Why Sonny Liston Didn't Get Up
Despite his championship status, Ali was one anxious man in the spring of 1965. In addition to the very real fear of facing Sonny Liston once again, his marriage was in shambles, and his life in jeopardy.
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Jack Cashill
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7 stories on BoxingScene are published under the Jack Cashill byline.
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Latest Articles by Jack Cashill
Why Ali Betrayed Malcolm X
"Turning my back on Malcolm," says Muhammad Ali 40 years after the fact, "was one of the mistakes that I regret most in my life." To his credit, Ali has come to grips with this tragic misstep, at least partially. His faithful, however, have not. To maintain both Ali and Malcolm X in the same unstable pantheon – an astonishing bit of myth juggling – they have had to gloss over an all but unforgivable act of treachery.
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Why Joe Frazier Won The Fight of The Century
No one in Ali's camp that March 1971 night in Madison Square Garden – Ali included – had ever seen a fighter more determined than Joe Frazier. Frazier gave up 10 pounds in weight, four inches in height, and nine inches in reach. To win, he was going to have to penetrate Ali's long-range defenses. To penetrate, he was going to have to take some serious hits. To survive those hits, he was going to have to bob and weave from the waist, do it repeatedly, and do it all night, an exertion of nearly inhuman persistence and energy.
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The Unusual Men To Whom Ali Paid Homage
In September 1960, the very same month Ali won his Olympic gold in Rome, Joseph Mobutu staged a coup in the Congo and placed elected President Patrice Lumumba under house arrest. In November, Lumumba escaped but was recaptured by Mobutu's troops. They eventually delivered him into the lethal hands of rebel leader, Moise Tshombe, with the understanding that he would be permanently removed from center stage.
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How one boxer finally crossed the racial divide
Those who believe in the great good humor of God and the glory of the American dream had to have felt vindicated Nov. 5, 1994.
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How Ali found God and became a Republican
Muhammad Ali was changing in ways that few people saw or chose to see. He traces his hour of enlightenment to "around 1983." It was only then that he became a "true believer." Always more honest than the mythmakers around him, Ali sheds needed light here on his own reality. Before this moment, he confesses to biographer Tom Hauser, "I thought I was a true believer, but I wasn't. I fit my religion to do what I wanted. I did things that were wrong, and chased women all the time."
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How Ali's Legacy Destroyed Mike Tyson
Promoter Don King had taken Muhammad Ali's misbegotten racial rap and commercialized it. If Ali was sincere, King was not, and his cynicism made him all the more lethal. Ali abandoned racism as he and the society matured, just as Malcolm X had before him. King and the other race hustlers – Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton among them – had no more reason to abandon racism than they did any other viable promotional gimmick – Christianity, Islam, patriotism, whatever.
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