[Posted Sunday PM]
Muhammad Ali Quiz: 1) Who was his first professional fight against? 2) What was Ali’s record when he returned to boxing on Oct. 26, 1970, after his 3 ½ year layoff to face Jerry Quarry? 3) Who did Ali face after Quarry, but before Ali-Frazier I on March 8, 1971? Answers below.
Death of The Greatest
Robert Lipsyte / New York Times
“Muhammad Ali, the three-time world heavyweight boxing champion who helped define his turbulent times as the most charismatic and controversial sports figure of the 20th century, died on Friday in a Phoenix-area hospital. He was 74.
“Ali was the most thrilling if not the best heavyweight ever, carrying into the ring a physically lyrical, unorthodox boxing style that fused speed, agility and power more seamlessly than that of any fighter before him.
“But he was more than the sum of his athletic gifts. An agile mind, a buoyant personality, a brash self-confidence and an evolving set of personal convictions fostered a magnetism that the ring alone could not contain. He entertained as much with his mouth as with his fists, narrating his life with a pattern of inventive doggerel.
“Ali was as polarizing a superstar as the sports world has ever produced – both admired and vilified in the 1960s and ‘70s for his religious, political and social stances. His refusal to be drafted during the Vietnam War, his rejection of racial integration at the height of the civil rights movement, his conversion from Christianity to Islam and the changing of his ‘slave’ name, Cassius Clay, to one bestowed by the separatist black sect he joined, the Lost-Found Nation of Islam, were perceived as serious threats by the conservative establishment and noble acts of defiance by the liberal opposition.
“Loved or hated, he remained for 50 years one of the most recognizable people on the planet.
“In later life Ali became something of a secular saint, a legend in soft focus. He was respected for having sacrificed more than three years of his boxing prime and untold millions of dollars for his antiwar principles after being banished from the ring; he was extolled for his un-self-conscious gallantry in the face of incurable illness, and he was beloved for his accommodating sweetness in public.
“In 1996, he was trembling and nearly mute as he lit the Olympic caldron in Atlanta.
“That passive image was far removed from the exuberant, talkative, vainglorious 22-year-old who bounded out of Louisville, Ky., and onto the world stage in 1964 with an upset victory over Sonny Liston to become the world champion. The press called him the Louisville Lip. He called himself the Greatest….
“As a bubbly teenage gold medalist at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, he parroted America’s Cold War line, lecturing a Soviet reporter about the superiority of the United States. But he became a critic of his country and a government target in 1966 with his declaration ‘I ain’t got nothing against them Vietcong.’
“ ‘He lived a lot of lives for a lot of people,’ said the comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory. ‘He was able to tell white folks for us to go to hell.’
“But Ali had his hypocrisies, or at least inconsistencies. How could he consider himself a ‘race man’ yet mock the skin color, hair and features of other African-Americans, most notably Joe Frazier, his rival and opponent in three classic matches? Ali called him ‘the gorilla,’ and long afterward Frazier continued to express hurt and bitterness.
“If there was a supertitle to Ali’s operatic life, it was this: ‘I don’t have to be who you want him to be; I’m free to be who I want.’ He made that statement the morning after he won his first heavyweight title. It informed every aspect of his life, including the way he boxed….
“His personal life was paradoxical. Ali belonged to a sect that emphasized strong families, a subject on which he lectured, yet he had dalliances as casual as autograph sessions. A brief first marriage to Sonji Roi ended in divorce after she refused to dress and behave as a proper Nation wife. (She died in 2005.) While married to Belinda Boyd, his second wife, Ali traveled openly with Veronica Porche, whom he later married. That marriage, too, ended in divorce.
“Ali was politically and socially idiosyncratic as well. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the television interviewer David Frost asked him if he considered Al Qaeda and the Taliban evil. He replied that terrorism was wrong but that he had to ‘dodge questions like that’ because ‘I have people who love me.’ He said he had ‘businesses around the country’ and an image to consider.
“As a spokesman for the Muhammad Ali Center, a museum dedicated to ‘respect, hope and understanding,’ which opened in his hometown, Louisville, in 2005, he was known to interrupt a fund-raising meeting with an ethnic joke. In one he said: ‘If a black man, a Mexican and Puerto Rican are sitting in the back of a car, who’s driving? Give up? The po-lice.’
“But Ali had generated so much good will by then that there was little he could say or do that would change the public’s perception of him.
“ ‘We forgive Muhammad Ali his excesses,’ an Ali biographer, Dave Kindred, wrote, ‘because we see in him the child in us, and if he is foolish or cruel, if he is arrogant, if he is outrageously in love with his reflection, we forgive him because we no more can condemn him than condemn a rainbow for dissolving into the dark. Rainbows are born of thunderstorms, and Muhammad Ali is both.’
“Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. was born in Louisville on Jan. 17, 1942, into a family of strivers that included teachers, musicians and craftsmen….
“Ali’s mother, Odessa, was a cook and a house cleaner, his father a sign painter and a church muralist who blamed discrimination for his failure to become a recognized artist. Violent and often drunk, Clay Sr. filled the heads of Cassius and his younger brother, Rudolph (later Rahman Ali), with the teachings of the 20th-century black separatist Marcus Garvey and a refrain that would become Ali’s – ‘I am the greatest.’….
“Cassius started to box at 12, after his new $60 red Schwinn bicycle was stolen off a downtown street. He reported the theft to Joe Martin, a police officer who ran a boxing gym. When Cassius boasted what he would do to the thief when he caught him, Martin suggested that he first learn how to punch properly.”
Clay won the 1960 Olympic light-heavyweight title in Rome and came home a professional contender. The Louisville Sponsoring Group that he signed a contract with, 11 local white millionaires, hooked him up with trainer Angelo Dundee in Miami.
Dundee and the group carefully selected his early opponents and in 1963, at 21, and after just 15 professional fights, he was on the cover of TIME magazine.
Then came Sonny Liston, Miami Beach. Fla., on Feb. 25, 1964. It was feared Clay would get hurt in the fight against the bigger Liston, but Clay mocked him as the “big ugly bear” and issued his battle cry: “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, rumble, young man, rumble.”
Clay of course won that night, and he shouted at the press: “Eat your words! I shook up the world! I’m king of the world!”
The next morning, Clay confirmed his rumored membership in the Nation of Islam. He would be Cassius X. A few weeks later that became Muhammad Ali. The only prominent leader to send Ali a telegram of congratulations was the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Julian Bond, the late-civil rights activist, once said: “I remember when Ali joined the Nation of Islam. The act of joining was not something many of us particularly liked. But the notion he’d do it – that he’d jump out there, join this group that was so despised by mainstream America, and be proud of it – sent a little thrill through you.”
But following the assassination of Malcolm X (who had left the Nation), by members of the group, some said Ali was complicit. Political journalist, and boxing fan, Jack Newfield, wrote, “If Ali, as the new heavyweight champion, had remained loyal to his mentor, and continued to lend his public support to Malcolm, history might have gone in a different direction.”
On Feb. 17, 1966, Ali learned he had been reclassified 1A by his Louisville selective service board. As Robert Lipsyte writes, the timing was suspicious because the contract with the Louisville millionaires was up and Nation members were taking over as Ali’s managers and promoters.
Peppered with questions by reporters over his feelings about the Vietnam War, Ali snapped: “I ain’t got nothing against them Vietcong.”
