The deification of Ali is a fact. But for those of us who are his contemporaries, he was one year older than me, we know who he was and what he said. Today, there are not that many people who know what transpired in the 60s and 70s.
I also can’t stand Jane Fonda.
Vintage people like ourselves watched all of this unfold.
Ali was a great boxer. Also a great entertainer in his use of poems/phrasing
Transmitting those qualities over into his beliefs should have never occurred then and now.
Todays public is easily fooled by what they don’t know and won’t take the time to find out.
Case in point his outright humiliation of Joe Frazier... In todays world that would be called “ hurtful”
"When the ref finally stopped the bruising beating in the twelfth round, Ali, retaining his title as Heavyweight Champion, left the ring amidst the crowd's booming boos. They were astonished by what appeared to be little more than a display of needless cruelty directed at Patterson, a sensitive boxer nicknamed the Gentle Gladiator.
But this gentle man would not pull punches when he set himself against Ali. The war of words between the two titans began in biting earnest more than a year before their battle in the ring. Patterson condemned Ali's membership in the Nation of Islam, an organization that preached the superiority of Black Muslims and advocated the separation of the races. Patterson clarified his views at length in an essay entitled “I Want to Destroy Clay”, written with Milton Gross, for the October 19, 1964 issue of Sports Illustrated. Insisting on calling Ali by his old name, he wrote that “Clay is so young and has been so misled by the wrong people that he doesn't appreciate how far we have come and how much harm he has done by joining the Black Muslims. He might as well have joined the Ku Klux Klan.” Patterson, in contrast, believed in the integration of blacks into what was then exclusively white society, and he supported the NAACP's efforts to open American society up to the nation's most marginalized community. He took the differences between them seriously enough that he believed beating Ali would be his “contribution to civil rights.”
“I say... that the image of a Black Muslim as the world heavyweight champion disgraces the sport and the nation,” he wrote in another essay for Sports Illustrated, published just six weeks before their fight. “Cassius Clay must be beaten and the Black Muslims' scourge removed from boxing.” Even Martin Luther King Jr. took a side. “When Cassius Clay joined the Black Muslims,” he said, “he became a champion of racial segregation and that is what we are fighting against. I think perhaps Cassius should spend more time proving his boxing skill and do less talking.”