_Marcellus_Clay_%28abolitionist%29 - who happened to be an anti-slavery emancipationist. |
|
