Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, a history podcast that does what it says in the title. I'm your host, Margaret kilj It with me todays I and Johnson.
Hi yan, Hey Margaret, how are you?
I'm doing all right? Our producer Sophie Oh, I guess I should say who you are? Ian as an audio engineer. You do other stuff too? How come this?
He's also one half of the d He's DJ Gladiator with our boy DJ Daniel, also on the Cool Zone medio team. We have the full Gladiator, which is something I like to say as often as legally allowed. You do say, I say it as many times as I can.
Yeah, But yeah, you know, my main my main gig is chopping up these podcasts. Recently got into tennis. That's been fun. Yeah, and uh yeah, I do love to DJ. That's it's a lot of fun.
So, yeah, are you gonna make a DJ controller that's like a tennis racket and then it's like MIDI based on where the height and.
No, that's that's a little beyond that's a little bit beyond my my scope, you know, the engineering side of it. That's I'll leave that to someone else.
Fine, okay. Our producer Sophie, Hi, Sophie, how you doing?
My dog has to have surgery. I am sad, but I am okay. I am holding on bye bye by small amount.
But every time bad stuff happens to my friend's dogs, I just like go out and hug grintraw. That's what you're supposed to do.
Yeah, that's appropriate response.
My my least my least favorite thing about UH social media is when you randomly see sad animal ship without your consent, Like.
How would people do that?
TikTok is pretty bad about it, Like it's it's like you're like scrolling, You're like, ah, disassociation, and you see like cute animal things and it all of a sudden it's like, no, I don't want to see some sad dog it no wants nobody wants to see that anyways. Sorry, this is cool people, cool stuff. Our theme songs by young woman Ian edits it. I produce it, Margaret writes research and hosts it. And this week we're talking about Muhammad Ali.
Yeah I did it.
Hell yeah. This week we're talking about Momhammed Ali, one of the greatest athletes, says that I know, but it's a script and like, how am I going to start the second half of those?
Fair enough? That's a good point.
My My main move is to say things off script and then still have to read them later in the script. That's like, that's what that is.
That is that's classic.
Wait, because I'm like, I don't know how to I can't on the fly edit it.
Is there any TV in this episode?
There is no tuberculosis in this entire episode?
You know what?
I'll take? Can some over dianetics?
Yes, every time, really thoroughly, because there's antibiotics for that shit.
Yeah, But Muhammad A Lee gets out way before dianetics kick in, so this this episode will be entirely free of that. So first episode we talked mostly about the Nation of Islam, the religion of movement he spent most of his boxing career, and today we're gonna talk about the man himself. Muhammad Ali was born Cassius Clay. I thought about not using that name, and then I realized he uses it himself in his books to talk about
when he was younger. But it was a whole thing where people would like basically dead name him constantly just to be a fucking dick to him and his name is Muhammad Ali. He was born on January seventeenth, nineteen forty two, in Louisville, Kentucky. His father was a painter. He usually gets called a sign painter and that's his job, but he he was a painter. He painted a ton of a ton of murals, a ton of paintings. His mother was a domestic Unlike Jack before him, he was
deeply impersonally affected by segregation as a kid. Like literally once he's like waiting at a bus stop and he needs water and he's like this is like when he's like so young, he can't even remember this, and his mom like takes him in to get a couple of water, and they're like, no, we're not giving your kid a cup of water, you know, Okay, yeah, I don't know if you knew this, but segregation's bad. He was dyslexic.
He struggled in school. His family was Baptist and went to church every Sunday, and his father painted a lot of the murals in the church and every other Baptist church in the city. Although actually I read that, but also the fact that his father was Methodist and they went to his mother's Baptist church, but you know whatever. He speaks well of his parents and his childhood and his specifically, one of the things he talks about is his father wasn't afraid to show affection to his children.
Oh that's nice.
And yeah. And then he had his favorite game that he liked playing as a kid. His favorite game was trying not to get hit by rocks.
Oh okay, okay.
Specifically, his favorite game was have his younger brother throw rocks at him and see if he could dodge them.
Oh, is this how he developed the footwork and the Oh yeah, okay, I see okay, Yeah, it's coming together. Oh yeah.
So if you want to toughen up your kid, just get them to get him into dodge rock.
You know, dodge Rock.
That's great. So one day, as the story goes, and I don't have a counter argument to the story. It's actually the story. This is the story, he says to himself. Young Muhammad, he's twelve years old. He had his bike stolen. It's his prized possession. It was not a cheap bike. It was a red and white Shwin and he wanted to go find a cop to report it stolen. And he heard that this white cop named Joe Martin might be able to help him who ran a boxing jim.
So he shows up a Joe's boxing Jim and is like, you should help me find that kid so I can beat him up. And there's like two versions of this, and one is the cop is like, hey, why not learn to box before you go beat him up? So you're better at beating him up. And there's another version that's like the cop and everyone else is like, oh God, if the kid who stole your bike is a white kid, you're gonna end up dead. Like, let's just try and get you to not go hunt down your bike. Right,
So cameo buy a cop who did something good? Rare, I know, especially Louisville, Kentucky, nineteen fifty four. White CoP's unexpected.
Yeah.
So he starts boxing and he's really fucking good at it. And he's really good at it partly because he just like sets his mind to it. There's like natural talent. But he talks a lot about how it's like, no, it's that he trained six days a week and you know, he grew up playing dodge rock and boxing kept him out of trouble on away from drinking and smoking. He got his first fight really quick after that. In nineteen
fifty four, he's still twelve, he has ninety pounds. His opponent is bigger and taller and white, and little Ali is like afraid, and his dad's like, nah, go whop that white kid's ass. It's great, like you're in the ring, you know. Little Ali won. He went on to win a lot And one of the stories that I really like is that he tracked down the neighborhood bully. There's this kid named Corky Baker and the first time Ali saw, yeah, quirky.
Yeah, that's like a nineteen fifty ass name. Okay, yeah yeah.
