Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, a
Speaker 1: history podcast that does what it says in the title.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Margaret kilj It with me todays I
Speaker 1: and Johnson.
Speaker 2: Hi yan, Hey Margaret, how are you?
Speaker 1: I'm doing all right? Our producer Sophie Oh, I guess
Speaker 1: I should say who you are? Ian as an audio engineer.
Speaker 1: You do other stuff too? How come this?
Speaker 3: He's also one half of the d He's DJ Gladiator
Speaker 3: with our boy DJ Daniel, also on the Cool Zone
Speaker 3: medio team. We have the full Gladiator, which is something
Speaker 3: I like to say as often as legally allowed. You
Speaker 3: do say, I say it as many times as I can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But yeah, you know, my main my main gig
Speaker 2: is chopping up these podcasts. Recently got into tennis. That's
Speaker 2: been fun. Yeah, and uh yeah, I do love to DJ.
Speaker 2: That's it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, are you gonna make a DJ controller that's
Speaker 1: like a tennis racket and then it's like MIDI based
Speaker 1: on where the height and.
Speaker 2: No, that's that's a little beyond that's a little bit
Speaker 2: beyond my my scope, you know, the engineering side of it.
Speaker 2: That's I'll leave that to someone else.
Speaker 1: Fine, okay. Our producer Sophie, Hi, Sophie, how you doing?
Speaker 3: My dog has to have surgery. I am sad, but
Speaker 3: I am okay. I am holding on bye bye by
Speaker 3: small amount.
Speaker 1: But every time bad stuff happens to my friend's dogs,
Speaker 1: I just like go out and hug grintraw. That's what
Speaker 1: you're supposed to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's appropriate response.
Speaker 3: My my least my least favorite thing about UH social
Speaker 3: media is when you randomly see sad animal ship without
Speaker 3: your consent, Like.
Speaker 1: How would people do that?
Speaker 3: TikTok is pretty bad about it, Like it's it's like
Speaker 3: you're like scrolling, You're like, ah, disassociation, and you see
Speaker 3: like cute animal things and it all of a sudden
Speaker 3: it's like, no, I don't want to see some sad
Speaker 3: dog it no wants nobody wants to see that anyways. Sorry,
Speaker 3: this is cool people, cool stuff. Our theme songs by
Speaker 3: young woman Ian edits it. I produce it, Margaret writes
Speaker 3: research and hosts it. And this week we're talking about
Speaker 3: Muhammad Ali.
Speaker 2: Yeah I did it.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah. This week we're talking about Momhammed Ali, one
Speaker 1: of the greatest athletes, says that I know, but it's
Speaker 1: a script and like, how am I going to start
Speaker 1: the second half of those?
Speaker 2: Fair enough? That's a good point.
Speaker 1: My My main move is to say things off script
Speaker 1: and then still have to read them later in the script.
Speaker 1: That's like, that's what that is.
Speaker 2: That is that's classic.
Speaker 1: Wait, because I'm like, I don't know how to I
Speaker 1: can't on the fly edit it.
Speaker 3: Is there any TV in this episode?
Speaker 1: There is no tuberculosis in this entire episode?
Speaker 2: You know what?
Speaker 1: I'll take? Can some over dianetics?
Speaker 2: Yes, every time, really thoroughly, because there's antibiotics for that shit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But Muhammad A Lee gets out way before dianetics
Speaker 1: kick in, so this this episode will be entirely free
Speaker 1: of that. So first episode we talked mostly about the
Speaker 1: Nation of Islam, the religion of movement he spent most
Speaker 1: of his boxing career, and today we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: the man himself. Muhammad Ali was born Cassius Clay. I
Speaker 1: thought about not using that name, and then I realized
Speaker 1: he uses it himself in his books to talk about
Speaker 1: when he was younger. But it was a whole thing
Speaker 1: where people would like basically dead name him constantly just
Speaker 1: to be a fucking dick to him and his name
Speaker 1: is Muhammad Ali. He was born on January seventeenth, nineteen
Speaker 1: forty two, in Louisville, Kentucky. His father was a painter.
Speaker 1: He usually gets called a sign painter and that's his job,
Speaker 1: but he he was a painter. He painted a ton
Speaker 1: of a ton of murals, a ton of paintings. His
Speaker 1: mother was a domestic Unlike Jack before him, he was
Speaker 1: deeply impersonally affected by segregation as a kid. Like literally
Speaker 1: once he's like waiting at a bus stop and he
Speaker 1: needs water and he's like this is like when he's
Speaker 1: like so young, he can't even remember this, and his
Speaker 1: mom like takes him in to get a couple of water,
Speaker 1: and they're like, no, we're not giving your kid a
Speaker 1: cup of water, you know, Okay, yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you knew this, but segregation's bad. He was dyslexic.
Speaker 1: He struggled in school. His family was Baptist and went
Speaker 1: to church every Sunday, and his father painted a lot
Speaker 1: of the murals in the church and every other Baptist
Speaker 1: church in the city. Although actually I read that, but
Speaker 1: also the fact that his father was Methodist and they
Speaker 1: went to his mother's Baptist church, but you know whatever.
Speaker 1: He speaks well of his parents and his childhood and
Speaker 1: his specifically, one of the things he talks about is
Speaker 1: his father wasn't afraid to show affection to his children.
Speaker 2: Oh that's nice.
Speaker 1: And yeah. And then he had his favorite game that
Speaker 1: he liked playing as a kid. His favorite game was
Speaker 1: trying not to get hit by rocks.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, okay.
Speaker 1: Specifically, his favorite game was have his younger brother throw
Speaker 1: rocks at him and see if he could dodge them.
Speaker 2: Oh, is this how he developed the footwork and the
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, okay, I see okay, Yeah, it's coming together.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: So if you want to toughen up your kid, just
Speaker 1: get them to get him into dodge rock.
Speaker 2: You know, dodge Rock.
Speaker 1: That's great. So one day, as the story goes, and
Speaker 1: I don't have a counter argument to the story. It's
Speaker 1: actually the story. This is the story, he says to himself.
Speaker 1: Young Muhammad, he's twelve years old. He had his bike stolen.
Speaker 1: It's his prized possession. It was not a cheap bike.
Speaker 1: It was a red and white Shwin and he wanted
Speaker 1: to go find a cop to report it stolen. And
Speaker 1: he heard that this white cop named Joe Martin might
Speaker 1: be able to help him who ran a boxing jim.
Speaker 1: So he shows up a Joe's boxing Jim and is like,
Speaker 1: you should help me find that kid so I can
Speaker 1: beat him up. And there's like two versions of this,
Speaker 1: and one is the cop is like, hey, why not
Speaker 1: learn to box before you go beat him up? So
Speaker 1: you're better at beating him up. And there's another version
Speaker 1: that's like the cop and everyone else is like, oh God,
Speaker 1: if the kid who stole your bike is a white kid,
Speaker 1: you're gonna end up dead. Like, let's just try and
Speaker 1: get you to not go hunt down your bike. Right,
Speaker 1: So cameo buy a cop who did something good? Rare,
Speaker 1: I know, especially Louisville, Kentucky, nineteen fifty four. White CoP's unexpected.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So he starts boxing and he's really fucking good at it.
Speaker 1: And he's really good at it partly because he just
Speaker 1: like sets his mind to it. There's like natural talent.
Speaker 1: But he talks a lot about how it's like, no,
Speaker 1: it's that he trained six days a week and you know,
Speaker 1: he grew up playing dodge rock and boxing kept him
Speaker 1: out of trouble on away from drinking and smoking. He
Speaker 1: got his first fight really quick after that. In nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty four, he's still twelve, he has ninety pounds. His
Speaker 1: opponent is bigger and taller and white, and little Ali
Speaker 1: is like afraid, and his dad's like, nah, go whop
Speaker 1: that white kid's ass. It's great, like you're in the ring,
Speaker 1: you know. Little Ali won. He went on to win
Speaker 1: a lot And one of the stories that I really
Speaker 1: like is that he tracked down the neighborhood bully. There's
Speaker 1: this kid named Corky Baker and the first time Ali saw, yeah, quirky.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's like a nineteen fifty ass name. Okay, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And to make it as nineteen fifties as possible, the
Speaker 1: first time Ali saw Quirky, Muhammadli at least describes it
Speaker 1: this way. Krky was holding a football player upside down
Speaker 1: and shaking him for loose change.
