Muhammad Ali: Boxing, Fame and The Trap

What happens when a black icon refuses to make white audiences comfortable? This episode traces Muhammad Ali’s BBC interviews—full of swagger and wit, fury and fallout—to reveal how he reshaped media, protest and public speech. Along the way: Vietnam, the Nation of Islam, Joe Frazier, and a blueprint every outspoken Black celebrity still wrestles with today.

Additional archive: When We Were Kings, PolyGram Film Productions, 1996 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin from BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries. This is Big Lives.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Army Manual Jochi, I'm Kairi, and here on the show.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
What we do is we take a single cultural icon
and we break down their life and they impact using
the BBC's Flask Archive. And today, my friend, we're going
to talk about Muhammad Ali.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
Mohammed Ali, Fella and Manila all of it.

Speaker 4 (00:47):
I could I could do a bunch of puns or
a bunch of what is a bunch of rhydes.

Speaker 5 (00:51):
I'm going to retire to heavyweight chap in the world.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Filth.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
The world will be stunned.

Speaker 5 (00:59):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
If you take the World of Stars.

Speaker 6 (01:02):
When Nickson resigned, wait till I kick the foremost behind.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
I feel like what most people know him for is
sort of like the large in life personality, this boxer
who was like super super vocal and just kind of
braggadocious in like a really major way. So, Kai, it's
okay if you don't, but I'm just curious. Do you
remember the first time as a kid you sort of
encountered Muhammad Ali?

Speaker 3 (01:28):
Huh. Interesting.

Speaker 4 (01:30):
I don't remember the first time I encountered him, but.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
I just remember.

Speaker 4 (01:39):
How big a deal he was to the generation of
people who raised me right like he was a humongous
part of their idea of important people in the world.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
Honestly, one of my clearest memories actually, I was about
like eight or nine, I think, and I was watching
TV after school, and I don't know what I was
sticking through the channels, but I ended up sort of
stumbling upon a segment they were doing somewhere on some
TV show about Muhammad Ali and just going into his

(02:12):
life as like, oh, he's this amazing boxer. And basically
the clip that they kept showing again and again and
again on this British TV program was this white guy,
Henry Cooper flattening Ali and actually knocking him like to
the canvas.

Speaker 7 (02:25):
Just seconds left of this fourth round, and let's play
poking out one, two left and I got I got
left hand from Cooper and return.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
A very solid one.

Speaker 7 (02:32):
There By, Cooper entered plays based after Play tries.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
To come back and plays down.

Speaker 8 (02:37):
Cooper has down him a beautiful puncher and as the
bell goes, play had just been dropped.

Speaker 7 (02:46):
Quite a beautiful punch from Cooper.

Speaker 4 (02:50):
This is the memory they want to add, So of.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Course, what happens is little me.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
I go to the dinner table that night and I'm
talking about you know how schoolman and all that stuff,
and I say something about Muhammad Ali and my dad
was like, oh, okay, you you know about Ire, Like, oh, yeah, no,
he got defeated by recouper.

Speaker 3 (03:11):
Oh my god, I'm sure your father was like, get
out of my.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
House legitimately, and it started.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
I remember this like three hour conversation, like where my
parents sat me down and we were like, well, number one,
he won that fight, but also we're talking about someone
who is the greatest boxer of all time, but also
so so much more than a boxer. And I remember,
for like the next couple of weeks, any older black adult,

(03:37):
I think my parents like sent out an SOS signal
about me or something too, like my relatives, because for
the next couple of weeks, it was like every older
black person in my life took upon themselves to basically
tell me the significance of this guy, which was, yes,
this was a boxer, but also some of his most
famous fights didn't take place in the ring at all,

(03:58):
like they took place in the social and political arena.
And the example of this that my parents told me
about was this series of incredible interviews Muhammad Ali did
throughout the seventies on the BBC. Like, my folks talked
about these interviews just as much as they talked about
his famous fights. And I realized recently I'd never actually

(04:20):
seen these interviews, like I think I saw a few
clips of them when he died a few years ago.
But I started looking through these interviews via the BBC
archive and like, the energy of these interviews is wild,
Like you can really tell, Okay, this is a new
type of TV event. And in watching these interviews in

(04:40):
the BBC, I realized, Oh, I'm watching a new type
of black celebrity in action.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
But also I noticed in these interviews there's almost like
this blueprint for a test. Every outspoken famous black celebrity
or public figure I've ever seen, like post Ali has
had to navigate the sort of test back.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
Honestly, if you get it wrong, kills careers. I like
to call this test the.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
Outspoken Black person exam ah, which is name I'm given
to this, Okay, And that's what we're gonna get into today.

Speaker 4 (05:14):
Honestly, We're gonna take a test about being black people
with opinions, which I think we both count as.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
So this is important most definitely, and we'll get into
that off of the break.

Speaker 5 (05:24):
You and it's the TV show. There's nothing to Mohammad Ali.
Have you got some more questions?

Speaker 6 (05:28):
I asked them, and I bet y'all eat you up
right here on there.

Speaker 5 (05:31):
It ain't no way you can tackle me.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
Welcome back to Big Lines. We're talking today about Muhammad
Ali and Kai. Okay, before we get into these interviews,
I just want to do an exercise that I know
is dumb, because you are closer to this time period
in your life and I am, but I.

Speaker 4 (05:58):
Is that old now I went alive with Mohamad. Let's
just pump the breaks on that. This is my parents' people. Yes,
I am much closer.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
Than you, fair enough. I just want to place you
a little in time here. Okay, So we're in the
early nineteen seventies, nineteen seventy one to be exact, and
at this point, Muhammad Ali's twenty nine and he's just
come out of a really pivotal sort of decade in
his life, which is the sixties, which honestly pivotal decade
in America's life in the world in the world, right,

(06:31):
you know, we're talking about height of the civil rights
movement this time when honestly, being a famous black man, hell,
just being like a regular black person in America means
just by existing, right, you're having to make real choices
about what sort of person you're gonna be in this time, right,
like how to use your power. And Ali is a

(06:52):
man of his time in that sort of way, Like
so much of how we're going to see him throughout
this episode in these interviews is as a person trying
to contend with that in a real way. And just
to give you an idea of sort of where he's
starting the decade, just because I feel like to say it,
the rundown of it on paper is really quite crazy.
Like in the past ten years of his career. At

(07:14):
this point, he's become heavyweight champion of the World. He's
become a massive part of the black power movement because
he changes his name. He joins the Nation of Islam,
which was at that time was his massive scene as
radical black group, both a religious group and an activist
group that Malcolm X was famously a part of. And
he's also by this point taking a moral stand that

(07:36):
is revolutionary. You know, at this time, the Vietnam War
is in full swing, and Ali he refuses to be
drafted into it.