And to make it as nineteen fifties as possible, the first time Ali saw Quirky, Muhammadli at least describes it this way. Krky was holding a football player upside down and shaking him for loose change.
Classic yeah yeah.
And everyone was always afraid of Corky Baker, but Muhammad Ali, I would say, not Muhammad Ali, but no, he was afraid, but Muhammad Ali believed in doing what he was afraid of. So Ali challenged him to a fight. But he was like, I'm not gonna fight you here in the streets. I'm gonna fight you in the ring, and Corky was basically like, boxing's for sissy's. But everyone on the streets starts calling him. This is straight up just I'm just describing a nineteen
fifties movie. Yeah, but everyone around him starts calling him a coward, and so he gives in and he fights Ali in the ring. And it was a title match. The title was King of the Street. Whoever wins is King of the Street. It's two rounds. Quirky never lands a single punch. After two rounds of the black eye, Corky says literally, this ain't fair and runs off like just like.
Not Quirky, saying this ain't fair. Okay, yeah, Corky, I know shit I could take.
He would probably take Quirky. After this, Ali and his friends and all the neighborhood kids run down the street chanting, We're free, We're free. Long live the King were free.
That's awesome.
Yeah, and Corky gets a redemption arc. So after this, Corky stops fucking with people he like, stops being a bully. And this is a huge life lesson for young Ali. If you stand up to bullies, you stand up, you stand up to them. And you stand up to them for yourself and everyone else. He winds up befriending Quirky. They don't become tight, but they stay in touch until years later when Corky dies in a shootout with the cops.
Oh god, I know, it was so great and then it got so bad. I know, I know.
When he was eighteen, not Quirky. But when Muhammad Ali was eighteen, he goes to the fucking Olympics in Rome and he's afraid to fly. He'd only flown twice before. This is like his big fear besides Corky, and he's conquered that fear. He's afraid to fly. He's only flown twice before. He flew to California and back for the Olympic trials. He was so afraid that he wasn't going
to go. But his father's advice quote always confront the things that you fear, got to him, and with a good fatherly pep talk, he goes out and buys a parachute and brings the parachute on the plane because he is a prepper king, that is all I'm saying. So he goes to Rome and he wins the gold medal for yeah, I didn't write it into the script. It's it's the lighter than heavyweight. It's the like light heavyweight or something.
Was it like, yeah, like light heavyweight, or there's like welter weight, or.
It wasn't welter weight because I remember that was as a funny name. Okay, so light heavyweight is probably yeah, does that make sense? Yeah, I think welterweight was when I was the like brief time I was learning boxing, I think I was welterweight, but I can't remember.
He got a gold medal at eighteen for light heavyweight division at the nineteen sixties Summer Olympics.
Check by the producer.
Yeah, excellent.
So he comes back and he thinks, he's like, oh, I'm good. Racism will not be able to stand up to this fucking gold medal because he comes back and there's like when he shows up in Louisville, there's crowds of black people and white people cheering for him. The mayor takes him as like, this is the key to the city. The gold medal is mayor doesn't give him a different key.
He's a hometown hero. Yeah.
Yeah, except there's a problem.
The problem in America.
Yeah, yeah, even while he's in Rome, a Soviet interviewer comes up. It gets in a really sick burn. The Soviet is like, so, how does it feel to have like won a medal for a cut tree that won't let you eat it in restaurants?
Hmm yeah and uh.
And so he goes and he's home and he wears the gold medal everywhere. He's like fucking he showers with it. It's like causing back problems because he's like sleeping with it on and it like, you know, yeah.
I would do the same thing, and I just want a gold medal. Yeah, I would never take yeah. Yeah.
One day, he and a friend try to eat at a diner and the waitress says, we don't serve negroes, and he responded, well, we don't eat them either. Oh that's good, I know, which is how you know he's going to grow up to be a dad, because he's got them dad jokes.
Lock.
Yeah. And there's a couple of different versions of the He writes a lot of what I'm saying is like from his own autobiography, but other people, including his friends, have said that he lies in his autobiography in order to like say his friends have said things like, damn those honkeys, WI believe anything you tell him, and they said that specifically around he says that he got so mad that he threw his gold medal into the river.
Okay, yeah, that's like the common story that I've heard.
Yeah, and you know, and that story comes from him, But one of his friends later was like, no, like that's not true either way. Up to that point, he wore the medal every moment of his life. Afterwards, he realized it's just a material object. He starts taking it off. After winning the gold medal. He starts his professional career. And I don't know if you knew this, he's really good at boxing.
I had heard that.
Yeah, yeah, like some sort of superlative I think. So he wins a lot, and he usually wins by knockout. Of his first nineteen fights, which he won all of he won fifteen of them by knockout.
Wow. Yeah.
And one of his whole things is that he's like, you can't fucking hit him, and so he got that famous line, float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. He he dodges more than he blocks, and then he hits really fucking hard.
It's all that Dodge rock.
Yeah, it's really like poetic and arn'tful the way that that he performs it.
Yeah. I I like watching boxing honestly, Like I like watching for all the like, I have this whole thing where it's like the only reason I don't know sports is that I don't know pop culture. It's like not actually like sports are actually really fucking cool. Yeah, pop culture could be really fucking cool too. I'm not trying to just I like watching.
Yeah, I also.
I like I like in like the fighting sports, the walkins when they walk into the to the arena. Itash.
It's hard if that doesn't get you hyped, Like what, Yeah, well, do you want to know where he got his showman walkins and attitude from?
Because it's the next paragraph in the script?
Is it? No?
Is it?
Actually?
Is it?
Actually?
Because I was just I was just talking it is yep? Fuck yeah really on my game today. Yeah.
