MITCHELL & MARSHALL: BOBBY MITCHELL, RACE & THE NFL

I've written another long essay on a recently-deceased NFL player. In this case it's Bobby Mitchell, Jim Brown's running mate in Cleveland and then the first player to break the NFL apartheid in Washington with the Redskins. You can read it at my patreon.com column, Friday Morning Tight End if you subscribe to it (£2/$3 a month) or at Medium by following this link which will bypass the paywall at a site which remains a good value.

GORDIE HOWE: THE TELEGRAPH OBITUARY

My obit of Gordie Howe, Canada's 'Mr. Hockey', is in the Daily Telegraph today, with a lovely photo; you can also link to it online here. Because it's considerably curtailed from what I originally wrote for them, back in 2014 when it looked as if Gordie was going to die, I am posting my original copy below; you can read that instead. I changed the line about Bobby Hull to 'next great winger' because he did play the left side.

When I saw Gordie had died I contacted The Daily Telegraph because I'd done his obit for their stock about 18 months ago. The Daily Telegraph had apparently done an edit of it back then, but got all twisted trying to explain ice hockey as if it were quantum physics. They asked me a number of questions and then asked me to do an edit of their rewrite, which was awkward as I haven't done anything for the Daily Telegraph for a year now. This was because they eventually spiked a couple of obituaries they had commissioned from me (the poet Mark Strand, which you can find here; and the football great Chuck Bednarik; I did a longer, more complete version of that for my nfluk.com column, here). In both cases, they went to the spike because they hadn't been used in a timely fashion; in both cases the Daily Telegraph decided to not deign to honour me with payment for the work they had commissioned. So I stopped working for them. But they had paid me for Gordie's obit for stock, and unlike them, I felt I should live up to my part of the bargain, and rather than refuse until they compensated me for what they owed me, I said I would I did the edit. Since no good gesture goes unpunished, they flipped much of the my rewrite back anyway.

Howe's refusal to quit life eighteen months ago was a mark of his indomitable strength, and it was sad that he passed away only to be overshadowed by Muhammad Ali's funeral. I was in the BBC World Service studios doing commentary on Ali's memorial last night, for four and a half hours, and during that time I mentioned Howe, and how although he represented the Canadian ideal: hockey's mix of graft, hard work, and toughness,along with some grace, innate modesty, a sense of doing the right thing and exceptionally sharp elbows. He was arguably the greatest in his sport, certainly during the pre-Gretzky era, but his impact was not worldwide, transcendent, the way Ali's was. Of course neither is hockey, and no team sport exposes a man's inner self the way boxing does. This is not to take anything away from Gordie Howe. Look at Keith Olberman's personal reflection of Howe here. It tells you a lot about Howe the man; it's heartfelt, and I understand why it is.

Because, as I said in the obituary, after he finally retired from hockey Howe worked for a while for Howard Baldwin's film company. So did my old friend Steve Berman. But I didn't know that until one night in London sometime in the 80s, I think, when my phone rang and it was Berman calling from LA, in the days when trans Atlantic calls were still a Big Deal. 'Guess who was in my office today?' he said, with no preamble. 'Clint Eastwood?' I guessed. 'Better than that.' 'Sigourney Weaver?' Rae Dawn Chong?' 'Nastassja Kinski?' 'Nope better than that....Gordie Howe!" And Berms proceeded to tell me about Howe's visit, either coming to or from the golf course, with exactly the same tone of awe you hear in Keith Olberman.

A few notes. I actually coined 'The Howes That Gordie Built' myself, when I wrote an article for one of the Advocate papers about the family's coming to Hartford, but the Daily Telegraph attributed it to 'the press'. Who knows, someone in Houston might have done it years before me. I would have liked to mention that just as Gordie suffered a near-fatal injury playing hockey, so too did his son Mark, the best of the Howe sons on ice. Howe's near-miss resulted in the NHL's adoption of the quick release goals that get dislodged so often in modern games. I would have liked to write a little about Howe's appearance honouring Jean Beliveau: in the piece I mention Maurice Richard and Howe being Canadian 'fire and ice', but Howe and Beliveau were in many ways two of a kind. The NHL certainly thought so: when they retired after the 1971 season, the league waived the normal waiting period, and they were inducted together into the Hockey Hall Of Fame in 1972.

There was another parallel to be drawn to English sport with Howe, which thinking of Richard brought to mind. The French Canadian player in those days was supposed to be more full of finesse, more fiery, less steady and predictable, maybe not as good at the graft of hockey. It reminded me of the way English commentators would describe Gallic flair and temperament in rugby and even football commentary, which also reminded me that, in English football where flashy 'skill' (pronounced 'skeh-ull') was regarded with great suspicion, and things like 'work-rate' and 'bottle' (pronounced 'baht-oohl') were what won matches. I'm reminded of Conn Smythe's famous dictum in hockey: 'if you can't beat them in the alley, you can't beat them on the ice.'

I also went and looked up the Gordie Howe hat-trick (a goal, assist, and fight in the same game). Gordie himself registered exactly two of those in his career, according to official stats (Brendan Shanahan is the leader with 17, though Rick Tocchet had 18 if you count playoff games). But I suspect Howe did a lot of mixing up that was never actually whistled a penalty, or maybe called as a roughing minor, not a fighting major. I recall a Bugsy Watson story about checking Howe in his rookie year, taking the puck from him and skating the other way thinking 'that wasn't so hard'. Until he realised Howe was skating right behind him, and the blade of Howe's stick was right under his nose. I write about Howe's wrists below (the Telegraph had a deucedly difficult time figuring out what a wrist shot was) but Watson knew all about them, and knew a broken nose was just a flick of the wrists away. He 'lost' the puck back to Gordie. 

