If it weren’t for his debilitating disease, Muhammad Ali, who reached the big 7-0 last Tuesday, would be shaking with anger and sadness at what he’s seeing. His legendary mouth would not be mute.
Yes, the sport he took to its cultural zenith is extinct. A Mayweather-Pacquiao fight would only resurrect boxing for a night.
But the biggest fight of his career had nothing to do with Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier or George Foreman. If Ali could stand on a soapbox and talk about civil rights, his change of religion and a war he didn’t believe in and came out lionized, one would think athletes would continue to fly his flag.
Instead, in the 31 years since Trevor Berbick sent The Greatest into retirement, athletes by-and-large have spent their time in the ring with multi-national corporations. Other than Jim Brown, Ali’s contemporaries in other sports are more pitchmen than politico.
In some ways, it’s hard to blame them.
When a young athlete – a large percentage of which grew up poor – is faced with either living with a salary and a voice or a salary, signature shoe and a list of commercials longer than Jack Nicholson’s IMDB, the answer is obvious.
Athletes today are as sophisticated about the four jewels of the celebrity endorsement dollar as Rod Tidwell’s wife Marcee in Jerry Maguire. “Shoe, car, clothing line, soft drink.” Criticizing the auto industry bail-out won’t show me the money.
Former North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms once called the University of North Carolina the “University of Negroes and Communists.” In 1990, Charlotte mayor and African American Harvey Gantt ran against the good ol’ boy for the Senate and would have been the first black Senator from the south since Reconstruction.
The world’s most famous Tar Heel could have stepped up and supported Gantt. Instead, Michael Jordan famously said, “Republicans buy sneakers, too.” Helms won the election, and His Airness showed the world what he wanted each person to be: a customer.
Sadly, Jordan’s capitalist quote is more prescient today than “No Vietcong ever called me Nigger.”
Athletes are still mimicking Ali. LeBron James can say he wants to be a “global icon” just like him. But The King’s idea of the term is to be immortalized on a poster in every frat house in North America, just like the legendary photo of a brash Cassius Clay screaming over a beaten Liston.
The Champ changed his name from Clay to Ali when joining the Nation of Islam in 1964. Johnson and Artest have become Ochocinco and World Piece and joined the Nation of Idiots instead.
There are those who think that Ali was a product of the 60s. He had Vietnam, civil rights and a politically engaged and active America at his fingers. But we had Iraq, weapons of mass destruction and the Arab Spring.
And the best we got is one pro-life quarterback to show for this?
Once upon a time, this was Muhammad Ali’s world. Now, it’s like he didn’t exist at all.
Time to blow out the candles.