It was front-page news around the world. The media’s response was not just unfavorable, it was hostile. The New York Herald Tribune’s Red Smith wrote, “Squealing over the possibility that the military may call him up, Cassius makes himself as sorry a spectacle as those unwashed punks who picket and demonstrate against the war.”
Lipsyte:
“Most of the press refused to refer to Ali by his new name. When two black contenders, Floyd Patterson and Ernie Terrell, insisted on calling him Cassius Clay, Ali taunted them in the ring as he delivered savage beatings.
“On April 28, 1967, Ali refused to be drafted and requested conscientious-objector status. He was immediately stripped of his title by boxing commissions around the country. Several months later he was convicted of draft evasion, a verdict he appealed. He did not fight again until he was almost 29, losing three and a half years of his athletic prime.”
During this period, broadcaster Howard Cosell, one of Ali’s most steadfast supporters in the news media, kept Ali in the public spotlight, both as an interview subject and as a commentator on boxing matches.
Ali made his return to the ring on Oct. 26, 1970, against white contender Jerry Quarry, a tune-up for his bout with Joe Frazier on March 8, 1971, “The Fight,” as it was billed and it lived up to expectations; Frazier winning a 15-round decision as the two slugged it out.
On June 28, 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reversed a lower court decision and granted Ali his conscientious-objector status.
He won 13 of his next 14 fights, including a rematch with Frazier, who had lost his title to George Foreman, a bigger version of Sonny Liston.
Ali then won the Oct. 30, 1974, fight in Zaire against Foreman, unveiling his rope-a-dope strategy to befuddle him, Foreman punching himself out, allowing Ali in the eighth round to spring to action and take him down with a blur of punches, Ali regaining the title.
Jerry Izenberg / Star-Ledger
“The people. With Muhammad Ali, it was always the people.
“It didn’t matter whether they were rich or poor, black or white, celebrity-famous, blue-collar weary or welfare poor. It didn’t matter what language they spoke, what God they worshipped, what gender they were. Well, in this last group I’d have to say that the ladies had a little edge.
“I have been in this business more than 60 years and shared time with most of the great ones – Pele and Joe Louis, Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams and Mickey Mantle, with Joe Willie Namath and Vince Lombardi, and even Jim Thorpe in his declining years. But in all that time, I never knew an athlete who could stop a room, a building or even a city street dead in its tracks, the way Muhammad Ali could and did.
“He went full bore into each fight with a silver tongue and heavyweight gold.
“I watched Ali press the flesh in Manila and Kuala Lumpur, in Kinshasa and London, in Vegas and New York, saw the magic of his charisma hypnotize Frank Sinatra, the Beatles and enough other entertainment superstars to light up the Hollywood sky. I saw it dwarf the psyches of absolute-power heads of state like Zaire’s Mobuto Seseseko and the Philippines’ Ferdinand Marcos. I saw it turn politicians, captains of industry and Howard Cosell into slack-jawed, Jell-o-kneed sycophants.
“His was a bond forged with a constituency that didn’t have to meet him to know him, a constituency that transcended all economic, racial, ethnic and political barriers.
“With his passing they lost a hero.
“With his passing, I lost a friend….
“He was a kid sitting on the steps in the Olympic Village in Rome when I first saw him. The light heavyweight gold was draped around his neck, and Cassius Clay was holding it up for everybody to see.
“ ‘I’m the best. I’m the best. I’m gonna be the heavyweight champion of the world…heavyweight champion of the world…and I’m pretty, too….’”
Izenberg and Ali truly did share a long friendship and Izenberg was always one of Ali’s chief defenders in those years when he couldn’t fight.
“When I reach back in my memory to define him, my fondest memories are of the quiet times in his Deer Lake, Pa., training camp.
“I remember a day when we sat there in a fine drizzle and talked about how his view of America had changed.
“ ‘It’s not about color. I know black people who are devils and white people who are good and caring. And I know plenty of both who are the reverse.’
“I brought my own kids up there one day, and Ali shook hands with my son, then swooped down to pick up my little daughter and held her high over his head as she giggled.
“ ‘Is that your daddy? Don’t lie to me. Is that your daddy? That’s not our daddy. That man is ugly and you are beautiful. The Gypsies musta brung you. Gimme a kiss.’
“It was in Deer Lake that hot paraffin baths healed his arthritic hands and watching him hit the heavy bag after two years, convinced me he would knock Foreman out – and I wrote it. He told me:
“ ‘Listen, Jerry, if you think the world was shocked when Nixon resigned, just wait until I kick Foreman’s behind.’….
“Only once in all those years can I think back to a moment when he did not share himself, a moment all his own on the bank of the Zaire River. He had chased a dream to Africa and into the very heart of that continent. And there, within a mortar shot of the historic spot where Stanley found Livingstone, he faced a bigger, stronger opponent, with little more than faith in himself and a good fight plan, and George Foreman came tumbling down.
“Two hours later, I saw him as I had never seen him before. He was alone. No retinue. No spectators. No one. He was alone with his thoughts as he stood by the river.
“The day before, he had stood in that same spot as a heavy underdog, an aging ex-champ and a man who, without whining, had taken more crap from his own government than all the white-collar criminals in America.
“Now he turned and walked toward us as heavyweight champion of the world again. Proud. Strong. Both arms raised skyward.
“Each time I think of him, I will remember him that way.”
Dave Anderson / New York Times
“At the end, the mischief was still in his eyes. Even the pall of Parkinson’s disease never took that away, but for too many years before his death, Muhammad Ali was not the Muhammad Ali you wanted to remember. Instead of shouting, ‘I am the greatest,’ he whispered. Instead of whirling in his white boxing shoes with red tassels, he shuffled. And instead of that wonderful face lighting up when he spoke, he wore a cheerless mask.
“Whenever people asked you about him lately, you always preferred to tell them what he was like in all those years when you covered 32 of his fights, what he was like when he really was Muhammad Ali.
“To go back to the beginning, you told them what he was like the first time you met him, when he was Cassius Clay in the days before he won a disputed decision over Doug Jones in 1963 at the old Madison Square Garden and you were in his Midtown hotel room.
“ ‘Stand up and put your hands up like a boxer,’ he ordered, circling and then flicking his left jab inches from your chin as you blinked. ‘Pop, pop, pop. Ain’t never been a heavyweight fast as me.’
“Sonny Liston learned that, twice. But for all of Ali’s flash as the new champion, you learned that he could be cruel when he tortured Floyd Patterson and taunted Ernie Terrell. And in 1967, with Ali surrounded by Black Muslim bodyguards in black suits and black bow ties, you listened as he sat in the basement of the Garden after a workout before his title defense against Zora Folley and implied that he would go to prison rather than obey his Army induction order during the Vietnam War.
“ ‘For my beliefs,’ he said.
“At a Houston induction center, Ali did not take the symbolic ‘step forward’ in compliance with the military draft. Stripped of the heavyweight championship by boxing politicians and convicted of refusing Army induction, he began a three-and-a-half-year exile. By the time he fought Joe Frazier in their Mach 8, 1971, spectacle at the new Garden, he remained an unpatriotic villain to some, a hero to others for standing up to the government. The morning after his first loss and an embarrassing knockdown, his jaw was still swollen, and he winced whenever he moved on the bed in his hotel room.
“ ‘When a man gets me going, that’s a punch, and when a man drops me, that’s a hell of a punch,’ he said, referring to Frazier’s left hook in the 15th round. ‘I didn’t give the fight to him. He earned it.’