Speaker 9 (07:46):
But me and other so called negroes go ten thousand
miles away from home in America to drop bombs and
bullets on other brown people who's never us. And I
will say directly, no, I will not go ten thousand

(08:07):
miles to help appeal innocent people.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
His draft number gets called up and he says he
won't fight, and he loses everything as a result.

Speaker 2 (08:18):
Right, he gets his heavyweight.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
Title stripped from him, belts, he's banned from fighting, and
he also gets criminally convicted. And this is like I
cannot overstate like how big a deal this was.

Speaker 3 (08:30):
I think it's the first thing I'd learned about.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
Right, probably, But I bring all of this stuff up,
this laundry list of sort of things that he's been through,
which is, by the nineteen seventies, Alie, he is a.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
New type of black man for a new era.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
And by the nineteen seventies, that boxing ban because of
his Vietnam War protest that's been overturned. Everybody knows that
Vietnam was like a bad idea by this point, and
like I've seen him pretty horrendous war crimes. His conviction
is overturned, and this man is back. He's fighting and
he's the man. And it's in that context that he

(09:11):
goes on the BBC in nineteen seventy one and appears
on this program called Parkinson. I feel like in the
UK you say Parkinson, people know exactly what it means,
but in the US I'm tinally going to figure out
how to describe it.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
This is like maybe the biggest talk show in British
television history. It is like the Ed.

Speaker 1 (09:32):
Sullivan's Show, the Tonight Show of Johnny Carson. It's all
of those kind of into one. Ah and yeah, it's
a big.

Speaker 7 (09:39):
Deal Evening Tonight. My guest is an extraordinary man, if
you would argue if I call him unique. He's the
prime example of a man who is an athlete and
yet who represents so many other things to so many
other people. To me as someone who's interested in sport,
he's without doubt the most beautiful and complete athlete I've
ever seen. To others, he's a political leader, a figurehead

(10:02):
in the battle between black and white, and yet to
more people who care little about sport and even less
about politics. He's one of the world's great entertain a character,
a comedian, and the some time point here he is
in all this splendor, ladies and gentlemen.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
Muhammad Ali, so he goes on this show. It's this
big event.

Speaker 1 (10:20):
I think it's important to note here the whole structure
of this thing is it brings on sort of well
known people of the day every week, and it's a
brand new show. It's in the first view of its existence.
They're still working out how to do the show. And honestly,
they have not had that many black guests on at
this point. I think the first episode of the show ever,

(10:41):
they happen to have Arthur Ash on. But you know,
Arthur Rash was one of like several guests that they
had on that episode. And Arthur Rash Tennis legend, is
a very very different person to Muhammad Harvey. Yeah, right, yes,
And some of his interview tape is kind of a

(11:01):
sort of tape that you've probably heard from Ali before, like,
you know, just sort of his I'm the greatest, I'm
gonna knock everybody out, I'm the champion of a world stuff,
you know, that kind of stick.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
I'll play a little bit of this for you.

Speaker 7 (11:13):
Did you at that time, though, when you were twelve
and in your early teens, did you ever imagine yourself
as being world champion?

Speaker 10 (11:18):
You used to say, Well, it happened one night when
I heard Rocky Marciana nineteen fifty four, fifty three or
sometimes he had beat Walcott or somebody. And I was
in the rain on my bicycle, leaning over listening to
a Fellows radio on the car, and I heard I
got there too late, and I heard the fellow say,
and still the.

Speaker 3 (11:35):
Heavy weight champion of the world, Rocky.

Speaker 10 (11:37):
Marciano, and all the noise, and little skinny kid in
Kentucky went about, I don't know how many stones it
is with eighty five pounds and small and it sounds.
So I rode off in the rain on my bicycle.
I could just hear the man say it. At that
time my name was cast Us Play and still the
heavyweight champion of the whole world, cash Us Clay. I

(11:59):
heard it as I rode off in the rain, and
I said to myself, the champion of the whole world
can whoop every man in Russia, every man in the Maryland,
every man in China, every man in Japan, every man
in Europe, every man in America.

Speaker 3 (12:12):
The champan of.

Speaker 10 (12:12):
The whole world has sound big then, so I kept
working until I did.

Speaker 3 (12:22):
Not only the champion of the whole world, but better
than all of those before me.

Speaker 11 (12:34):
I'm not gonna argue with you.

Speaker 3 (12:36):
You're not as dumb as you look.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
So I don't know for my parents, and it sounds
like for your parents to like to be watching a
black man in full technical color on your TV when
I don't really interview.

Speaker 2 (12:52):
Black people like that.

Speaker 1 (12:53):
Uh tell the white host, Yeah, you're not as dumb
as you look. Like that's that's huge.

Speaker 4 (13:00):
Right, especially after he's already supposed to have been chased
out of society because of his Vietnam thinking.

Speaker 3 (13:05):
Here he is.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
And also I think the thing that's so evident is
it's like he's not just allowed mane.

Speaker 3 (13:10):
He's charming and handsome.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
And I think that's a really important thing that we're
going to get to in a bit here. Just the
way he looked, he was a new type of TV
staff for people. And I don't know, he's like turning
even like the softball cues that Parkinson is asking him
on their head to make them more meaningful in a
way that is really interesting.

Speaker 2 (13:31):
I'm going to pay you this quit here.

Speaker 11 (13:33):
I was reading a piece of Norman Miller wrote about you,
where recently described you as the second most prominent American,
second most prominent after Nixon. Might dispute that, but would
you like to be president?

Speaker 3 (13:44):
No?

