Ali @ 65

Muhammad Ali (b. January 17, 1942) is 65 today. See photo galleries commemorating the life and times of "The Greatest" - Photo Galleries 1; Photo Galleries 2; Photo Galleries 3.

My favourite pictures of Ali are those taken by Flip Schulke in Miami in the early sixties - probably the first to define in images the legend that would become The Greatest. Schulke captured some of the most poignant moments of the civil rights era with his camera (see Schulke's images of Martin Luther King - whose birthday was earlier this week on Monday 15th - here) - and photographed a young Ali training underwater. An image of sublime beauty, in which Ali resembles a god or a discus thrower from ancient Greece. The book has pride of place among my books on Ali, and I was lucky to have seen Flip Shulke's exhibition held at the Photofusion Gallery in London from October to December in 2000.

• Related Posts: I - II - III

The Lost Black Hope

Now, this is where I didn't know I was going with my Muhammad Ali post of last week, but I don't mind continuing the boxing thread in the slightest. Especially when an illuminating article comes along in the shape of Joe Queenan's brilliant piece in The Guardian's Guide section of yesterday. With the sixth instalment of the Rocky series of movies coming in its star, Sylvester Stallone's 60th year, Queenan examines the racial insult the movie has been to African Americans for 30 years - and it was like scales fell off my eyes. I knew the cinematic defeat of Dolph Lundgren in Rocky IV was a deal a blow to America's cold war enemies in Eastern Europe. But Queenan now tells us that those on the receiving end of Rocky's most hurtful blow have always been closer to home. The critic unravels the racial politics of Philadelphia when the first Rocky was released. The film's Best Film Oscar also began the decline of American cinema. But to return to the racial concern, Queenan points to the significance of Apollo Creed in the early Rocky movies:

Cheerfully moronic, imbued with an almost infantile racism to which Stallone and the film's enthusiasts have long purported to be oblivious, Rocky lionizes a small-time South Philly hood who somehow manages to wangle a bout with the reigning heavyweight champion of the world, and thereupon gives him the fight of his life. The champion, Apollo Creed, is a motor-mouthed African-American punk who shows no respect for America, much less the flag; he is transparently a stand-in for Muhammad Ali, who, though sainted and adored now, was in those days reviled by a substantial percentage of white Americans, particularly old school Caucasian fight fans. The character of the talent-thin but gutsy Rocky Balboa is based on a thuggish New Jersey club fighter named Chuck Wepner who once spent an evening in the same ring as Ali, getting smacked around, before returning to the obscurity he deserved. Because there is no cliche African-American athletes despise more than being told that their talent is God-given, rather than the result of their own hard work and perseverance, the first Rocky said exactly what White America wanted to hear: They're gifted but we work harder.

So there you have it: Apollo Creed was Stallone's lampooning (on behalf of white America) of the 'loudmouth' Ali.

Central to Queenan's piece is the question: "Why is a fictional Philly boxer still getting more respect than a living black one" - thirty years and counting? If the character of Rocky Balboa is based, as we are told, on "a thuggish New Jersey club fighter... who once spent an evening in the same ring as Ali, getting smacked around" - then we can conclude that in Stallone's mega successful movies, the undeserving hoodlum gets his own back, and smacks Ali around.

But that's not the half of it. What hurts the most is Joe Frazier (a man I never thought would could inspire racial hurt in me); the boxer lies at the heart of Queenan's central question. Hear him:

When I was in my teens, I worked in a clothing store owned by a tough ex-Marine who used to referee fights in North Philadelphia gyms. One day he told me that he had joined an organisation called Cloverlay, which would provide funding to a young man so that he could quit his job in a slaughterhouse and train for a career as a professional boxer. The young man knocked out Buster Mathis and became heavyweight champion of the world. Three years later, he would crown a majestic career by defeating Muhammad Ali in one of the most famous bouts in history. The prize fighter in question, like Ali, was young, gifted, and black, not old, talentless and white like Rocky. His name was Joe Frazier. A real-life, flesh-and-blood heavyweight champion, Frazier was long vilified as the white man's champion by fans of Ali and by Ali himself, and never, ever got the respect he deserved. If you go to Philadelphia today, you can see the statue of Sylvester Stallone at the foot of the Art Museum steps, where it has temporarily been relocated as a fundraising gimmick. But you will not see a statue of Joe Frazier, a working-class hero who fought his way to the top but who is now down on his luck financially, anywhere in the tri-state area. This is not just an insult; this is a disgrace.

So there you have it. If you go to the cinema to cheer on Rocky Balboa's antics in 'Rocky VI', pause a moment to think upon this and if you will, spare a thought for Joe Frazier.

• Related Post
• Joe Queenan is the only film critic I know of who had the insight to dismiss the film Borat as the hideous trash it is.

Ali in Retrospect

Asked in the January issue of Vanity Fair (page 164) which living person he most admires, the author Norman Mailer answers: Muhammad Ali.

Ali features again in words and images on pages 128 and 129 of the same issue, in an in-depth piece about the groundbreaking new journalism of Esquire Magazine in the 60s. The magazine featured on its December 1963 cover the former world heavyweight boxing champion Sonny Liston - as Santa Claus. Liston-as-Santa had been a very controversial decision on the part of Esquire magazine back in the day. An ex-convict whose links to organised crime were more than mere allegations and who was an embarrassment to the civil rights movement, is described by one Esquire staffer as "'the baddest motherf---er' ever kissed by fame". He would provide the publication with what they described years later as "the perfect magazine cover."

Even more famous, is the cover from April 1968 (VF regals us with images from the photo shoot) showing Muhammad Ali - fresh from losing his heavyweight crown for refusing to go to Vietnam - 'martyred' as Saint Sebastian. The cover was still on the stands when Martin Luther King Jr was martyred for real by an assasin's bullet in Memphis.

I bought The Observer today principally because the Sports Monthly magazine was going to list for us their 50 Most Heartbreaking Moments in Sports. Number 4 is Muhammad Ali's defeat by Larry Holmes on 2nd October 1980 in Las Vegas (I saw this match live on television as a kid in Los Angeles, and yes, it was like seeing a titan fall). Thomas Hauser, who wrote the piece, reminds that "Muhammad Ali in 1980 was the most recognisable, and possibly the most loved, man on earth."

Of the bout that proved the undoing of The Greatest, Hauser writes: "It was a horrible night. Ali was a shell of his former self. He had no reflexes, no legs, no punch. Nothing, except his pride and the crowd chanting, 'Ali! Ali!'. By the time Ali's trainer Angelo Dundee stopped the fight after ten rounds, "An era in boxing - and an entire historical era - was over."

George Foreman describes elsewhere in the magazine his own heartbreaking moment - and it again involves Ali. This time, it was his loss to Joe Frazier in March 1971. Foreman says he was offered a fight with Ali around the same time but turned it down because "I didn't want to see him lose" (to Foreman! a bit presumptuous of Foreman to say this, especially as we'll never know). Still, Foreman reports: "It felt like Alis defeat was a defeat for us all, boxers and fans. We had our hopes invested in him. I was so sad that he had lost his unbeaten record."

Talking of covers, this month's VF's features jiving Eddie Murphy, Jamie Foxx and the inescapable Beyonce Knowles - in a promo of the movie, Dreamgirls. But we'll leave all that aside for now.

There are no Africans in The Observer's 50 most heartbreaking moments. If the death of Marc-Vivien Foe on the pitch during an international match in June 2003 was not heartbreaking, then I don't know what is.