So he's an incredible boxer, he's also an incredible showman. And he learned this and he talks about this a lot. He met this guy named gorgeous George. You'll ever seen gorgeous George. No, Gorgeous George is like he's the first professional wrestler who does the villain heel, who like you just want to hit because he's so smart. Yes, yes, Gorgeous George is a flamboyant wrestler who was as effeminate
as possible. He kept his hair bleached blonde and long and pinned up in gold plated bobby pins, which he distributed to his fans and called Georgie pins. He marched to the ring to that graduation song, Pomp and Circumstance, like no, I can't do it. It's out of my head. As soon as I tried, Sophie, can you sing pomp and circumstance?
Oh, I just started thinking of like vitamin C graduation And now that's the only thing playing in my head.
I get sing that. I don't even know what it is. That's okay, Well is that we'll play for you after? Yeah? Okay, thanks. Mark had always tricks me into singing. Nobody else can do that. So he marches into the graduation song with people throwing rose petals. He gets up on into the ring and he disinfects it with Chanelle number five, which is completely unproblematic, and there's no other podcast that explores
the problematic history of Chanel. There's that behind the bastards talking about this anyway, And he talks crazy shit on his opponents, and he brings in the crowds because people want to see him get beat up, Like yes, because he and so half of them come to jeer him, but they come and they buy tickets, and so this is how he learns that, Like, this is how Muhammad Ali learns, like if people hate you, you still make money off the people who hate you.
The heat is good, The heat is good.
That's basically the strategy of like every UFC situation.
Yeah, and so that's where this comes from. Is gorgeous George the all but a drag queen, like the tightest line between gorgeous George and a drag queen and Muhammad Ali fucking love gorgeous George and so and he's like, look, half of Muhammad Ali used it as like, OK, right, I'm drawing in crowds and half of the angry white people want to see me lose. But that's fine. All the racists can just give me their money. That's not a problem for me.
Right. It reminds me of like when people in like the nineties were like burning all those nwacds likews hey, they paid for him, like I don't care what they do with them after.
I know, And then it's just more publicity, is like exactly exactly, And so during this showman stage, he's already started to do some poetry. When he gets off of the plane with the gold medal is the first time he publicly recites a poem. But part of his showman
thing is his poetry. He's basically rapping, and a lot of sources will call him the first rapper, although the first of any of that kind of sort of thing is impossible to really know, right, He writes dis poetry and he recites it constantly, and he constantly belittles his opponents, and he talks himself up, and this is like part of why he matters, because he didn't fucking make himself small for white people. He also, and I love this
about him, constantly talked about how pretty he was. He'd say, I'm as pretty as a girl. He'd say, I'm handsome, I'm fast, I'm pretty, and I can't possibly be beat. And part of that talking is the reason he's so pretty. When he's saying I'm so pretty, he's saying because no one can punch me in my face. I'm too fast.
Yeah.
He also started making predictions about his fights, and he would encode them into poetry, like when you come to the fight, don't block the aisles, and don't block the door where you all may go home. After round four, when he would make these predictions, he got seventeen out of twenty one of them right about. That's what round he would win.
Yeah.
Yeah, Like people started betting based on his predictions that he would win in whatever round he said he would win.
Did you talked about them demoralizing? That is somebody's like, I'm going to knock you out in the third round, and then they actually do it, and then you're just like, well shit, I know you know what's coming, and he still happens.
I know I would to fight it. I mean I wouldn't actually, because like one of the things that he talks about is that he considered his boxing like very scientific. He was not the largest, he didn't have the furthest reach, he was not the strongest, he didn't have the best knockout punch. He had a very good knockout punch, but he considered himself like a scientific boxer. He would like study it, you know.
Yeah, he was more like strategic and the tactical side of it.
Maybe yeah, yeah. And one of the things that was part of his strategy was don't try to hurt your opponent. He talked about how like, if you're winning, don't just like damage someone just because you can. And that's interesting. I never really considered, like, you know, anytime I'm like sparring or something, I've never prefer like, I've never fought even an amateur round of just practiced, you know, and like when you're sparring, it's just like, well, I want
to win, right, you know. It's like, oh fuck, I'm in a fight. I better win this fight. Well, when you're so fucking good, you can just like actually control what's happening. I just I'm really impressed by all this shit. He also got into stage magic, and he joined a stage magician's union, so he's not just a hero but a union man.
That's awesome.
He also consciously talked about how he grew up without black role models on TV in the public eye, so he's set about to become one. And around this same time as he starts his professional career, he gets into the Nation of Islam. But before we talk about that, we should talk about turtles. Turtles are great. We should go back to being sponsored by turtles.
Nice, I love turtles.
Yeah, here's some ads for turtles.
And we're back.
And so at the beginning of his career, he's excited about the Nation of Islam, but he he doesn't have the means to join it. And actually, one thing I read is that they weren't sure about accepting a boxer, but I wasn't able to find out more information about
specifically that. I'm sure that information exists, but there's someone referred to it as like the professional athlete with the most words written about them in history, you know, like people have talked a lot about Muhammad Ali because he's fucking cool and worth talking about. In nineteen fifty nine, he learns about the Nation of Islam and he gets
really excited by them. By nineteen sixty two, he becomes friends with Malcolm X, and by nineteen sixty four he was ready to fight for the heavyweight Championship of the World, which was held by another black man named Sonny. Liston Boxing has apparently gotten over its obsession with Jay names. At this point, Sonny is a huge man with a huge personality. He's also a mafia enforcer. Yeah, but one time a cop called him some racial slurs, so he beat the shit out of the cop, broke the CoP's knee,
and took the cops gun. So I kind of like Sonny hero. Yeah, Muhammed fought him. The odds were heavily against him seven to one, like the book the booking odds, Muhammed is this young upstart Sonny Liston is the fucking giant champion of everything. You know, Muhammad Ali by round three he's winning Listen.
Uh.
I think it's the first time he gets cut in his professional career. He needs stitches for a cut under his eye. After round four, Muhammad had something in his eye that was burning him when he's in the sitting in the corner afterwards and he can't see. And a lot of people think the mafia guy was cheating with oil of winter green on his gloves to blind Muhammed. M It's possible, though, that's that seems possible. It's also entirely possible that Liston's cut man. I did not know that.
