From Radical to Icon: The Strange Public Career of Muhammad Ali

Published

11 years ago

December 5, 2013

Muhammad Ali was not always been beloved. In fact, he wasn’t even always Muhammad Ali.

Ali was born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. on January 17, 1942 in Louisville, Kentucky. After being introduced to boxing at age 12, Clay established himself on the amateur boxing scene by winning six Kentucky Golden Gloves titles, two National Golden Gloves titles, an AAU National Title, and a gold medal in the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy.

Clay made his professional debut the very same year, and was named number one contender to heavyweight champion Sonny Liston just four years later. Despite being only 22 years old and a heavy underdog in the fight, Clay was already certain he was “The Greatest.”

Others were not so sure. Indeed, the wit and witticism he later became so celebrated for was barely tolerated before his 1964 title fight against Liston. An audacious challenger, Clay taunted Liston by calling him a “big ugly bear.” He told anyone and everyone who would listen to him that he would “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee” in the bout, and dethrone perhaps the most feared heavyweight champion in all of boxing history. Still, Clay was considered by most a good-looking and funny flake with very little chance of actually lifting the title from Liston.

But that’s just what he did. Clay dominated the fight with his tremendous footwork and blindingly fast hands, and he was declared the bout’s winner when Liston refused to answer the bell for the seventh round. After the fight, Clay famously exclaimed “I shook up the world…I must be the Greatest!”

Maybe he was. The boxing world, at least, was starting to notice the brash and flashy puncher from Louisville, but Clay’s precociousness wasn’t exactly winning people over. At least, not yet.

Clay met Liston in a rematch one year later. By then, Clay had converted to the Nation of Islam through the teachings of polarizing Black Muslim leader Elijah Muhammad and changed his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali. Ali quickly dispatched Liston in the rematch in just one round, with a short, hooking-type punch he dubbed an “anchor punch” akin to what he learned from former heavyweight champion Jack Johnson.

But despite solidifying himself as the best heavyweight in the world, it was Ali’s newfound religious conviction that had made the deepest impression on the public. At the time, the Nation of Islam was widely regarded by Americans as a dangerous and extreme organization bent on the separation of black Americans from society. So much so, in fact, that it’s most prominent member, human rights activist Malcolm X, had severed ties with the group in 1964.

The few writers who had supported Ali before his conversion felt betrayed. One referred to Ali as a “once likable loudmouth.” Another called Ali’s conversion “calculated deception” meant to drive up ticket sales for his fight.

Things were about to get worse.

“My conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America,” said the World’s Heavyweight Champion, Ali, in 1967 after refusing induction into the United States military based on his religious beliefs. “And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger, they never lynched me, they didn’t put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father… Shoot them for what? …How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail.”

Ali’s boxing license was almost immediately suspended, and he was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison for draft evasion. In appealing the decision, Ali was thrust into becoming something more than just a boxer who’d held the title from 1964-67, more than just a man with a polarizing religion. He was now a civil rights activist who’d help spark opposition to an ongoing war.

During his exile from boxing, Ali traveled around the United States and gave lectures at college campuses. The topics included everything he knew about boxing, the Nation of Islam, the Vietnam War and racism in America. Ali, nicknamed “The Lip” back in his younger days, had the gift of gab and it showed.

The public at large was split on Ali. For young people growing up in the late 1960s, Ali became a symbol of rebellion against both the Vietnam War and authority itself. For the establishment, Ali was another harrowing reminder of an ever-advancing subculture of people whose values differed quite significantly than their own.

Pulitzer Prize winning author David Remnick, who authored a biography of Ali entitled King of the World, noted, “As he had before and would again, Ali had showed his gift for intuitive action, for speed, and this time he was acting in a way that would characterize the era itself, a resistance to authority, an insistence that national loyalty was not automatic or absolute. His rebellion, which started out as racial, now had widened in scope.”

Ultimately, the Supreme Court would overturn Ali’s conviction and his life inside the ring would begin again.

As the 1970s progressed, so, too, did Ali’s public reputation. Back in his element, the sweet science, Ali solidified himself as one of most successful boxing champions in history. As a heavyweight, only Joe Louis’s reign of 25 title defenses over nearly 12 years rivals that of Ali. Unlike Louis, Ali faced the most remarkable group of heavyweight contenders in the history the sport. There is simply no heavyweight in history that defeated as many fellow all-time greats as Ali.

