Yes. Thank you! I love made-up words. That’s why I said infidelious was ‘the great non-word’. I’m thinking infidelious could also be defined as
“showing a tendency to hate people who don’t believe in your God.”

Nail on the head right here.

Say what you want about if you disagree with everything he did and said or agreed. It was bold and he put himself out there, win or lose. None of the athletes in the world today would make a stand like he did.

I’m well-aware it isn’t a word. Made it up. Do it all the time.

G,

I agree with you 100% and would’ve mentioned Ali’s philandering and the Joe Frazier stuff but didn’t think it was all that applicable to the point I was making.

If Ali was around today, goodness knows we’d think differently of him.

Ali was a member of a radical and often violent sect of the Islamic religion. Isnt that why he was persecuted? Not to say it was justified. But Ali essentially belonged to a terroristic sect that sold drugs, ran small time casinos and often acted as small time hoods in order to generate money. And at the front of all that was Ali, the primary bread winner to the Nation. The Nation in turn funded groups like The Black Mafia.

…I believe Ali was one of the greatest boxers (top 1-3) of all time. I believe that he was an enormous agent of change. But I question the notion that he was unjustly watched. While he didn’t assassinate anyone or blow up city blocks, his boxing purses certainly did.

And as for the comment to him being the greatest symbol and agent in the civil rights movement. Jackie Robinson’s fam would have something to say about that… He was everything Ali was without the arrogance, big mouth or the connection to terror.

Ali was able to get away with much of this because he was a clown and he loved to work the media. He was a funny and charismatic guy. Yet I suspect things would have been different if he had to endure today’s media environment. Back then his antics were filtered through the mainstream media.

Ali also gained considerable sympathy for his illness.

As Mountain Jack points out, there are other like Bill Russell who endured racism as well and were much more impressive men. But, they didn’t have the charisma of an Ali, and they didn’t have the world stage of being the heavyweight champion of the world.

As Brooks points out, times are changing. The new media environment strips away some of the aura surrounding sports heroes. The days of Mickey Mantle are long gone.