“When the Supreme Court reversed his 1967 conviction for refusing Army induction, he was free. But it took three years and a 12-round decision over Frazier before he got another shot at the title, then held by the undefeated knockout puncher George Foreman, in Kinshasa, Zaire. In a 1974 bout that began there at 4 o’clock in the morning to accommodate closed-circuit theater television in the United States, you heard his 60,000 worshipers in a soccer stadium chanting, ‘Ali, bomaye,’ meaning ‘Ali, kill him.’
“In the eighth round, Ali, who had covered up with his back against the ropes while Foreman punched himself out, threw a right hand that spun Foreman onto the canvas. KO 8.
“ ‘The surprise is that I did not dance,’ you heard him say later outside his villa along the Congo River. ‘For weeks I kept hollering, ‘Be ready to dance,’ but I didn’t dance. That was the surprise. That was the trick. I told him, ‘You’re the champ, George, and I’m eatin’ you up.’ Don’t ever match no bull against a master boxer. The bull is stronger, but the matador’s smarter.
“As champion for the second time, Ali was suddenly more popular than ever. And he was having more fun than ever.
“After he and Joe Bugner selected the gloves for their 1975 title bout in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, you noticed Ali staring at the commission official who put the gloves in separate boxes, then sealed the boxes with wax from a burning candle.
“ ‘Where are you taking the gloves?’ he asked.
“ ‘We’re putting them in jail,’ the official explained. ‘To make sure nobody tampers with them, we’re putting the gloves in a safe in jail.’
“ ‘The gloves are going to jail,’ he said, his eyes wide. ‘The gloves ain’t done nothin’ – yet.’
“Three months later, in what Ali called the Thrilla in Manila, he survived a brutal third fight with Frazier when Frazier’s trainer, Eddie Futch, would not let him answer the bell for the 15th round. Futch explained that Frazier, his left eye closed, could not see Ali’s right hand coming. Minutes later, Frazier was in the interview area, talking about what happened, and he later boogied at his post-fight party.
“Ali needed nearly an hour to face the news media, and when asked what the fight had been like, you heard him say, ‘Next to death.’ At his post-fight party, he sat stiffly and silently.
“You’re not a doctor, but you have often thought that if Ali had retired after Manila, maybe Parkinson’s disease would not have hit him harder than even Joe Frazier ever had….
“He was far from perfect, of course. And month by month and year by year, his speech slurred more and more. Whenever you saw him and you watched him playfully pretend to throw a punch or do his magic tricks, you could see the twinkle in his eyes and you knew the mischief was still there. But he was not the Muhammad Ali you wanted to remember. And he never would be.”
Thomas Boswell / Washington Post
“Everybody my age can do the Ali Shuffle, it’s just a lot slower now. We can quote ‘Float Like A Butterfly, Sting Like A Bee.’ We can, probably, tell you where we were or how we felt when we learned Muhammad Ali’s fate in the Fight of the Century, the rumble in the Jungle and the Thrilla in Manila….
“What we cannot do, but perhaps wish we could, is explain to those who did not live through the heart of Ali’s 15-year era that none of this is our central memory of the man, nor even a small portion of the weight he carries in our memories. He was one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century and one of the most charming, funny and mischievous entertainers. Yet all that was the least of him – merely the platform for the larger man.
“Many will say, accurately, that no athlete since Ali has remotely approached his fame, or force, on the world stage. None has been remotely as beloved on as many continents by hundreds of millions who barely had any other common link except ‘Ali.’ He proved that deep conviction, explained eloquently under duress, resonates around the world, even among those who did not entirely agree or, in fact, actually disagreed with him.
“In the late 1960s, many admired Ali when he was a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War and refused to be drafted…. And many hated him, too. Otherwise, his actions – just one athlete’s decisions – could not have had such symbolic power. Arrested, found guilty of draft evasion and stripped of his heavyweight title in 1967, he did not fight for nearly four years during his boxing peak. Finally, the Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 1971.
“Then a marvelous and, at the time, almost passing strange thing happened. To the degree that the world ever agrees to stop screaming and find a locus of consensus, a decent common ground, it did so on Muhammad Ali. He stood by his beliefs, which qualified as eccentric, almost alien to many, and took every form of punishment that the laws of his country demanded. He paid the price for his beliefs, right up to the Supreme Court, while never ceasing to speak out, especially against racial injustice.
“To a degree that may be hard to grasp today, even those who disagreed with Ali’s views or did not grasp, much less sympathize, with his religion acknowledged that he was a man who had acted with honor, not out of self-interest. He was not welcomed back to the ring; he was swept into it with joy.
“As Ali is eulogized, all will agree that, for years, he was probably the most recognized man in the world and perhaps the most widely loved. It may be noted less often that what he did then in 1967 was equivalent to a current athlete – who combined the accomplishments and fame of Peyton Manning, LeBron James and Derek Jeter – denouncing America’s entire military policy, performing an act of civil disobedience to protest it, and basing his stand on a set of beliefs that few Americans grasped. And within five years being celebrated as either vindicated in his views or entitled to them.
“In all contexts but one, the best athletes who have come after Ali, from Michael Jordan to Tiger Woods to Tom Brady to whomever you would name, seem worthy of their accolades. Yet compared to Ali, and only in that light, they suddenly shrink. Jordan seems like a sneaker salesman, Woods a golf obsessive and Brady a guy whose big stand-on-principle is that you can’t absolutely prove he deflated a football.”
Nick Bryant / BBC News
“During an era when African-Americans continued to be treated as second-class citizens, and those living in southern states were subject to an ugly and often brutal system of racial apartheid, few did more to nurture black pride than Muhammad Ali.
“The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. may have been the untitled leader of the civil rights movement, winning the Nobel Peace Prize and delivering the finest oration that Americans had heard since the Gettysburg Address, but many young blacks especially did not consider him anywhere near radical enough.
“In 1963, Sidney Poitier had become the first black actor to win an Oscar, an important racial first, but that meant little if you were unemployed in Detroit or summoning up the bravery to register to vote in Mississippi.
“Ali, after knocking Charles ‘Sonny’ Liston in February 1964, to become the heavyweight champion of the world, arguably commanded the respect and awe of a larger black constituency.
“ ‘I am the greatest,’ Clay had declared. From a black man, in the midst of one of America’s most tumultuous decades, it was not just a boast, but also a statement of immense authority. Ali exuded power at a time when many black Americans looked upon themselves as being powerless….
“Ali was by no means the first black athlete to hammer at the walls of prejudice. Jesse Owens had dealt a mighty blow to the idea of white supremacy at the Berlin Olympics – a timely one, too, given that Hitler had intended the games to showcase Aryan pre-eminence.
“And in the 1940s, Jackie Robinson, the Brooklyn Dodgers star who became the first African-American to play major league baseball in the modern era, had broken the sport’s color bar. But what set the boxer apart was the way he fused his distinctive voice and outsized personality to the protest movement….
“It was not just the struggle for black equality that made Ali such a prominent political figure outside of the ring. His decision in 1967 to refuse to serve in Vietnam made him the country’s most high profile anti-war protester….
“Tony Gittens, a student leader at the time at the mainly African-American Howard University, where Ali once came to speak, said: ‘It was amazing to see someone of his stature being ready and willing to give up everything on principle.
“ ‘A lot of people decided that they were going to be with him. They burned their draft cards and they took a stand.’
