When We Were Kings.

This was written and submitted before the result but, by the time it is published, we shall all know the victor in the “prize fight” between former champion (Iron) Mike Tyson and YouTube influencer Jake Paul. Regardless of the monies earned by all involved, this event will ultimately trouble neither the history books nor the boxing almanacs.

Is this it? Is this what the honourable sport of gentlemen, with its Marquess of Queensbury Rules, has become? If so, it is the best case study possible to provoke all of us to ask what we want this industry, and this product of sport, to be. 

Maybe we just don’t realise how lucky we were, as boys in the 70s and 80s, in being able to see the standard of “event” being offered then, across all the weight divisions of boxing. Often fully available on free normal television, it was entertainment of real compelling quality.  

Big name boxing always stopped the world back then. It was Achilles v Hector in a square ring. My own Baptism date was moved back a week to avoid clashing with the Sonny Liston v Cassius Clay fight on Feb 25 1964. I was born 6 days earlier.

Watching last night, or even the recent AJ fight, we can easily conclude that the product has somewhat degraded.

 

But combat sport has not lost its appeal. 

In Como, at the Summit, one of the agreed “reasons to be cheerful” about our industry was the enduring attractiveness of the “fight”. 

It’s true. Think about it. The most successful corporate in sport (TKO Inc) is a conglomerate which includes cage fighting and wrestling. People just like to see a scrap, even a scripted one like WWE, and the product market fit of combat will likely never be in doubt. It is maybe even increasing, tending ultimately to our dystopian destiny as a society of the Hunger Games. 

The question for today’s Sunday Column is what the hell happened to the origin story; boxing? Why do we have to endure seeing one of the greatest pugilists of all time, Mike Tyson, demean himself against a clown with a large social media audience? Even if money is being made, engagement metrics are cooking, and it’s very functional as “entertainment content”, this just doesn’t sit right.

It doesn’t fucking sit at all, if we are honest. Not when we remember the way we were.

It is the 50th anniversary of the Rumble in the Jungle and I’d like to think that this coincidence is a sport, and its soul, reminding us very loudly that The Force is not in balance.

 

Boxing has lost its way.

Something happened to the industry of sport in the 90s. It found Mammon and started demanding that broadcasters hand over serious money to cover its events. That is the simple story of the last 30 years. Sport would no longer be “free” and you would have to pay to access it, behind a paywall. To keep that gravy train running ever-faster, it then wasn’t enough to ask people to subscribe to just one channel showing sport. Now the “skill” of our sector is defined as finding a way to make fans shell out for multiple subscriptions, from the different broadcasters, who have all been sold only a part of the story. 

Fragmenting your rights into myriad packages has become the “must-have” ability for our sector’s CEOs and commissioners, and the appeal of most sports has suffered as a consequence. Boxing is, undoubtedly, one of those. 

How sad, squalid and stupid that is, if you stand back at look at it coldly. A very smart KC would phrase it like this:

So Mr Commissioner, would I be unfair to describe your job as being to see how far you can split up your product, across various delivery platforms, so that your loyal customer is obliged to make multiple payments to receive the entire product? Is that a fair comment? Is it also fair to suggest that you yourself are paid handsomely to be very good at knowing how much you can push the sports fan, before the poor soul expires in desperation or poverty? Given that they have really no choice in following their passion, could I suggest, Sir, that you are in fact running a mafia racket, selling cocaine you have “cut” far too many times?

Harsh? I don’t think so. 

Sure, some of all that is down to the anti-trust lawyers insisting, 20 years ago, on breaking up the monopoly of sports delivery. But look where that has left everything. Some of us, around back then, tried to warn the government that a sports competition needed to have only one broadcaster, one storyteller, one package for tender, but regulators for sport always know best. Right?

 

Arabian Knights to the rescue.

Boxing now needs a strategy and a marketing plan. Fragmentation, behind paywalls, has brought us to Jake Paul, and this is the biggest dilemma for all of sport. In a world of easy piracy, some of the main pillars of our industry need to be now seriously questioned. Dan Porter always saw this conundrum. 

As did industry doyen Ricardo Fort.