Gordie is of course, as I said, in the Hockey Hall of Fame and also the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame. He was awarded the Order Of Canada by the Queen. And when the new bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario is opened in 2020, it will be called the Gordie Howe International Bridge. RIP...

GORDIE HOWE: CANADA'S 'MR. HOCKEY'
 

The ice-hockey legend, Gordie Howe, who has died aged 88 was Canada's version of Stanley Matthews. That is assuming Matthews had been lucky enough to play with two of his sons, and dominant enough to be nicknamed 'Mr. Football'. Howe was 'Mr. Hockey'; arguably the greatest right-winger of all-time. Generations of Canadians idolised him; Wayne Gretzky, who grew up to break Howe's scoring records, treasured a picture taken when he was a 12 year old pee-wee star alongside the great man. Howe trumped all other greats with his longevity, playing in five decades; debuting in the National Hockey League aged 18 in 1946, and playing final match in 1980, aged 52, on a team with his sons.

More importantly, Howe epitomised the values Canadians see in their national game. A smooth but not flashy skater, Howe applied himself fearlessly to hockey's relentless physical grind. His graft was rewarded by goals scored by quick-snapping hockey's finest wrist shot, faster then many players' slapshots, but without the windup slapshots require. He was ambidextrous, and using a flat-bladed stick, was equally effective with either backhand.

Born on a farm in Floral, Saskatchewan, Howe grew up in Saskatoon where his father was a day labourer. When he was five, his mother gave him a pair of hand-me-down skates and hockey became his obsession. He played on ponds all winter and shot on dry land the rest of the year. His family was poor, and he suffered from malnutrition; when his growth spurts began doctors recommended chin-ups to counter a calcium deficiency. The exercise, coupled with what he called 'tossing concrete' on building sites with his father, gave Howe a distinctive build: narrow sloping shoulders leading to powerful forearms and steel-band wrists. In juniors he was so dominant he got a try-out with the New York Rangers at 15, but he signed at 16 with Detroit Red Wings, playing with their junior team in Galt before making his professional debut at 17 with their minor league affiliate in Omaha, Nebraska.

The following year, 1946, he arrived in Detroit, assigned jersey number 17. He fought so often fans created the 'Gordie Howe hat trick', meaning a goal, assist, and fight in the same game. Howe actually did this only twice in his career; but his reputation prevented most players from even challenging him. The next season, Howe switched to number 9, because the lower number guaranteed him a bottom berth on Pullman trains. Coincidentally 9 was also worn by Maurice 'Rocket' Richard of Montreal's Canadiens, already the league's best right wing. For a decade Richard and Howe were Canadian fire and ice; a rivalry begun in Howe's rookie season when he knocked out the French-Canadian star with a single punch.

Howe teamed with centre Sid Abel and left wing Ted Lindsay on what became known, in tribute to Detroit's car industry, as 'The Production Line'. In the 1949-50 season, they were the league's top three scorers, but in the Stanley Cup playoffs Howe's career was nearly ended when he fractured his skull crashing into the rink's dasher boards. Emergency surgery drained liquid to relieve the pressure on his brain; doctors warned he might be permanently impaired. But Howe recovered quickly enough to appear at the match in Detroit when the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup title. They won three more in the next five seasons, with Howe winning four consecutive most valuable player trophies. He won six in all, led the league in scoring six times, and was named its best right wing 12 times.

Howe played his last season for Detroit in 1970-71, moving to the front office after a contract battle with owner Bruce Norris, who accused Gordie's wife Colleen of manipulating Howe's demands. Colleen had got Gordie more money in his last contract, but a wrist injury limited his effectiveness and he was  finally convinced to retire. Colleen was a force in her own right; she started a junior team in Detroit so her sons could get top-level training. In 1973, when the upstart World Hockey Association arrived to compete with the NHL, the Houston Aeros shocked hockey by signing Mark and Marty Howe straight out of juniors, and bringing Gordie out of retirement to join them.

The Howes That Gordie Built won the WHA title in each of their first two seasons. In 1974 all three Howes played on a WHA select team against the Soviet nationals. Bobby Hull, arguably hockey's next great winger, gave up the 9 jersey in a show of respect; he wore 9 because as a kid he'd idolised Howe.  Howe was the leading scorer in the contentious series which the Soviets won; before it began Soviet coach Victor Kulagin complained publicly that Howe's selection, aged 46, was an 'embarrassment' to the game. Early on, Howe set up a goal for son Mark, then retrieved the puck from the net and flipped it with his stick over the Soviet bench to Kulagin. Later in the series, when a Russian defenseman slashed open Mark's ear, Howe sent a puck into the corner for him to chase, then checked him so hard he fractured his arm.

Howe ended his career with the Hartford (Connecticut) Whalers, one of the WHA teams absorbed into the NHL when the leagues merged in 1979. His last goal came in the 1980 Stanley Cup playoffs against Montreal. Fittingly, it was a backhanded wrist shot. He retired the league's all-time leading scorer, even without counting his years in the WHA.

In retirement he worked for Whalers' owner Howard Baldwin's film business, and as a popular spokesman. Colleen ran the family's business, trademarking 'Mr. Hockey', 'Mrs. Hockey' for herself, and even the name 'Gordie Howe'. In 1997, Howe took a shift with the minor-league Detroit Vipers, marking his sixth decade in professional hockey. Coleen Howe died in 2009. Howe began showing signs of dementia, and suffered a series of strokes. He spent his last years moving between his children's homes. 