Speaker 2: Classic yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And everyone was always afraid of Corky Baker, but Muhammad Ali,
Speaker 1: I would say, not Muhammad Ali, but no, he was afraid,
Speaker 1: but Muhammad Ali believed in doing what he was afraid of.
Speaker 1: So Ali challenged him to a fight. But he was like,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna fight you here in the streets. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna fight you in the ring, and Corky was basically like,
Speaker 1: boxing's for sissy's. But everyone on the streets starts calling him.
Speaker 1: This is straight up just I'm just describing a nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties movie. Yeah, but everyone around him starts calling him
Speaker 1: a coward, and so he gives in and he fights
Speaker 1: Ali in the ring. And it was a title match.
Speaker 1: The title was King of the Street. Whoever wins is
Speaker 1: King of the Street. It's two rounds. Quirky never lands
Speaker 1: a single punch. After two rounds of the black eye,
Speaker 1: Corky says literally, this ain't fair and runs off like
Speaker 1: just like.
Speaker 3: Not Quirky, saying this ain't fair. Okay, yeah, Corky, I
Speaker 3: know shit I could take.
Speaker 1: He would probably take Quirky. After this, Ali and his
Speaker 1: friends and all the neighborhood kids run down the street chanting,
Speaker 1: We're free, We're free. Long live the King were free.
Speaker 2: That's awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Corky gets a redemption arc. So after this,
Speaker 1: Corky stops fucking with people he like, stops being a bully.
Speaker 1: And this is a huge life lesson for young Ali.
Speaker 1: If you stand up to bullies, you stand up, you
Speaker 1: stand up to them. And you stand up to them
Speaker 1: for yourself and everyone else. He winds up befriending Quirky.
Speaker 1: They don't become tight, but they stay in touch until
Speaker 1: years later when Corky dies in a shootout with the cops.
Speaker 2: Oh god, I know, it was so great and then
Speaker 2: it got so bad. I know, I know.
Speaker 1: When he was eighteen, not Quirky. But when Muhammad Ali
Speaker 1: was eighteen, he goes to the fucking Olympics in Rome
Speaker 1: and he's afraid to fly. He'd only flown twice before.
Speaker 1: This is like his big fear besides Corky, and he's
Speaker 1: conquered that fear. He's afraid to fly. He's only flown
Speaker 1: twice before. He flew to California and back for the
Speaker 1: Olympic trials. He was so afraid that he wasn't going
Speaker 1: to go. But his father's advice quote always confront the
Speaker 1: things that you fear, got to him, and with a
Speaker 1: good fatherly pep talk, he goes out and buys a
Speaker 1: parachute and brings the parachute on the plane because he
Speaker 1: is a prepper king, that is all I'm saying. So
Speaker 1: he goes to Rome and he wins the gold medal
Speaker 1: for yeah, I didn't write it into the script. It's
Speaker 1: it's the lighter than heavyweight. It's the like light heavyweight
Speaker 1: or something.
Speaker 2: Was it like, yeah, like light heavyweight, or there's like
Speaker 2: welter weight, or.
Speaker 1: It wasn't welter weight because I remember that was as
Speaker 1: a funny name. Okay, so light heavyweight is probably yeah,
Speaker 1: does that make sense? Yeah, I think welterweight was when
Speaker 1: I was the like brief time I was learning boxing,
Speaker 1: I think I was welterweight, but I can't remember.
Speaker 3: He got a gold medal at eighteen for light heavyweight
Speaker 3: division at the nineteen sixties Summer Olympics.
Speaker 1: Check by the producer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, excellent.
Speaker 1: So he comes back and he thinks, he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm good. Racism will not be able to stand up
Speaker 1: to this fucking gold medal because he comes back and
Speaker 1: there's like when he shows up in Louisville, there's crowds
Speaker 1: of black people and white people cheering for him. The
Speaker 1: mayor takes him as like, this is the key to
Speaker 1: the city. The gold medal is mayor doesn't give him
Speaker 1: a different key.
Speaker 2: He's a hometown hero. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, except there's a problem.
Speaker 2: The problem in America.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, even while he's in Rome, a Soviet interviewer
Speaker 1: comes up. It gets in a really sick burn. The
Speaker 1: Soviet is like, so, how does it feel to have
Speaker 1: like won a medal for a cut tree that won't
Speaker 1: let you eat it in restaurants?
Speaker 2: Hmm yeah and uh.
Speaker 1: And so he goes and he's home and he wears
Speaker 1: the gold medal everywhere. He's like fucking he showers with it.
Speaker 1: It's like causing back problems because he's like sleeping with
Speaker 1: it on and it like, you know, yeah.
Speaker 2: I would do the same thing, and I just want
Speaker 2: a gold medal. Yeah, I would never take yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One day, he and a friend try to eat at
Speaker 1: a diner and the waitress says, we don't serve negroes,
Speaker 1: and he responded, well, we don't eat them either. Oh
Speaker 1: that's good, I know, which is how you know he's
Speaker 1: going to grow up to be a dad, because he's
Speaker 1: got them dad jokes.
Speaker 2: Lock.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And there's a couple of different versions of the
Speaker 1: He writes a lot of what I'm saying is like
Speaker 1: from his own autobiography, but other people, including his friends,
Speaker 1: have said that he lies in his autobiography in order
Speaker 1: to like say his friends have said things like, damn
Speaker 1: those honkeys, WI believe anything you tell him, and they
Speaker 1: said that specifically around he says that he got so
Speaker 1: mad that he threw his gold medal into the river.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, that's like the common story that I've heard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, and that story comes from him,
Speaker 1: But one of his friends later was like, no, like
Speaker 1: that's not true either way. Up to that point, he
Speaker 1: wore the medal every moment of his life. Afterwards, he
Speaker 1: realized it's just a material object. He starts taking it off.
Speaker 1: After winning the gold medal. He starts his professional career.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if you knew this, he's really
Speaker 1: good at boxing.
Speaker 2: I had heard that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, like some sort of superlative I think. So
Speaker 1: he wins a lot, and he usually wins by knockout.
Speaker 1: Of his first nineteen fights, which he won all of
Speaker 1: he won fifteen of them by knockout.
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And one of his whole things is that he's like,
Speaker 1: you can't fucking hit him, and so he got that
Speaker 1: famous line, float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
Speaker 1: He he dodges more than he blocks, and then he
Speaker 1: hits really fucking hard.
Speaker 2: It's all that Dodge rock.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really like poetic and arn'tful the way that
Speaker 3: that he performs it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I I like watching boxing honestly, Like I like
Speaker 1: watching for all the like, I have this whole thing
Speaker 1: where it's like the only reason I don't know sports
Speaker 1: is that I don't know pop culture. It's like not
Speaker 1: actually like sports are actually really fucking cool. Yeah, pop
Speaker 1: culture could be really fucking cool too. I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to just I like watching.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I also.
Speaker 3: I like I like in like the fighting sports, the
Speaker 3: walkins when they walk into the to the arena. Itash.
Speaker 2: It's hard if that doesn't get you hyped, Like what, Yeah, well,
Speaker 2: do you want to know where he got his showman
Speaker 2: walkins and attitude from?
Speaker 1: Because it's the next paragraph in the script?
Speaker 3: Is it? No?
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 3: Actually?
Speaker 4: Is it?
Speaker 1: Actually?
Speaker 5: Because I was just I was just talking it is yep?
Speaker 5: Fuck yeah really on my game today. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So he's an incredible boxer, he's also an incredible showman.
Speaker 1: And he learned this and he talks about this a lot.
Speaker 1: He met this guy named gorgeous George. You'll ever seen
Speaker 1: gorgeous George. No, Gorgeous George is like he's the first
Speaker 1: professional wrestler who does the villain heel, who like you
Speaker 1: just want to hit because he's so smart. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: Gorgeous George is a flamboyant wrestler who was as effeminate
Speaker 1: as possible. He kept his hair bleached blonde and long
Speaker 1: and pinned up in gold plated bobby pins, which he
Speaker 1: distributed to his fans and called Georgie pins. He marched
Speaker 1: to the ring to that graduation song, Pomp and Circumstance,
Speaker 1: like no, I can't do it. It's out of my head.