Speaker 10 (13:45):
No, no, sir, too dangerous. Like in other words, here's
a ship. People are dancing on the ship. A lot
of money is on the ship, a lot of foods
on the ship. And I cannot integrate on the ship.
I cannot have equality on the ship. I'm just in
the galley working and I never could get up to
see the captain of the ship. Now, all of a sudden,
the man tells me, oh, say come.

Speaker 5 (14:06):
On down, I'll lead out of the gallley. I want
you to come up here, have some of the drink.

Speaker 3 (14:11):
What do you want?

Speaker 10 (14:11):
And giving me number one spot from the galley to
the number one spot. I said, this ship must be sinking.

Speaker 3 (14:19):
Why is he so nice to me? Now?

Speaker 5 (14:22):
What moves him to call me up here?

Speaker 10 (14:25):
Black men have been males. Now one might be the president.
Maratha's in too much trouble. I don't want that job.

Speaker 3 (14:30):
Now there it is pre Charlie.

Speaker 1 (14:35):
And the thing you hear in that tape is just
like how inside the audience actually is with him. And again,
like you know, I don't know the exact demographics of
that room, right, but at this time, early seventies UK
receved for an interview like that, he's being interviewed by
a white guy. You could guess that the room is
largely not black. It's a largely white audience. And this

(14:59):
is a guy who you know, yes, like he's all
of these things you've mentioned, right. He is confident, outspoken,
he is handsome, but he also believes in some things
that would have been pretty radical for a lot of
those white people in the audience and honestly for black
people watching at home as well.

Speaker 4 (15:19):
Absolutely, I mean he's been in the Nation of Islam.
You know, this is a radical This is a truly radical.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
Act, a truly radical act, and he's winning people over
just by being so charming. And this is where we're
going to arrive at what I called kind of like
a really key part of the outspoken Black person exam,
which I'm going to call the radical mentor problem.

Speaker 3 (15:42):
The radical midtor a problem.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
Yes, So, like you just mentioned, are these a part
of the Nation of Islam. And I don't know if
you have describe the Nation of Islam to somebody, like,
how would you describe him?

Speaker 4 (15:54):
Well, at the time, I mean, you know, Elijah Mohamed,
who had been there of the Nation of Islam.

Speaker 3 (16:00):
Did describe white people as devils.

Speaker 1 (16:04):
You know, their whole thing was they were a group
that had informed in large part out of response to,
like obviously centuries of racism and oppression. And it's a
whole sort of religious movement built around the idea of
sort of, actually, these people who've done these horrible things
to us, they're evil, and what the best thing for

(16:25):
us is to stay as far away from that as possible, Like,
we don't need your white beauty standards, we don't need
any of this kind of stuff. We're going to be
our own people because.

Speaker 2 (16:35):
Black is great.

Speaker 1 (16:36):
And it was a total inversion of sort of the
idea that, right, everything good is white and everything bad
is black. And what happens is Parknerson assually about that.

Speaker 7 (16:47):
Elisia Muhammad has been on record, you must have been
nice this many times as saying that white men are devils.

Speaker 10 (16:52):
You don't believe that, Yeah, I believe everything he preached
mainly talks about the American white man.

Speaker 5 (16:56):
You think I'm gonna get on television and tear you do.

Speaker 10 (16:58):
Don't believe in what he likes, Muhammad teaching I'm as
number one as main fallibles, I believe and if the white.

Speaker 1 (17:02):
Men and you can almost see this like spark sort
of light up in parkins his eye because he's just like, wait,
surely Ali has not for this through because what you're
saying then is like, so every you hate every white person.
And so Parkinson asked ally about the best white guy

(17:24):
that he can think of.

Speaker 7 (17:25):
Are you saying that that every white man amer is
a white man?

Speaker 12 (17:28):
Jon F.

Speaker 7 (17:28):
Kennedy white man?

Speaker 1 (17:29):
Yeah?

Speaker 13 (17:30):
Was he was?

Speaker 3 (17:30):
He devil?

Speaker 4 (17:31):
Well?

Speaker 3 (17:31):
Who am I to say?

Speaker 2 (17:33):
What do you think he was?

Speaker 5 (17:34):
Who am matters say he was the devil?

Speaker 3 (17:35):
I'm not Eli.

Speaker 10 (17:37):
I've heard laid Mohamma say this that many white people
who mean right and then heart want to do right,
but there are so few. If ten thousand Rattlesnakes was
coming down at all now and I had a door
here I could shut, and then that ten thousand, one
thousand meant right, one thousand Rattlesnakes didn't want.

Speaker 3 (17:52):
To bite me. I knew they were good.

Speaker 10 (17:54):
Should I let all these rattlesnakes come down, hoping that
that thousand get together and farm a shield, or should
I just close the door and stay safe. I think
that they understand that bed Kong are not all bad,
but America's still dropping bombs. In Hiroshima is your pay
wasn't bad, but she still dropped the bomb. In Korea,
they weren't bad, but they still drop the bomb. So
now I'm gonna forget the four hundred years of lynching

(18:16):
and killing and raping, and the prime of my people, freedom, justice, quality,
the first five last high, the lords are low, last respected,
And I'm gonna look at two or three white people
who are trying to do right and.

Speaker 6 (18:25):
Don't see the other million trying to kill me. I'm
not that big of a food and I'm not gonna deny.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
I believe he made.

Speaker 3 (18:33):
That a joke. Yeah, you know, like he got a
laugh out of that.

Speaker 2 (18:37):
He just told in the UK.

Speaker 1 (18:41):
Like one of the great originators of the system of impression.
He's describing he was able to bring out four hundred
years of oppression.

Speaker 3 (18:48):
I think we could say the original, yes.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
Origin Listen, I don't want to make I don't want
to let pa Portuguese in the Dutch off that easy, okay,
But yes, the perfectionists of sistem and bring that up
and make them laugh at it. And the reason why
I'm bringing this up, and I just want to explain
what even this test is a little bit here, which
is he staked his repeat right on being more than

(19:11):
just an athlete, and he handles that so easily, right,
But there's real jeopardy in the question Abat Parkinson is
asking him there, like if Ali distances himself from Elijah
Muhammad in a major way, if he says, okay, yes,
you know he says that, but you know, I like
some white people. I like you, that's a perfectly acceptable answer, right.

