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The Frazier-Ali feud 1-2
Of the various levels of contempt, two are of interest in relation
to Ali-Frazier. The contempt that Ali held for Frazier during the final
third of his career and in retirement was at the level of “Hobbesian
indifference,” which William Ian Miller, author of The Anatomy of
Disgust, points out, is designed to render the target invisible or nonexistent.
But Ali was not always Hobbesian. Early on, as Cassius Clay,
he had an insolent contempt, a promiscuous spray of disrespect that
indicates someone trying to secure rank by mere display; a rather
mean fool. When he became champ, he accelerated the contempt
that shames and humiliates, especially against those he saw as threats
to his superiority and rank among blacks, particularly the much-loved
Floyd Patterson and later the implacable challenge of Frazier. Joe’s
contempt, ceaseless and unsparing, was a different sort from the outset.
His was that of the “blood-feuder,” and remains so today. Besides
responding to the pain and humiliation Ali caused him, he wanted
and wants to reduce his rank, to show him that he failed, that he
never measured up, that he claimed much more for himself than he
was. Ali has sat in Frazier’s gut like a broken bottle.
The Frazier Ali-feud 1-2
The Heavyweights
A series of threads about Frazier, Ali, Patterson and Tyson
Frazier
For a good period, Joe Frazier seemed as if he had been born at
the age of twenty-one. No one knew much about him. In many conversations
he was agreeable enough, but there was a strained cheerfulness,
and just below a restrained hostility. Or was it? Perhaps it was
just a matter of confusion within that was behind his vague remoteness,
a distrust of white people, a frustration with his ability to articulate
or know how to act confidently, or that he hadn’t come to
accept himself as a contender. He never looked you in the eyes, never
seemed to want to be there. Gypsy Joe was asked about his pal’s
demeanor and said: “He just a warrior. He afraid to say much.” Most
likely, all of the above was true about Frazier then; he left the personality
of himself up to his manager, Yank Durham, who gladly
obliged. He was seldom without Durham by his side, and over the
years it become discomfiting and eerie how the manager seemed to
think he was the fighter, how he even ended sentences for him, like:
“I don’t think this fight will go long. You won’t see any lumps on my
face after this one. I wanna do some dancin’ with the girls tonight.”
It wasn’t until Ali began to humiliate Frazier about his blackness,
tried to turn him into a white pawn, that he started to respond about
his youth and bleak times. The last of eleven children, Joe was raised
in Laurel Bay, not far from Beaufort, South Carolina, the otherworldly
low country that was the oldest and most historical settlement
of the slave culture in the nation. The people there were perjoratively
called Geechee, but they were actually Gullah and they
spoke a language of their own. They had their own way of living, had
a silent contempt for whites, and were suspicious of other blacks,
who viewed them in turn as backward and dangerous, a people who
had not moved beyond slavery. They were in fact a proud, independent
people who clung to African ways (to assimilate was to lose their
souls) with small adjustments for reality. Once there, you could never
forget the people or the land, filled with large trees weeping Spanish
moss, thousands of whispering, steaming waterways that easily concealed
bootleg stills and smuggling.
“I don’t think Frazier knew the term Uncle
Tom,” says Ricki Lights, a poet and medical doctor in Philly who was
raised there. “You never heard it. To call a Gullah an Uncle Tom would
be asking to die. I mean it.”
Slave history of the low country supports that view. Class distinc
tion based on skin color was drawn almost from the beginning of the
settlement. Mulattoes, the fair-skinned progeny of white slavers and
African women, were the emerging group and favored by owners. They
got the better jobs and a big share of the largess (such as it was) that was
handed down on the whim of their masters. Purebloods from Africa,
seen as nonadaptive, resented sharply the superior airs of the mulattoes,
who were too eager to conform to white culture. In various rebellions
that were often chronic, the mulattoes were rarely included in conspiratorial
plans; the blooded didn’t trust them.
While Frazier would later call Ali a “half-breed” in Manila, the
phrase was not just a passing comment of frustration; it leaped out
from a tribal flash of racial memory. Always able to feel the lancing
invective with which Ali assaulted him, Frazier began to see it as an
orchestrated campaign to crush any respect he had in the black community.