Speaker 1: As soon as I tried, Sophie, can you sing pomp
Speaker 1: and circumstance?
Speaker 2: Oh, I just started thinking of like vitamin C graduation
Speaker 2: And now that's the only thing playing in my head.
Speaker 1: I get sing that. I don't even know what it is.
Speaker 1: That's okay, Well is that we'll play for you after? Yeah? Okay, thanks.
Speaker 1: Mark had always tricks me into singing. Nobody else can
Speaker 1: do that. So he marches into the graduation song with
Speaker 1: people throwing rose petals. He gets up on into the
Speaker 1: ring and he disinfects it with Chanelle number five, which
Speaker 1: is completely unproblematic, and there's no other podcast that explores
Speaker 1: the problematic history of Chanel. There's that behind the bastards
Speaker 1: talking about this anyway, And he talks crazy shit on
Speaker 1: his opponents, and he brings in the crowds because people
Speaker 1: want to see him get beat up, Like yes, because
Speaker 1: he and so half of them come to jeer him,
Speaker 1: but they come and they buy tickets, and so this
Speaker 1: is how he learns that, Like, this is how Muhammad
Speaker 1: Ali learns, like if people hate you, you still make
Speaker 1: money off the people who hate you.
Speaker 2: The heat is good, The heat is good.
Speaker 3: That's basically the strategy of like every UFC situation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so that's where this comes from. Is gorgeous
Speaker 1: George the all but a drag queen, like the tightest
Speaker 1: line between gorgeous George and a drag queen and Muhammad
Speaker 1: Ali fucking love gorgeous George and so and he's like, look,
Speaker 1: half of Muhammad Ali used it as like, OK, right,
Speaker 1: I'm drawing in crowds and half of the angry white
Speaker 1: people want to see me lose. But that's fine. All
Speaker 1: the racists can just give me their money. That's not
Speaker 1: a problem for me.
Speaker 2: Right. It reminds me of like when people in like
Speaker 2: the nineties were like burning all those nwacds likews hey,
Speaker 2: they paid for him, like I don't care what they
Speaker 2: do with them after.
Speaker 1: I know, And then it's just more publicity, is like
Speaker 1: exactly exactly, And so during this showman stage, he's already
Speaker 1: started to do some poetry. When he gets off of
Speaker 1: the plane with the gold medal is the first time
Speaker 1: he publicly recites a poem. But part of his showman
Speaker 1: thing is his poetry. He's basically rapping, and a lot
Speaker 1: of sources will call him the first rapper, although the
Speaker 1: first of any of that kind of sort of thing
Speaker 1: is impossible to really know, right, He writes dis poetry
Speaker 1: and he recites it constantly, and he constantly belittles his opponents,
Speaker 1: and he talks himself up, and this is like part
Speaker 1: of why he matters, because he didn't fucking make himself
Speaker 1: small for white people. He also, and I love this
Speaker 1: about him, constantly talked about how pretty he was. He'd say,
Speaker 1: I'm as pretty as a girl. He'd say, I'm handsome,
Speaker 1: I'm fast, I'm pretty, and I can't possibly be beat.
Speaker 1: And part of that talking is the reason he's so pretty.
Speaker 1: When he's saying I'm so pretty, he's saying because no
Speaker 1: one can punch me in my face. I'm too fast.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: He also started making predictions about his fights, and he
Speaker 1: would encode them into poetry, like when you come to
Speaker 1: the fight, don't block the aisles, and don't block the
Speaker 1: door where you all may go home. After round four,
Speaker 1: when he would make these predictions, he got seventeen out
Speaker 1: of twenty one of them right about. That's what round
Speaker 1: he would win.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like people started betting based on his predictions that
Speaker 1: he would win in whatever round he said he would win.
Speaker 2: Did you talked about them demoralizing? That is somebody's like,
Speaker 2: I'm going to knock you out in the third round,
Speaker 2: and then they actually do it, and then you're just like,
Speaker 2: well shit, I know you know what's coming, and he
Speaker 2: still happens.
Speaker 1: I know I would to fight it. I mean I
Speaker 1: wouldn't actually, because like one of the things that he
Speaker 1: talks about is that he considered his boxing like very scientific.
Speaker 1: He was not the largest, he didn't have the furthest reach,
Speaker 1: he was not the strongest, he didn't have the best
Speaker 1: knockout punch. He had a very good knockout punch, but
Speaker 1: he considered himself like a scientific boxer. He would like
Speaker 1: study it, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was more like strategic and the tactical side
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 1: Maybe yeah, yeah. And one of the things that was
Speaker 1: part of his strategy was don't try to hurt your opponent.
Speaker 1: He talked about how like, if you're winning, don't just
Speaker 1: like damage someone just because you can. And that's interesting.
Speaker 1: I never really considered, like, you know, anytime I'm like
Speaker 1: sparring or something, I've never prefer like, I've never fought
Speaker 1: even an amateur round of just practiced, you know, and
Speaker 1: like when you're sparring, it's just like, well, I want
Speaker 1: to win, right, you know. It's like, oh fuck, I'm
Speaker 1: in a fight. I better win this fight. Well, when
Speaker 1: you're so fucking good, you can just like actually control
Speaker 1: what's happening. I just I'm really impressed by all this shit.
Speaker 1: He also got into stage magic, and he joined a
Speaker 1: stage magician's union, so he's not just a hero but
Speaker 1: a union man.
Speaker 2: That's awesome.
Speaker 1: He also consciously talked about how he grew up without
Speaker 1: black role models on TV in the public eye, so
Speaker 1: he's set about to become one. And around this same
Speaker 1: time as he starts his professional career, he gets into
Speaker 1: the Nation of Islam. But before we talk about that,
Speaker 1: we should talk about turtles. Turtles are great. We should
Speaker 1: go back to being sponsored by turtles.
Speaker 2: Nice, I love turtles.
Speaker 1: Yeah, here's some ads for turtles.
Speaker 2: And we're back.
Speaker 1: And so at the beginning of his career, he's excited
Speaker 1: about the Nation of Islam, but he he doesn't have
Speaker 1: the means to join it. And actually, one thing I
Speaker 1: read is that they weren't sure about accepting a boxer,
Speaker 1: but I wasn't able to find out more information about
Speaker 1: specifically that. I'm sure that information exists, but there's someone
Speaker 1: referred to it as like the professional athlete with the
Speaker 1: most words written about them in history, you know, like
Speaker 1: people have talked a lot about Muhammad Ali because he's
Speaker 1: fucking cool and worth talking about. In nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: he learns about the Nation of Islam and he gets
Speaker 1: really excited by them. By nineteen sixty two, he becomes
Speaker 1: friends with Malcolm X, and by nineteen sixty four he
Speaker 1: was ready to fight for the heavyweight Championship of the World,
Speaker 1: which was held by another black man named Sonny. Liston
Speaker 1: Boxing has apparently gotten over its obsession with Jay names.
Speaker 1: At this point, Sonny is a huge man with a
Speaker 1: huge personality. He's also a mafia enforcer. Yeah, but one
Speaker 1: time a cop called him some racial slurs, so he
Speaker 1: beat the shit out of the cop, broke the CoP's knee,
Speaker 1: and took the cops gun. So I kind of like
Speaker 1: Sonny hero. Yeah, Muhammed fought him. The odds were heavily
Speaker 1: against him seven to one, like the book the booking odds,
Speaker 1: Muhammed is this young upstart Sonny Liston is the fucking
Speaker 1: giant champion of everything. You know, Muhammad Ali by round
Speaker 1: three he's winning Listen.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: I think it's the first time he gets cut in
Speaker 1: his professional career. He needs stitches for a cut under
Speaker 1: his eye. After round four, Muhammad had something in his
Speaker 1: eye that was burning him when he's in the sitting
Speaker 1: in the corner afterwards and he can't see. And a
Speaker 1: lot of people think the mafia guy was cheating with
Speaker 1: oil of winter green on his gloves to blind Muhammed.