And there's a job called cut man in boxing. Whish is the doctor the ringside doctor. Yeah, yeah, it's possible. Liston's cut man white Tis had put something probably on that cut, right, and then that had gotten onto the guy's gloves and then gotten onto you know, gotten to Liston's gloves and then gotten in Muhammad's eyes.
That is possible.
And someone on Listen's side like literally wiped his own eyes with the sponge to prove there wasn't some foul play like the sponge that he used to like wipe off the guy's gloves. So I don't know either way.
In round five, Mhammad Ali fights almost completely blind. By round six, it was cleared up and Liston calls it quits rather than fight around seven, so Muhammad Ali becomes the heavyweight champion of the world and Liston wants a rematch or one of them wants to rematch as soon as Listen And this one I couldn't figure out, and I'm kind of curious, like this one is like everyone talks about it, but no one really conjectures too hard.
They have a rematch and Listen goes down in the first round from a six inch punch that everyone calls the phantom punch and basically says like, couldn't possibly have knocked him down. So it's completely possible that Liston took a dive. Other people say, no, it's legit.
They think he threw the fight potentially.
Yeah, And then if he threw the fight, my first thought was like, oh, he's a mafia guy. He got paid to whatever.
Right, That's literally immediately what I thought. Yeah, yeah.
Later Liston implied that he was afraid of the Nation of Islam. Oh, and what they would sing, what they would do if he like won. I I don't know, Muhammad Ali if so, was not excited or in on it, like he literally was like yelling, get up and fight, sucker, and no one will believe that, Like, no one will believe I actually beat you.
You know.
But now that Muhammad Ali is the heavyweight champion of the world, they sign him up more officially Elijah Muhammad gives him the name Muhammad Ali, and he moves to Chicago to be near the center of the Nation of Islam. And most journalists refuse to call Muhammad Ali. They calmcashus and he just gets madder and madder about it, which is completely fucking understandable. And he said, quote, why should I keep my white slave master's name visible and my
black ancestors invisible, unknown, unhonored. Shortly after Ali joins the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X leaves it. Like I said earlier, Malcolm tried to get him to quit too, but Ali didn't quit. Ali stays in the movement. He becomes an outspoken proponent of it, including the really positive stuff like developing black self determination and pride, and including the things
that are less popular now, like advocating against interracial marriage. Meanwhile, he married his first wife, Sanji Roy and it didn't last because she wouldn't conform to the conservative values of
the Nation of Islam. He hated that she wore makeup and dressed provocatively and went out to bars and partied and all that shit, Which is to say, Muhammad Ali is not going to get featured on our spin off show great men in history who were actually good to the women in their lives, at least not young Muhammad. The way that he interacts with his family is well, it's part of his arc.
You know.
I don't want to say redemption arc, because that's the main thing is whatever. He's fucking complicated and I think he's fucking cool, and we'll keep talking about it. His children overall seem to have a positive impression of him, and he changed his perceptions on lots of stuff as his life continued. But he was married four times. He had at least nine children, including several with people who
he wasn't married to. While he was married to other people, he had a bunch of affairs and mistresses, including a sixteen year old when he was thirty two. Another time he left his wife for a young hot model. He says that one of his only regrets about his career is the time it took him away from his children, that he wasn't as good of a father as he wanted to be, So you know that's part of him complicated.
Yeah. Yeah.
This other thing is happening in the nineteen sixties the US. I don't know if you've heard about this. It did an imperialism in Vietnam.
Oh yeah, yeah.
For more on that, see about eighty percent of the episodes of this show I have done this year because I'm sticking to the sixties seventies for a little while, because there's so much here. And Muhammad Ali he was not the highest bracket on the draft. The highest bracket is one A. He was one why because he'd failed some literacy tests because of his dyslexia until nineteen sixty six when they were like whatever, fuck it, who cares, and they lowered their standards and he was suddenly one
a again. And there's a lot of sketchiness around this. A lot of people are like, this is a way to shut him up or get him killed. The US sure like putting black soldiers in harms. Way, I think it's more likely because they told him they were going to try and do this, that he wouldn't have to pick up a gun. They just wanted to use him for like propaganda and have him like fight exhibition matches and shit and like get other young black men killed instead, you know.
Okay, yeah that makes sense. Hmm. Yeah.
That was actually because the first time i'd heard about any resisted the draft, I was like, why would you fucking make Muhammad Ali a private and put him in the front, you know? And yeah they thought of that too. Despite being bad. The US government has a modicum of intelligence, but Ali wasn't gonna fucking go. There was no way to quote him. And I think I used this quote before, similar quote quote, man, I ain't got no quarrel with
them Viet Kong. Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights. He's also got another good quote that I can't repeat about what words the Viet Cong have never called him. He registers as a conscientious objector. This part I didn't know until even the Nation of Islam tried to persuade him to accept induction.
His parents and in the Nation of Islam are like, just go, you don't have to fight anyone. You'll just fight some exhibition matches. It'll just be easier. But he's like, no, I'm not going to fucking do it. So when he gets called up anyway, he goes to the induction center and he refuses to step up when they call his name. They warn him, being like, hey, if you don't step up, it's a felony, And he refuses a total of three times. The government fucking flips out on him. Every state in
the country pulls his boxing license. The New York State Athletic Commission stripped him of the heavyweight championship even though he had never lost, and they take his passport away because he's like pending trial, so he can't fight anywhere. That's his livelihood and purpose in life, and he can't do it. His celebrity and his polarizing of society just spike at this point. He already has polarized a shit
out of everyone. When he like came out next with Malcolm X and was like, yo, I'm Muslim now in nineteen sixty four, everyone was like, oh fuck, you know, But yeah, he polarizes the shit out of society. Here is a proud black man willing to put it all on the line for his beliefs, to refuse to do something evil the agents of white supremacy there on the other side of the polarization. Not only was he constantly being threatened, but newspapers who wrote in support of him
had bomb threats at their offices. One journalist had his windshields smashed out for writing things like Muhammad Ali isn't doing something bad, you know, And he was found guilty of draft resistance. His argument was, noamconcious subjector I didn't resist. I showed up and told them I'm not going to do it, and he takes it all the way to the Supreme Court. So he wasn't in prison while they deliberated,
but he wasn't allowed to do his job. So instead he travels around speaking at colleges talking about black power and draft resistance and why the US should get the hell out of Vietnam. And one random right wing pundit I listened to the Muhammad Ali story from a right wing point of view, and it talks about how having done this for the lucrative college speaking money. You ever spoken at a college. It's not a very good way
to make money. You don't say no, Okay, there's an exception to this when I lived out of a van and four hundred dollars was a lot of money, like a lot, a lot of money.