“He rejected the racial separatism promoted by the Nation of Islam. The American establishment, rather than fearing him, came to love him. But, by then, he had already made a matchless contribution to American history as an athlete who changed his sport, and as an activist who changed his country.”
Michael Powell / New York Times
“I was not yet a teenager when I wandered into the living room of our rent-controlled apartment on the Upper West Side. I saw my parents sitting silently by our black-and-white television, listening as a young black boxer, Muhammad Ali, talked.
“He was saying he would not serve in the Army and he would not fight those Vietcong.
“ ‘My conscience won’t let me go and shoot them,’ Ali said in that rat-a-tat-tat stream of consciousness style of his. ‘They never called me nigger, they never lynched me, they didn’t put no dogs on me.’
“ ‘How can I shoot those poor people?’ he added. ‘Just take me to jail.’
“ ‘Just take me to jail.’ Those words registered as astonishing. Here was this great, sexy fighter on the cusp of fame and fortune, a physically pretty man who recited doggerel and who graced the covers of magazines. And he was willing to march off to prison to protest an unjust war.
“We celebrate athletic courage. Watch a hoopster hit a spinning, fall-away jumper in the last seconds, see a center fielder race toward a fence heedless of the possible injury, applaud a fullback who catapults into the end zone, and we talk of courage.
“Courage is being 24 years old and risking all, the anger of newspaper and television reporters and millions of white Americans who see you as a public enemy, to say no to a war….
“The point is not whether you agree with their every utterance, any more than that was so with regard to Ali. To see athletes – young men and women who could rightly enough claim obsession with sport and endorsements – embrace the larger world and its discontents is moving.
“Ali was a man, which is to say complicated and many-faced and imperfect. He could be cruel to opponents, in the ring and outside it. Joe Frazier, he said, was too dumb and too ugly to be champion.
“It is probably smart not to get too worked up about this. Cruelty is woven into boxing like tweed into a fine herringbone jacket.
“Ali reincarnated himself as champion, three times losing and regaining his title, and that gave to his life narrative a metaphorical power.”
Joe Saraceno / USA TODAY Sports
“For three decades, Ali courageously battled Parkinson’s disease without complaint or seeking pity. Exceedingly frail with an eerie stillness in recent years, he endured muscle tremors, a wobbly gait and slurred speech but he refused to hide his challenges from the public, instead serving as a source of inspiration.
“It was in stark contrast to the boxer’s talents in the ring and gregariousness outside it.
“Ali possessed a snake-like jab, the physique of a Greek god and the improvisational skills of a jazz musician. The 6-3, 225-pound ring marvel fought more heavyweight championship rounds than any fighter in history (255) while fashioning a record of 56-5 with 37 knockouts. At 39, Ali was retired by Trevor Berbick after he lost a desultory 10-round decision in the Bahamas.
“During his prime, Ali’s talent, vanity and desire to become a great heavyweight overlapped the rise of bombastic broadcaster Howard Cosell. Their memorable television exchanges – Ali once peeled back Cosell’s toupee on-air – helped propel both their careers.
“As Chuck Wepner, one of Ali’s vanquished opponents, told USA TODAY Sports: ‘He was the greatest promoter of all time – he could turn a fight between a lion and a duck into a fight that looked legit,’ often by using outlandish predictions delivered in poetic style.
“ ‘It’ll be a killa, a chila, a thrilla, when I get the Gorilla in Manila!’ was Ali’s pre-fight proclamation in the build-up to his stirring 1975 triumph against Frazier…the third and final bout in their compelling trilogy.”
Mike Lupica / New York Daily News
“We kept watching him that night in Las Vegas, in October 1980, slumped on his stool between rounds, watching Larry Holmes take round after round from him, watching and waiting for there to be a round or at least a moment when Muhammad Ali would be young again, when no one could decide whether his hands were even faster than his feet.
“This should have been the end of it for him, a 60th fight in a parking lot in Caesars Palace, against an opponent who was still young, and too long, and too good. Ali was dehydrated that night in Vegas, and it would be reported later that the athletic commission in Nevada had ordered him to the Mayo Clinic before that fight with Holmes, for a neurological examination. It showed, among other things, that at the age of 38, closer to 39 than 38, he had difficulty with something as basic as hopping on one leg. This man who once floated like a butterfly, and stung like a bee….
“But even the way he looked that night, old and slow and tired, Ali still could not make you forget what he was like when he was young, when he really could float like a butterfly and sting like a bee and call himself prettier and better than everybody else. He could never take away the memories he gave us, when he was as great a star as sports has ever produced in this country.
“There was Babe Ruth before him and then Michael Jordan later, DiMaggio and Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle and Tiger and LeBron and Brady and Manning and Serena and anybody else you care to put on the list.
“Nobody was ever bigger than Ali was. In so many ways, he was the first completely modern sports star….
“Finally, of course, there was the Thrilla in Manila, a fight and a night that defined both him and Joe Frazier, Frazier’s trainer, the great Eddie Futch, finally throwing in the towel before the 15th round. Now we knew, for all times, how tough both of them were.
“ ‘Man, I hit him with punches that would bring down the walls of a city,’ Frazier would tell Mark Kram after that fight was over for Kram’s piece in Sports Illustrated, one of the most beautiful pieces of writing in the history of sportswriting. ‘Lawdy, lawdy, he’s a great champion,’ Smokin’ Joe Frazier said.
“This was a fight that was for the championship of each other, once and for all. In all of the most meaningful ways, this was the most famous heavyweight fight of them all. And Muhammad Ali, the former Cassius Clay, the kid with the big voice and bigger smile out of Louisville, out of the ‘60s, said this when it was over:
“ ‘It was like death. Closest thing to dyin’ that I know of.’
“Now he is gone, after more than 30 years of Parkinson’s, the disease stealing that voice, and all of his physical grace. After all the noise, and bright lights, and controversy and even the meanness he showed to Frazier when he called him a gorilla; after all that, Muhammad Ali, of all people, lived out his life in quiet, until his body finally gave out for good in Arizona on Friday.
“He was a child of the ‘60s, and always childlike, but a proud man of conviction, and a total and complete American original, one who changed everything in sports, for all the stars who would follow him. Even when he could barely light the Olympic torch in Atlanta in 1996 because of shaking hands – because Parkinson’s had even made those hands weak – he could still do what he had always done:
“He made the world stop and he made the world watch. And, with the world watching, so much older than his years, he made us remember what he was like when he was young, and the greatest of them all.”
Greg Baum / Sydney Morning Herald
“On page one of Norman Mailer’s seminal 1975 book The Fight, he describes Muhammad Ali up close thus: ‘The world’s greatest athlete is in danger of being our most beautiful man. Women draw an audible breath. Men look down. They are reminded again of their lack of worth. If Ali never again opened his mouth to quiver the jellies of public opinion, he would still inspire love and hate.’
“But he did open his mouth, loquaciously, colorfully, sometimes poetically, but foremost to tell us that he was ‘the greatest.’ He conferred the title on himself, then made it his. Now that he is dead, what other living mortal would strip him of it?….
“Ali was the sportsman of his times because he made the times his. He created an impression of greatness, a persona of greatness, and played up to it, and lived up to it. In 1999, he was named by Sports Illustrated Athlete of the Century, and the BBC’s Sportsman of the Century. By then, he had become a transcendental figure in the world of sport. It is 20 years since Ali’s last grand public appearance, shimmering and shaking a little as he lit the flame at the Atlanta Olympics….