Upon his return, Ali was unable to reclaim his heavyweight title from newfound rival Joe Frazier when the two met in 1971, in a bout dubbed by promoters “The Fight of the Century,” losing a 15-round unanimous decision.

But Ali went 13-1 until he got his next title shot in 1974, amassing wins over Floyd Patterson, Jimmy Ellis, Bob Foster and a revenge match against Joe Frazier, who had since lost the title to a young and menacing slugger named George Foreman. Ali’s lone loss during this time came against Ken Norton. The two fought back-to-back bouts in 1973, winning one each by split decision. Ali would later take the rubber match in 1976 unanimously.

Ali defeated Foreman in 1974, employing what became famously known as his “rope-a-dope” strategy of luring the champion in close while having his back up against the ropes to encourage the younger, stronger Foreman to tire himself out by throwing punch after punch while Ali miraculously evaded them. Despite being a heavy underdog to the 40-0 Foreman (who had blasted out Ali rivals Norton and Frazier within two rounds each) Ali defeated Foreman by knockout in the eighth round.

By the time he defeated Joe Frazier again 1975, the Vietnam War had finally ended and the fruits of the civil rights movement were in full swing. Ali was now the most popular boxing champion since Jack Dempsey ruled boxing in the Roaring 20s.

Ali retired from boxing in 1981. HIs final ring record stands at 56-5 (37 KOs). Ring historians consider him one of the top heavyweight champions ever, most often being placed in either the first or second position. Ring Magazine ranked him number one among all-time heavyweight champions in 1998 while the International Boxing Research Organization ranked him second (to Joe Louis) under the same criteria in 2006. Moreover, Ali was named “Fighter of the Year” by Ring Magazine more times than any other fighter in history.

Ali’s legacy has continued to have a lasting impact outside of the ring. Not only was Ali the most famous athlete of his time, he was also named Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the 20th Century as well as the British Broadcasting Company’s Sports Personality of the Century. He has been the subject of countless books, films and magazines, and he has continued to be a human rights activist even as Parkinson’s disease has stolen his voice.

On January 8, 2005, Muhammad Ali was presented with the Presidential Citizens Medal by President George W. Bush. Later that year, he accepted the Otto Hahn Peace Medal in Gold from the UN Association of Germany (DGVN) in Berlin for his work as a civil rights advocate.

It is perhaps too easy to say any one thing contributed to his lasting appeal. Instead, one might say Ali has been many things to many people. As a member of the Nation of Islam, Ali was a voice for those seeking religious freedom. As a champion in exile, Ali became a lasting and impactful force for the burgeoning civil rights movement. In his return to the ring after exile, Ali became one of the finest heavyweight pugilists who ever lived.

And so maybe, in the end, it’s simply safer to say that Ali’s transformation from radical to icon was not one thing or another, or even two or three things put together. Rather, it was all things put together, his life, the things he said and did, and the man he came to be to both for himself and others.

Epilogue: Strange Public Careers of Other Heavyweight Greats

Muhammad Ali wasn’t the only heavyweight champion to enjoy a radical shift in public perception during his career. The first African-American heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson, was virtually despised during his fighting days. Johnson deliberately inflamed white animosity during the days of Jim Crow segregation by appearing in public with white girlfriends at his side. He defeated a caravan of “white hopes” during his seven-year title reign, most famously besting former heavyweight champion James J. Jeffries in 1910. Johnson’s resurgence in popularity continues to grow to this day, made most apparent by numerous bipartisan posthumous pardon attempts for his 1913 conviction of crossing state lines with a woman for “immoral purposes.”

Jack Dempsey’s image underwent stark changes in the 1920s. Now regarded as one of the most popular fighters in boxing history, Dempsey was dismissed as a draft dodger during the first part of his title reign. Dempsey was mostly reviled by boxing fans until he lost his title to Gene Tunney in 1926. After which, he became somewhat of a folk hero. By 1950, AP sportswriters liked him enough to vote him the greatest boxer of the half-century.

“Big” George Foreman retired from boxing in 1977. Despite winning a gold medal at the 1968 Olympics and becoming heavyweight champion in 1974, Foreman was largely considered a big, mean nuisance of a man when he retired from boxing in 1977. Foreman had a religious epiphany and became a Christian minister. Big George came back to boxing a changed man in 1987. Instead of his trademark scowl, Foreman was a smiling man now. He went on to become the oldest heavyweight champion in history when he knocked out Michael Moorer in 1994 at age 45. Foreman’s popularity has endured, and he’s had quite the third career selling his George Foreman grills.

