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| l3v1ck wrote: Can't say I ever took to the bloke. Such extreme levels of arrogance and cockiness. | |
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Cockiness undoubtedly yes. It's a sport that encourages loudmouths and braggarts, and he undoubtedly was one. But does someone who was, almost by universal consensus, considered to be the best practitioner of his sport that has ever lived allow themselves to be arrogant by their actions? This is a genuine question, because I really don't know. Is arrogance ever acceptable? And if so, is being the best there has ever been enough to justify it?
Is say Pele allowed to be arrogant? Was Ayrton Senna? If you approach the point where the things you say that are arrogant are also actually true, what are we to say to that?
It's always tempting to eulogise the recently passed, to gloss over their frailties. Ali definitely had frailties - he fought on for years the he should have retired to save his health. Indeed his years of disability were probably a direct consequence of his stubbornness in this. And no perfect man has been divorced three times.
But he remains to this day a talent almost unrivalled -I'd say Sugar Ray Leonard has a claim to the 'greatest ever boxer' as well but he's the only one.
. It did get to the stage of them reporting 'Muhammad Ali still dead' though. They even dropped the weather forecasts and sports news, all day. It was actually really odd.