muhammad-ali Page 4 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

What The Most Infamous NBA Heckler Learned From His Friend Muhammad Ali
He had a role model. The most obnoxious spectator in sports history says he was inspired by the most beloved athlete of all time....

25 Dope Pictures Of Muhammad Ali
Over at the ever-amazing Kottke, I found a link to this cool post at the Guardian. ...

How Muhammad Ali's Rope-A-Dope Myth Suckered America
Myth now dominates our misunderstanding of Muhammad Ali, who was once the most accessible celebrity in the world. The truth of the man is nearly irretrievable. With Ali having receded into an exile of his own choosing, the jokes and half-truths and outright lies he once told to entertain us have h...

A Total Eclipse of the Sonny: The Night 'The Greatest' Was Born
This week marks the 40th anniversary of the Rumble in the Jungle. A lot has been written about that fight. Movies have been made about it. People have wept and torn their hair and rolled in the grass, beating their heels against the ground, because of that fight. It was a mighty fight. A remarkabl...

Pain And Violence As A Way Of Life: Muhammad Ali-George Chuvalo II
Leonard Gardner is the author of one of the finest sports novels ever written, Fat City, a masterpiece of the terse style that is, in the words of Denis Johnson, “so precisely written and giving such value to its words that I felt I could almost read it with my fingers, like Braille.” Gardner also ...

Down Goes Terror: How A Frightened George Foreman Shocked Joe Frazier
Excerpted from Bouts of Mania: Ali, Frazier, and Foreman—and an America on the Ropes. ...

The Splendid Photography Of Art Shay
Legendary photographer Art Shay has an exhibition at New York's Morrison Hotel Gallery, and to celebrate the his work, Slate has published a number of Shay's best pieces in a beautiful retrospective. Seems like the man was everywhere in the 60s, and captured nearly all the iconic American entertaine...

The FBI Believed Clay/Liston I Was Fixed
There has long been chatter that Clay/Liston II, in which Sonny Liston went down to a phantom punch, wasn't on the up-and-up. But documents obtained by the Washington Times show the FBI suspected that their first fight, in 1964, may have been fixed by the mob....

For Some Stupid Reason, Everyone Was Shocked When Clay Beat Liston
Fifty years ago tomorrow, in Miami Beach, 22-year-old Cassius Clay beat the hell out of Sonny Liston and took the world heavyweight crown from the Big Bear. According to the great New York Times sportswriter Robert Lipsyte, "only three of 46 sportswriters covering the fight had picked Clay to win." ...

The True Greatness of Ali
On the table in front of him sit a copy of the holy Koran and a plate holding three frosted raspberry coffee cakes, and when he leans forward on the couch and reaches out it is not for enlightenment. It is for a piece of pastry. With his right hand wobbling just this side of uncontrollably, he guide...

Seven Scenes From The Life Of A Quiet Champ
Dig Pete Dexter's 1980 Inside Sports profile of Larry Holmes:...

A Photog Remembers When, And Why, "Uncle Tom" Frazier Kicked Ali's Ass
Today is Muhammad Ali's 72nd birthday. Four decades ago, after three-and-a-half years away from the ring, he was half-assedly gearing up for a title fight with the reigning champ, Joe Frazier. LIFE photographer John Shearer remembers that winter well....

Tyson Vs. Ali
A performance piece at PS122 reviewed in the Times and also featured in the Wall Street Journal. ...

1966 "Lost" Interview with Ali: Found
Over at the dope site, Blank on Blank. ...

I Can't Stop Watching Muhammad Ali Dodge 21 Punches In 10 Seconds
Holy shit, Muhammad Ali is the man....

Joe Frazier Was Cooler Than Ali. Discuss.
Joe Frazier died two years ago today. Now is as good a time as any to pay tribute to the former champ through a single photograph that best captured the unbridgeable distance between the two premier fighters of the age — a picture made at the very moment when the rivalry between Ali and Smokin' Joe ...

The Meaning Of The First Sonny Liston-Muhammad Ali Fight
Over on The Stacks, we're republishing Murray Kempton's classic dispatch from the first Clay-Liston fight, in 1964; you can find the story below. Kempton was an elegant columnist and essayist with a great ear for the overtones and undertones of any public spectacle—mob trials, nominating conventio...

The Champ And The Chump: The Meaning Of Liston-Clay I
Originally published on March 7, 1964, in The New Republic. Reprinted here with the permission of the author's family....