Blacks who understood the mulatto and pureblood equation
winced. On display every day in the streets, it was now being played
out in a large public way.
The Muslims, it should be pointed out, mirrored the age-old divide
of color. Their leader, Elijah Muhammad, was “color struck.” He taught
his followers that they were descended from “Asiatic blacks,” meaning
that they were from Arab stock, not from the sub-Saharan Africa. Elijah
was a light man, and so were a large part of the Muslim hierarchy; the
so-called sub-Saharans in the movement had subordinate roles. When
Malcolm X established contacts with newly independent African
nations, he was admonished for associating with “these people.” Unlike
Malcolm, Elijah would avoid travel to sub-Saharan Africa during his
pilgrimage to Mecca in 1959. During at least two later visits to Africa,
Ali himself would remark that African women would be more attractive
if they had a little white blood in them.
Ali:
Frazier first met Ali the night following the
Zora Folley bout in the Garden, his last before he exiled for evading
the draft. Durham recalled, “Somebody takes Joe over, `Champ, this
is Joe Frazier,’ and I’m sayin’ I don’t want this happening. I want Ali
remaining a face, a name, nobody important now. I’m training a dog,
you see, to eat a dog.” Ali sized Frazier up and said, “I know who he
is. Stay healthy, Joe. I’ll be back. We gonna do some business.” He
then snapped Joe’s suspenders, saying, “These won’t keep you
standin’. You not big enough for me. But we’ll make some money
anyway.” Joe gave him a big smile and said, “Could be.” Sensing too
much softness in Joe, Durham broke in, saying, “Clay, you ever need
some money, we’ll always have some sparring work for you.” Ali just
looked at Yank, then turned away, with his aide saying to him, “Can
you believe that country ******?” Yank pulled Joe aside and said, “You
best get some sense in your head, boy. You too impressed by him.
You’re somebody. Got a big future. Get them stars outta your eyes,
else he’ll pick the gold right outta your pocket
Next
The Frazier Ali-feud 2-2
to Ali-Frazier. The contempt that Ali held for Frazier during the final
third of his career and in retirement was at the level of “Hobbesian
indifference,” which William Ian Miller, author of The Anatomy of
Disgust, points out, is designed to render the target invisible or nonexistent.
But Ali was not always Hobbesian. Early on, as Cassius Clay,
he had an insolent contempt, a promiscuous spray of disrespect that
indicates someone trying to secure rank by mere display; a rather
mean fool. When he became champ, he accelerated the contempt
that shames and humiliates, especially against those he saw as threats
to his superiority and rank among blacks, particularly the much-loved
Floyd Patterson and later the implacable challenge of Frazier. Joe’s
contempt, ceaseless and unsparing, was a different sort from the outset.
His was that of the “blood-feuder,” and remains so today. Besides
responding to the pain and humiliation Ali caused him, he wanted
and wants to reduce his rank, to show him that he failed, that he
never measured up, that he claimed much more for himself than he
was. Ali has sat in Frazier’s gut like a broken bottle.
The Frazier Ali-feud 1-2
The Heavyweights
A series of threads about Frazier, Ali, Patterson and Tyson
Frazier
For a good period, Joe Frazier seemed as if he had been born at
the age of twenty-one. No one knew much about him. In many conversations
he was agreeable enough, but there was a strained cheerfulness,
and just below a restrained hostility. Or was it? Perhaps it was
just a matter of confusion within that was behind his vague remoteness,
a distrust of white people, a frustration with his ability to articulate
or know how to act confidently, or that he hadn’t come to
accept himself as a contender. He never looked you in the eyes, never
seemed to want to be there. Gypsy Joe was asked about his pal’s
demeanor and said: “He just a warrior. He afraid to say much.” Most
likely, all of the above was true about Frazier then; he left the personality
of himself up to his manager, Yank Durham, who gladly
obliged. He was seldom without Durham by his side, and over the
years it become discomfiting and eerie how the manager seemed to
think he was the fighter, how he even ended sentences for him, like:
“I don’t think this fight will go long. You won’t see any lumps on my
face after this one. I wanna do some dancin’ with the girls tonight.”
