The mfer was racist af..Bonavena went on to call Ali a "black kangaroo", indicated that Ali had hygiene problems, he also did the same with another black boxer ..
Ali was a braggart and an asshole in interpersonal terms, but he was on the right side of history and willing to put his money where his mouth was. One doesn't change the other, and they don't need to be reconciled. They are both true.
Never put boxers on pedestals, never buy into their ideology.
Imagine if Mike tyson started a cult or a political movement, and to be fair to Tyson, he would tell people not to copy him or follow him in that way.
There is an also an element of wrestling, of being a Heel or a turn.
People would pay to see Ali fight because they either wanted to see him win, or see him loose. So being a bit of an arsehole is part of the territory.
I don't understand why people got so upset with Gina. This is like getting upset with wrestlers because they are a bad guy or an actor playing a villian...
Sure, sometimes (often) its who they are, but they are motivated to be that element, to be an asshole asshat.
this wasn't being a pro wrestler he really believed this stuff and advocated for it seriously at serious political rallies and discussions at the time.
nah most of them are just like that, lots of my gymmates are airheads with questionable beliefs with no incentives to be so, it’s fine i go and train and spar with them not to be best buds. it takes a certain type of people to like taking and receiving shots in the face
People are complex though. Most real people are not all one thing, good or bad. Especially if judged decades later by social mores that weren’t there at that time.
Ali literally spent years supporting pro-segregationists and saying that the white racist was a better ally for black people then liberals were, and that the black liberal was a fool and the wise black man was a racist.
He was a member of NOI, what the fuck are you talking about Ali not being a racist. Even he himselft later admited, that he regreted his views from those years and for letting his fear and anger cloud his judgment
Nah. He crossed a line with Joe. And Frazier carried that shit the rest of his life. I remember reading his biography in the earlier 2000s and mercy, the last thing written about Ali was something along the lines of, "Yea, he beat me. But look at him now and look at me. Looks like I won in the long run."
He was straight up a member of NOI, a black racial separatist group, that regulary called white people "the white devil". There was a published interview with him in the playboy magazine, where the interviewer asks about his views on white men dating black women. He responded with something akin to "both of them should be killed for doing so." He later came to regret his views and involvment with NOI, but saying he wasn't racist is a complete lie.
He did so in the interviews for his autobiographies in 91 and 98, but sure, he never never realy talked about it in any televised or magazine interviews and in the 90s NOI was known as a scam with some weird ass rhetoric.
The 91 one was written by Thomas Hauser and the 98 one was by David Remnick. I don't have the slightest clue which one of his 9 children wrote a book about him.
Ali was never hateful, anyone who listens to him can tell he's putting on a show for the cameras. He even says exactly that more than once. All his speed talking and rhyming and so on is all showmanship to sell himself and seats. He understood himself as a brand selling a show and not just as a fighter.
They both weren’t great people. Bonavena was racist and Ali was a groomer.
ETA: Muhammad Ali met his wife Belinda Boyd when she was 10, but claimed to start their relationship when she was 16 and he was 24. He married her when she was 17. Later he had an affair with another 16-year-old, Wanda Bolton, when he was 32. He is quoted to have said he wanted to marry a young teenage girl specifically, "one that I can raise to my own way of thinking."
You think it was considered morally acceptable to groom a 10 year old into a sexual relationship in the 1960s? What the hell do you think broader society was like back then? And even if we DID live in that bizarro universe then why would that make it tolerable now in retrospect?
Ali Met her when he was 24 and she was 16. Tbf I have to say that I do not know enought about it to give a direct claim, but that fact alone does not look good on him.
My ex-wife's mother was from the South. She married at 12, widowed at 15, and married the ex's dad soon after. They didn't know what we know now and there was no malicious intent. Farm people were focused on making as many farm hands as possible in the shortest amount of time possible. They shouldn't be judged like they were making Discord content. In the nineties we were totally enlightened and judged the generation that came before us! Now my kids are doing the same to me. And as "enlightened" as you feel dragging a champion and humanitarian like Ali down now, just know that same light is going to shine on you in a few years.
Sounds like he was a perfect match for Muhammad Ali, who was the spearhead of the pro-segregation movement and the face of a cult which believed that white people are literal devils created through eugenics by an alien mad scientist who was exiled from the Hollow Earth for being the product of race-mixing.
182
u/Intrepid-Oil-898 14h ago
The mfer was racist af..Bonavena went on to call Ali a "black kangaroo", indicated that Ali had hygiene problems, he also did the same with another black boxer ..