Speaker 1: M It's possible, though, that's that seems possible. It's also
Speaker 1: entirely possible that Liston's cut man. I did not know that.
Speaker 1: And there's a job called cut man in boxing. Whish
Speaker 1: is the doctor the ringside doctor. Yeah, yeah, it's possible.
Speaker 1: Liston's cut man white Tis had put something probably on
Speaker 1: that cut, right, and then that had gotten onto the
Speaker 1: guy's gloves and then gotten onto you know, gotten to
Speaker 1: Liston's gloves and then gotten in Muhammad's eyes.
Speaker 2: That is possible.
Speaker 1: And someone on Listen's side like literally wiped his own
Speaker 1: eyes with the sponge to prove there wasn't some foul
Speaker 1: play like the sponge that he used to like wipe
Speaker 1: off the guy's gloves. So I don't know either way.
Speaker 1: In round five, Mhammad Ali fights almost completely blind. By
Speaker 1: round six, it was cleared up and Liston calls it
Speaker 1: quits rather than fight around seven, so Muhammad Ali becomes
Speaker 1: the heavyweight champion of the world and Liston wants a
Speaker 1: rematch or one of them wants to rematch as soon
Speaker 1: as Listen And this one I couldn't figure out, and
Speaker 1: I'm kind of curious, like this one is like everyone
Speaker 1: talks about it, but no one really conjectures too hard.
Speaker 1: They have a rematch and Listen goes down in the
Speaker 1: first round from a six inch punch that everyone calls
Speaker 1: the phantom punch and basically says like, couldn't possibly have
Speaker 1: knocked him down. So it's completely possible that Liston took
Speaker 1: a dive. Other people say, no, it's legit.
Speaker 2: They think he threw the fight potentially.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then if he threw the fight, my first
Speaker 1: thought was like, oh, he's a mafia guy. He got
Speaker 1: paid to whatever.
Speaker 2: Right, That's literally immediately what I thought. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Later Liston implied that he was afraid of the Nation
Speaker 1: of Islam. Oh, and what they would sing, what they
Speaker 1: would do if he like won. I I don't know,
Speaker 1: Muhammad Ali if so, was not excited or in on it,
Speaker 1: like he literally was like yelling, get up and fight, sucker,
Speaker 1: and no one will believe that, Like, no one will
Speaker 1: believe I actually beat you.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: But now that Muhammad Ali is the heavyweight champion of
Speaker 1: the world, they sign him up more officially Elijah Muhammad
Speaker 1: gives him the name Muhammad Ali, and he moves to
Speaker 1: Chicago to be near the center of the Nation of Islam.
Speaker 1: And most journalists refuse to call Muhammad Ali. They calmcashus
Speaker 1: and he just gets madder and madder about it, which
Speaker 1: is completely fucking understandable. And he said, quote, why should
Speaker 1: I keep my white slave master's name visible and my
Speaker 1: black ancestors invisible, unknown, unhonored. Shortly after Ali joins the
Speaker 1: Nation of Islam, Malcolm X leaves it. Like I said earlier,
Speaker 1: Malcolm tried to get him to quit too, but Ali
Speaker 1: didn't quit. Ali stays in the movement. He becomes an
Speaker 1: outspoken proponent of it, including the really positive stuff like
Speaker 1: developing black self determination and pride, and including the things
Speaker 1: that are less popular now, like advocating against interracial marriage. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: he married his first wife, Sanji Roy and it didn't
Speaker 1: last because she wouldn't conform to the conservative values of
Speaker 1: the Nation of Islam. He hated that she wore makeup
Speaker 1: and dressed provocatively and went out to bars and partied
Speaker 1: and all that shit, Which is to say, Muhammad Ali
Speaker 1: is not going to get featured on our spin off
Speaker 1: show great men in history who were actually good to
Speaker 1: the women in their lives, at least not young Muhammad.
Speaker 1: The way that he interacts with his family is well,
Speaker 1: it's part of his arc.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I don't want to say redemption arc, because that's the
Speaker 1: main thing is whatever. He's fucking complicated and I think
Speaker 1: he's fucking cool, and we'll keep talking about it. His
Speaker 1: children overall seem to have a positive impression of him,
Speaker 1: and he changed his perceptions on lots of stuff as
Speaker 1: his life continued. But he was married four times. He
Speaker 1: had at least nine children, including several with people who
Speaker 1: he wasn't married to. While he was married to other people,
Speaker 1: he had a bunch of affairs and mistresses, including a
Speaker 1: sixteen year old when he was thirty two. Another time
Speaker 1: he left his wife for a young hot model. He
Speaker 1: says that one of his only regrets about his career
Speaker 1: is the time it took him away from his children,
Speaker 1: that he wasn't as good of a father as he
Speaker 1: wanted to be, So you know that's part of him complicated.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This other thing is happening in the nineteen sixties the US.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've heard about this. It did
Speaker 1: an imperialism in Vietnam.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: For more on that, see about eighty percent of the
Speaker 1: episodes of this show I have done this year because
Speaker 1: I'm sticking to the sixties seventies for a little while,
Speaker 1: because there's so much here. And Muhammad Ali he was
Speaker 1: not the highest bracket on the draft. The highest bracket
Speaker 1: is one A. He was one why because he'd failed
Speaker 1: some literacy tests because of his dyslexia until nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: six when they were like whatever, fuck it, who cares,
Speaker 1: and they lowered their standards and he was suddenly one
Speaker 1: a again. And there's a lot of sketchiness around this.
Speaker 1: A lot of people are like, this is a way
Speaker 1: to shut him up or get him killed. The US
Speaker 1: sure like putting black soldiers in harms. Way, I think
Speaker 1: it's more likely because they told him they were going
Speaker 1: to try and do this, that he wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: pick up a gun. They just wanted to use him
Speaker 1: for like propaganda and have him like fight exhibition matches
Speaker 1: and shit and like get other young black men killed instead,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah that makes sense. Hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That was actually because the first time i'd heard about
Speaker 1: any resisted the draft, I was like, why would you
Speaker 1: fucking make Muhammad Ali a private and put him in
Speaker 1: the front, you know? And yeah they thought of that too.
Speaker 1: Despite being bad. The US government has a modicum of intelligence,
Speaker 1: but Ali wasn't gonna fucking go. There was no way
Speaker 1: to quote him. And I think I used this quote before,
Speaker 1: similar quote quote, man, I ain't got no quarrel with
Speaker 1: them Viet Kong. Why should they ask me to put
Speaker 1: on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home
Speaker 1: and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam
Speaker 1: while so called Negro people in Louisville are treated like
Speaker 1: dogs and denied simple human rights. He's also got another
Speaker 1: good quote that I can't repeat about what words the
Speaker 1: Viet Cong have never called him. He registers as a
Speaker 1: conscientious objector. This part I didn't know until even the
Speaker 1: Nation of Islam tried to persuade him to accept induction.
Speaker 1: His parents and in the Nation of Islam are like,
Speaker 1: just go, you don't have to fight anyone. You'll just
Speaker 1: fight some exhibition matches. It'll just be easier. But he's like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to fucking do it. So when he
Speaker 1: gets called up anyway, he goes to the induction center
Speaker 1: and he refuses to step up when they call his name.
Speaker 1: They warn him, being like, hey, if you don't step up,
Speaker 1: it's a felony, And he refuses a total of three times.
Speaker 1: The government fucking flips out on him. Every state in
Speaker 1: the country pulls his boxing license. The New York State
Speaker 1: Athletic Commission stripped him of the heavyweight championship even though
Speaker 1: he had never lost, and they take his passport away
Speaker 1: because he's like pending trial, so he can't fight anywhere.
Speaker 1: That's his livelihood and purpose in life, and he can't
Speaker 1: do it. His celebrity and his polarizing of society just
Speaker 1: spike at this point. He already has polarized a shit
Speaker 1: out of everyone. When he like came out next with
Speaker 1: Malcolm X and was like, yo, I'm Muslim now in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four, everyone was like, oh fuck, you know,
Speaker 1: But yeah, he polarizes the shit out of society. Here
Speaker 1: is a proud black man willing to put it all
Speaker 1: on the line for his beliefs, to refuse to do
Speaker 1: something evil the agents of white supremacy there on the
Speaker 1: other side of the polarization. Not only was he constantly
Speaker 1: being threatened, but newspapers who wrote in support of him
Speaker 1: had bomb threats at their offices. One journalist had his
Speaker 1: windshields smashed out for writing things like Muhammad Ali isn't
Speaker 1: doing something bad, you know, And he was found guilty
Speaker 1: of draft resistance. His argument was, noamconcious subjector I didn't resist.
