JOHN TERRY found himself at the centre of a media storm this week when he was accused of making a racist comment at QPR last Sunday.
The Chelsea skipper denies the incident involving Hoops’ Anton Ferdinand ? and there is going to be an official FA investigation.
Race rows have happened in boxing, too.
In a new documentary called ‘The Real Rocky’, white ex-heavyweight contender Chuck Wepner claims that, in the build-up to his 1975 fight with Muhammad Ali, the Greatest told him to call him a n***** to hype up the fight.
Wepner refused ahead of a joint TV appearance because he had black friends and sparring partners.
But Ali replied: “No, no, you gotta do this. We gotta pump this fight up and we’re going to make it look like a racial thing.”
Even though Wepner didn’t play along, Ali still told the TV host that Wepner had called him a n*****, which led to some pushing and shoving on the set that created a stir for the fight.
A few years later, the unbeaten Gerry Cooney was cast as ‘The Great White Hope’ in his fight against unbeaten world heavyweight champ Larry Holmes, who dubbed Cooney ‘The Great White Dope’.
Then, in 1993, Frank Bruno issued a writ against Lennox Lewis before their WBC world heavyweight title fight in Cardiff after Lewis called him an ‘Uncle Tom’ in a newspaper interview.
I know that comment hurt Big Frank and caused him a lot of anguish over the years.