Gordon 'Gordie' Howe born 31 March 1928 Floral, Sask.

Died 10 June 2016, Toledo, Ohio

Wife Coleen Joffa m. 1953 d. 2009

Survived by four children: sons Mark, Marty, Murray daughter Cathy

MUHAMMAD ALI: WORLD SERVICE WEEKEND

Sunday morning I appeared on BBC World Service's Weekend programme to discuss Muhammad Ali. You can link to that on the IPlayer here, it's the first item on that half-hour segment, and it's very good.
I just wish I'd finished that Louisville story by mentioning Ali's story of throwing the Olympic gold medal into the Ohio River, which he later admitted 'might' have been apocryphal.

MY MUHAMMAD ALI: BELLS AFTER FIFTEEN ROUNDS

1. When We Were Kings is the title of a superb documentary film about the Rumble In The Jungle, Muhammad Ali's classic battle with George Foreman in Zaire, where he regained the heavyweight crown. The title is fitting, because Ali's fame began in the ring, and it was a time of giants in boxing's most glamorous division. George Foreman said that he, Joe Frazier and Ali were like one person; they had been forged together in the public imagination, but there were also Sonny Liston, Floyd Patterson, Ken Norton, Henry Cooper, Ernie Terrell: men over whom Ali needed to triumph to establish himself, and men who now shine in his reflection. Watch the moment Foreman falls in the film: at ringside the writer George Plimpton is frozen in drop-jaw disbelief, Norman Mailer is already beginning to celebrate. Boxing has always drawn great writers; there is no more telling display of character, no more naked revealing of what is happening inside a man's heart, than that time in the ring, and writers and film-makers have always known that.

2. Muhammad Ali was the most important sportsman of the Twentieth Century, and would have been even had he not become the most transcendent, become a symbol for battles of conscience, for racial justice, for people far removed from power, for religious belief, for so much else. He was unquestionably the most-recognisable human being in the world; he could go virtually nowhere without being mobbed. But it started on a smaller scale. When he burst on the scene after winning his Olympic light-heavyweight gold in Rome, he brought something new to sport: showmanship and self-promotion. He carried the trash-talk of the playground and the braggadocio of the professional wrestling ring into the arenas of 'legitimate' sport.Ali's style coincided with the rise of sports television: it was the beginning of the time when sportsmen stopped being paid as competitors and began to realise TV turned them into entertainers, like movie stars. This did not mean Ali was embraced immediately or automatically. To many 'traditional' sports fans, mainly whites, he was a loud-mouth, he was uppity, he needed to be put into his place.

3. From 'I Am The Greatest', a poem by Cassius Clay: 'The fistic world was dull and weary/with a champ like Liston things had to be dreary'.

I once wrote about Sonny Liston, who before Clay might legitimately have been considered the baddest man on the planet, saying 'his only skill was hurting people'. The white audience faced severe problems trying to decide if they should root for Liston, a thug who'd learned his boxing in prison, to be the one to shut 'the Louisville Lip' up. Not that they doubted he would; he was a 7-1 favourite. Cassius Clay had irritated people calling Doug Jones 'an ugly little man' before their title eliminator in Madison Square Garden, which Clay won by decision. He spent the build-up to the fight entertaining celebrities like the Beatles (his win over Henry Cooper a few months earlier had already made him a star in Britain) who flocked to Miami; he called Liston a 'big ugly bear' and seemed so hyper at the weigh-in sportswriters claimed he was scared to near-death. Clay's victory in February 1964 shocked the world. Soon after, he announced his conversion to Islam and his name-change to Muhammad Ali. When he won the rematch with Liston in Lewiston, Maine, delayed and moved to its unlikely location because boxing politics had already stripped him of the WBA version of the title (for agreeing the rematch, rather than facing the WBA's top contender) the surprise was such that many still believe Liston took a dive, falling to the famous phantom punch.

4. Floyd Patterson may have been the first black 'white hope'. Ali beat Patterson, who had been destroyed twice in short-order by Liston, mercilessly; when the fight was stopped in the twelfth round, he had carried 'the rabbit', in order to inflict extra punishment on Floyd. It was partly for using his 'slave name' Cassius Clay, and partly because Patterson was promoted as the 'credit to his race' boxer the establishment wanted to see win. In a strange way, the beating Floyd took from Ali restored some of the respect he'd lost in his two losses to Liston, returned his place among champs. Patterson had first lost his own championship to the Swede Ingemar Johansson, then re-gained the title; my father, whose parents were Swedes, was a Floyd fan because of that. The generation gap was already apparent in our house in late 1965. Ali then beat four white fighters in a row within the space of six months in 1966: Canada's George Chuvalo, Cooper and fellow Brit Brian London, and Germany's Karl Mildenberger. By the time he'd finished, my dad was an Ali fan. Even when Ali fought the guy deemed the latest, perhaps last, Great White Hope, Jerry Quarry.

5. 'I was the onliest boxer in history people asked questions like a senator.' 