Speaker 1: I showed up and told them I'm not going to
Speaker 1: do it, and he takes it all the way to
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court. So he wasn't in prison while they deliberated,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't allowed to do his job. So instead
Speaker 1: he travels around speaking at colleges talking about black power
Speaker 1: and draft resistance and why the US should get the
Speaker 1: hell out of Vietnam. And one random right wing pundit
Speaker 1: I listened to the Muhammad Ali story from a right
Speaker 1: wing point of view, and it talks about how having
Speaker 1: done this for the lucrative college speaking money. You ever
Speaker 1: spoken at a college. It's not a very good way
Speaker 1: to make money. You don't say no, Okay, there's an
Speaker 1: exception to this when I lived out of a van
Speaker 1: and four hundred dollars was a lot of money, like
Speaker 1: a lot, a lot of money.
Speaker 2: He was really.
Speaker 1: Lucrative to speak at college's, Okay, he was. He was
Speaker 1: raking in money as a as a fighter, right, as
Speaker 1: a boxer, Yeah, talking to colleges. I'm sure they paid
Speaker 1: him more than four hundred dollars to come speak. This
Speaker 1: is not in the same fucking league as professional boxing
Speaker 1: and him doing this. It is hard to overstate how
Speaker 1: influential this is on American politics. Black political prisoner Mamia
Speaker 1: bou Jamal said about him, quote, as someone who grew
Speaker 1: up very young in the party Black Panther Party, I
Speaker 1: didn't form a lot of the idolatries that many age
Speaker 1: mates did at fourteen to fifteen, I wasn't fantasizing about
Speaker 1: being a member of the NBA or NFL. I was
Speaker 1: a member of the Black Panthers and that was enough
Speaker 1: for me. But if ever there was a sports hero
Speaker 1: to us, it was Muhammad Ali. He influenced the Black
Speaker 1: Panthers more directly than that too. The first use of
Speaker 1: the Black Panther symbol had a slogan with it, we
Speaker 1: are the Greatest. And this is the collectivization of of
Speaker 1: Ali's personal motto, I am the Greatest. Huey Newton, one
Speaker 1: of the co founders of the Panthers, was clear that
Speaker 1: it was watching speeches by Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali
Speaker 1: that had inspired his political growth. And the difference for
Speaker 1: the Panthers is that, at least for Huey Newton when
Speaker 1: he's talking about this, is that he had enough of
Speaker 1: religion right. But the other stuff he quite liked that
Speaker 1: Malcolm X, Muhammed Ali were saying he was a hero
Speaker 1: to black troops because the black troops knew they were
Speaker 1: being fucking used. His words and his deeds helped inspire
Speaker 1: the black troops who refused service and those who turned
Speaker 1: their guns around on their actual pressers, the white officers
Speaker 1: who were forcing them to go kill and die in
Speaker 1: an unjust war.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just like he had a massive platform
Speaker 1: and he was willing to burn it to the ground
Speaker 1: to do what was right, and by doing so, he
Speaker 1: helped fucking stop a war. So he's cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: He's fucking cool. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. You know the fact that they took away his
Speaker 2: livelihood and stripped him of the titles and everything, but
Speaker 2: he still felt the obligation and found a way to
Speaker 2: use the platform that he had to still, you know,
Speaker 2: empower people and inspire people. Even if he couldn't do
Speaker 2: it in a ring, he was going to find another
Speaker 2: way to do it, and that that's awesome. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And he he also was standing up to the
Speaker 1: Nation of Islam. They kicked him out during this m Yeah,
Speaker 1: as Muhammad put it, quote, the Nation of Islam didn't
Speaker 1: make me a Muslim. My belief in God made me
Speaker 1: a Muslim. And slowly, after three years, he's allowed to
Speaker 1: box again. And the first place I think I was wrong.
Speaker 1: I think I said his first fight was the fight
Speaker 1: of the century when he came back, that's not true.
Speaker 1: That was his third fight back.
Speaker 2: Oh okay.
Speaker 1: The first place that let him box again was in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: because Atlanta's cool sometimes and the black political establishment was
Speaker 1: strong there, so they basically reinstate. They were the first
Speaker 1: people to reinstate his license because they were like whatever,
Speaker 1: Like he's Muhammad Ali. Why are we preventing him from boxing.
Speaker 1: He can fight here, right, okay? And so he fights
Speaker 1: and he wins. And then I believe I've read both
Speaker 1: that the Supreme Court thing that happens in a moment
Speaker 1: is why, and I've also read that it was a
Speaker 1: lawsuit in New York. Either way, something happens in New York.
Speaker 1: He's allowed to box there again. He faces another guy,
Speaker 1: he wins, and now he's ready to fight for his
Speaker 1: championship to get it back. He is ready for the
Speaker 1: second Fight of the Century. Much like the Battle of
Speaker 1: the Too Many People with j Name sixty years earlier,
Speaker 1: this one was also presented as a battle between the
Speaker 1: forces of whiteness and good in America and apple Pie
Speaker 1: on one side, and the evil black man who wants
Speaker 1: to murder all the white people on the other side.
Speaker 1: The catch this time, I think I've alluded to already.
Speaker 1: Joe Fraser, the heavyweight champion, is also black, so it's
Speaker 1: a little fucked up. Yeah, and Joe Fraser Muhammad Ali's
Speaker 1: relationship isn't as simple as anyone seems to say. There's
Speaker 1: a version where Fraser and Ali were friends for a
Speaker 1: while after all, before all of this, Fraser guy gave
Speaker 1: Ali money while he was out of work and helped
Speaker 1: him get his boxing license reinstated. But this wasn't necessarily altruism.
Speaker 1: People didn't really take Fraser seriously as the heavy white
Speaker 1: champion because he'd never beat the last way he beat
Speaker 1: the lat Actually, I don't remember if he was whatever.
Speaker 1: He hadn't beat Ali, so no one took Fraser.
Speaker 2: It's I think he beat the guy that they gave
Speaker 2: the belt to and he took it off Ali or
Speaker 2: something like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Frasier talked directly with President Nixon about getting Ali
Speaker 1: reinstated so that Fraser could beat him and show the
Speaker 1: world that the Muslim extremist wasn't as good as a
Speaker 1: patriot like Fraser, or at least that is the way
Speaker 1: that it is phrased in some versions of this. Because
Speaker 1: everyone is a showman, everyone is playing into this shit.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like kind of hard to parse out.
Speaker 1: So they talked shit on each other. Fraser kept dead
Speaker 1: naming Ali. Ali called Fraser a dumb tool of the
Speaker 1: white establishment and an uncle Tom. Neither side appreciated this
Speaker 1: about what the other was doing, and it got painted
Speaker 1: by both Muhammad Ali and the media as a fight
Speaker 1: between black and white, even though it wasn't. And the
Speaker 1: whole thing is that Muhammed Ali is building up his
Speaker 1: reputation as the people's champion at this point. Right the
Speaker 1: Fight of the Century was in Madison Square Garden. We
Speaker 1: talked about it in our episode about the Catholic burglars
Speaker 1: and FBI. On the night of the match, Acifist broke
Speaker 1: into an FBI office and stole documents proving conclusively how
Speaker 1: the FEDS have been spying on everyone but Ali, at
Speaker 1: least by his own telling of this. He he got cocky.
Speaker 1: He was like, of course, I'm gonna win that, Muhammad Ali,
Speaker 1: you know, he's never lost, is a reasonable assumption Primmed
Speaker 1: have made right. He loses, and this is his first defeat.
Speaker 1: But if you want to not get defeat, well, actually,
Speaker 1: let's do the Let's get sponsored by something nice. We
Speaker 1: got sponsored by turtles. But is there anything ian that
Speaker 1: you want to be sponsored by that's particularly like a
Speaker 1: nice good thing.