Mike Tyson was the youngest and perhaps most feared heavyweight champion ever when he burst on the scene in the early 1980s. He’s ferocious style inside the ring and tremendous success made him popular if not well-liked, but a lot of that crumbled when he was convicted for rape in 1992 and sent to prison for three years. His return to the ring afterward was marked by more controversy, perhaps most famously biting off a chunk of Evander Holyfield’s ear during their 1997 title fight. After retiring in 2005, Tyson’s popularity has risen to all-time highs. He’s been featured in numerous books and films, and he travels around the world giving his one man show to rave reviews.

Kelsey McCarson is a boxing writer for The Sweet Science and Bleacher Report. Follow him @KelseyMcCarson.

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 289: East LA, Claressa Shields and More

Published

1 day ago

July 25, 2024

David A. Avila

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 289: East LA, Claressa Shields and More

East Los Angeles has long been a haven for some of the best fighters around if you can keep them out of trouble. For every Oscar De La Hoya or Seniesa Estrada there are thousands derailed by crime, drugs or drinking.

Boxing has always been a favorite sport of East L.A. Every family has an uncle or two who boxes.

On Friday, 360 Promotions’ Omar Trinidad (15-0-1) fights Viktor Slavinskyi (15-2-1) in the main event at Commerce Casino, in Commerce, CA. UFC Fight Pass will stream the fight card.

The City of Commerce used to be part of East L.A. until 1960 when it incorporated. It’s still considered to be part of East Los Angeles, but informally.

Plenty of fighters come out of East L.A. but few make it all the way like De La Hoya and Estrada. Will Trinidad be the one?

The first world champion from East L.A. or “East Los” as some call it, was Solly Garcia Smith back in the late 1800s. Others were Richie Lemos, Art Frias and Joey Olivo. There is also 1984 Olympic gold medalist Paul Gonzalez.

Once again 360 Promotions brings its popular brand of fights to the area. On this fight card includes two female bouts. One features Roxy Verduzco (1-0) the former amateur star fighting Colleen Davis (3-1-1) in a featherweight fight.

All that action takes place on Friday.

Elite Boxing

The next day, also in East L.A., Elite Boxing stages another boxing card at Salesian High School located at 960 S. Soto Street in the Boyle Heights area of East Los Angeles.

Elite Boxing has promoted several successful boxing cards at the Catholic high school grounds. The area is saturated by many of the best eateries in Los Angeles. Don’t take my word for it. Check it out yourself and grab some of that delicious food.

Boxing has long been a favorite sport of anyone who lives in East L.A. It’s a fight town equal to Philadelphia, Brooklyn or Detroit. There’s something different about the area. For more than 100 years some of the best fighters continue to come out of its boxing gyms. Some will be performing on these club shows.

For tickets or information go to www.eliteboxingusa.com

Claressa Shields in Detroit

Speaking of fight towns, pound-for-pound best Claressa Shields who won two Olympic Gold Medals in boxing, moves up another weight division to tackle the WBC heavyweight world champion Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse on Saturday, July 27, at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, Michigan.

DAZN will stream the heavy-duty fight card.

Shields (14-0) cleaned out the super welterweight, middleweight and super middleweight divisions and now wants to add the big girls to her conquests. She will be facing Canada’s Lepage-Joanisse (7-1) who holds the WBC belt.

The last time Shields gloved up was more than a year ago when she fought Maricela Cornejo. Don’t blame Shields. She loves to fight. She loves to win. The last time Shields lost a fight was in the amateurs and that was three presidential administrations ago.

Shields doesn’t lose.

I wonder if Las Vegas even takes bets on her fights?

The only fight she may have been an underdog was against Savannah Marshall who was the last opponent to defeat her. And that was in 2012 in China. When they met as pros two years ago, Shields avenged her loss with a blistering attack.

Don’t get Shields mad.

Perhaps her toughest foe as a pro was in her pro debut when she clashed with Franchon Crews-Dezurn in Las Vegas. It was four rounds of fists and fury as the two pounded each other on the undercard of Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev in November 2016.

That was a ferocious debut for both female pugilists.

