Everything
is about Sex, Except Sex. Sex is about Power.
Julian Wheetcroft starts to text message furiously on social
media: “Good morning cute, little China girl...
I feel that in tug-of-war many Chinese really enjoy to see
the boyish macho aspect.
It's recently been stated that he who doesn't have will be left
out despite having a strong grip on what they entail to achieve.
It's similar in this situation because if you’ve got
strength it's the same as having powerful ability.
But in reality, strength comes in different formats.
A butterfly can never be hurt by the most powerful boxer who
throws a punch at it.
So, does this mean that a butterfly is stronger than the boxer
who is able to be knocked to the ground by another powerful boxer?
On another aside, having practiced a skill and being good
at your sport or such is also another aspect of being powerful.
I was at a pub in Bangkok, drinking copious amounts of beer and
relaxing nearby a pool table; thick, acid/base, bar music pounding in
everyone's veins.
And there was this local Thai pool shark. Incredibly skilled and
both showing off that no one could defeat him and getting a power high from his
sport but if you look at him he's physically old, thin: definitely not macho
like.
I guess I too can get a powerful fix and feel really good after
doing a quality sketch...
When we are good at a skill of somesort it is something that can
give us satisfaction and a power buzz
But as for having skill as a boxer..
The first victory fight went down in history for Mohamed Ali
because it was based not that he was
physically stronger than the previous heavyweight champion..the guy before was
Sonny Liston...he was extremely built and physically powerful..and if he landed
the right punch it was knock out and game over, which was the reality for a lot
of his success in his career..but Muhammed Ali..was agile...fast on his feet and
yes had the skill to defeat the stronger boxer...who was Liston at that time.”
The two fights between Muhammad Ali and Sonny Liston for boxing's World Heavyweight Championship -- in Miami Beach, Florida, in February 1964 and in Lewiston, Maine, in May 1965 -- were among the most anticipated, watched, and controversial fights in the sport's history. In the days leading up to the fight Ali (still known as Cassisis Clay) proudly described his fighting style: " float like a butterfly, sting like a bee." Charles Liston's father was a sharecropper in Mississippi. His mother had had one child before she married his father, who had 13 children with his first wife; together, they would have 12 more. Sonny was the second youngest but never knew when he was born. "The only thing my old man ever gave me was a beating," he claimed, and the scars were still visible decades later. After he joined his mother in St. Louis, Missouri, he joined a street gang and was imprisoned for robbery when he was around 20. It was then that he turned to boxing. After serving two years of his five-year sentence he was paroled. As an amateur he won the Chicago Golden Gloves Tournament of Champions (defeating the 1952 Olympic heavyweight champion) and then knocked out the 1953 European Championship bronze medalist. After less than a year he turned pro but supplemented his income by working as an intimidator-enforcer for racketeers. A widely publicized account of his resisting arrest -- even after nightsticks were allegedly broken over his skull -- led to another six-month stint in jail. Moving to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he resumed his boxing career under the management of Joseph "Pep" Barone, an associate of Frankie Carbo, a one-time mob hit man and senior member of the Lucchese crime family, and continued having run-ins with the law. In 1960 he was the leading contender to challenge champion Floyd Patterson, but his ties to organized crime prevented a title bout. until 1962, after he got a new manager. His fists measured 15 in (38 cm) around (the largest of any heavyweight champion), and weighed 25 pounds more than Patterson; he knocked him out at 2:06 of the first round, the third-fastest knockout in a world heavyweight title fight and the first time the champion had been knocked out in round one. The rematch lasted four seconds longer than the first one.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, another boxing star was rising. Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. had begun training as an amateur boxer when he was 12 years old. At 16 he won a split decision in his amateur boxing debut; his amateur reord was 100 wins with five losses. At 18, he won a gold medal in the light heavyweight division at the 1960 Summer Olympics and then went professional, amassing a 19-0 record over the next three years. Though he became the top contender for Liston's title, his last two matches before the title bout were controversial victories: He was saved by the bell when Henry Cooper, the British champion, knocked him down at the end of round four, and was staggered in the first round by his closst rival as top contender though he won a unanimous decision. Between March 1961 and the Clay fight, Liston had fought three times and won each bout with first-round knockouts—meaning that he had fought just over six minutes during a 35-month stretch. Convinced that he would dispose of Clay within the first two rounds, he trained minimally, typically running just one mile a day instead of his usual five. Before the championshp fight Clay was a 7–1 underdog. But that didn't stop him from his usual pre-fight antics, including a predictive poem:
ReplyDeleteClay comes out to meet Liston and Liston starts to retreat,
If Liston goes back an inch farther he'll end up in a ringside seat.
Clay swings with a left,
Clay swings with a right,
Just look at young Cassius carry the fight.
Liston keeps backing but there's not enough room,
It's a matter of time until Clay lowers the boom.
Then Clay lands with a right, what a beautiful swing,
And the punch raised the bear clear out of the ring.
Liston still rising and the ref wears a frown,
But he can't start counting until Sonny comes down.
Now Liston disappears from view, the crowd is getting frantic
But our radar stations have picked him up somewhere over the Atlantic.
Who on Earth thought, when they came to the fight,
That they would witness the launching of a human satellite.
Hence the crowd did not dream, when they laid down their money,
That they would see a total eclipse of Sonny.
At the beginning of the third round Clay hit Liston with a combination that buckled his knees and opened a cut under his left eye, the first time Liston had ever been cut. In the sixth, Clay hit Liston repeatedly. When Liston did not answer the bell for the seventh round, Clay was declared the winner, becoming the youngest boxer thus far (at 22) to take the title from a reigning heavyweight champion. (Patterson had been the youngest champion, at 21, but he won during an elimination bout following undefeated champion Rocky Marciano's retirement; in 1986 Mike Tyson would become champion at 20.) Clay then joined the Nation of Islam and changed his name to Cassius X and then to Muhammad Ali. In the rematch Liston was knocked down in the first minute, but Ali refused to retreat to a neutral corner, thus delaying the count. The fight resumed after Liston rose after being down about 20 seconds, but it was almost immediately stopped when the timekeeper indicated that he had counted Liston out, though it should have been the referee's count that mattered; Ali was declared the winner by knockout. Many speculated that Liston threw the fight, either because of death threats from the Nation of Islam or to pay off debts by betting against himself or because of mob bets against him.