Speaker 2: Yes, I've been thinking about this for a while. You know,
Speaker 2: when you like just wash your sheets and you make
Speaker 2: your bed all nice, that first that first night sleep
Speaker 2: in like a freshly laundered bed, that's like, there's no
Speaker 2: better feeling in the world. We want to be sponsored
Speaker 2: by that.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, we are sponsored by first night of sleep
Speaker 1: in freshly londered sheets. Not well, he might also be
Speaker 1: sponsored by specific mattresses or linen sheet sets, but that's
Speaker 1: not our main sponsor. Our main sponsor is the first
Speaker 1: night of sleep in a freshly londoned bed. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and we're back. So in nineteen seventy one, the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court overturned his conviction unanimously. He should not have been
Speaker 1: denied a conscientious objector status. It was absolutely part of
Speaker 1: his religion to not go fight in this war, and
Speaker 1: part of their evidence in favor of this was actually
Speaker 1: the autobiography of Malcolm X, which helped them understand that
Speaker 1: this was a sincere conviction and not cowardice on his part.
Speaker 1: I think the other argument against it being cowardice is
Speaker 1: it's Muhammad Ali. Like anything that man is afraid of,
Speaker 1: he does anyway. But so he's back, he keeps fighting.
Speaker 1: He's actually back in the Nation of Islam. I didn't read.
Speaker 1: I didn't find about how his return after being kicked
Speaker 1: out for a while went. A lot of people at
Speaker 1: least during this time period seems to get kicked out
Speaker 1: and reaccepted back into the Nation of Islam. I think
Speaker 1: things are getting a little hectic in that organization this point.
Speaker 1: So he kept fighting, and in nineteen seventy four he
Speaker 1: gets a rematch with Joe Fraser. But the problem is
Speaker 1: is that Joe had lost his championship already to a
Speaker 1: guy who sells girls named George Foreman, and so in
Speaker 1: order to fight Foreman, he needs to fight Fraser. So
Speaker 1: in order to get his belt back, he needs to
Speaker 1: beat the person who beat him and then beat the
Speaker 1: guy who beat the person who beat him, which is
Speaker 1: an uphill battle, and he wins. He fucking rematches Joe
Speaker 1: Fraser and he fucking wins.
Speaker 2: Oh, I kind of at this point, are once their
Speaker 2: relationship like with Joe Fraser and Ali, are they still
Speaker 2: kind of like on the opposite sides of this like
Speaker 2: white versus black like kind of thing, or has that
Speaker 2: been kind of like swept aside at this point. I'm
Speaker 2: just curious.
Speaker 1: This is when it gets even worse. I think that
Speaker 1: you this is when I believe this is the point
Speaker 1: at which Muhammad Ali is carrying around a stuffed gorilla
Speaker 1: in his pocket and saying he's gonna beat that ugly gorilla, yes,
Speaker 1: which I think even at the time people were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's racist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can see why Joe Fraser would
Speaker 2: not like Muhammad Ali after some things that like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: And I don't know whether Joe. I think Joe Fraser
Speaker 1: actually accepted this apology. And in his in Muhammad Ali's
Speaker 1: book The Soul of a Butterfly, which is one of
Speaker 1: his later autobiographies, he's like, I went too far.
Speaker 2: That was bad.
Speaker 1: I should not have done that. And he's fairly like
Speaker 1: direct that He's like he was like, I was just
Speaker 1: doing my bit, but that is not an acceptable thing.
Speaker 2: I should have done, right, he took it too far?
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, yeah, but yeah, his second match with Joe Fraser,
Speaker 1: I think is where he like really just starts pulling
Speaker 1: out all the stops on on his shit talk. Is
Speaker 1: the nicest possible way to say that. But it's not good.
Speaker 1: But I actually don't know whether I think I think
Speaker 1: I forgot to mention with the the nineteen seventy fight
Speaker 1: or nineteen seventy one, nineteen seventy fight, is that the
Speaker 1: first fight with Fraser is that Fraser is getting called
Speaker 1: the Great White Hope, right, and which I didn't I
Speaker 1: haven't read Fraser's side of all of this much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was gonna say, I wonder how he felt
Speaker 2: about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's kind of suck. So so it beats
Speaker 1: Joe Fraser this this second time, right, and bo he
Speaker 1: beats him the first whatever the second match between the
Speaker 1: two of them, Muhammad Ali wins, but he doesn't get
Speaker 1: the belt back because Joe Fraser doesn't have the belt.
Speaker 1: George Foreman has the belt. So he goes and he
Speaker 1: fights Foreman in this fight is called the Rumble in
Speaker 1: the Jungle and it's held in what was then Zaire
Speaker 1: and what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
Speaker 1: and everyone assumed Ali would lose. He was old. He
Speaker 1: was thirty two years old. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: could imagine being thirty two years old, but that sounds
Speaker 1: like really old.
Speaker 2: Oh, don't say that.
Speaker 1: And he'd lost what would have been the best years
Speaker 1: of his career his late twenties to his objection to imperialism.
Speaker 1: He is and George Foreman is black also.
Speaker 3: But.
Speaker 1: Muhammad Ali is seen as the people's champion like Worldwide Right,
Speaker 1: and so I don't believe that this fight was racialized
Speaker 1: in the same way. But he is like the local
Speaker 1: hero in Zaire, and Muhammad Ali loves Zayire's like holy shit,
Speaker 1: it's a fucking country run by black people with fucking rules,
Speaker 1: and the crowd in Zaire love him, and they chance
Speaker 1: Ali kill him. And he doesn't actually want to kill
Speaker 1: George Foreman, or at least he says he doesn't later,
Speaker 1: And there's literally no reason to believe that he actually
Speaker 1: wanted to kill George Foreman. George Foreman was considered unbeatable.
Speaker 1: He has one of the hardest punches in the history
Speaker 1: of the sport and he is younger and all this stuff.
Speaker 1: So Ali comes up with a new strategy called rope
Speaker 1: a dope. You ever heard of this?
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, Yes, such.
Speaker 1: A good name. So he goes in and he punches
Speaker 1: Foreman as hard as he can in the face to
Speaker 1: like get him mad, and then he just hangs on
Speaker 1: the ropes and he blocks, and he lets the elastic
Speaker 1: take the pressure out of Foreman's blows, and he just
Speaker 1: fucking tries to wear Foreman down. Literally, this is like
Speaker 1: the equivalent of like Dodge Rock. You know. It's like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna wear you down by you punching me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, until you're so tired that you can't even fight anymore.
Speaker 2: Then I'll just knock you out.
Speaker 1: Oh I love yeah, Yeah, And that's what he did.
Speaker 1: And the whole time he's on the ropes, he's just
Speaker 1: mocking his opponent and trying to make him mad and
Speaker 1: tiring him out, and slowly he starts to fight back harder,
Speaker 1: and round eight he knocked George Foreman out and literally
Speaker 1: a billion people watched it happen on television. Wow, all,
Speaker 1: I can't I know. I think that's a quarter of
Speaker 1: the people who were alive in Like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, was it nineteen seventy four?
Speaker 1: You said, yeah, Like I think the population of the
Speaker 1: world was like four million in the nineties, four billion
Speaker 1: in the nineties. I don't know, but yeah, So this
Speaker 1: is a this is a big deal in a way
Speaker 1: that boxing actually isn't as much anymore. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: still a big deal, but it's like I think that
Speaker 1: it's like looking back on boxing, it's it's not the sport.
Speaker 1: When I first think of sports, I think of basketball
Speaker 1: as like the thing that you know, maybe football or something.
Speaker 2: But like, yeah, I feel like the popular of boxing
Speaker 2: like probably peaked in like the nineties, like with like
Speaker 2: Tyson and stuff. I feel like it hasn't been the
Speaker 2: same since then.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. And Mike Tyson went in
Speaker 1: a road rage incident knocked someone unconscious like a mile
Speaker 1: away from my house where I grew up.
Speaker 2: Whoa wild Okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, anyway, so he is now the heavyweight champion of
Speaker 1: the world again for the second time. Fraser wasn't done
Speaker 1: with him, and they had a third match, and this
Speaker 1: is called the Thrilla in Manila. It's possible this is
Speaker 1: when the Girl of Stuff happened. But I'm not certain.
