Once upon a time not long ago, heavyweight boxing was the caviar of sports. ABC?s Wide World of Sports was promoted as a smorgasbord of sports from around the world, from cliff diving in Acapulco to ski-jumping in Switzerland. But it was the boxing career of Muhammad Ali that drew viewers and made it a mainstay on television for 37 consecutive years.
With his intellectual belligerence, antagonistic treatment of the Vietnam war, a rapier wit and a left jab that to this day has yet to be seen on a man fighting above 210 pounds, Ali became the most recognizable person in the world, something neither Michael Jordan nor Tiger Woods achieved despite coming along in the age of the Internet.
African-Americans ? even southern Christians hopelessly in love with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his philosophy of non-violent passive resistance ? loved Ali as much as they loved Cassius Clay. And when Ali went to jail for his refusal to submit to the draft, white liberals canonized him also.
Not long after Joe Louis? sharecropper father died while he was a child, Louis, who overcame as best he could a terrible speech impediment, moved to Detroit. Shortly after arriving in Motown Louis gravitated to boxing, bringing with him an uncanny ability to leave anyone who stood in front of him concussed.
He became a pre-World War II hero to post-Depression-era black folks, beaten down daily by Jim Crow who nevertheless still gathered in front of radios for his big fights the way we gather around flat screens for the Super Bowl. The heavyweight champion of the world from 1937-1949, Louis became America?s first African-American cultural hero when he bludgeoned Hitler?s favorite athlete, Max Schmeling (the son of a Jewish father, ironically), in their 1938 rematch.
While racism and bigotry abounded during the Louis era, the ?Brown Bomber??s emergence was a welcome sight in mainstream America after Jack Johnson?s ?Reign of Terror.? People thought Clay, with his ranting and raving prior to the bout, was crazy in the walk-up to his first fight with Sonny Liston.
However, this behavior paled in comparison to the audacity exhibited by Johnson, who on top of the ignominy he heaped on those who worshiped at the feet of Jim Crow by disposing of a multitude of Great White Hopes, this massive negro mauler saw nothing wrong with throwing on a pinstripe suit, hoping into a convertible Cadillac and cruising the Interstates with interchangeable white women laughing and giggling in the passenger seat ? in the early 1900s!
While the sweet science no longer occupies the lofty perch it once held on the world platform ? it can be argued that mixed martial arts is close to eclipsing it in popularity ? the one thread that remains is the drama generated outside of the ring still seems to eclipse what happens in it.
The same is true today, however pathetic the sport and its practitioners have become. This is why someone such as former Dallas Cowboys receiver Michael Irvin ? a Hall of Famer who has shown a predilection for cocaine and outlandish suits ? can still come off as remarkably dignified when he calls out Floyd ?Money? Mayweather Jr and implores him to stop running from a fight with Manny Pacquiao.