When Ali was called up for the draft in 1966, he had to be reclassified 1-A. He'd originally been judged 1-Y, fit to be called up only in times of 'national emergency' because his IQ was measured at 78, which put him in the bottom 16% of Americans; the army didn't take anyone from the bottom 30%. 'I said I was the greatest, not the smartest' he said at the time. He would belie that statement many times in the next few years. Clay was not a good student; he never was a reader. But he absorbed things he thought were necessary to learn, like a sponge, and his ability to separate what he needed to learn from what he didn't was superb. He had the charisma to make people, interviewers, great writers, all feel he was talking on their level, probably because they were more eager to be understood on his. And he could recycle old tropes, jokes, stories, and make people feel they were brand new.

     As anyone who went through the process knew at the time, draft boards are not elected bodies, nor civil service, they are made of up of local grandees who rarely sent their own sons off to war. Many people thought the timing of Ali's reclassification by the Louisville draft board, when he was already 24, was more than coincidence, because it happened just afer his contract expired with the ten influential Louisville millionaires who originally backed him, and they saw the Nation of Islam's Elijah Muhammad taking control of the fighter.

6. 'No Viet Cong ever called me nigger'. 

I write the N word here because that's what Ali said, and because how can anyone who wasn't alive at the time understand fully the depth of anguish and honesty in what he was saying if they don't hear the lash of the word? Ali failed to step forward for induction into the army in April 1967 and almost immediately had his New York State boxing license withdrawn, and was stripped of his titles. In June, a jury took only 20 minutes to convict him, and the case went to appeal and eventually to the Supreme Court. Here's how he explained it: 'what should I shoot them for? They never called me nigger. They never lynched me, they didn't put no dog on me. They didn't rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father....How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail.' This made my decision to be a conscientious objector, and face the consequences, so much easier.

7. In 2014 I wrote Ernie Terrell's obituary for The Guardian:

Ernie Terrell, who has died aged 75, lost his heavyweight championship to Muhammad Ali in the infamous 'What's My Name?' fight, one of the most brutally cruel displays in boxing history. In the build-up to their match Terrell insisted on calling Ali by his 'slave name', Cassius Clay. This tactic had backfired for Floyd Patterson in an earlier loss to Ali, but because Terrell also held the WBA belt Ali felt was his, Ali was infuriated. He called Terrell 'an Uncle Tom nigger' and said 'I'll make him eat those words, letter by letter'.

     The unification fight was held in February 1967 in the Houston Astrodome, where 37,000 spectators made it the biggest indoor boxing crowd ever. In his pre-match poem, Ali talked of knocking Terrell out of the stadium in the first round: 'The ref is frantic/Terrell's over the Atlantic/Who would've thought, when they came to the fight/They'd see the launch of a coloured satellite!' 

      For 15 rounds Ali taunted Terrell as he inflicted as much damage as he could. He thumbed Terrell's left eye, and later pushed it along the ring-ropes, leaving Terrell nearly blind. By the twelfth round, Terrell was simply covering his face, and in the thirteenth Ali landed a stream of unanswered punches, but referee Harry Kessler never stopped the fight. Terrell nearly lost the sight in his eye, and was never the same fighter again. Ironically, only two months after the fight, Clay was stripped of both his titles.

      (Terrell) remained philosophical about his beating...saying, in 2009, 'We were fighting...I bore no animosity. What he say, all that, don't count. That was his way of promoting the fight'.

8. The cover story of the April 1968 issue of Esquire Magazine was called 'The Passion of Muhammad Ali', and the magazine cover created by George Lois and shot by Carl Fischer, is often considered the greatest of all time: a homage to Mantegna's 'Martyrdom Of St Sebastian', Ali in his white trunks penetrated by arrows. The issue hit the stands just as President Lyndon Johnson announced that he 'would not seek, nor shall I accept' the nomination of his party for President. It was easy to think we, young people protesting the Vietnam Nam war and the ongoing problem of racial prejudice, had won. Easy, but as it turned out, delusional.

9. While banned from boxing, Ali toured college campuses giving lectures. Sometime I believe in the spring of 1970, before the Invasion of Cambodia, shootings at Kent and Jackson State, and the student strike, I was in a packed crowd at the brand-new rink at Wesleyan, listening to Ali, and hanging around afterwards to applaud as he left by car. I honestly believe that absent Ali's visit, the lacrosse team, of which I was a part, would not have been the first group on campus to vote to join the strike. There is a clip from around that time on You Tube where Ali faces down a young critic, telling him that white folks are the enemy, not the Viet Cong. 'If I die, I'm gonna die right here fighting you,' he says. We believed him, and we somehow believed that 'white folks' didn't include us.

10. From 'I Am The Greatest' a poem by Cassius Clay: 'This kid fights great, he's got speed and endurance/If you sign to fight him, increase your insurance.'

If Ali had never become a public figure outside boxing, never revolutionised the way we saw sport, never set sportsmen free to be entertainers, he would still be an iconic figure based on the major fights he fought after his return. The enforced absence from the ring cost him some of his speed: few opponents had been able to hurt him with solid punches before. The three fights against Joe Frazier, the Rumble in The Jungle against George Foreman, the two split decisions against Ken Norton, are all engrained in my memory. Some of them I only heard on the radio, but I've since watched them over and over again, and can see the relentless Frazier plowing forward, head down, left arm low and cocked to deliver the hook that caused so much damage. I now watch the Rope A Dope strategy against Foreman and think about the courage, the intelligence, the risk Ali took. And think mostly about the long-term damage those big fights inflicted on The Champ.

11. In 1976 I was a press liason at the Montreal Forum during the boxing finals, at which both Spinks brothers won gold medals. Leon Spinks' win over Cuban Sixto Soria was the greatest amateur bout I've ever seen. In 1978 I watched Ali retake his title from Spinks, on closed circuit at the Dominion in Tottenham Court Road. It was the result I wanted, but I took no joy from it. Ali would be nearly 40 when the fifth and final loss of his career, a difficult-to-watch unanimous decision against Trevor Berbick finally convinced him to retire. He refused to believe what he thought possible might not be.

