Track of the Week - 5 June 2016
Some of these are easy to write, some less so. It's a less so week so excuse me if this is a bit all over the place.
2016 hasn't been a great year for icons. David Bowie, Prince and now Muhammad Ali have all departed. Ali was a sporting hero of mine. A copy of the famous photo of him, stood above and taunting a prostrate Sonny Liston, hangs in our spare room.
As Ali was, I believe, one of the most important people of the 20th century you'll find far better tributes than I could ever write out there on the internet. You won't have to look hard. Similarly you'll find out about his flaws too. He was human after all.
The line I'm going to take is as a sports fan. You see, I think Muhammad Ali invented modern day sport*. Sport existed before Ali '"shook up the world" in 1964 but in a back page and/or for the dedicated kind of way.
Ali's style, politics, humour, good looks, anger, you name it, lifted sport from the Pathé News kind of reporting to status of major event. From the back pages to the front. His rise was perfectly-timed to capture the increase in the sale of televisions in the early-mid sixties. His mouth guaranteed to make people want to see him win or get battered.
That sport explosion would have happened but it's hard to know when or who might have had the same effect. George Best had the skills and charisma but was more interested in drinking and ladies. Quarterback Johnny Unitas was a huge figure but in a sport without worldwide appeal at the time. Pelé was a genius on the football field and humble with it but has had little to say other than in Viagra commercials. Ali had it all. Sadly, his self-belief and confidence kept him in the ring too long and led to his health problems.
Among his other pieces of showmanship Ali would like to predict when he would win fights. My favourite story regards his bout with British boxer Richard Dunn in 1976. When pressed for a finishing round Ali asked the television company how many rounds of advertising were booked. When he was told 'four' he replied: "OK. The limey frankenstein goes down in five." Sure enough, Dunn was knocked out in the fifth.
From the same year as the Dunn fight is this Johnny Wakelin song which reached number four in the UK chart. It's about the famous Rumble in the Jungle where Ali beat the previously undefeated George Foreman, a man seven years his junior, to regain the World Heavyweight title.
Wakelin had form for Ali songs. Two years before, Black Superman (credited to Johnny Wakelin and the Kinshasa Band) had peaked at number seven.
RIP The Greatest.
* And probably had a big say in inventing the modern idea of 'celebrity' too.
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