Wise words from a decent man.

This man had more influence on my life and character than my own father.
I will continue to aspire to live up to your example even though I am certain I will fall short.

السَّلاَمُ عَلَىٰ اهْلِ ٱلدِّيَارِ مِنَ ٱلْمُؤْمِنِينَ وَٱلْمُسْلِمِينَ
نْتُمْ لَنَا فَرَطٌ
وَنَحْنُ إِنْ شَاءَ ٱللَّهُ بِكُمْ لاََحِقُونَ

Peace be upon the inhabitants of these graves, the faithful believers and Muslims.
You have preceded us,
and we, Allah willing, shall join you.

I was just verbally sparing with my girlfriend about the value of Muhammad Ali as an individual outside of his boxing ability and political statements. It’s no secret that I look up to him, so does my reverence make me biased? Probably. Could Ali’s trash talk teeter on the line between self-aggrandizing and bluntly abusive? Sure. But was it always entertaining? Certainly.
I never felt that Ali’s trash talk came from a place of malice, it seemed fairly harmless to me, especially compared to his contemporaries:

And that is just in boxing. It’s not that rare for athletes today to curse each other out, and threaten each other with grave bodily harm. Ali talked trash, but he never sounded crude or ignorant. Not only did he use trash talk to promote his fights in an entertaining way that had never been seen before, but he may have invented battle rap:

He was also a master of the mental game that is so important in boxing. The lowest form of victory in boxing is a victory based on physical advantages, the highest form is a victory based on superior strategy and the manipulation of your opponents actions through planning. To attain that form of victory, a fighter needs to use the tools at his disposal to control an opponent to the point where none of that opponents actions are the product of their own free will or game plan, it’s the creation of dominance by forcing the opponent to react, not act. Ali understood that the road to that type of victory begins before the the fighters enter the ring, it starts in the gym, and on the professional stage, continues at the press conference.
I do feel a sense of remorse for Ali’s most famous victims or this type of gamesmanship: George Foreman and Joe Frazier. Foreman was a young fighter when he ran into Ali, and Ali slowly broke down his confidence before breaking down his hulk-like physique in Kinshasa. Steeped in the wave of praise that follows an undefeated, power punching champion, Foreman must have believed himself invincible, and he was until Ali convinced him otherwise. After that 1974 defeat—Ali’s greatest victory—Foreman fell into a deep depression that lead to a 2 year lay-off, and his career and confidence wouldn’t recover until he recaptured the heavyweight title 20 years later in 1994. While Foreman’s victory over Michael Moorer was one of the more heart-warming underdog stories in recent sporting history, it still stands as a monument to the depth of those taunts—it took this man two decades to shake off the effects of Ali’s verbal jousting and return to the heights of the sport.
Frazier I believe never recovered from the verbal games Ali played with him. I find it sad that Frazier’s story is only told in the context of Ali’s, he is a footnote in the story of another fighter, however had he fought 10 years earlier or 10 years later, he would probably be remembered as one of, if not the greatest Heavyweight of all time. Ali and Frazier were perfect foils, the boxer and the puncher, and Ali’s legacy in the ring is invaluably enhanced by their incredible rivalry.
The Ali-Frazier rivalry is significant in that it began right after Muhammad Ali’s public conversion to Islam. Not since the days of Jack Johnson and the “Great White Hype” had middle Americans so clamoured for a champion to be vanquished. Against his will, the Philadelphia-bred brawler who clawed his way to an Olympic gold medal became the “White man’s champion” and he was viewed as such by Muslims and Black people around the world caught up in the racial climate of civil rights and independence movements around the world. As the story spun itself into myth, Ali became the people’s champion, wrongly stripped of his titles because of his refusal to fight in Vietnam, while Frazier was the sellout—a paper champion installed by The Man who hoped that by beating Ali, Frazier would show the superiority of his Christianity and his America. I can only imagine the bitterness of a man who just wanted to compete; unfairly saddled with the expectations of people he never felt he represented and viciously vilified by the for whom he hoped he would be a champion and example.
Unfortunately, not only did Ali’s trash talk bury Frazier’s legacy and standing in the minds of uninitiated spectators to the sport, they also affected Frazier the man. In his 2004 book of reflections and poetry, Soul of a Butterfly Ali writes of Frazier in a poem titled the “Silent Warrior:”

There live a great man named Joe
who was belittled by a loudmouth foe.
While his rival would taunt and tease
Joe silently bore the stings.
And then fought like gladiator in the ring.
For every struggle that Joe survived,
For every dispute he endured, to rise,
Joe will go down in history
as a model for champions to come.
While Frazier was a man of few words,
Ali was a world of mouth,
but he found his place in history.
Now his heart can express him well.
Joe Frazier was a silent warrior,
whom Ali silently admired.
One could not rise without the other.

Are those the words of an asshole? Sort of, he admits he was wrong to say what he said. But in my opinion, his self awareness and willingness to humble himself absolve him slightly of his actions.
I think there is something to be said of the place that my past has in my feelings towards Ali. Boys without fathers spend their lives collecting father figures. I find it hard to separate the man from the legend, the man was a terrible husband and a questionable father who drilled opponents inside and outside the ring. The legend was a master of his craft, and a charismatic master of men who brought stone giants to their knees with his words and pounded them into gravel with his fists.
I apologise for the man, but I still need the legend.

1. Very remarkable; extraordinary.
2. Perceptible by the senses or through immediate experience.

No competition. None

If you asked me what living famous person I would like to meet I would say Stan Lee 9 times out of 10 (the other 1 I would say Muhammad Ali but I don’t think I would like to meet him in his current condition.) I would just love the chance to talk to a man who created so many timeless characters, who have all been able to be regenerated and refreshed across generations and cultures because they are all built around simple, human truths.

I wonder if my fellow Washington Heights-dweller (we don’t have a snappy “ite”) knew in the 70′s that some kid in Gaborone, Botswana would be reading stories about characters he created to help him deal with the dueling demons of racism, adolescence and sudden responsibility.

Thanks.

‘Nuff Said

“If you want to be great, find someone you like, figure out what you like about them, then steal it.”
-B.B King

From a conversation with Journalist Thomas Hauser:

Muhammad Ali is humble in many ways, but he also takes pleasure in being famous.

Years ago, when Mike Tyson was in his prime, Ali asked me, “If I walked down one side of the street and Mike Tyson walked down the other, which of us would have more people on his side?”

“You would,” I answered honestly.

“If I walked down one side of the street and Bill Cosby walked down the other, who would have more people; Bill Cosby or me?”

“You.”

“If I walked down one side of the street and Little Richard, Chubby Checker and Chuck Berry all walked down the other, which side would have more people?”

“Yours.”

“Now Muhammad was on a roll.”

“If I walked down one side of the street and Elvis Presley walked down the other, who would have more people?”

“Muhammad, I’ll be honest with you,” I answered. “Overseas, you might. But here in the United States, I think it would be Elvis.”

That brought silence followed by, “Well, that’s because Elvis has been dead for a long time and people would want to see if it was really him.”