12. From 'I Am The Greatest' a poem by Cassius Clay: 'Then someone with colour, someone with dash/brought the fight fans running with cash.' 

Clay understood from the first what he was doing, and in his poem he refers to himself as a new kind of fighter, to boxing's 'New Frontier'. He claimed to have based his style on the early TV wrestling star Gorgeous George, but it's more likely he was copying 'Classy' Freddie Blassie, the self-proclaimed 'King of Men', who was big in the Louisville when Clay was young. In 1976, Ali took part in a fight with the Japanese wrestler Antonio Inoki, and brought Blassie in as his manager. Watch them on the Tonight Show, guest-hosted by MASH actor McLean Stevenson. Blassie says Ali has 'the fastest feet, the fastest punch and now he's proven he's got the fastest brain too...because he hired me.' Although Ali claimed it was going to be a real fight, that was never Inoki's idea, and when Ali got to Japan negotiations as to how the fight should be scripted broke down; neither guy would do a job for the other. So we saw Inoki lying on his back in the fight, using his feet to keep Ali away; easily the least edifying moment of Ali's career. He was born to be a boxer and a performer. He became the latter through the former.

13. In 1988, working for ABC Sports, I was in Pesaro, Italy, broadcasting a middleweight title fight between Sumbu Kalambay and Mike McCallum. The night before the fight I stayed up late with the promoter Bob Arum and with Angelo Dundee, Ali's legendary trainer. I don't think I've ever heard anyone describe someone in the way Angelo did; it was somewhere between respect and worship, like a follower who had been blessed in ancient times to fight alongside a demigod. And it was sincere. I learned a lot about boxing on that trip, but I never did discover whether Angelo actually sliced Clay's gloves to buy time in the first fight against Cooper.

14. At the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 I was in charge of host broadcast coverage of basketball at the Georgia Dome. The bane of my life was any game with the US Dream Team II, because my fellow broadcasters and journalists would desperately try to get into broadcast/press seats, not working but just to see the superstars. But before the game with Angola, Ali, who of course had lighted the Olympic torch to open the games, arrived courtside. The Angolans broke off their warmups to crowd around, followed by the Dream Teamers who rushed out of their locker room to join them. Here were the world's biggest superstars turned into fan boys just like the rest of us. I walked casually down to court side, fan boy myself, just to admire the admiration.

15. Today I woke to the news Ali was gone, and listened to tributes and watched my memories gather and soar. I rummaged through some boxes and found my copy of Cassius Clay's 45, 'I Am The Greatest', b/w 'Will The Real Sonny Liston Please Fall Down'. It's more than half a century since I first heard it. This is a DJ copy I won in a college competition; on the single as released the flip side is Ali singing 'Stand By Me'. The sleeve is a bit worn, and I don't have a record player anymore, so I couldn't play it. I just looked at the pictures on the sleeve and heard the voice in my head, clear as it was when I was 12. 'This is the legend of Cassius Clay/the most beautiful fighter in the world today. He talks a great deal and brags indeedy, 'bout a tremendous punch that's incredibly speedy....If Cassius says a mouse can beat a horse, don't ask how, put your money where your mouse is...if Cassius says a cow can lay an egg, don't ask how, grease that skillet.' The world that brought that character into the spotlight no longer exists, and a great part of the reason for that is Muhammad Ali. But the shadow of those things that drew Ali to the spotlight outside of the ring, those most American clouds of race, of war, of rich and poor, still lingers over the country. It's a different country, in part because of Ali, and he was The Greatest. Grease that skillet.

Saturday 4 June 2016

NOTE: I wrote this on Saturday, and it appeared Sunday at Newstalk.com in Ireland. You can link to that here. It was billed somewhat misleadingly as a 'list of some of the landmark moments' in Ali's career, which obviously it isn't, so I thought I'd repost it here, with my original subtitle. You can also find a version, deftly shortened by London Review of Books, at the LRB Blog here. Over the weekend, there were so many great obituaries and reminiscences, and so much great writing about him while he lived, it wasn't for me to follow those who knew him. But everybody had their own responses to Ali, and these were some of mine.

 

CLAY AND LISTON: THE PUNCHES ECHO FIFTY YEARS ON

Is it really fifty years since Cassius Clay stopped Sonny Liston, shocking the boxing world and inaugurating a new era in sports? The fight's anniversary has attracted lots of attention, and you could argue that it probably has not attracted enough.

As a boxing phenomenon, Clay-Liston ranks as one of the great upsets in history. The challenger was a 7-1 underdog, coming off a string of less than impressive wins over less than impressive opponents—remember he'd barely survived Henry Cooper; indeed many still argue that Angelo Dundee did indeed slice Clay's glove open, buying him extra time to recover.I worked with Angelo a few times, and never got a straight answer to that one.

Remember too that Sonny Liston was regarded as the baddest man alive, and merely finding someone willing to get in the ring and endure the punishment his fists provided was close to impossible. He'd beaten the former champ, Floyd Patterson, twice, in the first round both times. Since 1961, he'd spent barely six rounds in the ring. Yet Clay would taunt him, insult him, and brashly proclaim victory—even having a poem read on the TV show I've Got A Secret in which he promised 'a total eclipse of Sonny'. It was the beginning of a new era in sports in the same way the Kennedy triumph over Nixon in the televised debates began a new era in politics.