“In The Fight, an account of Ali’s win over George Foreman in Zaire, Mailer describes meeting Ali in the dressing room immediately afterwards. ‘His face was unmarked except for a small red bruise on one cheekbone,’ Mailer writes. ‘Maybe he never appeared more handsome. He stared out like a child. ‘I have stolen the jam,’ said his eyes, ‘and it tastes good.’ Light twinkled in those eyes all the way back to the beginning. Truth, he looked like a castle all lit up.’
“If boxing was a little over romanticized then, it is not at all now. It alters contemporary perspective on Ali. But it cannot and should not diminish who he was and what he meant in his prime and its long afterglow.
“Now he is dead, but undimmed.”
From the South China Morning Post:
“In 1979, Ali visited China and helped revive interest in boxing, which had been banned decades earlier following a death in the ring. His visit, and his meeting with Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, also had geopolitical implications.
“China had only recently resumed relations with the U.S. and was still isolated. Ali came to China, first through Hong Kong and then Guangzhou, before being invited to Beijing to meet ‘an important person.’ There, he found Deng waiting for him and Chinese officials took him to see the Great Wall of China.
“The image of Ali shaking hands with Deng sent a powerful signal to Washington and the rest of the world about China’s willingness to engage.
“On a subsequent visit, Ali told Chinese media: ‘Now that you are open to the world, never lose your culture, because others will try to give you their culture. It will be a great fight.’”
Richard Sandomir / New York Times
“They were a 1960s power couple, two hypertalkative showmen: Muhammad Ali, the African-American boxer born with a slave name, and Howard Cosell, the Jewish Brooklyn lawyer who found his calling in sportscasting.
“Ali recited doggerel, danced in the ring, taunted his opponents and converted to Islam. And, as he told us, he was pretty.
“Cosell was homely, with an adenoidal voice and a collection of toupees. But at his best, he could call a boxing match with dramatic brio, articulate complex issues, narrate football highlights with astonishing skill and little preparation, and, as he often said, ‘tell it like it is.’
“ABC Sports, Cosell’s employer, carried a lot of Ali’s fights, so Cosell was at ringside, inside the ring interviewing Ali and his opponents after fights, or in the network’s studio interviewing Ali. Their camaraderie produced an entertaining union of spirited opposites and a well-suited black-white pairing for the times.
“One man, Ali, understood racism; the other, Cosell, experienced anti-Semitism. And neither could stop talking….
“ ‘Every time you open your mouth, you should be arrested for air pollution,’ Ali once told Cosell, who responded, ‘You would still be in impoverished anonymity in this country if I hadn’t made you.’
“Beneath the stagecraft of their relationship was Cosell’s support of Ali, whether by no longer calling him Cassius Clay when others, like his opponent Ernie Terrell, persisted, or by excoriating the New York State Athletic Commission for stripping him of his heavyweight title in 1967 after he refused induction into the Army….
“Both men’s health declined, Ali from Parkinson’s disease, Cosell from multiple problems. In 1992, when Ali celebrated his 50th birthday on a television special, the ailing Cosell offered his greetings in a prerecorded segment that showed his emotional side, without bombast or gibes.
“ ‘Fifty years old,’ he said. ‘I never thought that could happen, not to you. But it has, and you know something? You are exactly who you said you are. You never wavered. You are free to be who you want to be.’
“Cosell paused, choking up, and added, ‘I love you.’”
—
LeBron James: “When I was a kid, I was amazed by what Ali did in the ring. As I got older and started to read about him and watch things about him, I started to realize what he did in the ring was secondary to what he meant outside of the ring – just his influence, what he stood for….
“The reason why he’s the GOAT [Ed. “greatest of all time”] is not because of what he did in the ring, which was unbelievable, it’s what he did outside of the ring, what he believed in, what he stood for, along with Jim Brown and Oscar Robertson, Lew Alcindor – who became Kareem – Bill Russell, Jackie Robinson. Those guys stood for something. He’s part of the reason why African-Americans today can do what we do in the sports world. We’re free. They allow us to have access to anything we want. It’s because of what they stood for, and Muhammad Ali was definitely the pioneer for that.”
Promoter Bob Arum: “It’s sad, and yet, here was a person who probably did more to transform what people thought about race and religion and about peace, both in the United States and the world, and I really believe he even had more of an impact, because he had been this great boxer, and because he had made this tremendous sacrifice, giving up his career for what he believed in for 3 ½ years – than even Martin Luther King. I really believe that.
“He ended up beloved by everybody. For that to happen, based on the abuse that was heaped on him for a number of years when he took the position on the Vietnam War, is something that I wouldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams.”
Mike Tyson: “God came for his champion. So long Great One.”
George Foreman: “We lost a great athlete. I lost a great friend…Remember Ali loved the press – he started the whole (publicity) thing… We champs all really became one, so I can’t imagine things without my friend.”
Sugar Ray Leonard: “Outside the ring – what he stood for, what he believed in, what he sacrificed for – gave every minority hope.”
Don King: “Ali will never die. He was a fighter for the people and to become a champion of the people he demonstrated the type of character he was. He had the fortitude, the inspiration, the motivation to stand up for what he believed in and to say what he means and mean what he said. He brought me into the sport of boxing – my first fight was Muhammad Ali.
“Nobody can really say how great Muhammad Ali was because for four years at the height of his career he was jeopardized by trials.”
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: “At a time when blacks who spoke up about injustice were labeled uppity and often arrested, Muhammad willingly sacrificed the best years of his career to stand taller and fight for what he believed was right. In doing so, he made all Americans, black and white, stand taller. I may be 7-feet-2 but I never felt taller than when standing in his shadow.”
Michael J. Fox: “Ali, the G-O-A-T. A giant, an inspiration, a man of peace, a warrior for the cure. Thank you.”
Barack Obama, back in 2010, for USA TODAY: “We admire the man with a soft spot for children, who, while visiting a hospital in Philadelphia many years ago, picked up a boy with no legs. Gazing into the child’s eyes, Ali said, ‘Don’t give up. They’re sending men into space. You will walk someday and do this,’ and proceeded to do the famous Ali Shuffle with the giggling boy in his arms.
“We admire the man who has never stopped using his celebrity for good – the man who helped secure the release of 14 American hostages from Iraq in 1990; who journeyed to South Africa upon Nelson Mandela’s release from prison; who has traveled to Afghanistan to help struggling schools as a United Nations Messenger of Peace; and who routinely visits sick children and children with disabilities around the world, giving them the pleasure of his presence and the inspiration of his example.
“And we admire the man who, while his speech has grown softer and his movement more restricted by the advance of Parkinson’s disease, has never lost the ability to forge a deep and meaningful connection with people of all ages.”
—
Ali Quotes:
“To make America the greatest is my goal, so I beat the Russian and I beat the Pole. And for the USA won the medal of gold. The Greeks said you’re better than the Cassius of old.” [After winning the gold medal at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome.]
“I’m so fast that last night I turned off the light switch in my hotel room and was in bed before the room was dark.”
“The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.”
“When you’re as great as I am, it’s hard to be humble.”
Before the first Sonny Liston fight:
“Who would have thought when they came to the fight
That they’d witness the launching of a human satellite?
Yes, the crowd did not dream, when they put up the money
That they would see a total eclipse of the Sonny.”
“If you even dream of beating me, you better wake up and apologize.”
“I always like to chase the girls. Parkinson’s stops all that. Now I might have a chance to go to heaven.”