(19:33):
But what he does in that is he would totally
confirm that he's basically exactly the sort of blowhard showman
who doesn't really understand what he's talking about, which is
something that like, at that time, the media was trying
to portray him as.

Speaker 2 (19:49):
Right.

Speaker 1 (19:49):
They are like, you are a boxer, stay in your lane,
shut up and dribble.

Speaker 4 (19:54):
Basically, yeah, I mean, remember this man has already at
this point, you know, been convicted right of draft dodging,
you know, and did it very publicly. He was recruited
into the Nation of Islam by B Malcolm X.

Speaker 3 (20:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (20:12):
So it's like, part of what's remarkable to me is
that he's that they're having this interview at all, like
by this stage in his career.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
Right, right, you know, all of that has been brought
about just because of the sheer force of his celebrity.

Speaker 3 (20:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:28):
And it's interesting to me because when I look back
through the tape and looked at other interviews, there is
this consistent pattern of interviewing, which is to try and
get him to either a walk away from some of
the more radical things about the Nation of Islam says,
or to get him to double down on it in
a way that ends up being problematic for.

Speaker 3 (20:48):
Him, right, to set a trap, this test.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
And I feel like this sort of questioning you see
again and again, which is you have sort of an outspoken,
famous black person, often in the political field, and often
because of how complicated we are as a people and
how many fast we are as a people, they're connected
to somebody with some pretty outish views, all just views
that make white people uncomfortable, but speak to truth that

(21:13):
we as black people all know, right, but we can
sort of look at it with like a grain of
salt or whatever. But if you were to play with
the tape, you'd be like, oh, wow, yeah, this is
going to horrify white people. And you know what this
reminded me of. It reminded me of Obama's first campaign
for president when he's running. So Obama runs and one

(21:36):
of the big events of his first campaign for president
was people brought up one of his supposed mentors, this
guy Jeremiah Right, the pastor.

Speaker 2 (21:46):
There was a flicker of your eyes.

Speaker 4 (21:50):
It was it was more of a like my almost
PTSD right, like this this moment in our political history.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
But continue.

Speaker 1 (21:59):
Basically, this guy who was on the record is a
pastor at a church that Obama went to Chicago for
many years, who you know, was on a record saying
some pretty like naked hard truths about America, but also
some things that were offensive to people, you know what
I mean. Basically saying that nine to eleven, for example,

(22:19):
was the natural conclusion, a natural result of America's foreign policy,
but not saying it like that, saying that nine to
eleven was like America's chickens coming home to roost stuff
like that.

Speaker 4 (22:30):
Which is quoting Malcolm X, like not God bless America,
Goddamn America is the quote that God.

Speaker 1 (22:37):
Obama in trouble and in order to fix that, like
Obama had to basically pull out the speech of his
life and invoke his white grandma to talk about how like, yes,
we all have people in our lives who say things
but like we don't necessarily agree with but can't disown
Ah And yeah, right from the beginning, you're seeing basically
this is a new type of interview, and on Parkinson's side,

(23:00):
he's engaging in a sort of journalism that in of
itself is new, which is just as Ali is figuring
out how to basically be a prominent famous black person
in this way and bring Brian to his people, Pawkinson
is figuring out how to interview somebody like that.

Speaker 4 (23:14):
But I have to say, also, when you bring up
the Obama comparison, it really is striking to think about
what happens for Muhammad Ali is he refuses to distance
himself from the Nation of Islam. Those are deeply held
beliefs and he is not going to thread some sort

(23:37):
of needle to say I disavow the organization that I'm
part of and the things that I believe. Barack Obama
all these years later, that speech that you're describing as
him is a fancy way of disavowing his pastor right,
you know, like he does the exact opposite thing. And

(23:59):
I think there is something to think about of these
two sort of titanic black men in culture across generations,
you know, and the difference in how they handle this
test because I think their polar opposite, but he refuses.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
It's this complete ultimate playbook. And I think a big
part of that too. You know, Muhammad Ali as this
person that he is at this moment in time, He's
part of a whole generation, right of black men who
are in the public guye on TV in ways that
the previous generations of black men in this country were
not right. And I think in these interviews, I don't

(24:39):
even think he says it. At different points, He's making
a conscious decision about who he's talking to. Right When
you look at other people in his generation, we could
include Martin Luther King Jr. In this Sydney porchier like
famous actor like they are all people who almost by
the definition of what they believe in and what they

(24:59):
stand for, deliberately want to make inroads with the white community.
And it's not that it's something that Muhammad Ali is
uninterested in, but it's not, it's not his primely concern.
He is talking at all times in his interviews to
the black person sitting at home. He's imagining a room

(25:21):
full of black people feeling like seen.

Speaker 2 (25:24):
Basically that one.

Speaker 3 (25:26):
Really interesting, Emanuel, exactly.

Speaker 4 (25:28):
That in therein lies the difference between his response in
Barack Obama's response.

Speaker 1 (25:32):
Right, because years later, Barack Obama is trying to win
over the whole American public. He's trying to black white people,
and you know, one of the criticisms you could say
of his whole presidency is that he does that too much.

Speaker 3 (25:45):
Yeah, and wow, that's it's a really good point.

Speaker 2 (25:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
So it seems like your assessment obvious national test is
Ali aces it right.

Speaker 3 (25:55):
Everything I've heard, that's the test.

Speaker 1 (25:58):
I agree with you, And you can tell watching it
that he knows he's ased it.

Speaker 2 (26:02):
He's like, I just killed that.

Speaker 1 (26:04):
I'm going to tell you the end of the interview,
Mohammad Ali, Thanks Lord.

Speaker 10 (26:08):
One more poem about your ship.

Speaker 3 (26:10):
Two soconds.

Speaker 10 (26:11):
I asked how much money was I getting, you know,
for taking up all my time. You know, you usually
get a little paid for this, and they said, you don't.
Your budget's kind of lower and you don't pay too much.
So I wrote a poem and I'm gonna close with this.
I love your show and I like your style, but
you'll pay us so cheap I won't be back for

(26:32):
a while.

Speaker 4 (26:36):
Wow wow, right, Like, I mean the levels of trolling
in that tape, right, Like he manages to be like, oh,
you're kind of cheap and new, right because and I'm,
by the way, been around a while.