Even during the fight itself, there was a moment after the fourth when Ali, blinded, didn't want to continue, and Dundee had to push him back into the ring. Some say he'd got liniment from Liston's shoulder in his eyes, others that Liston's corner had put whatever coagulant they were putting on Sonny's cuts onto his gloves.

Ali exploded out after his eyes cleared in the fifth, and after taking punishment in the sixth Liston simply sat in his corner, refusing to come out. He seemed at the time like a confused wounded animal, resigned to his ultimate fate. Now we wonder if the fix was in. Seven to one is pretty long odds for a heavyweight championship (Jim Braddock won his title at 10-1) and that's hard for the wise guys to resist. There is a problem, though, and if we jump forward to the rematch in Lewiston, Maine, and the so-called 'phantom punch' it becomes clear. If that were indeed a dive, as so many have claimed, it was done the way dives are supposed to be done, literally by diving. You don't sit on your stool in your corner saying 'No Mas'. Doctors after the fight confirmed Liston had a torn tendon, and Sports Illustrated's Tex Maule said Liston had been unable to lift his arm.

But Clay had done the unthinkable. He'd humbled the baddest man in the world. More importantly, he'd said before the match that he would. He ran to the edge of the ring, pointed at the reporters, and yelled 'eat your words!'

This was something unprecedented in the ethos of sport. Sportsmen didn't brag, they didn't call untoward attention to themselves, and they never challenged authority, at least not with impunity. Like soccer players well into the late part of the past century, American sportsmen were supposed to be loyal, quiet servants (note that NFL players and coaches still call the owners 'Mr.' and the league gives the Super Bowl trophy to the guy who signs the checks). Clay changed all that. Joe Namath would soon follow in his footsteps, unafraid to state brag as fact, as would Fred 'The Hammer' Williamson, promoting himself relentlessly (only to be knocked cold by Donnie Anderson in the first Super Bowl).

It went beyond the undeniable flair Ali brought, the heavyweight who moved quick as a middleweight, the handsome fighter whose face stayed unmarked. Looking at footage of Joe Louis being interviewed after the first Liston fight, you think they're not just from different generations, they're from different planets. So too when Clay went crazy at the weigh-in, taunting the scariest man in the world. All those stare-downs you see before fights nowadays are a direct response to the first Clay-Liston fight.

You'll often read about Ali modelling his public persona after Gorgeous George; the young Ali was a big wrestling fan, and the adoption of wrestling promotion was a conscious choice by Clay. But if you watch his style, if you consider where he grew up and when, and who he was most likely to see, you would find it easy to conclude that much of his bombast and braggadoccio actually came not from George but from 'Classy' Freddie Blassie, the self-proclaimed 'King of Men'. I never thought it was coincidence that when Ali 'fought' the Japanese wrestler Antonio Inoki, it was Blassie whom he chose to be his 'manager', and Blassie did much of the talking in what people assumed was an imitation of Ali's style.

This meant Clay had a huge appeal to kids around my age, who'd probably just gone through their own 'golden age' of wrestling, and recognised and enjoyed Ali's public bombast. I still have my 45rpm record Cassius Clay recorded, 'this is the story of Cassius Clay, the most beautiful fighter in the world today. He talks a great deal and brags indeedy, of a powerful punch that's incredibly speedy....This kid has power, speed and endurance; if you sign to fight him, INCREASE YOUR INSURANCE!...If Cassius says a cow can lay an egg, don't ask how...GREASE THAT SKILLET!' I was mesmerised.

The adult (white) world was torn. Sonny Liston had destroyed Floyd Patterson, a 'credit to his race', and was a scowling ex-con you would run across the street to avoid if you saw him coming. But Clay was 'uppity'; an odd way to describe someone so clever, articulate, handsome, energetic, and so much fun. Who could they root for? For me, and many of my peers, the choice was easy. We may not have been convinced that the cow could lay eggs, or that the big ugly bear would indeed be beaten, but it was an idea that spoke to us.

It's no coincidence that the Beatles visited Clay's training camp in Miami. Or that Clay and Liston were both in the audience in Miami when the Beatles played there on the Ed Sullivan Show. You could look at them the same way you looked at Clay. It wasn't just that they were different; the Beatles were quite as scrubbed clean as the Bobby Rydells and Paul Ankas of the white pop world, but like Clay they were livelier, a breath of fresh air in a stale business. And like Clay, they didn't seem in thrall to the business itself. I still remember a Time magazine profile of the Beatles, marveling that they weren't slaves to the profits of the music industry—that they spent their money on simple things, like beer and fags, or something like that. I remember how it struck me as just as odd as Time intended it to sound, as if there were something wrong with not chasing the lifestyle of showbiz. Of course all that would change pretty quickly, but I think you can also argue that both the Beatles and Clay saw the sudden celebrity they received as something less important than they were supposed to.

And you can argue that Clay used that celebrity in a way that made the most of it, something unmatched even by the most famous pop group in the world (George's Bangladesh and Lennon's sleep ins for peace notwithstanding).

After the fight, Ali was with Malcolm X, Jim Brown, Sam Cooke. You can watch him pull Cooke over to an interviewer at ringside, and say, 'talk to him he's a famous pop star'. This was a veritable black Mount Rushmore gathered just at the time Clay would make probably the most momentous off-field decision made by any sportsman of the century.