He was really.
Lucrative to speak at college's, Okay, he was. He was raking in money as a as a fighter, right, as a boxer, Yeah, talking to colleges. I'm sure they paid him more than four hundred dollars to come speak. This is not in the same fucking league as professional boxing and him doing this. It is hard to overstate how
influential this is on American politics. Black political prisoner Mamia bou Jamal said about him, quote, as someone who grew up very young in the party Black Panther Party, I didn't form a lot of the idolatries that many age mates did at fourteen to fifteen, I wasn't fantasizing about being a member of the NBA or NFL. I was a member of the Black Panthers and that was enough for me. But if ever there was a sports hero to us, it was Muhammad Ali. He influenced the Black
Panthers more directly than that too. The first use of the Black Panther symbol had a slogan with it, we are the Greatest. And this is the collectivization of of Ali's personal motto, I am the Greatest. Huey Newton, one of the co founders of the Panthers, was clear that it was watching speeches by Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali that had inspired his political growth. And the difference for the Panthers is that, at least for Huey Newton when he's talking about this, is that he had enough of
religion right. But the other stuff he quite liked that Malcolm X, Muhammed Ali were saying he was a hero to black troops because the black troops knew they were being fucking used. His words and his deeds helped inspire the black troops who refused service and those who turned their guns around on their actual pressers, the white officers who were forcing them to go kill and die in an unjust war.
Yeah.
I mean, it's just like he had a massive platform and he was willing to burn it to the ground to do what was right, and by doing so, he helped fucking stop a war. So he's cool.
Yeah, that's awesome.
He's fucking cool. Yeah.
Yeah. You know the fact that they took away his livelihood and stripped him of the titles and everything, but he still felt the obligation and found a way to use the platform that he had to still, you know, empower people and inspire people. Even if he couldn't do it in a ring, he was going to find another way to do it, and that that's awesome. Yeah.
Yeah. And he he also was standing up to the Nation of Islam. They kicked him out during this m Yeah, as Muhammad put it, quote, the Nation of Islam didn't make me a Muslim. My belief in God made me a Muslim. And slowly, after three years, he's allowed to box again. And the first place I think I was wrong. I think I said his first fight was the fight of the century when he came back, that's not true. That was his third fight back.
Oh okay.
The first place that let him box again was in Atlanta, because Atlanta's cool sometimes and the black political establishment was strong there, so they basically reinstate. They were the first people to reinstate his license because they were like whatever, Like he's Muhammad Ali. Why are we preventing him from boxing. He can fight here, right, okay? And so he fights
and he wins. And then I believe I've read both that the Supreme Court thing that happens in a moment is why, and I've also read that it was a lawsuit in New York. Either way, something happens in New York. He's allowed to box there again. He faces another guy, he wins, and now he's ready to fight for his championship to get it back. He is ready for the
second Fight of the Century. Much like the Battle of the Too Many People with j Name sixty years earlier, this one was also presented as a battle between the forces of whiteness and good in America and apple Pie on one side, and the evil black man who wants to murder all the white people on the other side. The catch this time, I think I've alluded to already. Joe Fraser, the heavyweight champion, is also black, so it's a little fucked up. Yeah, and Joe Fraser Muhammad Ali's
relationship isn't as simple as anyone seems to say. There's a version where Fraser and Ali were friends for a while after all, before all of this, Fraser guy gave Ali money while he was out of work and helped him get his boxing license reinstated. But this wasn't necessarily altruism. People didn't really take Fraser seriously as the heavy white champion because he'd never beat the last way he beat the lat Actually, I don't remember if he was whatever. He hadn't beat Ali, so no one took Fraser.
It's I think he beat the guy that they gave the belt to and he took it off Ali or something like that. Yeah.
Yeah, Frasier talked directly with President Nixon about getting Ali reinstated so that Fraser could beat him and show the world that the Muslim extremist wasn't as good as a patriot like Fraser, or at least that is the way that it is phrased in some versions of this. Because everyone is a showman, everyone is playing into this shit. You know, it's like kind of hard to parse out. So they talked shit on each other. Fraser kept dead naming Ali. Ali called Fraser a dumb tool of the
white establishment and an uncle Tom. Neither side appreciated this about what the other was doing, and it got painted by both Muhammad Ali and the media as a fight between black and white, even though it wasn't. And the whole thing is that Muhammed Ali is building up his reputation as the people's champion at this point. Right the Fight of the Century was in Madison Square Garden. We talked about it in our episode about the Catholic burglars
and FBI. On the night of the match, Acifist broke into an FBI office and stole documents proving conclusively how the FEDS have been spying on everyone but Ali, at least by his own telling of this. He he got cocky. He was like, of course, I'm gonna win that, Muhammad Ali, you know, he's never lost, is a reasonable assumption Primmed have made right. He loses, and this is his first defeat. But if you want to not get defeat, well, actually, let's do the Let's get sponsored by something nice. We
got sponsored by turtles. But is there anything ian that you want to be sponsored by that's particularly like a nice good thing.