Speaker 3 (26:51):
And I'm famous already.

Speaker 2 (26:52):
You know.

Speaker 4 (26:52):
Definitely I'll slum here on your little show for you
for a minute.

Speaker 3 (26:57):
It's brilliant.

Speaker 2 (26:59):
Yeah, No, I agree with you. I think he positive.

Speaker 1 (27:01):
Yes he's a showman, Yes he's a boxer, but he's
not saying all of this political stuff just to get
a rise out of people for a shock value to
sell tickets.

Speaker 2 (27:09):
He access communicates, but he means it.

Speaker 4 (27:11):
Yeah, I mean the trap, right, The trap they've said,
as you said, is either you're going to say something
that's going to ruin your celebrity at large, or you're
going to say something that's gonna undermine your core following,
and he is like, you can't put me in that trap, you.

Speaker 3 (27:26):
Know, And are you saying that?

Speaker 4 (27:28):
The way he does it, the way he escapes the
trap is by making sure his primary interest is black people.

Speaker 1 (27:35):
Yeah, he intuitively understands something I think about TV that,
like I think is new, which is right if you
yourself and you don't try and do the politician y
thing of trying to like be somethody that you're not,
and you do that well, people respond to that. So, yeah,

(27:57):
this show is a huge success and it's so popular
that Ali, despite him saying I won't be back for
a while, Dove return to the show for more interviews.
But the next couple times it comes to the show
are going to get a little trickier and they are
going to be some tests, some part of the outspoken
Black person exam but I've talked about but I actually

(28:17):
think that Ali does a little less well with but
I want to get into after the break, Welcome back
to Big Lives. We're talking about Muhammad Ali and Kai.
Where we just left off right, Muhammad Ali had just

(28:39):
raised his first interview with Michael Parkinson killed what I
called the radical mental test. But for this next part
of this exam, I don't know if when you were
a kid, Kai, I don't know were you often in
white spaces occasionally where there's maybe like one other black
kid in that in that space.

Speaker 4 (29:00):
Well, certainly, you know, like in school, we got set
to these segregated schools to try to get the good
the good education.

Speaker 3 (29:08):
Often the other black kid was for a period my brother.

Speaker 1 (29:13):
Similarly, I remember my mom would send me and my
sisters to school and she would be like, whatever you
guys get into with each other during the day, bring
it home. You do not want the only two black
kids in the school finding each other in front of
for all of these white people's entertainment. And this is
the text I want to get into, which is this

(29:36):
next test, and this sort of trap is what I
call the comparison trap, which is I feel like, as
an outspoken, famous black person, you are in a space,
you existing in a certain type of way. And one
of the lines of questioning that I feel like you
see a lot to this day is well, white interviews
will or mains media will compare you to another black

(29:56):
person who is kind of different than you, and be like, well, okay,
you're this way. You hold these beliefs, but what about
this other person? They don't hold them, So what do
you think of them? And you have kind of like
a choice, right, which is you can either lean into
that and sort of give in a way what that
interviewer might want, which is for you to ship on

(30:17):
that black person in a major way, or you can
like sort of turn the other cheek. Unfortunately, for Muhammad
Ali and most of the black men he faces like,
they're literally in a business where by definition they are
fighting in front of a crowd full of white people.

Speaker 3 (30:34):
They cannot a multi racial crowd, but they are.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
Fighting two black men fighting each other in front of
the world.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
And for this next bit, I want to talk about
this second interview Muhammad Ali did with Parkinson and BBC,
and it's one way he is to figure out how
to survive this comparison trap. And that person that he's
been compared to is his greatest rival, a guy named
Joe Frasier.

Speaker 4 (30:59):
I mean, this is some of the most famous stuff
in boxing history, right in this awesome black history Ali
versus Frasier.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
Yes, indeed, so I'm just gonna you indult me because
I knew some of this, but I didn't know some
of the details of his. And I'm the same place,
which is like Arlie and Fraser at one point back
in the day, like we're friends. They were friends coming
up as young boxers, smoking Joe Fraser, smoking Joe Fraser,
and like, these two could not be more different in

(31:28):
terms of personality, right. Ali is loud and brash and
like very confident, and he's tall and like very in.

Speaker 2 (31:39):
His own words, beautiful and all the rest of it.
Literally like the.

Speaker 1 (31:42):
Black arch type of Michelangelo's David.

Speaker 2 (31:46):
And Joe Fraser.

Speaker 1 (31:48):
You know, he's like a good four inches shorter, he's stocky,
he's quiet, is darker skinned than Ali, and he in
general has a very different sort of life. Ali grew
up not middle class, but what would have passed for
middle class in a black.

Speaker 2 (32:06):
Community at that point in time.

Speaker 1 (32:09):
Joe Fraser did not like his people were sharecropping folk,
so he knew a hard way. You know, there's those
famous scenes in the Rocky boxing movies of Sylvester Stallone,
that character punching slabs of meat in Philadelphia. They took
that from Joe Frasier.

Speaker 3 (32:25):
They took a lot of Rocky from Joe Fraser.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
M hm.

Speaker 4 (32:28):
Apparently like a lot of the story of Rocky is
actually Joe Fraser's.

Speaker 1 (32:31):
Story totally like the whole image of sort of the
humble working man's man getting a shot and knowing that
is Joe Frasier. And even though Joe was also a
person at this time like Ali, trying to figure out
how he's going to be a black man in this space,
and he chose a slightly different track, which was basically,

(32:51):
you know, kind of do what you need to do,
be good, be supportive of v efforts going on, be
supportive as of a rights movement. But he was not
as vocal as Arli. But crucially, behind the scenes he
helped Ali in those years where Ali couldn't fight. It
was Joe Frasier who was lending Ari money to stay afloat. Basically,

(33:13):
it was Joe Frasier who, like when he eventually had
some time as a heavyweight champion of the world, was
appealing to the boxing license boards in some stories, appeal
to Nixon. President Nixon basically saying, like listen, this man's
had his time out in the wilderness. We know Vietnam
was bad. Let him back like a real friend, you

(33:34):
know what I mean, like real people. So Ali does that,
he comes back into boxing, but the problem is that
Joe Frasier is the heavyweight champion of the world instead
of him, and Ali realizes, Okay, I actually have to
fight my friend to get back to the top, and
so the two of them set up. This fight gets

(33:55):
billed as the fight of the century, and in a
run up to that bout in nineteen seventy one, Ali
starts like this campaign of words against Joe, and I'm
just going to read you this quote that Ali is
that Joe Frasier, He's gonna get telephone calls from folks
in Georgia and in Alabama and Mississippi saying, Joe Frasier,

(34:17):
you be a white man tonight and stop that draft
dodging n word.