The next day Clay announced he was a Moslem, a member of the Nation of Islam (aka the Black Muslims) and that he was renouncing his 'slave name' and had taken the name Cassius X. A week later, Elijah Muhammad would rename him Muhammad Ali.

Asked about his conversion, sometimes with respect but more often with at best an assumption he had been somehow led astray, and at worst outright hostility, Ali's personality changed from pro wrestler to someone thoughtful and sincere. He argued with authority the positive tenants of his new religion,  echoing Malcom X's refusal to accept debate on someone else's terms. He demonstrated some of Jim Brown's massive inner strength and drive to self-determination. What this said to the black community has been explained by people better qualified than me to do that, but it had a wider resonance too. It came at just the right time, after Kennedy's assassination, when many verities seemed to be challenged. Lyndon Johnson was pushing the Civil Rights Act through Congress, and it cleared its first hurdle at the same time as the fight.

I'd been lured in by Ali's showmanship, now I was convinced by his seriousness and his sincerity. The same attitudes my own minister had instilled in me by riding freedom buses in the south, the same consistency of religious belief with moral action, was being demonstrated in front of me by a trash-talking (the phrase hadn't been invented yet) 22 year old. Within a few years Ali would refuse induction into the Army, be stripped of his heavyweight title, spend years in exile speaking to college audiences of kids just like me, and eventually win in the courts, and embark on his second career, with all its epic moments, the true stuff of classic heroism and tragedy.

When I applied for my conscientious objector status, I don't think I used Muhammad Ali as an example, or a reference, though Lord knows I used about every other public thinker I could find. I wasn't anywhere near as glib then as I am now, and there was more at stake too. But I'm sure I wished I could find the articulateness of Ali as I wrote my statement, the articulateness that belied the persona who could trump Joe Frazier or Howard Cosell with equal ease and precision.

The echoes of Cassius Clay remain even in the now sadly limited Ali. The courage of his public transformation would echo far more vibrantly today, but the impact it had on society is undeniable. You can argue it changed some history directly. You could argue it was a major factor in the split in the Black Muslims that saw Malcolm X assassinated. You could argue many people bought into Ali's pride and defiance without buying the rest of the moral package. You could argue he was among the most visible and successful opponents of the Vietnam War. And you can argue that he changed sport in America forever and for the better. Just as Jackie Robinson's entry to Major League Baseball pushed the issue of segregation in the wider world, so Clay's conversion to Ali pushed it further. Jim Brown and Bill Russell (at the table in the photo right, with Lew Alcindor--later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) taught us about dignity, but they had none of the impact of Ali. He said it himself, at ringside after the fight, 'I shook up the world!...I talk to God every day... I must be the greatest!'

TEOFILO STEVENSON: THE GUARDIAN OBITUARY

My obit of the great Cuban boxer Teofilo Stevenson is up at the Guardian's website now, you can link to it here. Ideally, it will also appear in tomorrow's paper. It was printed with a number of cosmetic changes, but one of them is important. I wrote originally that I was 'privileged' to see Stevenson's gold medal victory while I was working at the Montreal Forum in 1976, and therein lies a story. I was a press liason at the Forum, which meant I worked through every minute of gymnastics, the semi-finals and finals of both volleyball and basketball, and the final night of boxing, which was a great one. It was my first Olympic games; I've been blessed to work at eight more, and London 2012, where I'll be covering basketball for the BBC, will be my tenth.

Stevenson's victory was impressive, in its ironic way (I have never seen a towel fly so fast, for such little reason, at any fight since), but even more impressive was the one that preceded it. Leon Spinks at light heavuweight (his brother Michael had just won the middleweight gold pounding a Russian into submission) had one of the great fights I've ever seen: a three-round slugfest with Cuba's Sixto Soria, who was the favourite (he would win the world championship in 1978). Soria came out fast, and seemed to be landing three punches for every one of Spinks'--but Leon's were more telling. Going into round three Spinks was obviously down by two, but Soria, who could have tried covering up and protecting his lead, was having none of that. The toe to toe continued until Spinks finally staggered Soria, followed up his advantage, and referee stopped the fight with just seconds remaining.

The Stevenson-Simon fight (below right) was almost comic anticlimax, but Stevenson had virtually clinched the gold medal when he knocked out John Tate in the first round of their semifinal bout, which sadly, I didn't see. Tate and both Spinks brothers would eventually become heavyweight champions (Tate briefly held the WBA version). Stevenson, of course, had to be content to be a hero in Cuba, and a legend in amateur boxing.

I probably should have written more about the propaganda war surrounding the Ali-Stevenson matchup; it simply intensified when the Cubans turned down the offer, with the restraint of Stevenson's freedom to earn being held up as an early example of the victory of the free market system. How the actual fight would have gone is impossible to determine: Ali was already a shadow of himself, and Stevenson was younger, stronger and fitter. Stevenson didn't have Ali's speed, and his style had been heavily influenced by amateur scoring; he could certainly have kept Ali away, but how was he going to get in and hurt him? I remember Angelo Dundee telling me Ali would have won easily, but then, Angelo would have said that. I do wish we could have seen it.

It's also amazing how much alike they were, and how, only in the past year or so, Stevenson's aging face began to resemble later Muhammad Ali, a sad reminder that there is no 'safe' boxing.

One last thing I didn't mention in the obit: Stevenson was voted outstanding boxer of the 1972 Olympics, and in that year he was made an Honoured Master of Soviet Sport, an award given to few non-Soviets. He was that impressive.

