5 Things You Notice, After Watching Ali-Frazier III Like, 35 Times
5. Though I highly doubt Don Dunphy was a racist, based on all the nice things I've heard, calling these two fighters "boys" during the fight doesn't age well.
4. This is the ultimate contrast in styles: Ali jabbing and potshotting at range, Frazier boring inside, working the body.
3. I've still yet to figure out who Flip Wilson is, and how he gets invited to these things. (Oh.) That's two guys involved in this thing who died in 1998. 64 is too young, too.
2. The man I'd like to punch is the guy who keeps yelling, "Ali!!!" at really inappropriate times. Telling the man who invented the rope-a-dope to get off the ropes is pretty dumb, too.
1. Frazier had 4 losses to flat-out legendary fighters--twice to Ali and Foreman each. Ali had 5 total losses, only 3 if you dismiss the ill-advised comeback in the 1980s. These were the best. Had Ali not beaten Joe twice, it would be easy to call Frazier the better fighter (and he might be). Joe left the game with a draw; Ali left with two straight losses people fight to forget.
P.S. Actually Related Rant: Any boxing fan is disappointed that politics stripped arguably the greatest fighter of all time of nearly four prime years. On the other hand, I can't blame them for refusing to grant the objector request; his statements at the time were political enough to credibly not be considered religious. [False dichotomy, no?--ed.] I don't think so; having a moral objection to killing people (even if that objection is conditional) is one thing; taking it upon yourself to make a prudential decision about the strategic usefulness of it, and on that basis, refusing induction, is a criminal act. Remember, he said, "I ain't got no quarrel with no Viet Cong," among other things. If he had stood for induction, and then refused to take life on religious grounds, well and good. They can send him out afterwards, or he can take a nonviolent role. I'm glad we live in a country where we are free to question wars. I think having a volunteer armed forces is better in terms of liberty. But if I lived in a time when service was compulsory, no matter what I thought, I'd fulfill the law as best I could. Christianity demands that, even if I am a pacifist. Soldiers are instruments of policy, not setters of it. I have the right to pursue any means available within the law to avoid violating my conscience. Short of being ordered to commit an intrinsically evil act--of which the draft itself most certainly was not--there were other choices. Ali does not share my Christianity, true, but I am trying to think it through. It seems to me that short of a blatantly immoral order, once my recourse has been tried, I suck it up and make the best of it. (Romans 13) Would I have taken his title, and banned him? No way. But a nationalistic overreaction doesn't negate the fact that he was guilty. Lock him up 30 days, let him out, and let him fight. The patriots in the Greatest Generation have every right to think him a dirty dog, and hate him for all his days as a Clintonian draft-dodger. But fighters fight. Ain't nobody said boxing was all saints and patriots.
5. Though I highly doubt Don Dunphy was a racist, based on all the nice things I've heard, calling these two fighters "boys" during the fight doesn't age well.
4. This is the ultimate contrast in styles: Ali jabbing and potshotting at range, Frazier boring inside, working the body.
3. I've still yet to figure out who Flip Wilson is, and how he gets invited to these things. (Oh.) That's two guys involved in this thing who died in 1998. 64 is too young, too.
2. The man I'd like to punch is the guy who keeps yelling, "Ali!!!" at really inappropriate times. Telling the man who invented the rope-a-dope to get off the ropes is pretty dumb, too.
1. Frazier had 4 losses to flat-out legendary fighters--twice to Ali and Foreman each. Ali had 5 total losses, only 3 if you dismiss the ill-advised comeback in the 1980s. These were the best. Had Ali not beaten Joe twice, it would be easy to call Frazier the better fighter (and he might be). Joe left the game with a draw; Ali left with two straight losses people fight to forget.
P.S. Actually Related Rant: Any boxing fan is disappointed that politics stripped arguably the greatest fighter of all time of nearly four prime years. On the other hand, I can't blame them for refusing to grant the objector request; his statements at the time were political enough to credibly not be considered religious. [False dichotomy, no?--ed.] I don't think so; having a moral objection to killing people (even if that objection is conditional) is one thing; taking it upon yourself to make a prudential decision about the strategic usefulness of it, and on that basis, refusing induction, is a criminal act. Remember, he said, "I ain't got no quarrel with no Viet Cong," among other things. If he had stood for induction, and then refused to take life on religious grounds, well and good. They can send him out afterwards, or he can take a nonviolent role. I'm glad we live in a country where we are free to question wars. I think having a volunteer armed forces is better in terms of liberty. But if I lived in a time when service was compulsory, no matter what I thought, I'd fulfill the law as best I could. Christianity demands that, even if I am a pacifist. Soldiers are instruments of policy, not setters of it. I have the right to pursue any means available within the law to avoid violating my conscience. Short of being ordered to commit an intrinsically evil act--of which the draft itself most certainly was not--there were other choices. Ali does not share my Christianity, true, but I am trying to think it through. It seems to me that short of a blatantly immoral order, once my recourse has been tried, I suck it up and make the best of it. (Romans 13) Would I have taken his title, and banned him? No way. But a nationalistic overreaction doesn't negate the fact that he was guilty. Lock him up 30 days, let him out, and let him fight. The patriots in the Greatest Generation have every right to think him a dirty dog, and hate him for all his days as a Clintonian draft-dodger. But fighters fight. Ain't nobody said boxing was all saints and patriots.
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