The Bamboozling Muhammad Ali

I watched a SportsCenter segment on Floyd Patterson this morning and I was struck with an epiphany of sorts. Muhammad Ali was/is a harmful influence on me.

Doesn't that sound real extra? I know it does, but I really feel that way right about now. See, Ali is THE major figure for me when it comes to boxing before Sugar Ray Leonard. Not only does he dominate my version and recollection of boxing from his bout with Liston to the last Frazier fight and everything in between, but he's also dictated how I viewed the men he boxed. Everything he said I believed. I mean, really, I believed it from the first time I saw footage or heard tapes of him saying it, right up until today or I saw/heard evidence to dispute it. That's how overwhelming and magnificent his personality and mouth was. He spoke and acted like a deity.

So guess what? Liston was a big, stupid bear. Patterson was a disrespectful, jealous old-timer. Foreman was a vile goliath. And, Frazier, oh my...Frazier was everything negative, especially an Uncle Tom.

That was my version of those men. The version that Ali promoted. Only, that's what he was doing all along -- promoting. Except, his word/version was semi-biblical to me. Ali was/is that dude, that figure.

But I read now, I hear now; that Joe Frazier was the quintessential black man. The dude just trying to get his life lived. The man beloved in his neighborhood. The man that looked out for his people. Were their Tom elements to his interaction with the media? Probably. But what man of meager beginnings wouldn't seek to secure and develop a Good Guy image with the American public. Looking back, I can't fault Frazier for the stances he took, most notably the stance to somewhat take no stance at all. This wasn't OJ Simpson retreating/fleeing from the community and his roots. This was a man that probably didn't have that compelling of an opinion anyway. And essentially this was a man that was a good black man, pretty far from a Tom. But Ali was smart. And just as much as he was smart, he was also very much the opportunist and, in hindsight, perhaps a bit defeatus, hypocritical. Why would a man that claims adherance to principals and claims concern for the community skewer a good man with what he knows to be, at the very least, semi-false character-accusations?Why would you publicly call a black man a monkey and guerilla back then, when that was a seriously real viewpoint many Americans had about blacks? And, in a bizarre way, Ali was his own sort of Sambo. To write that actually made my heart skip a beat. But I watch footage of him and he's putting on a show. No, the joke was rarely on him. But there were times when I (in my newfound adult wisdom and insight) seem to view Ali as pandering. It makes me feel a lil warped.

I feelin a certain way, right now, and it's not good. My overall impression of Ali has changed a bit. He's still, probably, the greatest man of any sports figure. He's still sports greatest gangsta and best boxer. He's still Ali. But I watched the Patterson segment this morning and paused. I sat there with my legs crossed, holdin my cofee and paused. Like, "Hold up, you mean Patterson was actually a good guy." One of my favorite pictures is of Ali standing over Liston after he knocked him out. Ali is yelling/scowling at him. It's so gangsta. I could feel Ali's posture and his reaction. It was that black man angst and indignance coming out in a very raw form on a very grand stage and it was F'n awesome. But one of my favorite fights was the Patterson fight. You know, one that boxing historians call savage. Legend has it that Ali would bust the over-the-hill Patterson in the face and ask, "What's my name?" Because Patterson refused to call him Ali and kept calling him Clay. The great myth is that when Patterson would appear to waddle and be close to getting knocked out, Ali would uppercut him to keep him on his feet so that he could keep whoopin em. (NOTE: There's a documentary that chronicles Ali's early fighting days and his rise to the top. Precious stuff. Shows lots of television footage. Ali and Cossell, stuff like that. There's one scene where Ali is arguing with Cuiss Demato. Cuss is basically calling Ali a bum and saying that Patterson would've murdered him in Patterson's prime. And that, even though Patterson was a shell of himself, Ali was a sissy and couldn't even knock him out. This is another way to look at the fight. Was Ali keeping him up to prolong the punishment? Or was Ali simply not powerful to knock out an obstinant grizzly veteran?) That was always one of the quintessential boxing stories to me. And I always looked at the fight as exhibiting a personality/quality/character that many black people shared during those days which led to change. But I'm looking at that now and thinking to myself: Yes, Ali was indignant, as perhaps he should have been...but was he also be unjustifiably mean? Should I stop applauding that performance the way I do?

I know Ali is universally beloved, these days. But I sincerely think that's more on a bandwagon than on principle. Why do all these people love Ali? What changed. He had that same twinkle in his eye for his whole career, but people still found a way to hate this man. Now all of sudden you love him and he's your hero? Why, because he's harmless? But with that said, as I watch documentaries and specials and segments and I see how they portray the boxers that Ali railed against, I notice the victim brush that they paint them with. And I wonder: Is this some backhanded way to subliminally assasinate Ali's character and am I drinking the Kool-Aid? I wonder that, but I don't believe that. Ali, I think, could be a jerk at times. A great jerk, an entertaining jerk, a (somehow) noble jerk -- but a jerk. Never to be hated or excoriated, but a jerk. And most of all, a persuasive jerk. That's what this all about...about the fact that Ali was so persuasive and so captivating that I had pegged good men as bad men. Think about that. A crime lies within that.

One of the ironies of all this is how, to a man, these men that Ali skewered, all forgive him in the end. I tend to think it's out of pity. If Ali was still prettier and faster-talking and quicker-witted than Frazier and Patterson and Foreman, I believe it'd be another story. But still. Sometimes I see a footage of Frazier with him arm around the Parkinsons Ali and feel bad that I felt certain ways about Frazier. And when I saw footage, this morning, of Patterson coming up to Ali at some banquet and giving Ali, seated and shaking, a hug and kiss on the head, I thought: "Shame on you Ali." You gotta think that inside he feels a sting in the pit of his stomach over some of that stuff. You might think that their forgiveness hurts him even more.

Ali is still my No. 3 nigga (Magic, Jim Brown, Ali). There's no changing that place. And ultimately, I think no less of him. I'm just glad that, now, I think much, much more of the other men.