Yes, I've been thinking about this for a while. You know, when you like just wash your sheets and you make your bed all nice, that first that first night sleep in like a freshly laundered bed, that's like, there's no better feeling in the world. We want to be sponsored by that.
Hell yeah, we are sponsored by first night of sleep in freshly londered sheets. Not well, he might also be sponsored by specific mattresses or linen sheet sets, but that's not our main sponsor. Our main sponsor is the first night of sleep in a freshly londoned bed. Oh yeah, and we're back. So in nineteen seventy one, the Supreme Court overturned his conviction unanimously. He should not have been
denied a conscientious objector status. It was absolutely part of his religion to not go fight in this war, and part of their evidence in favor of this was actually the autobiography of Malcolm X, which helped them understand that this was a sincere conviction and not cowardice on his part. I think the other argument against it being cowardice is it's Muhammad Ali. Like anything that man is afraid of, he does anyway. But so he's back, he keeps fighting.
He's actually back in the Nation of Islam. I didn't read. I didn't find about how his return after being kicked out for a while went. A lot of people at least during this time period seems to get kicked out and reaccepted back into the Nation of Islam. I think things are getting a little hectic in that organization this point. So he kept fighting, and in nineteen seventy four he
gets a rematch with Joe Fraser. But the problem is is that Joe had lost his championship already to a guy who sells girls named George Foreman, and so in order to fight Foreman, he needs to fight Fraser. So in order to get his belt back, he needs to beat the person who beat him and then beat the guy who beat the person who beat him, which is an uphill battle, and he wins. He fucking rematches Joe Fraser and he fucking wins.
Oh, I kind of at this point, are once their relationship like with Joe Fraser and Ali, are they still kind of like on the opposite sides of this like white versus black like kind of thing, or has that been kind of like swept aside at this point. I'm just curious.
This is when it gets even worse. I think that you this is when I believe this is the point at which Muhammad Ali is carrying around a stuffed gorilla in his pocket and saying he's gonna beat that ugly gorilla, yes, which I think even at the time people were like, yeah, that's racist.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can see why Joe Fraser would not like Muhammad Ali after some things that like that. Yeah yeah, yeah, okay.
And I don't know whether Joe. I think Joe Fraser actually accepted this apology. And in his in Muhammad Ali's book The Soul of a Butterfly, which is one of his later autobiographies, he's like, I went too far.
That was bad.
I should not have done that. And he's fairly like direct that He's like he was like, I was just doing my bit, but that is not an acceptable thing.
I should have done, right, he took it too far?
Okay, yeah, yeah, but yeah, his second match with Joe Fraser, I think is where he like really just starts pulling out all the stops on on his shit talk. Is the nicest possible way to say that. But it's not good.
But I actually don't know whether I think I think I forgot to mention with the the nineteen seventy fight or nineteen seventy one, nineteen seventy fight, is that the first fight with Fraser is that Fraser is getting called the Great White Hope, right, and which I didn't I haven't read Fraser's side of all of this much.
Yeah, I was gonna say, I wonder how he felt about that.
Yeah, yeah, that's kind of suck. So so it beats Joe Fraser this this second time, right, and bo he beats him the first whatever the second match between the two of them, Muhammad Ali wins, but he doesn't get the belt back because Joe Fraser doesn't have the belt. George Foreman has the belt. So he goes and he fights Foreman in this fight is called the Rumble in the Jungle and it's held in what was then Zaire and what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
and everyone assumed Ali would lose. He was old. He was thirty two years old. I don't know if you could imagine being thirty two years old, but that sounds like really old.
Oh, don't say that.
And he'd lost what would have been the best years of his career his late twenties to his objection to imperialism. He is and George Foreman is black also.
But.
Muhammad Ali is seen as the people's champion like Worldwide Right, and so I don't believe that this fight was racialized in the same way. But he is like the local hero in Zaire, and Muhammad Ali loves Zayire's like holy shit, it's a fucking country run by black people with fucking rules, and the crowd in Zaire love him, and they chance
Ali kill him. And he doesn't actually want to kill George Foreman, or at least he says he doesn't later, And there's literally no reason to believe that he actually wanted to kill George Foreman. George Foreman was considered unbeatable. He has one of the hardest punches in the history of the sport and he is younger and all this stuff. So Ali comes up with a new strategy called rope a dope. You ever heard of this?
Yes, yes, Yes, such.
A good name. So he goes in and he punches Foreman as hard as he can in the face to like get him mad, and then he just hangs on the ropes and he blocks, and he lets the elastic take the pressure out of Foreman's blows, and he just fucking tries to wear Foreman down. Literally, this is like the equivalent of like Dodge Rock. You know. It's like, I'm gonna wear you down by you punching me.
Yeah, until you're so tired that you can't even fight anymore. Then I'll just knock you out.
Oh I love yeah, Yeah, And that's what he did. And the whole time he's on the ropes, he's just mocking his opponent and trying to make him mad and tiring him out, and slowly he starts to fight back harder, and round eight he knocked George Foreman out and literally a billion people watched it happen on television. Wow, all, I can't I know. I think that's a quarter of the people who were alive in Like.
Yeah, was it nineteen seventy four?
You said, yeah, Like I think the population of the world was like four million in the nineties, four billion in the nineties. I don't know, but yeah, So this is a this is a big deal in a way that boxing actually isn't as much anymore. I mean, it's still a big deal, but it's like I think that it's like looking back on boxing, it's it's not the sport. When I first think of sports, I think of basketball as like the thing that you know, maybe football or something.
But like, yeah, I feel like the popular of boxing like probably peaked in like the nineties, like with like Tyson and stuff. I feel like it hasn't been the same since then.
Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. And Mike Tyson went in a road rage incident knocked someone unconscious like a mile away from my house where I grew up.
Whoa wild Okay.