We as an industry are at a crossroads, navigating in the middle of a storm. I like Fort’s thinking for a simple reason. When all we have done as an industry is pay-away our florid media revenues to athletes and agents, why are we even worrying about maximising the top line? We don’t get to keep it anyway. Especially when paywalls kill the mass connection and general appeal of a sport. That’s not a smart trade-off. Sport is now fighting a desperate battle for attention, and this should be the KPI. But it seldom is.

The Women’s Soccer League (WSL) in the UK is now talking much less about the merits of its YouTube strategy, compared to a month ago. They got a bid to put their games behind the Sky paywall, and they took it. There is always a debate to be had about all this, especially for a new sport needing to grow its audience. Is the paywall the right road in the media market of 2024? Too many sports still seem to look at YouTube merely as an add-on, whilst the best realise that they now need to think much more about free-to-air and social platforms. To grow their sport.

 

The WSL aren’t alone in that thinking.

Sport always only ever thinks about the Benjamins at the end of the day. We are a short-termist profession, and that is not a badge of honour. We have enabled Jake Paul, but this insanity is all around us. An industry of middle-manager sales guys trying to hit their revenue target for the calendar year, cost what it costs. To pay players just that wee bit more.

In one of the most absurd news items of the week, we see Tottenham Hotspur Football Club penning a new sponsorship deal with ExpressVPN. For a mere pocketful of shillings, this EPL club is supporting a sponsor category, VPN, whose main value proposition is around enabling piracy, by disguising your residence. Piracy is the Number One threat to this entire industry.

To quote Bill Kilgore, one day this war will end. It will have to. In fact, legacy media, and the model which has fed us so well since the 90s, is dying right in front of our eyes. As Dan Porter says, maybe old TV isn’t even a thing anymore? Look at the reactions of the late-night hosts, The View, MSNBC, to losing the election. Their surprise isn’t just about Trump winning, it’s about their own irrelevance now. The orange man won this election on YouTube and Twitter. 

As an industry, we need to get beyond the old thinking about broadcast media rights, and short-term revenue (bonus) targets. It’s much more complex now.

 

Where does boxing go from here in this context?

Boxing as a business model has been deeply flawed for a while. Without the recent interest of Saudi Arabia, it was pretty much a busted flush. Its risk profile, paying so much to the fighters (unlike UFC), makes the numbers way too volatile as a business. Promoters, and their rivalry, have also always been a major blockage, to say nothing of some of the bad actors involved, endlessly delaying natural match-ups. All driven by short-termism and greed. It hasn’t worked consistently neither as PPV, nor with the pay model of DAZN. Piracy is out of control.

The Kingdom has changed all that and, make no mistake, boxing is now a Saudi property. They have in reality fully underwritten and de-risked the sport, (and DAZN). Sky UK, instead, like HBO and Showtime, will likely exit the scene.

Many of us will have seen decks on new challenger formats, new models, all trying to find a future. To claim back what has been lost to Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), especially the cage fighting UFC. They all have some merit, but can any of them ever bring back the fundamental societal impact of the way it was? The anticipation and fervour of awaiting Hearns v Hagler, Benn v Eubank and of course George Foreman v Muhammad Ali. 

I’m not so sure, and normally this Column would do a really deep dive, but I’m impatient this Sunday to get to the real reason for today’s essay. I want to write about him. 

 

The pinnacle of our product of sport. 

There are three sport documentaries that for many stand head and shoulders above all others. 

“The Last Dance“ (The Michael Jordan Bulls three-peat).

 

“Fire in Babylon” (the rise of the Whispering Death West Indies cricket team in the mid 70s)…

 

…and the grandaddy of them all, the match for the boxing Heavyweight Championship of the world between holder George Foreman and challenger Muhammad Ali (ne’ Cassius Clay), in 1974.

“When We Were Kings“.

Held in Kinshasa, Zaire (now Congo), this match gave the 20th century its finest moment in sport, and the documentary takes you right back there. It is simply epic, in the full sense of that word.

Find it. Buy it if necessary. 

 

“I Shook up the World”

Many, including those all revved up by Jake Paul’s antics in these years, may not know Ali, but it is no exaggeration to say that the arrival of Cassius Clay into boxing at the 1960 Olympics was as dramatic to the world as the explosion of Elvis Presley, a handful of years before. 