One of Ali’s final tweets, May 10, 2016, was to Bono. “Happy Birthday to a champion of human rights & an inspiring friend. Bono @u2, thanks for your dedication & care for those in need”
—
From the Washington Post:
“From a boxing ring in Manila to villages in Zaire to the Olympic Games in Atlanta, he had a radiant presence that seemed more in keeping with that of an international religious leader than a retired athlete. More than almost any other figure of his age, Ali was recognized and honored as a citizen of the world.
“ ‘Look at all those lights on all those houses,’ Ali told Esquire magazine writer Bob Greene in 1983, while flying into Washington’s National Airport. ‘Do you know I could walk up to any one of these houses, and knock on the door, and they would know me?
“ ‘It’s a funny feeling to look down on the world and know that every person knows me.’”
Tim Layden / Sports Illustrated…last fall…on Ali’s fading life…
“It’s impossible to know for certain, of course, what lies deep in the man’s soul. A life so large, ending so small. But that is what life often does. Few people have left more behind than Ali. Few will be remembered longer.”
NBA Playoffs
Thursday, Golden State took the opener of the Finals, defeating Cleveland 104-89 in Oakland in one of the strangest Finals games in recent memory. The Cavs held Steph Curry to 11 points on 4-of-15 shooting, while Klay Thompson had only 9 (4-of-12), so you would think the Cavs rolled, right?
Nope. Golden State received 13 points from Harrison Barnes, 12 from Andre Iguodala (plus 7 rebounds and 6 assists), 11 from reserve Leandro Barbosa, and 20 points from Shaun Livingston. Just an awesome team effort.
And tonight, Golden State annihilated the Cavs in Game 2, 110-77. Game 3 in Cleveland isn’t until Wednesday. It’s over.
MLB
Since posting my last chat….
–Wednesday, Boston’s Mookie Betts followed up his three-homer performance on Tuesday with two more in Boston’s 13-9 loss to Baltimore, becoming the first player ever to hit a home run in each of the first two innings of consecutive games. Betts also tied a major league record with five homers in a span of seven at-bats. He became only the third Red Sox player with five in a two-game span, joining Nomar Garciaparra and Carl Yastrzemski.
Also for Boston, Xander Bogaerts’ hitting streak ended at 25 when he went 0-for-3 in a 5-2 loss to Toronto on Friday.
–The Yankees placed first baseman Mark Teixeira on the disabled list with a torn knee ligament. What a disaster he’s been this season. Batting .180 with 3 homers and 12 RBIs in 167 ABs. He’s making $23 million and hasn’t played a full season since 2011. But they finally rid themselves of his contract after this year.
–San Francisco outfielder Hunter Pence will miss eight weeks after surgery this coming week to repair a torn hamstring tendon. Pence leads the team with 36 RBIs and they are a different club without him.
But Thursday, in a 6-0 win over the Braves, the Giants’ Madison Bumgarner threw 7 2/3 of shutout ball with 11 strikeouts, while hitting his second homer of the season, 13th of his career. Bumgarner is now 7-2, 1.91.
–Also Thursday, Arizona’s $34 million per man, Zack Greinke, improved to 7-3, 4.29, with 7 scoreless, 11 strikeouts, in the Diamondbacks’ 3-0 win over the Astros. So the old Greinke has returned after a miserable start.
–And I can’t help but note the comeback by Seattle against San Diego on Thursday. Down 12-2 after five innings in San Diego, the Mariners proceeded to stage their biggest comeback in franchise history, scoring 5 in the sixth and 9 in the seventh as they went on to a 16-13 victory, the worst loss in Padres’ history as well in terms of blown lead.
–In 1930, Brooklyn shortstop Glenn Wright hit 22 home runs, which remains the franchise record at that position. [Interesting career for this guy…look it up.] But Friday night, current Dodgers rookie shortstop Corey Seager hit three home runs in a 4-2 win over the Braves, upping his season total to 12. He was the first Dodgers rookie to hit three in a game since outfielder Don Demeter did it in 1959.
But wait…there’s more! Sunday, in L.A.’s 12-6 win over Atlanta, Seager hit two more to up his total to 14!
–Saturday, Clayton Kershaw tossed six scoreless in a 4-0 Dodgers win over the Braves to move to 8-1, 1.46. The Dodgers are 11-1 in his 12 starts this season. He did allow a walk, though, so his strikeout to walk ratio is 109/6.
[Sunday, the Dodgers released/designated for assignment outfielder Carl Crawford, the 34-year-old one-time star, long, long ago, who is still owed $35 million through 2017. What a freakin’ disaster the trade for him became in 2012, part of a nine-player deal I’ll attempt to analyze next chat. Crawford was hitting .185 this year in just 81 at-bats due partly to injury.]
–The Mets’ Jacob deGrom pitched 7 innings of one-run ball in a 2-1, 13-inning loss Wednesday to the White Sox, deGrom getting a no-decision. But in his young career during day games, deGrom is 13-2 with a 1.53 ERA.
Sunday, the Marlins’ Jose Fernandez shut down the Metropolitans (31-24), 1-0, as he tied a career-high in striking out 14 in seven innings. Fernandez is a truly stunning 23-1 at home in his short career, 1.58 ERA in 33 starts.
For the Mets, though, who are severely undermanned these days, Matt Harvey had his second consecutive excellent outing, allowing the lone run in seven. While he took the loss to go to 4-8, he at least lowered his ERA below 5.00 (4.95).
–What’s this? Jake Arrieta lost? Why indeed he did, on Sunday, as the Diamondbacks beat the Cubs, at Wrigley, 3-2; Arrieta having quite the line score…5 innings, 3 earned, 9 hits, 12 strikeouts! He falls to 9-1, 1.80.
–Indians outfielder Marlon Byrd was suspended for 162 games following another positive test for steroids. The 38-year-old apologized and then in comments to his teammates conceded his career was over.
Byrd had previously been suspended for a PED violation in 2012, with that suspension lasting 50 games. He has 159 career homers while playing for 10 teams during his 15-season career.
He is the second Indians outfielder to receive a PED suspension this season. Abraham Almonte was shelved for 80 games with his violation of MLB policy.
–In an interview for SportsOnEarth.com, Barry Bonds said he was “straight stupid” to have acted the way he did toward others during his major league career.
“I’m not going to try to justify the way I acted toward people. I was stupid. It wasn’t an image that I invented on purpose. It actually escalated into that, and then I maintained it….It was never something that I really ever wanted. No one wants to be treated like that, because I was considered to be a terrible person….
“Hell, I kick myself now because I’m getting great press [today], and I could have had a trillion more endorsements, but that wasn’t my driving force. The problem was, when I tried to give in a little bit, it never got better.”
–Just an awful tragedy prior to the beginning of the NCAA baseball tournament. Vanderbilt freshman pitcher Donny Everett drowned at a popular fishing and swimming spot in Tennessee Thursday afternoon. Everett was with two teammates and two other people when he tried to swim across the lake near a bridge. Apparently, his friends took his cries for help as a joke. Everett was a highly sought recruit out of Clarksville High in Tennessee, joining Vanderbilt after being drafted in the 29th round of last year’s MLB draft by Milwaukee. He would have gone in the first round had pro teams not known he intended to attend college. This year, though, he was beset by injury and appeared in just six games.
Vanderbilt still had to play in the tournament and the No. 1 seed was blitzed by Xavier 15-1 early Saturday, before being ousted by Washington, 9-8, later that day.