It wasn’t until Ali began to humiliate Frazier about his blackness,
tried to turn him into a white pawn, that he started to respond about
his youth and bleak times. The last of eleven children, Joe was raised
in Laurel Bay, not far from Beaufort, South Carolina, the otherworldly
low country that was the oldest and most historical settlement
of the slave culture in the nation. The people there were perjoratively
called Geechee, but they were actually Gullah and they
spoke a language of their own. They had their own way of living, had
a silent contempt for whites, and were suspicious of other blacks,
who viewed them in turn as backward and dangerous, a people who
had not moved beyond slavery. They were in fact a proud, independent
people who clung to African ways (to assimilate was to lose their
souls) with small adjustments for reality. Once there, you could never
forget the people or the land, filled with large trees weeping Spanish
moss, thousands of whispering, steaming waterways that easily concealed
bootleg stills and smuggling.
“I don’t think Frazier knew the term Uncle
Tom,” says Ricki Lights, a poet and medical doctor in Philly who was
raised there. “You never heard it. To call a Gullah an Uncle Tom would
be asking to die. I mean it.”
Slave history of the low country supports that view. Class distinc
tion based on skin color was drawn almost from the beginning of the
settlement. Mulattoes, the fair-skinned progeny of white slavers and
African women, were the emerging group and favored by owners. They
got the better jobs and a big share of the largess (such as it was) that was
handed down on the whim of their masters. Purebloods from Africa,
seen as nonadaptive, resented sharply the superior airs of the mulattoes,
who were too eager to conform to white culture. In various rebellions
that were often chronic, the mulattoes were rarely included in conspiratorial
plans; the blooded didn’t trust them.
While Frazier would later call Ali a “half-breed” in Manila, the
phrase was not just a passing comment of frustration; it leaped out
from a tribal flash of racial memory. Always able to feel the lancing
invective with which Ali assaulted him, Frazier began to see it as an
orchestrated campaign to crush any respect he had in the black community.
Blacks who understood the mulatto and pureblood equation
winced. On display every day in the streets, it was now being played
out in a large public way.
The Muslims, it should be pointed out, mirrored the age-old divide
of color. Their leader, Elijah Muhammad, was “color struck.” He taught
his followers that they were descended from “Asiatic blacks,” meaning
that they were from Arab stock, not from the sub-Saharan Africa. Elijah
was a light man, and so were a large part of the Muslim hierarchy; the
so-called sub-Saharans in the movement had subordinate roles. When
Malcolm X established contacts with newly independent African
nations, he was admonished for associating with “these people.” Unlike
Malcolm, Elijah would avoid travel to sub-Saharan Africa during his
pilgrimage to Mecca in 1959. During at least two later visits to Africa,
Ali himself would remark that African women would be more attractive
if they had a little white blood in them.
Ali:
Frazier first met Ali the night following the
Zora Folley bout in the Garden, his last before he exiled for evading
the draft. Durham recalled, “Somebody takes Joe over, `Champ, this
is Joe Frazier,’ and I’m sayin’ I don’t want this happening. I want Ali
remaining a face, a name, nobody important now. I’m training a dog,
you see, to eat a dog.” Ali sized Frazier up and said, “I know who he
is. Stay healthy, Joe. I’ll be back. We gonna do some business.” He
then snapped Joe’s suspenders, saying, “These won’t keep you
standin’. You not big enough for me. But we’ll make some money
anyway.” Joe gave him a big smile and said, “Could be.” Sensing too
much softness in Joe, Durham broke in, saying, “Clay, you ever need
some money, we’ll always have some sparring work for you.” Ali just
looked at Yank, then turned away, with his aide saying to him, “Can
you believe that country ******?” Yank pulled Joe aside and said, “You
best get some sense in your head, boy. You too impressed by him.
You’re somebody. Got a big future. Get them stars outta your eyes,
else he’ll pick the gold right outta your pocket
Next
The Frazier Ali-feud 2-2
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