SMOKIN' JOE FRAZIER: IN MEMORIAM

It was Joe Frazier's blessing and curse that he shared center stage in the squared circle with Muhammad Ali, and their rivalry may be the greatest of the sporting 20th century, better than Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain, Palmer and Nicklaus, Borg and McEnroe, because it took place in the one setting most revealing of a man's character, courage, and self-awareness.

It helps that Frazier and Ali were perfect complements to each other. Out of the ring Ali was pretty, loud, egotistical—a presentation he'd learned studying pro wrestlers. He often had another agenda, and he played it out perfectly. Joe was rugged but not beautiful, softly spoken, and straight forward in what he said and what he did.

The same applied inside the ring. It's not enough, nor is it true, to say they epitomised the 'boxer versus the puncher' matchup—you want a classic for that watch Kenny Buchanan against Roberto Duran. Rather, it was that their behaviour in the ring echoed perfectly their characters outside it.

Ali's boxing style kept his face from being hurt. He was the quickest heavyweight any of us had ever seen, both with his dancing feet and his ability to pull his head back out of range in a flash. His punches, with their twist on the end, weren't knockout blows, but damaging in their own way.

Smokin' Joe, by contrast, was willing to sacrifice himself to get into punching range, taking a beating in order to give one, and once he got close enough he inflicted hammering drill-press pain, with a left-hook that destroyed right-handed punchers. He was Rocky Marciano, in a lot of ways, and once Eddie Futch taught him to bob and weave coming forward, he was as close as boxing gets to an irresistible force.

The shame of their three meetings is that Ali, having been stripped of the title, didn't get to work his way through the other contenders, and face Frazier with his hand and foot quickness intact. When they met at the Garden for the first time, a few days before my 20th birthday, I listened to the fight on the radio. I was a war-protesting pseudo hippie jock trapped into a love of competitive sports, and Ali of course symbolised the meeting of those two worlds so I was cheering for him. But even in the radio commentary I could tell that Joe was dominating, coming forward, taking the fight to Ali. The beauty of their fights is that Ali proved he had the courage to match Frazier at his own game, enduring inhuman punishment, until in the monumental rubber match, it was Futch who threw in the towel after the fourteenth round.

People remember that Ali won the gold medal at the Rome Olympics in 1960 (but often forget it was at light-heavy) but not that Joe won the heavyweight gold in Tokyo four years later. His path to the medal wasn't easy, because he lost at the Olympic trials to Buster Mathis, who drove Joe crazy in the amateur ranks. When Joe lost to Mathis at the Olympic trials he complained that the Baby Huey-shaped Mathis pulled his trunks so high ('up to his titties') that he was penalised two points for a low blow that went right into Buster's ample midsection. But Mathis pulled out of the '64 Olympics, and Joe, despite breaking his left thumb in the semifinal, won the heavyweight gold. He would later destroy Mathis when they met as pros.

Frazier's pro career is odd, in that, having come up later than Ali, he never fought Liston or Patterson, he missed Ernie Terrell and Cleveland Williams, and after Ali he somehow never got in the ring with Ken Norton. His best fights, apart from Ali, were probably his first against Oscar Bonavena, who knocked him down twice, the stoppage of George Chuvalo (both those guys made Joe look like Ali), the first win over Jerry Quarry, which was probably Quarry's best fight, and the first over Jimmy Ellis, the Ali sparring partner who won the 'tournament' to replace him as champ, a tournament Joe refused to fight in. Joe Bugner gave him a tough fight losing a 12 round decision, and the one I remember well is Frazier's quick win over Bob Foster, the exceptional light-heavyweight, who was tall and skinny and nearly knocked horizontal in mid-air by a Frazier punch. But here's the rub: Ali had half a dozen fights besides the ones with Frazier that were legendary, or close to it. Frazier really had only the ones with Ali.

He lost twice to Ali, and twice to George Foreman, who was an immovable object if ever boxing produced one. Ali watched Frazier's irresistible force rendered useless and figured out what he'd have to do to beat Foreman, and he knew, having survived three fights with Joe, he could take the punishment. He paid the price down the line, as we all know. Joe saw Ali extending his career for big paydays, but his own comeback lasted only one fight, an awkward draw with Jumbo Cummings, and he retired for good.

Joe's legacy will always be entwined with Ali's, and it's important to remember how badly Ali treated him. Joe refused to participate in the WBA's tournament when Ali was stripped, and he wrote to President Nixon asking that he reinstate Ali. He actually loaned Ali money to keep him going when he wasn't boxing, and making a living speaking on college campuses. He thought they were friends, and he'd stood by his friend.

Then, when the time came for them to be matched, Ali launched into his full pre-fight hype mode, calling Joe an Uncle Tom, a gorilla, dumb, and all the rest, which not only infuriated Frazier, but hurt him. You could see his anger in the first fight, which otherwise he might have approached with some reluctance, in a business-like way. But Ali had made it personal, and both guys took a lot of punishment as a result.

Smokin' Joe was pretty fine as a singer too, with that Philadelphia sound—something that is often overlooked. He wasn't dumb by any means; but there was still a lot of rural Beaufort, South Carolina rather than urban Philly (or Louisville, for that matter) in him. He was funny and quick-witted in interviews, but that side of his personality would always be overshadowed by Ali. As would Joe's entire legacy. There is no shame in that—Ali is undoubtedly the biggest worldwide sports personality ever-- but there is shame if we don't remember just how good, how straight-forward, and how important Joe Frazier was. He was everything heavyweight boxing was supposed to be, and, since the days of Ali and Frazier, has not really been for a long time.