Assisting Shields on this fight card will be several intriguing male bouts. One guy you should pay special attention is Tito Mercado (15-0, 14 KOs) a super lightweight prospect from Pomona, California.

Many excellent fighters have come out of Pomona including Sugar Shane Mosley, Shane Mosley Jr., Alberto Davila and Richie Sandoval who just passed away this week.

Sandoval was best known for his 15-round war with Philadelphia’s Jeff Chandler for the bantamweight world title in 1984. Read the story by Arne K. Lang on this link: https://tss.ib.tv/boxing/featured-boxing-articles-boxing-news-videos-rankings-and-results/81467-former-world-bantamweight-champion-richie-sandoval-passes-away-at-age-63 .

Fights to Watch

Fri. UFC Fight Pass 7 p.m. Omar Trinidad (15-0-1) vs Viktor Slavinskyi (15-2-1).

Sat. ESPN+ 12:30 p.m. Joe Joyce (16-2) vs Derek Chisora (34-13).

Sat. DAZN 3 p.m. Claressa Shields (14-0) vs Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse (7-1), Michel Rivera (25-1) vs Hugo Roldan (22-2-1); Tito Mercado (15-0) vs Hector Sarmiento (21-2).

Omar Trinidad photo by Lina Baker

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Arne’s Almanac: Jake Paul and Women’s Boxing, a Curmudgeon’s Take

Published

3 days ago

July 24, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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Jake Paul can fight more than a little. The view from here is that he would make it interesting against any fringe contender in the cruiserweight division. However, Jake’s boxing acumen pales when paired against his skill as a flim-flam artist.

Jake brought a 9-1 record into last weekend’s bout with Mike Perry. As noted by boxing writer Paul Magno, Jake’s previous opponents consisted of “a You Tuber, a retired NBA star, five retired MMA stars, a part-time boxer/reality TV star, and two undersized and inactive fall-guy boxers.”

Mike Perry, a 32-year-old Floridian, was undefeated (6-0, 3 KOs) as a bare-knuckle boxer after forging a 14-8 record in UFC bouts. In pre-fight blurbs, Perry was billed as the baddest bare knuckle boxer of all time, but against Jake Paul he proved to have very unrefined skills as a conventional boxer which Team Paul undoubtedly knew all along. Perry lasted into the eighth round in a one-sided fight that could have been stopped a lot sooner.

Jake Paul is both a boxer and a promoter. As a promoter, he handles Amanda Serrano, one of the greatest female boxers in history. That makes him the person most responsible (because the buck stops with him) for the wretched mismatch in last Saturday’s co-feature, the bout between Serrano and Stevie Morgan.

Morgan, who took up boxing two years ago at age 33, brought a 14-1 record. Nicknamed the Sledgehammer, she had won 13 of her 14 wins by knockout, eight in the opening round. However, although she resides in Florida, all but one of those 13 knockouts happened in Colombia.

“We found that in Colombia there were just more opportunities for women’s boxing than in the United States,” she told a prominent boxing writer whose name we won’t mention.

The truth is that, for some folks, Colombia is the boxing equivalent of a feeder lot for livestock, a place where a boxer can go to fatten their record. The opportunities there were no greater than in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1995. It was there that Peter McNeeley prepped for his match with Mike Tyson with a 6-second knockout of professional punching bag Frankie Hines. (Six seconds? So it would be written although no one seems to have been there to witness it.)

Serrano vs Morgan was understood to be a stay-busy fight for Amanda whose rematch with Katie Taylor was postponed until November. Stevie Morgan, to her credit, answered the bell for the second round whereas others in her situation would have remained on the stool and invented an injury to rationalize it. Thirty-eight seconds later it was all over and Ms. Morgan was free to go home and use her sledgehammer to do some light dusting.

The Paul-Perry and Serrano-Morgan fights played out in a sold-out arena in Tampa before an estimated 17,000. Those without a DAZN subscription paid $64.95 for the livestream. Paul’s next promotion, where he will touch gloves with 58-year-old Mike Tyson (unless Iron Mike pulls a Joe Biden and pulls out; a capital idea) with Serrano-Taylor II the semi-main, will almost certainly rake in more money than any other boxing promotion this year.

Asked his opinion of so-called crossover boxing by a reporter for a college newspaper, the venerable boxing promoter Bob Arum said, “It’s not my bag but folks who don’t like it shouldn’t get too worked up over it because no one is stealing from anybody.” True enough, but for some of us, the phenomenon is distressing.