Yeah, anyway, so he is now the heavyweight champion of the world again for the second time. Fraser wasn't done with him, and they had a third match, and this is called the Thrilla in Manila. It's possible this is when the Girl of Stuff happened. But I'm not certain. I think it was the previous fight, the second fight. This is in nineteen seventy five, and it takes place in Manila, which is in the Philippines. And yeah, this fight was the hardest of Muhammad Ali's life, and it
was probably the hardest of either of their lives. It's also probable that they did permanent damage to each other in this fight.
Oh okay.
In his corner, Ali was like, so this is what dying feels like. But he won, and then just to go back to his Nation of Islam stuff and just to cover possibly the worst thing he ever did in nineteen seventy five, as a final act of black separatism. Basically, he gave a talk to the KKK ad a KKK rally. Yeah what in what was the context of this talk he went up to say, like, we all agree black
men should marry their own women. Oh no, okay, because he was a spokesperson for the Nation of Islam, and the Nation of Islam at that point was coordinating with the KKK because they both wanted racial separation.
Damn.
Yeah, while he was there. I there's no record that I found of the speech itself, but there's a well, there's some quotes from it, but there's clips of him talking about him giving him the talk, and he's just joking about it, and he's laughing about it. And one of the things is that like while he's there, they joke about lynching him. They're like, get that end word,
and then he turns around. They're like, Ah, we're just kidding, We're not actually gonna murder you, and he's like laughing at their funny joke.
Wow, that's terrible.
Yeah, that's the worst thing that I've found. I mean, I also don't entirely whatever. But then Elijah Muhammad died and the Nation of Islam converted to Sunni Islam, and with it, Muhammad Ali converted to Sunni Islam. No more pro segregation, no more hanging out with the KKK, still anti white supremacy, still pro black power. But that's fucking good. I'm real glad for that change. Yeah, and he's getting old.
He's still a boxer, but Fraser had really fucked him up, and he kept He keeps winning for a while, but the fights are getting closer and closer, and he loses the title to an upstart named Leon Spinx in nineteen seventy eight. He rematched and then he won again, and he becomes the first heavyweight to win the belt three times. I'd always like, I never quite thought about it when I was a kid, being like, oh, heavyweight champion three
times over or whatever. You're like, oh, yeah, like won three championships, like three tournaments or whatever, like not realizing it was like, no, he lost it and then won it again, you know. Yeah, he tried retiring, but he kept coming back, and then he started losing, and he kind of like later he was like, I wanted to be the first one to retire while I'm still on top. But then he's like, but I wouldn't. I wouldn't have. I wouldn't have retired until I started losing. There's no
way I would have, you know. Yeah, he fought his last professional match in nineteen eighty one.
He lost that. He lost a couple prior to that, and.
Around this time he got diagnosed with Parkinson's, almost certainly caused by the damage he'd sustained in the ring. But to quote a musician I've never heard of named Kinky Friedman, because this quote is often misattributed to Charles Pokowski, I just like this quote. Our goal in life is to find what you love and let it kill you, so you know, and he talks about that himself. He's like, he's like, I ain't got no regrets even though it did this to me.
You know.
Yeah, I'm sure he wouldn't have had it any other way, you know. Yeah, he was doing what he loved. Yeah.
Yeah. So Ali and Fraser talks shit on each other on and off for the rest of their lives. I've read sources claiming it became kind of a friendly banter and that like they accept like a Fraser accepted Ali's apology and stuff like that, and others have said it was a blood feud to the death. But I I'm on side they probably started getting along because I feel like the like it was a blood feud is like sell news extreme. Yeah yeah, And I'm gonna a little
bit speed run the rest of his life. And it's like kind of sucks in some ways because actually he does a lot of his most amazing shit in this period.
After he retires.
Yeah, after he retires, once he's converted to Sunni Islam, he starts taking faith really seriously. And if you listen to conservatives, one of those conservatives who's like name, I can't even remember one of those, like Chowder Crowder or some shit has this whole thing about like, oh, he became a conservative and that's why he became good, but he used to be a racist and like it's just like fucking like anti white racists or whatever.
Yeah, Noka.
So conservatives try to claim Muhammad Ali oh, I don't like that. I'm bringing it up because I because it's not true, and I want to talk about how it's not true. There are specific things that they use as their evidence that he became conser servative and like, and some of those things are technically true, but they aren't. It needs the context. He's focused primarily on the issues
of blackness and religion. Right in nineteen eighty he backs President Jimmy Carter because he believes Carter is suitably religious to be president. In nineteen eighty four, he starts off backing Reverend Jesse James and the Democratic primary, but when Jesse James loses, he starts backing Ronald Reagan. And he backs Ronald Reagan because basically his quote at the time was he wants to keep God in schools and that's enough.
Later he admits he was wrong to back Reagan, that he'd been listening to bad advice, and so basically, yeah, he'd been listening to bad advice. It didn't work anyway, even though he's like, it's kind of almost cool how
it didn't work. He's like one of the most famous people in the country and here he is being like, as a black man, I'm voting for Reagan, and like black voters didn't vote for fucking Reagan, Like no, we're good, yeah, even yeah, and even lower percentage of them voted for Reagan in nineteen eighty four than did in nineteen eighty
and it was not high either time. I think it's like fourteen percent and then nine percent, you know, And a lot of black voters are like, oh, it's the Parkinson's he's losing his mind, oh man, which is like kind of fucked up, but like, you know, but yeah, he continues to change as a person and develop, but not into conservative like his last books are still just like, man, you know what rules his reparations and you know what, I'm not sorry about how the Nation of Islam tried
to make black people's lives better, Like wouldn't it be great if all the rich people had to give up all their stuff and give it to poor black people. Like he's not a fucking like. There are elements right, like, you know, there's like the cultural conservativism of like not wanting women to address a certain way and stuff like that. I actually don't know how that did or didn't change over his life.
I'm not sure.
One of his quotes that he wrote later, the man who views the world at fifty the same as he did when he was twenty has wasted thirty years of his life. And one of his daughters becomes a professional boxer, and for a while Ali was upset about this because he didn't believe women should box. And then he came around and was like proud of her and was like good dad, you know.