Speaker 1: I think it was the previous fight, the second fight.
Speaker 1: This is in nineteen seventy five, and it takes place
Speaker 1: in Manila, which is in the Philippines. And yeah, this
Speaker 1: fight was the hardest of Muhammad Ali's life, and it
Speaker 1: was probably the hardest of either of their lives. It's
Speaker 1: also probable that they did permanent damage to each other
Speaker 1: in this fight.
Speaker 2: Oh okay.
Speaker 1: In his corner, Ali was like, so this is what
Speaker 1: dying feels like. But he won, and then just to
Speaker 1: go back to his Nation of Islam stuff and just
Speaker 1: to cover possibly the worst thing he ever did in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five, as a final act of black separatism. Basically,
Speaker 1: he gave a talk to the KKK ad a KKK rally.
Speaker 1: Yeah what in what was the context of this talk
Speaker 1: he went up to say, like, we all agree black
Speaker 1: men should marry their own women. Oh no, okay, because
Speaker 1: he was a spokesperson for the Nation of Islam, and
Speaker 1: the Nation of Islam at that point was coordinating with
Speaker 1: the KKK because they both wanted racial separation.
Speaker 2: Damn.
Speaker 1: Yeah, while he was there. I there's no record that
Speaker 1: I found of the speech itself, but there's a well,
Speaker 1: there's some quotes from it, but there's clips of him
Speaker 1: talking about him giving him the talk, and he's just
Speaker 1: joking about it, and he's laughing about it. And one
Speaker 1: of the things is that like while he's there, they
Speaker 1: joke about lynching him. They're like, get that end word,
Speaker 1: and then he turns around. They're like, Ah, we're just kidding,
Speaker 1: We're not actually gonna murder you, and he's like laughing
Speaker 1: at their funny joke.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's terrible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the worst thing that I've found. I mean,
Speaker 1: I also don't entirely whatever. But then Elijah Muhammad died
Speaker 1: and the Nation of Islam converted to Sunni Islam, and
Speaker 1: with it, Muhammad Ali converted to Sunni Islam. No more
Speaker 1: pro segregation, no more hanging out with the KKK, still
Speaker 1: anti white supremacy, still pro black power. But that's fucking good.
Speaker 1: I'm real glad for that change. Yeah, and he's getting old.
Speaker 1: He's still a boxer, but Fraser had really fucked him up,
Speaker 1: and he kept He keeps winning for a while, but
Speaker 1: the fights are getting closer and closer, and he loses
Speaker 1: the title to an upstart named Leon Spinx in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy eight. He rematched and then he won again, and
Speaker 1: he becomes the first heavyweight to win the belt three times.
Speaker 1: I'd always like, I never quite thought about it when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, being like, oh, heavyweight champion three
Speaker 1: times over or whatever. You're like, oh, yeah, like won
Speaker 1: three championships, like three tournaments or whatever, like not realizing
Speaker 1: it was like, no, he lost it and then won
Speaker 1: it again, you know. Yeah, he tried retiring, but he
Speaker 1: kept coming back, and then he started losing, and he
Speaker 1: kind of like later he was like, I wanted to
Speaker 1: be the first one to retire while I'm still on top.
Speaker 1: But then he's like, but I wouldn't. I wouldn't have.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have retired until I started losing. There's no
Speaker 1: way I would have, you know. Yeah, he fought his
Speaker 1: last professional match in nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 2: He lost that. He lost a couple prior to that, and.
Speaker 1: Around this time he got diagnosed with Parkinson's, almost certainly
Speaker 1: caused by the damage he'd sustained in the ring. But
Speaker 1: to quote a musician I've never heard of named Kinky Friedman,
Speaker 1: because this quote is often misattributed to Charles Pokowski, I
Speaker 1: just like this quote. Our goal in life is to
Speaker 1: find what you love and let it kill you, so
Speaker 1: you know, and he talks about that himself. He's like,
Speaker 1: he's like, I ain't got no regrets even though it
Speaker 1: did this to me.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure he wouldn't have had it any other way,
Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, he was doing what he loved. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So Ali and Fraser talks shit on each other
Speaker 1: on and off for the rest of their lives. I've
Speaker 1: read sources claiming it became kind of a friendly banter
Speaker 1: and that like they accept like a Fraser accepted Ali's
Speaker 1: apology and stuff like that, and others have said it
Speaker 1: was a blood feud to the death. But I I'm
Speaker 1: on side they probably started getting along because I feel
Speaker 1: like the like it was a blood feud is like
Speaker 1: sell news extreme. Yeah yeah, And I'm gonna a little
Speaker 1: bit speed run the rest of his life. And it's
Speaker 1: like kind of sucks in some ways because actually he
Speaker 1: does a lot of his most amazing shit in this period.
Speaker 2: After he retires.
Speaker 1: Yeah, after he retires, once he's converted to Sunni Islam,
Speaker 1: he starts taking faith really seriously. And if you listen
Speaker 1: to conservatives, one of those conservatives who's like name, I
Speaker 1: can't even remember one of those, like Chowder Crowder or
Speaker 1: some shit has this whole thing about like, oh, he
Speaker 1: became a conservative and that's why he became good, but
Speaker 1: he used to be a racist and like it's just
Speaker 1: like fucking like anti white racists or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Noka.
Speaker 1: So conservatives try to claim Muhammad Ali oh, I don't
Speaker 1: like that. I'm bringing it up because I because it's
Speaker 1: not true, and I want to talk about how it's
Speaker 1: not true. There are specific things that they use as
Speaker 1: their evidence that he became conser servative and like, and
Speaker 1: some of those things are technically true, but they aren't.
Speaker 1: It needs the context. He's focused primarily on the issues
Speaker 1: of blackness and religion. Right in nineteen eighty he backs
Speaker 1: President Jimmy Carter because he believes Carter is suitably religious
Speaker 1: to be president. In nineteen eighty four, he starts off
Speaker 1: backing Reverend Jesse James and the Democratic primary, but when
Speaker 1: Jesse James loses, he starts backing Ronald Reagan. And he
Speaker 1: backs Ronald Reagan because basically his quote at the time
Speaker 1: was he wants to keep God in schools and that's enough.
Speaker 1: Later he admits he was wrong to back Reagan, that
Speaker 1: he'd been listening to bad advice, and so basically, yeah,
Speaker 1: he'd been listening to bad advice. It didn't work anyway,
Speaker 1: even though he's like, it's kind of almost cool how
Speaker 1: it didn't work. He's like one of the most famous
Speaker 1: people in the country and here he is being like,
Speaker 1: as a black man, I'm voting for Reagan, and like
Speaker 1: black voters didn't vote for fucking Reagan, Like no, we're good, yeah,
Speaker 1: even yeah, and even lower percentage of them voted for
Speaker 1: Reagan in nineteen eighty four than did in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: and it was not high either time. I think it's
Speaker 1: like fourteen percent and then nine percent, you know, And
Speaker 1: a lot of black voters are like, oh, it's the
Speaker 1: Parkinson's he's losing his mind, oh man, which is like
Speaker 1: kind of fucked up, but like, you know, but yeah,
Speaker 1: he continues to change as a person and develop, but
Speaker 1: not into conservative like his last books are still just like, man,
Speaker 1: you know what rules his reparations and you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm not sorry about how the Nation of Islam tried
Speaker 1: to make black people's lives better, Like wouldn't it be
Speaker 1: great if all the rich people had to give up
Speaker 1: all their stuff and give it to poor black people.
Speaker 1: Like he's not a fucking like. There are elements right, like,
Speaker 1: you know, there's like the cultural conservativism of like not
Speaker 1: wanting women to address a certain way and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: I actually don't know how that did or didn't change
Speaker 1: over his life.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: One of his quotes that he wrote later, the man
Speaker 1: who views the world at fifty the same as he
Speaker 1: did when he was twenty has wasted thirty years of
Speaker 1: his life. And one of his daughters becomes a professional boxer,
Speaker 1: and for a while Ali was upset about this because
Speaker 1: he didn't believe women should box. And then he came
Speaker 1: around and was like proud of her and was like
Speaker 1: good dad, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and Laila was like very successful in her
Speaker 2: career as well.