Before Clay, boxing was grubby, thuggish and with more than a whiff of the night. Big bad men like Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, and especially Sonny Liston, with so many “bums”, all potential contenders, who ended up pitifully abandoned on skid row.

And then a young man from the South comes along. A kid called The Louisville Lip.

Handsome, charismatic, articulate, clean-cut, confident, with a completely new way to fight as a heavyweight, light on his toes, fast. He authentically shook up the world more than anyone before him.

Look at the sense of expectation and shock. Look at the personality, the magneticism, the box-office. No one gave him a chance. But he knew. He knew he was the One. The magic emotion in sport can’t ever be written, or touched; it can only be felt. That is all in this video.

These events are truly beyond belief, and everyone wanted to be a part of it. This right here is why my father insisted the date of my Baptism was delayed. My mother wasn’t pleased, but he was right; he knew he was watching history. My God even today, knowing the full story, the heart still bounces around the ribcage watching this, like a pinball on speed.

In 1999, Ali was named Sportsman of the Century by Sports Illustrated, and the Sports Personality of the Century by the BBC. A pretty easy choice. This was simply an extraordinary man, so great that it is limiting to claim him solely for boxing, or even sport. He was more important that than. His appearances, at the Olympics, by then only as the consumed shell of the hero, are possibly the most emotional moments you will ever see. 

Here, near his birthplace in Atlanta in 1996, the shaking hand…

…and then, near his very end, in London in 2012. Here.

The original culture warrior.

He was a giant. 

Growing up in America’s deep south, Clay experienced true racism and discrimination. Not the oft-invented, permanently-offended, versions we see today. Sickeningly unfair hardship and pain.

He was refused entry to restaurants, even as Olympic champion, and threw his gold medal into the river in disgust. He naturally found little comfort in the existing institutions and religions of his upbringing, and joined the Nation of Islam, the Black Muslims, in the early 60s. Not a popular choice, especially when becoming friends with the very edgy activist Malcolm X. 

Once World Champion, and a convert to Islam, he denounced his given “slave name” and formally changed it to Muhammad Ali. White America, and even the black civil rights movement, didn’t understand the move. Jackie Robinson, the race pioneer from Major League Baseball, even went public with his disapproval. Ali as always didn’t care, as this was clearly a man of stubborn beliefs and principles, who always walked the talk.

I myself don’t remember hearing anyone not respect Ali or his religion. “Islamophobia” wasn’t a thing. Well almost not! In one of sport’s most ill-advised stances ever, black boxer Ernie Terrell refused to recognise Clay’s new name before their fight, and paid a very heavy tariff for his obtuseness. Ali humiliated him for the entire 15 rounds, despite clearly being able to drop him, at will, at any time. 

What’s my name?

 

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

For three years Ali utterly redefined the world of boxing globally, in technical style and marketing. If Ali said he would fall in three, he fell in three. He spoke in poetry, moved with the Shuffle, and was the most famous sportsman in the world. The majesty of those early years is in this video.

A rock star, a leading man, an orator, all with the looks of Denzel Washington. The whole fucking package. In fact, a package like this didn’t exist. Still doesn’t. Like Elvis, they wanted to draft him, but this time for a real war. In Vietnam. 

I ain’t got nothing against no Viet Cong; no Viet Cong never called me nigger. Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? – Muhammad Ali.

Those principles in 1967 cost him his boxing license and titles; his livelihood. He did not fight for nearly four years, and boxing, the world in general, was deprived of the peak years of Muhammad Ali. This is arguably one of sport’s most cardinal of sins. 

Many would have retired, but Ali was never part of the tribe called “Many”. In March 1971 he again challenged for the title, then held by Joe Frazier.

Billed as the Fight of the Century, everyone was there in the Garden, from Frank Sinatra down, because it meant something. It was a happening. That’s what boxing used to be. In later years we would call that kind of thing must-watch appointment-to-view. Others back then described it better.

