Muhammad Ali: Biography

Beaks for life

Bacawwwwwwww!

Right side of my body has fallen asleep.

Should I seek medical help?

So this one’s for you

ididntdoit:

This one’s for you

The one that I can talk to

The one that understand’s

what I go through

Sitting on a shell of sound

While we are stairing at the ground

Watching the ninja’s run along the trees

All while we just shoot the breeze

typo.

Oh formspring :)

girlwithoutademon:

jjtc:

girlwithoutademon:

You are short. =)

Indeed I am!
Wait is this Lenny or Mike. Or am I completely off.

http://www.formspring.com/forms/?687661-4n3uR3BA2G

Must have been Mike.

Hmm…yeah I thought so. If it was you, you would’ve made some witty comment about my being short.

Obviously. I would never stoop to the level of just blatantly stating the obvious truth.

Blog #4

I have now finally finished reading the book Sting Like a Bee by Jose Torres.

I had been hoping that this final part would fill in the holes the other two parts left and go into his life in a more detailed manner, but as I closed the book, I was left very disappointed. As it would turn out, almost all of Part Three was dedicated to his one of his fights which I didn’t even care about nearly as much as it would appear Jose Torres did. It was just another fight that Muhammed Ali fought, and I was left extremely unimpressed with Torres’ writing skills. All of part three was the coverage of this fight and his opinion on this fight, and then the last 30 pages or so were play by play, round by round action recap. I feel cheated, and I wish I had picked a better book to read.

If I could go back to the moment in time when I was in the library picking out a book looking at Muhammed Ali biographies, I would have picked the book to the right of Sting Like a Bee. Heck, I would have taken any of the other biographies about him! I feel like I couldn’t have had any worse luck, for each part left me feeling as though I didn’t get the whole story.

I know now why I didn’t get the full story though. Obviously, this isn’t a book about Muhammed Ali. It is Jose Torres’ firsthand experience relating to Muhammed Ali. Every fight that is ever mentioned in this book was attended by Jose Torres, and you couldn’t go five pages without him referring to himself and his own fight history, or his opinions on Muhammed Ali. This is no biography! This is an extended editorial!

Jose Torres, if you are reading this, STICK TO BOXING.

Blog #3

I’ve now completed part 2 of the epic journey of Mr. Cassius Clay. After finishing part one, I was extremely confused. I was looking forward to reading a book about Muhamad Ali in chronological order, but when it picked up with him around 30, it shook me. However, Part 2 goes back and fills in his life for me what has happened up until Part One happens. I sometimes doubt Torres’ writing style. He can have awkward sentence structure at times, and on occasion it will shine through that he doesn’t speak American perfectly, and that he is, afterall, a boxer by title, not an author. However, I find myself very engaged with this book nonetheless. it has turned me off a bit how the story isn’t about the man. It is about his accomplishments. It is all about how he adjusted to fights and full summaries of how fights went. It’s completely carreer based. But, when I judge a book, I don’t only want to see what made them great at what they did, but what didn’t make them great at what they did. For example, Torres dedicated a paragraph to mention that Muhammad Ali just happened to be married twice. I want the full story. My only other issue with Mr. Torres is that he is very subjective and biased. He very often mentions himself, and in the events that he doesn’t, he gives his opinions and advice. Supposedly, he is a very smart and funny man, but when your getting in the way of the story, it can get bothersome.

Before reading this book, I honestly had no idea about boxing history. My best friend had said to me once, “Cassius Clay is one of the best boxers to ever live.” My response to him was , “Well what about Muhammad Ali? Wasn’t he a legend?” (Unknown to me, Cassius Clay is Muhammad Ali.

Muhammad Ali grew up in Louisville. He spoke by 8 months, and by the time school started, he loved the attention he could get. He would purposely make a fool of himself or others to get people saying his name. He loved being hated. For a year or two, he even declined to take the bus, preferring to run alongside it! He picked fights often, and liked to live by his own rules.

This rebellious way about him made him very special in the ring. On paper, his style of boxing shouldn’t work. It is both contradictory to orthodox fighting tactics, and in a way, down right stupid. For, he moves forward and backward when attempting to get out of the way of a punch or evade an opponent. ‘The book’ teaches you to move side to side, however. But, his speed makes it so that his fighting ways pay off. He was unmatched in the speed category for his weight class. Another outrageous thing he would do is only punch to the face. He didn’t punch to the body to tire guys out, instead he just kept running from them and making them miss to tire them. He just consistently nagged you with a jab to the face until you went down.

When Cassius Clay turned 12, he began his ameteur bouts. His parents hired a trainer for him, and he began to use his unique style and instinct to go undefeated. Then, his mouth made a difference. In the history of boxing, Cassius Clay is considered the most loud-mouthed trash talking boxer to ever make it in the pros. After going undefeated for 30 or so matches, he began to tell his neighbors and went door-to-door advertising himself. As he got older, he found that big crowds very often show up to fights if they hate one of the boxers. He thought to himself, “What a great idea!” So, from that point on, he wouldn’t shut up He just flat out didn’t care what anybody thought, and he mocked his opponents for months before fights, and very often even duing the fights. He was disrespectful, and this caused people to show up, not to see if his opponent could win, but to see if Clay could lose.

When he hired a professional trainer, he suggested to him to train for the olympics. That is just what he did, and in the Roman Games during the year 1960 I believe, he won the gold medal. He got back to the U.S. and was pumped. He went on a tear and got better and better.

At one point in time, we find Mr. Cassius Clay training in a gym in Miami. This is after he wins the Heavyweight Champion Title. Malcolm X and a few other Black Muslims approach him, and convince him to come to a Mosque. They convince him that there are no such things as Negroes, and that it is just a label that the enemy white societies have put on them. After awhile, Cassius Clay becomes a Black Muslim and changes his name to Cassius X, and then eventually Muhammad Ali. This makes absolutely every White American who once loved him absolutely hate his guts. He was involved very much politically, so when he announced his religion change, his supporters evaporated. Furthermore, his title of Champion is stripped from him and he is banned from the WBA. Enough letters were sent to the army, that they were willing to drop the IQ level needed to draft thus accepting Muhammad Ali. However, he would not go.

Muhammad Ali reacted to all of this by meeting up with a man, and through a series of underground transactions forming a sports club of his own, which he is given a license to. Part 2 ends right before a fight Muhammad Ali is scheduled to have with Flloyd, which is expected to turn 40 million dollars from ticket sales, and the prices could have been even higher if they wanted!

I know from Part One that Muhammad Ali is going to end up in jail for 3 and a half years, so I am interested to learn in this next part just how he ended up going to jail, and how he adjusts.