Velociworld

I like pro sports (although I'm never going to be one to give into too much hero worship--give a twenty year old, who's never really had to do anything in his life, twenty million dollars, adoration, all the women he wants, and nothing resembling normal accountability, and the results aren't really too surprising), and that picture is one of the best ever taken. Amazing, intense, perfect.

Is that Sonny Liston or some other poor bastard like Ernie Terrell?
Ali fought Terrell in the Astrodome about 1965. He had changed his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammed Ali a year earlier. For weeks before the fight, Terrell insisted on calling him Cassius Clay "because that's his damn name."
Come fight night, Ali beat the living shit out of Terrell but wouldn't finish him off; they call that "carrying" your opponent in boxing circles. For ten rounds he'd beat on Terrell, step back and scream "What's my name? What's my name?"
People tend to forget Ali's cruel streak.

That's Liston, 1964. And Ernie wasn't the only one that Ali "carried" while he taunted them about his name. He did it to Floyd Patterson in '65, I think, and intended to do it to Frazier in '71, but after Smokin' Joe got finished with him his jaw wouldn't move (the only cure for Ali).

Yep, he did it to Patterson. I've always read that was a particularly monstrous spectacle. Anybody with that much bile must be a muslim.