Speaker 3 (34:25):
I know it's not supposed to be funny, but it is.

Speaker 1 (34:27):
It is funny funny because it's like, what's happening here
is Ali is positioning Joe Frasier as the white man's
hope to beat him.

Speaker 3 (34:40):
Yeah, which is a trope.

Speaker 4 (34:41):
This is a thing if people somehow don't know, going
all the way back to the early twentieth century of
the great white hope who can beat the black boxer,
and boxing was like just a real canvas for racial
politics throughout the twentieth century.

Speaker 3 (34:57):
So it is a particular.

Speaker 1 (34:59):
Insult on a particular particularly insult to say that. And
also factually there were a lot of people from the
time Ali embraced sort of black para politics. Then they
Islam who really did just want someone to go and
shut that guy up and beat him in the ring?

Speaker 2 (35:15):
Where really do that?

Speaker 1 (35:18):
What happens is in it's run up to these fights
they would have throughout the early seventies, Ali would do
engage in a sort.

Speaker 2 (35:25):
Of like Uncle Tom messaging.

Speaker 1 (35:28):
Joe Fraser is the white man's champion, and he's a
traded two hour race in like a real, real nasty way.
So this Fight of the Century in nineteen seventy one,
Ali loses.

Speaker 3 (35:42):
And Fraser knocks his ass out right.

Speaker 1 (35:44):
He hands Ali his first professional defeat. Actually, Joe Fraser
really did, in a lot of black people's minds, become
known as like this guy who stood in opposition to Ali.
And I have to say, in certain ways, I don't
want to say he didn't help himself, but I do
think when you look at certain actions, you're like, oh,

(36:07):
I could see how this would feed the fire. So,
for example, in the early nineteen seventies, this South Carolina
legislature hadn't invited a black person to come speak before
them in over one hundred years, like since the invention
of Jim Crow and when it kicked out a bunch
of black lawmakers. Right, when Fraser beats Ali the first time,

(36:27):
they invite him to come speak and he goes, right,
Which if you are somebody who is trying not to
look like you're in league with white people who want
to take this guy down, not for greaters, Right.

Speaker 4 (36:40):
Do we know if Ali was explicitly offended and pissed
about that?

Speaker 1 (36:44):
We don't know if he was fitted about that. But
I lowing the way it was reported at the time.
This reporter Bran Gumbel, who at that time was a
black reporter working for a black magazine and would later
go on to host, like in a major HBO show
on sports and unboxing, wrote this article basically, but just
the article was, is jof Fraser actually.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
Kind of like a white guy in black man's clothing?

Speaker 1 (37:06):
Like it was out here, and and that was part
of that article, right, Joe Fraser also was so hurt
right by sort of this energy from Ali, right Like,
He's like, Ali, I supported you through yours.

Speaker 3 (37:23):
Right, I was trying to get you out of gen
I was quired.

Speaker 1 (37:26):
About it, but I was helping you, And this is
how you're gonna do me like and so I think.
He then starts to lean into the show himself a
little bit. And where that comes into play in a
pretty big way is again with Ali's name. Joe Fraser
is on a record like in the lead up to
sort of these fights, basically being like, listen, I'm gonna

(37:48):
call him Cashier's clape. So fast forward a couple of
years in time with me to nineteen seventy four. At
this point, Ali is starting to get a little on
the older side for a boxer, right, Like, he's barely
in his thirties, and when he wants more than anything
is to be the undisputed heavyweight champ. Again, the boxing
landscapes changed. There are all of these big, younger cats

(38:13):
who have come into the scene that are dominating it.
And like boxing, I don't know, sometimes I forget how
weird boxing is. There's rankings, but really at a certain level,
it's just based off of hype.

Speaker 3 (38:26):
Like who can sell the most tickets, who can.

Speaker 1 (38:28):
Tell the most tickets, but also to be able to
like get a shot, right. So in nineteen seventy four,
like you know, Aari really wants to get that championship fight,
and he wants to get a shot at the guy
who has the belts, which by this point is not
actually Joe Fraser anymore. It's this guy who will talk
about later. Don't worry George Foreman indeed, but like I said,

(38:50):
like to even get a shot at the champ it
turns out Ali has to fight Joe Fraser again and win,
and he wants a little payback for what happened before.
And so in nineteen seventy four, Ali is back on
the BBC to promote this fight. He's doing so along
with Joe Fras as part of the special joint broadcast

(39:12):
that the BBC and Michael Parkinson are doing with basically
Michael Parkinson's equivalent in America, which at this time is
this guy Dick Cavott.

Speaker 2 (39:21):
Yeah. I don't know if there's something you want add
about Dick Cabott, No, I.

Speaker 3 (39:25):
Don't have it.

Speaker 4 (39:26):
It's just more the recognition of he is a really
big deal. You know, this is the age of Walter
Khonkrete type characters, where there is a single voice on
American television, a white man who is the embodiment of
normal and trustworthy and truth.

Speaker 1 (39:43):
So there are a lot of eyes like on this program,
it's being broadcast on both sides of the ocean. Broadcast
starts with basically Dick Cavet and Michael Parkinson visiting the
different training camps of these two fighters in a run
up to this fight, and the whole point of it
is definitely to show how different these fighters are. The
show begins with Dick Caviot visiting Ali at his training

(40:05):
camp when I'm.

Speaker 8 (40:06):
In a remote part of Pennsylvania and I'm at the
training camp both Muhammad Ali de Pennsylvania dear Lake, maybe
it's not.

Speaker 1 (40:15):
And Cavit is there talking about Aari's training methods. But
while he's there, he's also trying to paint a contrast
between these two fighters, and he's definitely pushing Ali to
do what he's done in the past, right, which is
basically make fun of Joe because it's good.

