RF23 - No Longer The Greatest...

This will be my second criticism of Muhammad Ali in a long while and I think this one will concrete my first one in regard to the former world heavyweight champion. Like most people my age and older, they grew up watching or saw this man rise from Louisville, Kentucky to stardom and probably the greatest champion/athlete of all time. It's evident because like Jerry West is the emblem of the NBA, Ali is the emblem of ESPN's Classic channel.

I have no problem with that...As a fighter and self promoter, there was no one greater than Ali..

Then again...

I can't recall anyone that's not in professional wrestling being so controversial in promoting.

Ali was.

I'm going to be straight: I was angry and above all disgusted at what Ali did to Joe Frazier, Frazier's family and for this measure the country. He split the country and above all insulted and degraded Joe Frazier by calling him a gorilla and an Uncle Tom. This was after Frazier, on the side, while Ali was down for not answering his country's call for service by not entering the Vietnam War, was supporting Ali financially.


HBO's documentary on this opened my eyes to the one they call the greatest and I knocked him down a peg to well, he was one of the greats.

Well after yet another HBO documentary on Joe Louis, Ali just dropped two more steps to a fighter who danced to his own drum. I can't let his insult of Frazier go, nor can I tell how angry I was for his little quote on the documentary in calling Joe Louis a "Tom."

Enough is enough..

Joe Louis, along with other black fighters who paved a way for Ali to be even called champion, make the money he was able to make and be conned by Don King, was insulted by a loud mouth kid named Cassius.

I get that during the comment, Ali, along with other superstar athletes were taking a stand for civil rights during that time, but to insult and criticize men and women who had to put up with all the bullshit of being called nigger, spook or jiggaboo or asked to turn around by foreign women so they can see their tails is not only ignorant but they're guilty of what some liberal blacks say about blacks who don't agree with their politics or social stances...

"Forgot where they came from and how they got there."

You can't imagine my anger, when I saw a man who befriended and kept the religion of anti Semitism talk about a man who had to grin on cue, act on cue, not show emotion or celebrate after a victory over a white man, volunteer to fight in a war where the country he comes from won't let him sit in a diner, sit anywhere on a bus, get equal education, get paying jobs, denied the right to vote via intimidation or lyching and a helluva lot more denials a country where freedom and equal rights were promised...Yeah Ali lived in that era, but that era was ending and the country changed. It changed too late for Louis, but it changed at the right time for Ali, where his purses could have paid off Louis' tax debt...

It changed enough for Ali to be given forum after forum to discuss issues that Louis could only dream about.

So this is where I'm at, disdain for a man some called the greatest. And after seeing the documentary, the title was correct...

Joe Louis is and was an American hero and he was betrayed.