Posted on 06/03/2016 2:07:18 PM PDT by ColdOne
Muhammad Ali has been placed on life support — and his family fears that it “likely won’t be long until he passes away,” according to a report. The boxing legend was hospitalized in Scottsdale, Ariz., for a respiratory issue on Thursday and insiders tell Radar Online that his loved ones are now rushing to his side because it appears his condition has worsened. “He needs every bit of fight he’s got left to survive,” a source told the website. “Doctors are telling the family that it likely won’t be long until he passes away.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
I hope he converts back, quickly.
Ali named for Cassius Marcellus Clay 1810-1903 Republican. He was an abolitionist and was shot at an abolitionist meeting in 1843. He recovered and survived an assassination attempt by six men in 1849, killing one of them. Yet Ali said he "ain't having no slave name". This to explain his name change. I did read he joined the Muslims to keep organized crime figures away.
Others may argue that he started the "look-at-me" status of athletes; the trash talking of athletes; the "I-am-better-than-you athlete".
I, for one, wish he hadn't. In fact, I blame him for the crap we deal with today.
While he was fighting, I was only a kid and a teenager. I didn’t like him much because he had a big mouth, and I always rooted for Frazier or Foreman or ANYONE to beat the stuffing out of him. That he was a draft dodger didn’t exactly improve my opinion of him.
However, over time I have changed my thinking toward him. What he accomplished, he accomplished through sheer will and despite a lot of handicaps. I greatly admire him as an athlete and a competitor. I still don’t like the guy’s religious views - but he apparently doesn’t try to force them on others, so I guess that it is a live and let live thing, a big part of what this country is about.
As for avoiding going to Vietnam, I at least admire his guts in staying here and facing the music, rather than running away like a coward. Whatever else anyone can condemn him for, being a coward is NOT one of them. Still, I believe that he was very wrong. Part of living in a country and benefiting from what it offers is to serve if called upon to do so - and that is what he should have done. I’m sure that he wouldn’t have gone into battle, but would have been used for entertainment...and that is not “shooting the brown man.”
Yes, he is a mixed bag, but he said what he meant and meant what he said, gotta respect that.When the ayatollahs took over Iran Ali called them “a disgrace to islam”.
How is he a coward?
He was not a draft dodger.
He’s a chickens**t draft dodging muslim. He’s no American or hero of any kind.
Clay/Ali was arguably the very first high-profile professional athlete to shamelessly trash-talk and embarrass his opponent. AND America. No example of a "hero" or sportsmanship for kids. I still don't understand how and why he could be admired.
He was a reprehensible, demeaning SOB-racist. I found no redeeming virtue in the man. How he treated Joe Frazier was unnecessary and despicable.
Ali didn’t doge the Draft. He went to jail for his beliefs and lost his boxing license for a number of years.
I need to know (about) how old you are before I answer that.The younger you are the less likely you are to understand the answer.
I used to live across the street from him on the South Side of Chicago. There was nothing cooler than watching him emerge from his building’s underground parking ramp in his Rolls. He dwarfed the car!