Speaker 2 (40:32):
Television, right right, right, And.

Speaker 1 (40:35):
Ali has a choice at this moment, which is okay,
this time around, Do I go back to making fun
of a fellow black man in the way that I
did before in tying him to like white supremacy and
Uncle Thomas and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 3 (40:49):
Or.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
Do I just rise above and kind of make it different.

Speaker 1 (40:55):
And Dick Cavott is in the ring with Ali, and
you know, Dick Cavot sort of got his shirt off
and some gloves on, and they're fake training with each other,
and Dick Kavit's interviewing him. He goes along and they
get into this conversation about sparring, right, because these boxes
will often have a partner through out there training for
a big fight to basically kind of resemble the other fighter, right,

(41:18):
to get them prepared for the for the match.

Speaker 8 (41:22):
When you're sparring with the guy I know, I know
this much, you try to match as nearly as you
can the guy you're gonna fight in the ring.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
In other words, if you've.

Speaker 8 (41:28):
Got a tall guy, you try to get sorry partner
or approximately the same. But because what do you go
for and a guy like Fraser, I mean, it's not like.

Speaker 5 (41:39):
He's a guy a.

Speaker 10 (41:40):
Certain rough looking look, vicious looks, and you have to
meet a man who's vicious.

Speaker 14 (41:47):
So I have a.

Speaker 10 (41:47):
Spam partner who reminds me Joe Frasier threw him.

Speaker 3 (41:51):
All the way here. What do you look?

Speaker 5 (41:53):
Thousand miles weight? I think he's he reminds me. I
know somebody else is well, Briller Jones. Can we meet him,
girl of Jones, Girl Jones. I got a spam partner.
Let him out, Let him out.

Speaker 1 (42:09):
I'm les, so you said, Gorilla Jones. And at this
point Ali brings a guy. This guy kind of emerges
from the side of the ring and he has a
towel over his head right, so you can't really see
who it is, but it seems like a guy who's big.

Speaker 2 (42:29):
He comes into the ring and.

Speaker 1 (42:31):
Takes off the towel, and what you see is that
this guy who's come to supposedly spar with Muhammad Ali,
Who's aspiring partner, is a guy wearing a gorilla mask,
as in Gorilla Jones, a literal gorilla. And so Arli
pulls this guy from the ring and starts sparring with him.
I'm just gonna play this next bit for you.

Speaker 5 (42:51):
Take his time, Gorilla Corny, Are you ready.

Speaker 6 (42:59):
Excuse me ready because Joe Fraser, he resembles Joe Fraser.

Speaker 3 (43:04):
Well, that's too bad.

Speaker 1 (43:05):
Yeah, he's saying because his finger finding jo Fraser is
finding a gorilla, right, Like he is a gorilla, And like,
I don't know. I'm like, do we need to runpack
why a black man being called a gorilla is offensive?

Speaker 3 (43:18):
But we do that?

Speaker 2 (43:21):
I don't think we do.

Speaker 1 (43:23):
There's a couple of things I do want to say
about it, because there's a lot happening here, and there's
a lot of different meanings and intentions that we dig
out here, but I think are important to get into,
which is, you know, on one level, yes, Ali is
literally saying a black man looks like a gorilla, which
is like colorist and shitty in a bunch of different ways, right,

(43:45):
like a darker skinned black guy. On the other hand,
I feel like he's saying, right, this is a guy
who is dumb, as dumb as a girl, like lesser
than a man, lesser than me. Right, there's a big,
large amount of superiority that Ali is bringing into this. Right,
I'm this beautiful, awesome person and here's this dumb brute,

(44:10):
which I think is as a novelle, which is like, right,
these are boxes, these are people fighting, and sort of
the stereotype of boxes is as dumb brutes, which Ali.

Speaker 3 (44:21):
Did always rise above.

Speaker 4 (44:22):
I mean that was part of I mean again, I
wasn't there, but part of the joy, right is he
was spoken poetry.

Speaker 3 (44:29):
He wasn't a dumb brute.

Speaker 4 (44:30):
But also Manuel, what I hear you saying is like,
throughout this Fraser business, Ali is just grabbing at racist
stropes to throw. You know, first, he's like, oh, Frasier
is the white man's black man, which is a little
bit incongruent with the gorilla thing, but it doesn't have
to be congruent. He's just grabbing racist ideas and putting

(44:51):
them over the top of Joe Frasier. And I wonder,
I mean, he's a skilled communicator, that's his whole thing.

Speaker 3 (44:58):
He has to know he's doing that on purpose.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
Like you know, you're doing something, you're leading into something.
When Dick Kevin is like, this isn't a little corny,
right right right?

Speaker 2 (45:08):
You the white guy right, Oh, I don't know about this.
This is choreographed.

Speaker 14 (45:12):
And and I Joe Frasier really did in a lot
of black people's minds become known as like this guy
who stood in opposition to Ali, and so all of
this is in the air right in this in this
show special, the episode transitions from showing these two fighters

(45:34):
in their different worlds Ali's big Gorilla set up to
an actual live conversation between Ali, Joe Frasier, Michael Parkinson
is along for a ride, and the American host Dick Cabot.

Speaker 7 (45:48):
Well, now you've seen the two fighters in training. Now
let's see the moment they met for the first time
ever in a television studio. On the left, smoking Joe Fraser,
on the right, the one and only Muhammad Ali.

Speaker 2 (46:02):
They're all see this.

Speaker 1 (46:03):
This is so crazy, and they've all presumably just watched
the tape.

Speaker 2 (46:10):
So it's awkward, it's weird, it's there's attention.

Speaker 8 (46:13):
Certainly, nice to see you both, And I think we
might as well reveal right now that beneath the mask
of unfriendliness that we saw in there in the film
that Dandie if you really hate each.

Speaker 1 (46:21):
Other, And Dick Cavot kind of is basically like, Okay,
let's just address the elephants in the room and starts
trying to bring up some of the attention they have
with each other.

Speaker 2 (46:32):
I'm just gonna play you a little bit of that.

Speaker 8 (46:35):
Well, there's the reference to your calling him clay, and
you know we all.

Speaker 3 (46:38):
Just tak He's good. He's a nice man. He say
that because they used to make me mad.

