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Ali's betrayal of Frazier
"See," he says, "you gotta be black to appreciate just how pretty I am. The people all know that. Look at my skin. Look at how nice and bronze it is. Not Frazier. Frazier is real dark, real black. He’s just an ugly ******."-Muhammad Ali
"A little old ****** boy who ain't been anywhere 'cept Philly, never done anything for nobody 'cept rich peple that back him and politician crooks, never had a thought in his dumb head 'cept for himself"-Muhammad Ali
"This is black. You can't take who I am. You turn on your friend for what? So you impress them Muslim fools?"-Joe Frazier
Friendship:
Frazier tried to allay his dread, "You'll be back. Better than ever." Ali said, "Joe, you the big man now. You gotta keep my name out there. Don't let them forget." To that end, Frazier lobbied the press, Commision people, and rallied some old champs like Joe Louis, who was unsympathetic to Ali, largely because of his black nationalism, his loud presentation of self, his evasion of the military. Infuriated with how agreeable Joe was when it came to Ali, Yank Durham exploded one day, "You better start keeping you mouth shut about him. We dont need him. He needs us! Don't you understand anything, boy? He using you. Wake up for chrissake!"
Betrayal:
Frazier never forgot that exchange. "Yank was right the whole time," he said now, with regret as he took another small pull on the brandy jug. Nor would he ever forget what took place some time later, in 1969 in Philly, the abrupt severing of what Joe thought to be a bond bewtween them. The pair arranged a meeting, designed to attract press attention and heat up the perception of them as inseperable rivals. Ali was on WHAT-Radio, and Joe and Gypsy had the interview on in the gym. "He somthin', aint he?" Joe said to Gyp with a laugh. Ali was into his usual government rant, then suddenly shifted targets and began calling Joe clumsy a fighter without Class, an Uncle Tom. Ali callled Frazier a coward, and said if he wasn't, he should show up at the PAL gym in an hour and they'd settle the matter. Gypsy recalled: "Joe crush the radio with his foot. He say, he makin a fool of me in my backyard." When Joe reached the gym, it was packed, the ring posts bent by the surge of people inside. With Ali screaming, Joe hurriedly stripped of his shirt. A ploce sergeant, Vince Furlong, jumped between them, saying "None of that here. Take it to the park." Ali said to Joe, "You follow, or you a coward."
Joe declined as Ali led a big crowd through the black ghetto to Fairmount Park. But Durham hopped into his car and joinedi the parade behind Ali. Durham got up, raced up to Ali, and jabbed a finger in his face. "I'll fight you when you get a license," Yank said, using the personal pronoun that always bemused Frazier. "What the hell you trying to do here? You want work, come to our gym, and you can work with my kids. I'll pay you good. Joe's no chump. " By not joining Ali in the park, Joe felt silly, used, an object of ridicule and diminished in stature. After Joe and Ali appeared on the Mike Douglas Show the next day, Ali waited for him outside across the street. He then ran across to Frazier and threw a punch, a soft right, that caught Joe on the shoulder. They grappled. Ali sent out another right, missing Joe and zinging Durham, who held his eye. "You crazy motha****a," Durham shouted. He then mentioned to some in the crowd to help pull Joe away. On the way home, Frazier kept saying over and over to Gypsy, "I can't believe I trusted him."
And so that same evening they drove over to see Ali at his Cherry Hill house. Gypsy was saying, "Smoke, this ain't right. Let it pass. He wanna see you like this. He ain't right in the head. You playin' his game." Joe said:"It ain't no game to me." He then said," You tell Yank about this and you be no friend of mine. Ever." Two Muslims with shoulder arms answered the door. One went back to fetch Ali, and he came to the door with a big smile. He looked down at little Gypsy. According to Gypsy years later, here is what took place.
"who's the shrimp?" Ali asked.
Gypsy shot back, "Yeah, gimme five inches, and I whup your faffot ass good."
Ali ignored him, saying to Joe, " Come on in. My, my, we have some fun today."
"Right here'll do," Joe said. "And it weren't no fum for me. Showin' me up like that. Right here in my hometown. Callin' me names."
The Muslims drew in closer to Ali. Joe said to them:"Them guns don't me **** to me."
Ali said. "Just fun, Joe. That's all. Gotta keep my name outh there. Don't mean nuthin' by it."
"Coward? Uncle Tom? Only one I've been Tommin' for is you! Names like that ain't just fun. Those sorry ass Muslims leadin' you on me. It gonna stop right here."
"Don't talk about my religion, "Ali said. "I can't let ya do that. Go and cool down."
"Ain't ever gonna be coolin' down now. **** your religion. We're talkin' about me. Who I am." Joe extended his hand, saying, "This is black. You can't take who I am. You turn on your friend for what? So you impress them Muslim fools, so you can be the big man."
Ali said," We finished talkin'." He turned back into the house. Frazier snapped, "That's it, get the **** outta here. Hide behind your shooter. You and me, its comin'.
History:
It wasn't until Ali began to humiliate Frazier about his blackness, tried to turn him into a white pawn, that he started to repond 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 celled Geechee, but were actually Gullah and they spoke a languae of their own. They had thier 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 beynd slavery. they were in fact a proud, independent people who clung to their African ways (to assimilate wast to lose thier souls) with small adjustments for reality
"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 distinction based on skin colour was drawn almost from the beginning of the settlement. Mulattoes, the fair-skinned progeny of the white slavers and Afican women, were the emerging group and favoured by the owners. They got the better jobs and the bigger share of the largess (such as it was) that was handed down on the whim of their masters. Pureblodds from Africa, seen as nonadaptive, resented by the superior airs of the mulattoes, who were to eager to conform oto white culture. In various rebellions that werew often chronic, the mulattoes were rarely included in conspiratorial plans; the Full-blood didn't trust them.
While Frazier would later call Ali a "half-breed" in Manilla, the phrae 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 mulattoe and pureblood equation winced. On display every day on the streets, it was now being played out in a large public way.
Color Struck:
The Muslims, it should be pointed out, mirrored the age old divide of color. Their leader, Elijah Muhammad, was "colour struck." he taught his followers that they were descended from "Asiatic blacks," Meaning that they were descended from Arab stock, not from the Sub-Saharan Africans. Elijah Muhammad was a light man, so were a large part of the Muslim hierarchy; the so-called Sub-Saharans in the movement had subordinate roles. When Malcolm x established contact with the newly independent African nations, he was admonished for associating with "those people." Unlike Malcolm, Elijah Muhammad 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 blodd in them.
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