Frazier and Ali were initially friends. During Ali’s enforced three-year lay-off from boxing for refusing to be drafted into the US Army, Frazier lent him money and testified before Congress and petitioned U.S. President Richard Nixon to have Ali’s right to box reinstated.[28] Frazier supported Ali’s right not to serve in the army, saying “If Baptists weren’t allowed to fight, I wouldn’t fight either.”[29]
However, in the build-up to their first fight, The Fight of the Century, Ali turned it into a “cultural and political referendum”, painting himself as a revolutionary and civil rights champion and Frazier as the white man’s hope, an “Uncle Tom” and a pawn of the white establishment.[30][31] Ali successfully turned many black Americans against Frazier. Bryant Gumbel joined the pro-Ali, anti-Frazier bandwagon by writing a major magazine article that asked “Is Joe Frazier a white champion with black skin?” Frazier thought this was “a cynical attempt by Clay to make me feel isolated from my own people. He thought that would weaken me when it came time to face him in that ring. Well, he was wrong. It didn’t weaken me, it awakened me to what a cheap-shot son of a bitch he was.” He noted the hypocrisy of Ali calling him an Uncle Tom when his [Ali’s] trainer (Angelo Dundee) was white.[30]
As a result of Ali’s campaign, Frazier’s children were bullied at school and his family were given police protection after receiving death threats.[32] Ali declared that if Frazier won he would crawl across the ring and admit that Frazier was the greatest. After Frazier won by a unanimous decision, he called upon Ali to fulfil his promise and crawl across the ring, but he didn’t.[33] Ali called it a “white man’s decision” and insisted that he won.[34]
During a televised joint interview prior to their second bout in 1974, Ali continued to insult Frazier, who took exception to Ali calling him “ignorant” and challenged him to a fight, which resulted in the two of them brawling on the studio floor.[35] Ali went on to win the 12 round non-title affair by a decision. Ali took things further in the build-up to their last fight, The Thrilla in Manila, and called Frazier “the other type of negro” and “ugly”, “dumb” and a “gorilla”[36] At one point he sparred with a man in a gorilla suit and pounded on a rubber gorilla doll, saying “This is Joe Frazier’s conscience... I keep it everywhere I go. This is the way he looks when you hit him.”[37] According to the fight’s promoter Don King, this enraged Frazier, who took it as a “character assassination” and “personal invective”.[37] One night before the fight, Ali waved around a toy pistol outside Frazier’s hotel room. When Frazier came to the balcony, he pointed the gun at Frazier and yelled “I am going to shoot you.”[38] After the fight, Ali summoned Frazier’s son Marvis into his dressing room, and told him that he had not meant what he had said about his father. When informed of this by Marvis, Frazier responded: “you ain’t me, son. Why isn’t he apologizing to me?”
For years afterwards, Frazier retained his bitterness towards Ali and suggested that Ali’s battle with Parkinson’s syndrome was a form of divine retribution for his earlier behavior. In 2001, Ali apologized to Frazier via a New York Times article, saying “In a way, Joe’s right. I said a lot of things in the heat of the moment that I shouldn’t have said. Called him names I shouldn’t have called him. I apologize for that. I’m sorry. It was all meant to promote the fight”.[39] Frazier reportedly “embraced it”, though he later retorted that Ali only apologized to a newspaper, not to him. He said: “I’m still waiting [for him] to say it to me.” To this Ali responded: “If you see Frazier, you tell him he’s still a gorilla.”[40]
Frazier told Sports Illustrated in May 2009 that he no longer held hard feelings for Ali.[41] After Frazier’s death in November 2011, Ali was among those who attended the private funeral services for Frazier in Philadelphia. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who spoke during the service, asked those in attendance to stand and “show your love” and reportedly Ali stood with the audience and clapped “vigorously”.[42]
Conservatives are opposed to the draft, and Ali was correct about the draft and he should have opposed it, it is after all forced service.
If you’re talking about the Vietnam thing, Ali was did not doge the Draft. He took the consequences for his position. He knew perfectly well that he would not have seen a moment of combat had he gone.
How about whatever the gender jenner?
I might add a war started by Democrats JFK and LBJ.
Same her for those who remember his antics in the 1960s.
Loud Mouth. Everyone hated him.
Anti-Vietnam War, converted to islam claiming to be an iman and dodged the draft.
Rehabilitated by the news media as a benevolent and beloved sports figure.
Still loud mouthed.
Fought a Japanese wrestler and other sideshows.
Fought SMOKIN JOE FRASIER who lost, but JOE landed one good hit that permanently scrambled Ali’s brains and quieted his loud mouth.
Even the birds did not like him as they proceeded to his “museum” and crapped all over his pictures.
In 1967, three years after winning the heavyweight title, Ali refused to be conscripted into the U.S. military, citing his religious beliefs and opposition to American involvement in the Vietnam War. He was eventually arrested and found guilty on draft evasion charges and stripped of his boxing title. He did not fight again for nearly four years—losing a time of peak performance in an athlete’s career. Ali’s appeal worked its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, where in 1971 his conviction was overturned. Ali’s actions as a conscientious objector to the war made him an icon for the larger counterculture generation.[7][8]
You mean like Rush, Dick Cheney, and The Donald?
I’m very sorry to learn about this.
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