People who get upset about what Ali said to Frazier are simply ignorant of history and do not see the subtext of what really happened. Moreover it gives them a reason not to like a person that they have decided not to like. An uninformed case of the onlooker crying louder than the bereaved.what people do not know is that Frazier and Ali were friends even after the 1st fight between them. In the years when Ali was banned and Frazier was the champ. Frazier was one of Ali`s benefactors, regularly giving him money as Ali had little income. They met several times outside the ring prior to the fight and the name calling was part of the stratagem to make more money. $2.5m each was the purse. No one had even been pain $1m before that time. They both got paid and Frazier would have been in on it from the start.
Its a bit like people who I see trading insults over Jay -Z and Beyonce over her new album Lemonade and rumours of infidelity. Its all a promo scam and idiots get taken in and buy the album. Has Beyonce got a divorce lawyer yet? Suckers!. Yes Ali was brash, rude and irreverent, that was his nature and he could be cruel too. He once fought a black guy called Terrell in 1967. In the build up the guy had insisted on calling Ali Cassius Clay. Even though he had officially changed his name. Ali beat this guy black and blue for like 6 rounds or more even though he could clearly have knocked him out much earlier. With each barrage of blows he would taunt him " What`s my name"?. When Ali came to England to fight Henry Cooper he boasted that England had a queen and he was coming to be its King, posing with a crown for added measure.
Fraziers problem with Ali was not the name calling, at least not so much. It was the ego thing. He couldnt handle that Ali became so much more than a boxer, that in 3 fights he could not break him. He got lucky once in the first fight but in the other 2, Ali beat the crap out of him. What must have rankled even more was that Frazier fought Foreman twice and both times Foreman beat him senseless like a little girl. One uppercut literally lifted him up off his feet. Yet Ali made what seemed impossible possible with his miracle in Zaire.
Before you get all wrapped up in your sympathy for Frazier, Remember this. Frazier was later on once asked what he thought about Ali coming down with Parkinsons disease and Frazier replied. " Yes it was me that made him that way". He was a bitter man to the end.
Ali a racist? Really?! to whom was he racist?. To the people who wanted to make him meek and subservient like they wanted all black men to be. To the people who even then could lynch a black man just for looking admiringly at a white woman. Yeah right. Him and those other noted racist terrorists Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela.
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