–The Final USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll heading into the tournament….
1. Texas A&M
2. Florida
3. Miami (Fla.)
4. Mississippi State
5. Louisville
So Wake Forest beat Minnesota 5-3 in the first game of the regional, getting our hopes up, but then they faced No. 1 Texas A&M and the Aggies annihilated the Deacs 22-2. Wake was then eliminated in a rematch with the Gophers, 8-3.
Too late for me to summarize action thus far and I’ll cover it all next time.
–Steve Garrity of DraftSite.com projected the first round of the June 9-11 MLB draft and some of us, read Mets and Wake Forest fans, can dream. Garrity has Wake’s Will Craig going No. 19 in the first round to the Mets. I would be so freakin’ pumped.
Garrity says Jason Groome, a high school pitcher out of Barnegat, New Jersey, is the top player in the draft, but given he is a high-schooler and years from the majors, he’s guessing A.J. Puk, LHP, Florida, is selected first by the Phillies.
Cincinnati’s team president, Walt Jocketty, tends to go for college players in the first round, so Garrity has the Reds taking Tennessee third baseman Nick Senzel, with the second pick.
Groome then goes to the Braves with the third. [USA TODAY]
Golf Balls
–No offense to William McGirt, the 36-year-old who picked up his first PGA Tour victory at Jack Nicklaus’ Memorial tournament, but this is not what golf needs. You had a super strong field, but Rory McIlroy finished T-4, Jason Day T-27, and Jordan Spieth T-57. Phil Mickelson, in his first tournament since details on his insider trading case were revealed, was T-20.
If I told you Jon Curran lost to McGirt in a playoff that makes the story even worse.
–No real surprise that the PGA Tour moved a World Golf Championships event away from Trump National Doral Miami because of Donald Trump. PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem said politics wasn’t part of the decision, but of course it was. It’s long been known that Cadillac was not renewing its sponsorship, even before Trump announced he was running for president, but then when he did, and with some of his statements, it was difficult for the Tour to find a new sponsor that wanted to attach themselves to the Trump name.
For his part Trump, at a campaign rally, said: “They moved the World Golf Championships from Miami to Mexico City. Can you believe it? Not good. But that’s OK. Folks, it’s all going to be settled. You vote for Donald Trump as president, if I become your president, this stuff is all going to stop.”
Finchem said: “We are a conservative organization. We value dollars for our players. We have a strong sense of fiduciary responsibility. So we make decisions that are in the best interests of our players, short term and long term.”
Grupo Salinas, a collection of companies based in Mexico City primarily involved in retail and media, has agreed to sponsor the event for seven years, for a reported $12 million to $14 million annually, which means good purses and lots of money for charity.
–Michael Collins of ESPN.com had his second installment of Player Confidential with an anonymous PGA Tour player. It’s extensive, though not that surprising, except Collins asks the question: “I give you complete power over the PGA Tour. Which one player would you kick out?”
Answer. “Billy Mayfair would be the first to go. There’s been some strong rumors about Billy and [rules] indiscretions on the golf course, from multiple directions and multiple sources for a very long time. I don’t think it has affected anyone’s career [Ed. i.e., like mean the difference between a guy not finishing in the top 125 to keep his tour card, that kind of thing], but it’s just a s— way to behave.”
Now Mayfair turns 50 this summer and has played all of 14 tour events combined the last three years, but there was a time he was a pretty fair player and he has five career wins, and no doubt expects to be a presence on the senior tour.
I was just shocked to see this name because observing him on television all these years, he’s about the last player I’d suspect of being a dirtball.
Another question was, who would you want standing next to you in a bar fight. The anonymous player said: “Angel Cabrera. Guaranteed. Oh, yeah, he’s the one I want. He grew up tough. He was fightin’ for his dinner when he was a kid.”
Michael Collins said he would want Ernie Els. “I’m buying him two shots of whiskey, and then I’m going to stand behind him and watch the bodies fly!”
The anonymous player said that Ernie sober would hug ‘em all to death. “Ernie drunk would definitely bring the violence after a few.”
I’d go with Cabrera.
—Oregon pulled off the win in the NCAA Men’s Golf Championship last Wednesday, taking advantage of playing on its home course at Eugene Country Club to defeat Texas in the match play final.
Oregon was ranked No. 22 in Golfweek’s final poll before the championship [Texas came in at No. 1] and in the first round was only tied for 19th in the 30-team field.
But coach Casey Martin gave them a kick in the rear and they were superb the rest of the way, though the finale was 2-2 and would be decided in the last match between Oregon’s Sulman Raza and Texas’ Taylor Funk.
Funk led 1 up through 16, but Raza, who grew up in Eugene, made a par putt to knot it going to 18. Funk then made a 5-footer for par to extend the match and keep Texas’ hopes alive. But Raza won it on the third playoff hole.
By the way, the only other school to win the title while hosting was Ohio State in 1945. I find that kind of shocking.
French Open
Incredibly, they finished this event on time despite the record rains.
And on Saturday, Garbine Muguruza, born in Caracas, Venezuela, and now playing under the Spanish flag, upset Serena Williams in the women’s final, 7-5, 6-4, for her first Grand Slam title. Last summer she lost her first Grand Slam final to Williams at Wimbledon.
So once again, Williams was denied a 22nd Grand Slam title that would have tied her with Steffi Graf atop the Open Era. It was only the sixth time in 27 finals that Williams has lost.
On the men’s side, Novak Djokovic beat Andy Murray in the final for his first French Open title, thus completing the career grand slam, 3-6, 6-1, 6-2, 6-4.
I said last December that Djokovic deserved to be Sports Illustrated’s Sportsperson of the Year as much as Serena Williams and of course I was right (though I also had no problem with Serena winning it). Novak now holds all four Grand Slam titles at the same time; the first since Rod Laver to do so.
Djokovic has 12 career GS wins, overall (six Australian, 3 Wimbledon, 2 U.S. Open, 1 French), trailing only Roger Federer (17) and Rafael Nadal and Pete Sampras (14 each).
So Djokovic is hitting 20, no doubt. He has no competition. Andy Murray is solid, but he has only two Grand Slam titles. Federer is too old to win a final, and Nadal is too injury prone.
Who is waiting in the wings? No one. Ditto the women’s side. Tennis is in trouble. It would be more entertaining watching McEnroe and Connors play.
Meanwhile, the likes of yours truly can continue to pound the table that Djokovic should be Sportsman of the year!!!
Here’s what will suck. He wins Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, but SI decides it can’t pick two straight tennis players.
So…as I just ramble…it should go to Clayton Kershaw, assuming he continues his excellence. But the Dodgers need to win something.
Oops, forgot about Steph Curry. Now what if Djokovic and Curry close their deals? Curry gets it and Djokovic is screwed again.
Stanley Cup Final
I’m sorry, boys and girls. I like hockey but with everything else going on, and my Rangers not involved, nor the Devils or Islanders to stoke local interest, I just couldn’t care less, though I will watch a Game 7 if there is one.
For now it’s Pittsburgh up 2-1 over San Jose, as the Sharks did come up with a clutch win on Saturday, 3-2 overtime win at home on a Joonas Donskoi goal.
Game 4 Monday in San Jose.
Stuff
—NASCAR’s Sprint Cup race at Pocono Raceway was postponed until Monday due to heavy storms.