The thrust of this fight on the public consciousness is incalculable. It has been a ceaseless whir that seems to have grown in decibel with each new soliloquy by Ali, with each dead calm promise by Frazier. It has magnetized the imagination of ring theorists, and flushed out polemicists of every persuasion. It has cut deep into the thicket of our national attitudes, and it is a conversational imperative everywhere—from the gabble of big-city salons and factory lunch breaks rife with unreasoning labels, to ghetto saloons with their own false labels. – Mark Kram Sports Illustrated. 

After four years of Ali inactivity, Frazier unsurprisingly won the fight in 15 rounds.

 

George Foreman the new Sonny Liston. 

Joe Frazier, a great champion in his own right, was later beaten to a pulp by a new daddy, a brute of a man called George Foreman. A throw back to Dempsey, Louis and Liston. Do not watch this video if you have any type of aversion to violence. 

Everyone of my generation will remember this fight with a sense of guilty unease. Point is, George was indeed “a big boy” who seemed to really enjoy the finer arts of physical assault, and he did that kind of demolition job to the entirety of a very impressive heavyweight division. A monster.  Any normal person would have sought to avoid George, especially someone seen as being at the fag end of their career.

But Muhammad Ali was never a normal person.

The match was set for Africa in the Fall of 1974, a full ten years after that postponed Baptism of mine. Ali was more than an overwhelming underdog and, indeed, most expected him to suffer serious and permanent physical damage. They knew Ali was too proud and too brave, and would likely hang around in the ring for way too long. Ambulances were all at the ready, ringside. No hyberbole.

Perhaps, what we should remember about this man, more than his skill, is this resilience, this courage, the power of his will and belief. 

 

When We Were Kings. 

The documentary manages to capture everything about the context and anticipation of this event. It had the nasty dictator paying the bill for an image boost, the crazy and mega-dodgy promoter Don King, the music artists like James Brown leading what was called the Black Woodstock. And the real star of the film, Africa itself. Seeing Ali training, running through the villages, is truly poetic.

It had the great and good of journalism, David Frost, Norman Mailer et al, well beyond sport, all opining with the gravitas of a war correspondent at the Battle of Britain, or Gettysburg. Indeed one of the lighter curiosities around the Rumble in the Jungle is noting the number of people who claim to have been there; especially in the dressing room with Ali after the fight. All a bit like Violet’s (Kray) funeral. (Cockneys will get it.)

Foreman was injured in training, the fight delayed, and for over a month the world was centred around Kinshasa.

For the sporting records, as everyone knows, Ali delivered one of the most unexpected victories in the history of sport. With such melodrama. The aggressive right leads of Round 1, standing in his corner after those first three minutes looking for a Plan B, the rope-a-dope. Is that all you’ve got George? It is all beyond epic, and in that searing heat. It is superhuman.

And like with Liston, he told us all how wrong we were to doubt him. 

I told you, I told you all. All you suckers bow.

Tyson knows, and says it best in this tribute. Ali goes to a place very very few men dare to explore, and it is the definition of his greatness. Iron Mike’s narration here will rip out your heart. Because it’s him.

 

The punch he never threw. 

Ali had one more lesson for us all, that in fact has now entered common lexicon and parlance. Famously used by Aaron Sorkin in an episode of the West Wing, after a devastating win for Bartlett in the presidential debate. 

No need for spin. Everyone knows what happened and who won. No need to gloat. We all go home. It’s the punch Ali never threw –  CJ Cregg. 

George Foreman is beaten and going down. Ali has the killer right cross cocked for the final blow. He doesn’t throw it. Why? 

Probably the best punch of the whole fight was never landed. As I was going down, trying to hold myself, he saw me stumbling. Ordinarily, you finish your fighter off. I would have. He got ready to throw the right hand and he didn’t do it. That’s what made him, in my mind, the greatest fighter I ever fought. – George Foreman.

Many of us are like George. We like it when we are winning. We want to rub it in. And we throw the last punch, because it feels good. No one more guilty of that than me. This bloodlust is also everywhere post the Trump victory.  

Ali didn’t throw the punch. He said it spoiled the aesthetic beauty of the combination, but more likely because he was never someone who punched down, despite all the adversity he had faced in life. He never needed to, because he was, and is, the Greatest, and everyone already knew. 

It was all fifty years ago and how we miss Ali; how we miss when we, and boxing, were kings.

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