Speaker 1: Cool, so that's cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: He like in his thing, he's like, oh, I told
Speaker 1: her it was my talent, but then that she inherited,
Speaker 1: and then I was and but in the same thing,
Speaker 1: he's like, but then I was like, now it's your
Speaker 1: hard work. It's it's your hard work. Talent is only
Speaker 1: some tiny percentage of this. It's how hard to fail
Speaker 1: for it. He really like, like, honestly, The Soul of
Speaker 1: the Butterfly is a it's a really good book. It's
Speaker 1: like very religious and very like just full of like
Speaker 1: him talking about how he tries to do good and
Speaker 1: all of the different things. It's really interesting. I actually
Speaker 1: I really recommend it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I'll definitely have to check that out.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety, he flew to Bagdad to try and
Speaker 1: find a path to piece between the US and Iraq.
Speaker 1: He met with Saddam Hussein and spent ten days negotiating,
Speaker 1: basically speaking about how we need Muslim unity. He didn't
Speaker 1: stop a war, but he did secure the release of
Speaker 1: fifteen hostages.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's awesome, I know.
Speaker 1: And he didn't even like people say that he was
Speaker 1: trying to be this like clever statesman, this like hardened
Speaker 1: diplomat who's going to go and engage in like political fisticuffs,
Speaker 1: you know, and like, but he's actually just too earnest
Speaker 1: and too caring for like the political realm. So he
Speaker 1: just goes where someone where an earnest good person can
Speaker 1: say earnest good things and get earnest good things done.
Speaker 1: And in his later life he's just this hard working.
Speaker 1: I want everyone to be happy guy. He leveraged his
Speaker 1: fame for good every chance he got. He wrote quote,
Speaker 1: at night, when I go to bed, I ask myself,
Speaker 1: if I don't wake up tomorrow, when I be proud
Speaker 1: of how I live today. With that question in mind,
Speaker 1: I have tried to do as many good deeds as
Speaker 1: I can, whether it is standing up for my faith,
Speaker 1: signing an autograph, or simply shaking a person's hand. I'm
Speaker 1: just trying to make people happy and get into heaven.
Speaker 1: His children mentioned that his true faith, even more than Islam,
Speaker 1: was the faith of the heart that all religions are
Speaker 1: trying to get to. This His quote is rivers, lakes, ponds, streams, oceans,
Speaker 1: all of different names, but they all contain water. So
Speaker 1: do religions have different names, but they all contain truth
Speaker 1: expressed in different ways, forms and times. If you love God,
Speaker 1: you can't love only.
Speaker 2: Some of his.
Speaker 1: Children and he brought homeless families into his house constantly.
Speaker 1: He was like, if you ask, if you ask Muhammad
Speaker 1: Ali for money on the street, he's going to give
Speaker 1: you money, and then he's going to talk about how
Speaker 1: you probably were God, you know, like you were like
Speaker 1: the like test of the faith, you know, right right.
Speaker 1: The only evidence I have of him around anything that
Speaker 1: has to do with any homosexuality is that he knew
Speaker 1: a lesbian couple and commented on how they seemed happy.
Speaker 1: So fuck yeah. He supported the Special Olympics like very
Speaker 1: actively supported it, including actually during his boxing career, not
Speaker 1: just in his like later do gooder life. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: say humanitarian life instead. He took great pride in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine and getting to have He felt honored that
Speaker 1: he got to participate in the lighting of the Flame
Speaker 1: of Hope for the Special Olympics nineteen seventy nine. When
Speaker 1: he died on June third, twenty sixteen, at the age
Speaker 1: of seventy four, he insisted that his funeral be interfaith,
Speaker 1: but also be in accordance to Islamic rights as befitted
Speaker 1: his like I am Muslim, that is not the only way.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to end with a piece of his
Speaker 1: called how I would like to be remembered. I would
Speaker 1: like to be remembered as a man who won the
Speaker 1: heavy weight title three times, who was humorous, who treated
Speaker 1: everyone right, as a man who never looked down on
Speaker 1: those who looked up to him who helped as many
Speaker 1: people as he could, as a man who stood up
Speaker 1: for his beliefs no matter what, as a man who
Speaker 1: tried to unite all humankind through faith and love. And
Speaker 1: if that's too much, then I guess I'd settle for
Speaker 1: being remembered only as a great boxer who became a
Speaker 1: leader and champion of his people. And I wouldn't even
Speaker 1: mind if folks forgot how pretty I was.
Speaker 4: That's awesome. Yeah, Oh he's a man. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: that was I really I thank you for putting me
Speaker 4: up to learning more about him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, thank you for doing the research and then
Speaker 2: sharing it with me. So yeah, I just think it's
Speaker 2: so amazing and it was just so courageous that at
Speaker 2: a time where he had everything to lose, and you know,
Speaker 2: you could say that he did lose a lot of it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he was, you know, firm in his beliefs and stood
Speaker 2: by his guns because it could it could have been
Speaker 2: so easy for him, not only with Vietnam, but just
Speaker 2: with all of his activism, just to you know, keep
Speaker 2: it to himself or not say anything, or not make
Speaker 2: waves or you know, you know, stay out of the limelight.
Speaker 2: And I think to be honest, it's probably some probably
Speaker 2: part of the reason why he had that contentious relationship
Speaker 2: with Joe Frazier, But he decided to stand up for
Speaker 2: what he thought was right, and he inspired so many
Speaker 2: people because of it, Like, for example, Kream Abdul Jabbar
Speaker 2: I believe you know, uh Muhammad Ali was a big
Speaker 2: inspiration for him and his activism. So you know, the
Speaker 2: impact that he's had outside of boxing, which is the
Speaker 2: thing that he's you know, most known for, is still
Speaker 2: so wide reaching. I just think it's amazing. He had
Speaker 2: an amazing life.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And it's like in some ways, it's like, wow,
Speaker 1: he put everything on the line. He could have lost everything,
Speaker 1: and then the thing that's really interesting is he did
Speaker 1: lose everything.
Speaker 2: Right exactly. He did lose a lot, and.
Speaker 1: Then he got it back. It was like, well, I
Speaker 1: fought my way up to this before. If I'm knocked
Speaker 1: down to nothing, I can do it again.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: It did so badass?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, fucking cool. All right, Well you got anything
Speaker 1: you want to plug?
Speaker 2: I would say, just being kind to others. You never
Speaker 2: know what somebody's going through. It's free to not be
Speaker 2: an asshole. Just try it out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good one. I'm gonna plug myself because
Speaker 1: I'm a jerk. I'm gonna plug that. I have another
Speaker 1: podcast called Live Like the World Is Dying that comes
Speaker 1: out every Friday. I'm one of the hosts on that.
Speaker 1: It's all your individual and community preparedness needs.
Speaker 2: And love it. We love a prepper pod.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, I'd like I want a parachute for
Speaker 1: one day. No, that's actually probably just an anxiety thing.
Speaker 1: And you can follow me on the internet if you
Speaker 1: look for me as Margaret Kiljoy. I am currently the
Speaker 1: only Margaret kill Joy in the world. Although that said
Speaker 1: Margaret at Margaret Kiljoe on Twitter is taken by someone
Speaker 1: who hasn't posted in many, many years, and it's not me.
Speaker 1: Fucked up, I know, I know. Well, what it was
Speaker 1: was that this band, my Chemical Romance, had all their
Speaker 1: fans named themselves kill Joy for a while.
Speaker 2: Like ten years ago. Uh okay and.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and so I was like, why are all
Speaker 1: of these like teenagers from other countries suddenly following me
Speaker 1: on Twitter? And the answer was that they were just
Speaker 1: like looking for all the other kill Joys and following them.
Speaker 2: Hey, well, I hope they like podcasts.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: All right. Well that's it and you can hear more
Speaker 1: Cool People Did Cool Stuff next Monday.
Speaker 3: Fuck yeah, thank ye. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff
Speaker 3: is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts
Speaker 3: from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com,
Speaker 3: or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 3: or wherever you get your podcasts.