—Colombia beat the United States 2-0 Friday night in Santa Clara in the opener of the Copa America tournament. U.S. coach Jurgen Klinsmann spoke earlier about the importance of a strong showing in this match to create buzz for a potential 2026 World Cup bid, but the 31st-ranked (in the world) Americans began the biggest tournament at home since the 1994 World Cup with a less than inspiring performance, with new FIFA President Gianni Infantino among the 67,439 in attendance. [Colombia is the third-ranked team in the world.]
Next up for the U.S. is Costa Rica on Tuesday. They better freakin’ win.
Speaking of FIFA, disgraced ex-president Sepp Blatter was among a group of powerful football executives who secretly paid themselves $80m in a “coordinated effort to enrich themselves,” according to an internal investigation at the sport’s world governing body.
—Arsenal is in talks with Leicester City in an attempt to sign star striker Jamie Vardy. Vardy shouldn’t leave.
—New Baylor football coach Jim Grobe said he was retaining all of Art Briles’ assistant coaches and hopes to keep all of his recruits as well, as Grobe seeks to maintain some consistency while the program recovers from the sexual assault crisis that cost Briles his job.
Grobe met with the team and assured them Baylor will not be making any changes to its offensive or defensive schemes.
–Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari wants to move the SEC tournament to November and make it a preseason event, eliminating the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament and instead giving it to the regular-season champion.
I actually like this idea, though it doesn’t stand a chance of being accepted. Way back the ACC had what was known as the Big Four tournament (North Carolina, North Carolina State, Duke and Wake Forest) which opened up the season and was immensely popular. These days no one cares about the big season-ending conference tournaments.
The mid-majors, on the other hand, could continue to hold their own to select NCAA tourney entrants.
–Shark! Surfer Ben Gerring died Friday night in Royal Perth Hospital after being critically injured in a shark attack earlier in the week off western Australia. Gerring, 29, had his right leg bitten off above the knee. It was the first fatality in WA since December 2014, when a spear fisherman was killed by a 12- to 15-foot great white.
It’s amazing fellow surfers were able to get Gerring to shore and that he lived a few days. It’s assumed it was a great white.
But then on Sunday morning, a 60-year-old female diver was killed, the victim of an apparent shark attack, also off western Australia, Perth specifically. “The boat crew that arrived to help said the shark was longer than their 5.5m (18-ft.) vessel”!
A 43-year-old man who was diving with the woman, “told police he felt something go past him and when he surfaced he saw a ‘commotion in the water.’” [BBC News]
I just read that a Western Australia State Government order went out to find the killer, citing “a serious threat to public safety.” [The Western Australian]
Is this the beginning of the long-feared global assault? You had the incidents in California and Florida about a week ago. Now these two fatalities.
–On a brighter note…from News.com.au and the New York Post:
“If you need further proof that elephants are highly intelligent animals, this is it.
“Ben, an injured bull elephant – thought to be 30 years old – gave staffers at the Bumi Hills Safari Lodge in Kariba, Zimbabwe, the surprise of their lives when he appeared to ask for help.
“From the start, it was clear to manager Nick Milne that something wasn’t right, as the animal had a significant limp and appeared to be wounded.
“Unfortunately, the in-house vet had left for the weekend, so they were unable to tell the full extent of his injuries.
“The lodge got the word out, and another vet kindly volunteered to fly nearly 200 miles from the capital to help the elephant.
“While medical assistance jetted out to him, Ben calmly passed the six-hour wait; he stayed no more than a few yards from the house, drank his fill and grazed.
“When the vet arrived, Ben was tranquilized, and it was then that a large wound in his shoulder was discovered, along with two bullet holes in his ear – injuries thought to be from a poacher’s bullet sustained in a separate incident.
“The vet and workers were able to clean and disinfect Ben’s wound and administer a tracking collar to monitor his recovery.
“While Ben’s road to recovery will be a long one, it wouldn’t have been possible without his courageous, quick thinking.
“Nick Milne told News24: ‘Logic would suggest that if an animal has an injury that considerably hampers its mobility, it would not attempt the climb and would rather stay on the level ground near water.’”
–At least 70 were injured late Friday night when lightning struck a rock festival in western Germany, with two needing to be resuscitated. Eight were hospitalized before authorities then canceled the rest of the festival the following day amid further storms. The Red Hot Chili Peppers headlined this one.
The same event last year saw 33 taken to hospital last year after a lightning strike.
–For the record, Prince, died from an accidental overdose of self-administered fentanyl, a type of synthetic opiate, officials in Minnesota announced on Thursday.
—Taylor Swift and Calvin Harris broke up. Taylor’s camp is saying Harris broke up with her because he’s “intimidated by her success.” But a source close to Harris told the New York Post’s Page Six: “She broke up with him this week. She gave a bulls— excuse about her career. He was ring shopping.”
Top 3 songs for the week 6/8/68: #1 “Mrs. Robinson” (Simon and Garfunkel) #2 “Tighten Up” (Archie Bell & The Drells…had been #1 for two weeks…) #3 “This Guy’s In Love With You” (Herb Alpert…would be #1 two weeks later and stay there for four weeks…)…and…#4 “”The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” (Hugo Montenegro…love it…) #5 “Mony Mony” (Tommy James and The Shondels) #6 “Yummy Yummy Yummy” (Ohio Express…eegads…) #7 “MacArthur Park” (Richard Harris…simply one of the worst tunes to ever hit the top ten…should be employed by the CIA instead of waterboarding… “No, not MacArthur Park! What do you want from me?!”…) #8 “A Beautiful Morning” (The Rascals…peaked at #3…) #9 “Think” (Aretha Franklin) #10 “Honey” (Bobby Goldsboro…was #1 for five weeks earlier…)
Muhammad Ali Quiz Answers: 1) Ali’s first professional fight was against Tunney Hunsaker, Oct. 29, 1960. Hunsaker was police chief of Fayetteville, West Virginia. 2) Ali was 29-0 when he returned to the ring in Oct. 1970 to face Quarry, who he took out after three rounds. Quarry was ticked the fight was stopped but he had a deep cut over his eye that his corner couldn’t close. 3) After Quarry, Ali faced Oscar Bonavena, Dec. 7, 1970, at Madison Square Garden. Bonavena, a terrific fighter, but one who didn’t listen to his corner, stunned Ali in the ninth round with a left hook, before Ali finally knocked him out in the fifteenth.
So in honor of Ali, late Saturday night I stumbled on the Vargas-Salido title fight on HBO and watched the whole thing, a spectacular bout, honestly, that is being called the fight of the year. It ended up in a draw and that was the proper decision. Both just beat the crap out of each other. Non-stop action.
But some of you may be thinking, what’s so good about that? It’s sheer brutality! The sport of boxing is dead.
I’m going to have more on this in the coming week. With Ali’s death, my attitude about the sport could be changing back to the days of my youth when I loved watching it.
By the way, the upcoming film, “The Bleeder,” which is the story of the Bayonne Bleeder, Chuck Wepner, is getting some good buzz (coming out late September in full release). Ali’s death obviously helps in the promotion of this one.
For those of you not familiar, Wepner and his bout against Ali in 1975 was the source for “Rocky,” as Sylvester Stallone had to finally admit in court years later; Wepner not having received any money for the film. What I like is that Wepner, still going strong, has been heavily involved in “The Bleeder,” and as I learned in an interview with him this weekend is being paid on both the front and back end, as it should be.
Next Bar Chat, Thursday.