Yeah yeah, and Laila was like very successful in her career as well.
Cool, so that's cool.
Yeah, yeah.
He like in his thing, he's like, oh, I told her it was my talent, but then that she inherited, and then I was and but in the same thing, he's like, but then I was like, now it's your hard work. It's it's your hard work. Talent is only some tiny percentage of this. It's how hard to fail for it. He really like, like, honestly, The Soul of the Butterfly is a it's a really good book. It's like very religious and very like just full of like him talking about how he tries to do good and
all of the different things. It's really interesting. I actually I really recommend it.
Yeah, no, I'll definitely have to check that out.
In nineteen ninety, he flew to Bagdad to try and find a path to piece between the US and Iraq. He met with Saddam Hussein and spent ten days negotiating, basically speaking about how we need Muslim unity. He didn't stop a war, but he did secure the release of fifteen hostages.
Wow, that's awesome, I know.
And he didn't even like people say that he was trying to be this like clever statesman, this like hardened diplomat who's going to go and engage in like political fisticuffs, you know, and like, but he's actually just too earnest and too caring for like the political realm. So he just goes where someone where an earnest good person can say earnest good things and get earnest good things done. And in his later life he's just this hard working. I want everyone to be happy guy. He leveraged his
fame for good every chance he got. He wrote quote, at night, when I go to bed, I ask myself, if I don't wake up tomorrow, when I be proud of how I live today. With that question in mind, I have tried to do as many good deeds as I can, whether it is standing up for my faith, signing an autograph, or simply shaking a person's hand. I'm just trying to make people happy and get into heaven.
His children mentioned that his true faith, even more than Islam, was the faith of the heart that all religions are trying to get to. This His quote is rivers, lakes, ponds, streams, oceans, all of different names, but they all contain water. So do religions have different names, but they all contain truth expressed in different ways, forms and times. If you love God, you can't love only.
Some of his.
Children and he brought homeless families into his house constantly. He was like, if you ask, if you ask Muhammad Ali for money on the street, he's going to give you money, and then he's going to talk about how you probably were God, you know, like you were like the like test of the faith, you know, right right. The only evidence I have of him around anything that has to do with any homosexuality is that he knew a lesbian couple and commented on how they seemed happy.
So fuck yeah. He supported the Special Olympics like very actively supported it, including actually during his boxing career, not just in his like later do gooder life. I'm gonna say humanitarian life instead. He took great pride in nineteen seventy nine and getting to have He felt honored that he got to participate in the lighting of the Flame
of Hope for the Special Olympics nineteen seventy nine. When he died on June third, twenty sixteen, at the age of seventy four, he insisted that his funeral be interfaith, but also be in accordance to Islamic rights as befitted his like I am Muslim, that is not the only way. And I'm going to end with a piece of his
called how I would like to be remembered. I would like to be remembered as a man who won the heavy weight title three times, who was humorous, who treated everyone right, as a man who never looked down on those who looked up to him who helped as many people as he could, as a man who stood up for his beliefs no matter what, as a man who tried to unite all humankind through faith and love. And if that's too much, then I guess I'd settle for being remembered only as a great boxer who became a
leader and champion of his people. And I wouldn't even mind if folks forgot how pretty I was.
That's awesome. Yeah, Oh he's a man. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was I really I thank you for putting me up to learning more about him.
Yeah, no, thank you for doing the research and then sharing it with me. So yeah, I just think it's so amazing and it was just so courageous that at a time where he had everything to lose, and you know,
you could say that he did lose a lot of it. Yeah, he was, you know, firm in his beliefs and stood by his guns because it could it could have been so easy for him, not only with Vietnam, but just with all of his activism, just to you know, keep it to himself or not say anything, or not make waves or you know, you know, stay out of the limelight.
And I think to be honest, it's probably some probably part of the reason why he had that contentious relationship with Joe Frazier, But he decided to stand up for what he thought was right, and he inspired so many people because of it, Like, for example, Kream Abdul Jabbar I believe you know, uh Muhammad Ali was a big inspiration for him and his activism. So you know, the impact that he's had outside of boxing, which is the thing that he's you know, most known for, is still
so wide reaching. I just think it's amazing. He had an amazing life.
Yeah. Yeah, And it's like in some ways, it's like, wow, he put everything on the line. He could have lost everything, and then the thing that's really interesting is he did lose everything.
Right exactly. He did lose a lot, and.
Then he got it back. It was like, well, I fought my way up to this before. If I'm knocked down to nothing, I can do it again.
Right.
It did so badass?
Yeah, yeah, fucking cool. All right, Well you got anything you want to plug?
I would say, just being kind to others. You never know what somebody's going through. It's free to not be an asshole. Just try it out.
Yeah, that's a good one. I'm gonna plug myself because I'm a jerk. I'm gonna plug that. I have another podcast called Live Like the World Is Dying that comes out every Friday. I'm one of the hosts on that. It's all your individual and community preparedness needs.
And love it. We love a prepper pod.
Yeah, I know, I'd like I want a parachute for one day. No, that's actually probably just an anxiety thing. And you can follow me on the internet if you look for me as Margaret Kiljoy. I am currently the only Margaret kill Joy in the world. Although that said Margaret at Margaret Kiljoe on Twitter is taken by someone who hasn't posted in many, many years, and it's not me.
Fucked up, I know, I know. Well, what it was was that this band, my Chemical Romance, had all their fans named themselves kill Joy for a while.
Like ten years ago. Uh okay and.
So yeah, and so I was like, why are all of these like teenagers from other countries suddenly following me on Twitter? And the answer was that they were just like looking for all the other kill Joys and following them.
Hey, well, I hope they like podcasts.
I know.
Yeah.
All right. Well that's it and you can hear more Cool People Did Cool Stuff next Monday.
Fuck yeah, thank ye. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.