Muhammad Ali: Mad and Bad or The Greatest?

I am not quite sure what it is about Muhammad Ali.

I don't much like boxing.

I'm not in a position to judge whether he was he was really as good as some say.

I think Ali's relationship with the Nation of Islam was not to his credit. His separatist idea was barmy.

I disagreed with his stance on Vietnam.

But still I am sure that he was The Greatest.

In his Times piece Matthew Syed describes the way that history has sanitised Ali, forgetting what a controversial figure he was. But it is not a sanitised Ali that I admire. It is the raw, in your face Ali. My disagreements with his politics come from a middle aged Jew living in Pinner in the 20th century. He was of a young poorly educated black man living in America in the 1960s.

I admire him for the way he refused to accept his allotted role as a pawn in a boxing game heavily manipulated by white organised crime, and the way he kicked back against the racism of that time.

His indomitable spirit made him the Greatest and an important figure.

Here's Ali in his prime. The wit, the charm, the mad, bad political idea, the lot:

Comments

He was a boxer who could crack a joke, thats it.

[Dennis Warren]

Ali was simply the greatest sportsman that ever lived.
He combined all the grace skill and guts that epitomizes only the truly supreme athletes.
To watch his bouts with Joe Frazier is to witness every aspect of the beauty, bravery and sheer brutality of the human nature.
He was every contradiction a human being could possibly be; whilst completely uneducated he was genuinely intelligent and while he was witty and charming he was also cruel enough to cut to the bone, inside and outside the ring.
I sometimes feel his contribution to the historical makeup of modern America is over estimated but I fully understand why. He was certainly used by the nation of Islam and he aggressively promoted their cause. His relationship with Malcolm X has always been glossed over, particularly when X was thrown out of the NOI. He could sound racist, bigoted and very misogynistic and he certainly showed very little mercy inside the ring. Yet he was poetry personified, some of his performances were as good as anything performed in the theatre on the screen on ice or grass he was brave beyond comprehension and beautiful beyond reason.
Muhammad Ali was and is all of this and much more, a man who transcended sport and overshadowed any personality within a hundred miles of him.
To me he was very possibly the greatest specimen of a human being there has ever been.

[Peter Day]

He certainly wasn't mad!

[Laver]

A great boxer, like Joe Louis and Borg in tennis, Bradman in cricket, Lynford Christie in sprinting. And with a very nasty streak against other black boxers in the ring: the whole Uncle Tom taunting of a defeated opponent was utterly disgusting and a grave taint on the 'sport' of boxing. Not sure why this hagiography developed, obviously rooted in the cultural left anti-American thing so beloved of the Guardian and BBC.

[paul wright]

I agree with Mr Warren in that Ali was the greatest; the sporting highs and the lows, the clarity of thought, the beauty and the wit.
I don't think it is up to us white folk to judge Ali's involvement with the nation of Islam during Civil Rights.
And I would love to know why Mr Finkelstein disapproves of his stance on Vietnam, unjust war if ever there was one.
""I Ain't Got No Quarrel With The VietCong... No VietCong Ever Called Me Nigger" 1966. Seems fairly clear to me.

[Gabriel]

"I Ain't Got No Quarrel With The VietCong... No VietCong Ever Called Me Nigger"

Well, no, but they did set up a nationwide system of gulags, force over 1,000,000 people to flee the country and cause an artifical famine.

[Eric]

Ali's stand against Vietnam was infinitely more brave than any stand he took in the ring.

Is it just to say that because a huge group of Vietnamese people were committed to throwing out imperialist foreign influences, a poor American black man should be forced to go kill them?

Ali would have been a hero if he had never won a single boxing match. Even with his brave defiance of the moronic old white men in charge, millions of Vietnamese died in the war: from bullets, from bombs, and still today from land mines and Agent Orange. Not to mention almost 60,000 Americans, in what has to be the most worthless war ever fought.

[dottkham]

Patriotism comes in all forms... his comment sums it all.

[m.ali]

i am going to be the next muhammad ali of the twenty first century.