—

The next big women’s fight happens Saturday in Detroit where Claressa Shields seeks a world title in a third weight class against WBC heavyweight belt-holder Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse.

A two-time Olympic gold medalist, undefeated in 14 fights as a pro, Shields is very good, arguably the best female boxer of her generation which makes her, arguably, the best female boxer of all time. But turning away Lepage-Joanisse (7-1, 2 KOs) won’t elevate her stature in our eyes.

Purportedly 17-4 as an amateur, the Canadian won her title in her second crack at it. Back in August of 2017, she challenged Cancun’s Alejandra Jimenez in Cancun and was stopped in the third round. Entering the bout, Lepage-Joanisse was 3-0 as a pro and had never fought a match slated for more than four rounds.

Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse

True, on the women’s side, the heavyweight bracket is a very small pod. A sanctioning body has to make concessions to harness a sanctioning fee. Nonetheless, how absurd that a woman who had answered the bell for only 11 rounds would be deemed qualified to compete for a world title. (FYI: Alejandra Jimenez was purportedly born a man. She left the sport with a 12-0-1 record after her win over Franchon Crews Dazurn was changed to a no-contest when she tested positive for the banned steroid stanozolol.)

Following her defeat to Jimenez, Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse, now 29 years old, was out of action for six-and-a-half years. When she returned, she was still a heavyweight, but a much slender heavyweight. She carried 231 pounds for Jimenez. In her most recent bout where she captured the vacant WBC title with a split decision over Argentina’s Abril Argentina Vidal, she clocked in at 173 ¼. (On the distaff side, there’s no uniformity among the various sanctioning bodies as to what constitutes a heavyweight.)

Claressa Shields doesn’t need Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse to reinforce her credentials as a future Hall of Famer. She made the cut a long time ago.

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Former World Bantamweight Champion Richie Sandoval Passes Away at Age 63

Published

4 days ago

July 22, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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Richie Sandoval, who won the WBA and lineal bantamweight title in one of the biggest upsets of the 1980s and then, not quite two years later, suffered near-fatal injuries in a title defense, has passed away at the age of 63.

News circulated fast in the Las Vegas boxing community on Monday, July 22, the grapevine actuated by a tweet from Hall of Fame matchmaker Bruce Trampler: “Boxing and the Top Rank family lost one of our own last night in the passing of former WBA bantamweight champion Richie Sandoval. It hurts personally and professionally to know that Richie is gone at age 63. RIP campeon.”

Details are vague but the cause of death was apparently a sudden heart attack that Sandoval experienced while visiting the Southern California home of his son of the same name.

Richie Sandoval put the LA County community of Pomona, California, on the boxing map before Shane Mosley came along and gave the town a more frequently-cited mention in the sports section of the papers. He came from a fighting family. An older brother, Albert “Superfly” Sandoval, became a big draw at LA’s fabled Olympic Auditorium while building a 35-2-1 record that included a failed bid to capture Lupe Pintor’s world bantamweight title.

Richie was a member of the 1980 U.S. Olympic boxing team that was stranded when U.S. President Jimmy Carter (and many other world leaders) boycotted the event as a protest against Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan.

As a pro, Sandoval’s signature win was a 15^th-round stoppage of Jeff Chandler. They fought on April 7, 1984 in Atlantic City. Chandler was making the tenth defense of his world bantamweight title.

Despite being a heavy underdog, Sandoval dominated the fight, winning almost every round until the referee stepped in and waived it off. Chandler, who was 33-1-2 heading in and had avenged his lone defeat, never fought again.

Sandoval made two successful defenses before risking his title against Gaby Canizales on the undercard of Hagler-Mugabi in the outdoor stadium at Caesars Palace. In round seven, Sandoval, who had a hellish time making the weight, was knocked down three times and suffered a seizure as he collapsed from the third knockdown. Stretchered out of the ring, he was rushed to the hospital where doctors reduced the swelling in his brain and beat the odds to save his life. This would be Richie’s lone defeat. He finished his pro career with a record of 29-1 (17 KOs).

Bob Arum cushioned some of the pain by giving Richie a $25,000 bonus and offering him a lifetime job at Top Rank which Richie accepted. And let the record show that Arum was good to his word.

A more elaborate portrait of Richie Sandoval was published in these pages in 2017. You can check it out HERE. May he rest in peace.

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