Speaker 6 (46:43):
But it don't know more. See the press. Now everybody
calls me Ali. The press called me Ali, You call
me Ali. The group cluk Clan even call me Ali.

Speaker 3 (46:53):
So now you know I'm brother. I'm still calling me Clay.

Speaker 15 (46:55):
He really ain't no uncle Tom. He's just doing that
to make me mad. And I don't pay no attention
to it. No more like things that I used to
do to make him mad. He's meant that don't get
to him. No more things that make other people. He's
catching on a few things. So I gotta come from
another angle. He don't make me mad calling me clack.
He knows what it is.

Speaker 3 (47:13):
He just won't to say that.

Speaker 5 (47:16):
Sound good can make me mad.

Speaker 3 (47:19):
I don't call him.

Speaker 5 (47:19):
I don't get mad at.

Speaker 3 (47:20):
You for that.

Speaker 11 (47:21):
What's the point of insulting each other?

Speaker 4 (47:22):
Though?

Speaker 7 (47:22):
I mean, you insult everybody everybody.

Speaker 5 (47:25):
What's the part of insulting each other? The gardeners sold out?

Speaker 1 (47:36):
You have it so Ali's saying, right, like, listen, it's
for show.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
But here's the deal. Joe Fraser doesn't think it's for show.
He is deeply, deeply hurt by this.

Speaker 4 (47:51):
Was that Fraser I heard then there that said, oh
I'll give you an eight for that. Yeah, So everybody
else is having a good time, and he's.

Speaker 3 (47:59):
Like, this isn't funny anymore.

Speaker 1 (48:00):
Yeah, He's like, it was never fun Joe Frasier was
never funny. He's deeply hurt by that. The two go
on to fight. Ali wins this fight, but it's close.
And if we're looking at it in terms of this
exam right, but I've coined.

Speaker 3 (48:14):
Right, like outspoken black person in public.

Speaker 1 (48:16):
Test exactly, you know part of that. I think we've
framed it in terms of basically how.

Speaker 2 (48:20):
To be black in front of white people.

Speaker 1 (48:22):
And how to avoid these sort of traps and things
that you can fall into that ultimately end up kind
of harming you and harming like what you're trying to
do as a famous black person, and that outspoken famous
black person in that way, Like I think here he
fails it. Even though right this is about his relationship
with another black man, it's still happening specifically in this interview.

Speaker 2 (48:45):
It's happening on a white.

Speaker 3 (48:45):
Stage, literally in front of white people.

Speaker 1 (48:48):
And he's giving them exactly by insulting Joe Frasier. In
that way, Ali is giving that white audience exactly the
message and exactly the spectacle they want to see in
a way that like even makes them slightly uncomfortable.

Speaker 4 (49:05):
And it's ironic because he passed the test the first
time around as the Black mid Toward Test, the Radical
mid Toward test.

Speaker 3 (49:12):
Right by keeping in mind I'm only.

Speaker 4 (49:14):
Talking to black people exactly, Like that's where I start totally.

Speaker 1 (49:17):
But when it comes to like the comparison test, being
compared with with other people, when he has an opportunity
to just basically be like, you know what, I'm rooting
for everybody black.

Speaker 3 (49:26):
Yeah, no Ali, for everybody for Ali.

Speaker 1 (49:32):
But this thing with Fraser continues. They fight another time
years later in the Frillo Manila and that fight, I mean,
I remember watching that fight just as a child as
part of my educate falced education, and it's dark.

Speaker 2 (49:51):
You see two.

Speaker 1 (49:52):
People really really prepared, honestly die to win that fight
in a real way, and I think both of them
would emerge really scarred from that fight and from their
whole history to each other. Joe Fraser never forgave Muhammad
Ali until the day he died.

Speaker 2 (50:10):
You know, I just really sad to me, you know
what I mean.

Speaker 3 (50:12):
It is sad to me.

Speaker 4 (50:13):
And it's funny because the whole Fraser Ali show is
something I grew up with. It's part of like the lore,
you know, a black pop culture, and somehow I just
that this dark element of it, right, I didn't really
take in, you know.

Speaker 3 (50:32):
That it was really a story of betrayal.

Speaker 1 (50:35):
And I mean that's the favure of it, you know
what I mean, Like, this is a guy who.

Speaker 2 (50:41):
For me, it's a paradox. You know.

Speaker 1 (50:43):
So much of what Ali stood for, right was being
somebody that we could be proud of as black people
on TV. And part of that was a part of
like a big movement that was happening in our community
and in the African American community to be proud of
being black, right, the black power of it, but also
black is beautiful, right, as this sort of new radical

(51:06):
idea that was empowered to so many people.

Speaker 2 (51:09):
And so to see.

Speaker 1 (51:12):
The way in which this went based on that, if
he's trying to be someone who bere proud of if
he's trying to figure out how to be a black
person in his time. To me, that's that's evidence of
a famire.

Speaker 4 (51:25):
I think he fails that test miserably.

Speaker 3 (51:30):
And I can't underline enough like now that I think
of it this.

Speaker 4 (51:33):
Way, and Manuel, like black is beautiful, as you said,
Muhammad Ali was the.

Speaker 3 (51:39):
Poster child of that idea.

Speaker 4 (51:42):
He was beautiful, but his beauty, you know, was a
very different physicality from Joe Frazier's, you know, who was
short and stout and dark skinned importantly, and so there
is this irony of the horrible colorism inside this idea
of black is beautiful is exploiting that is really Oh

(52:07):
it's gross to think about, you.

Speaker 2 (52:09):
Know, yeah, totally.

Speaker 3 (52:10):
It's hard.

Speaker 1 (52:11):
Ali failing this particular part of the outspoken black person
exam is particularly striking to me because of what happens
the next time that Ali is on the BBC.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
So it's still nineteen seventy four.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
Ali has just won his title winning fight against George Forman.
He's won the Rumble in the Jungle, right, He's victorious,
and he comes back to the BBC, you know, as
a victorious person that everybody wants a piece of He
is high.

Speaker 7 (52:41):
He is confident, ladies and gentlemen, the heavyweight champion of
the world, Mohammad Ali.

Speaker 1 (52:47):
And it's interesting because right away, kind of from the
beginning of his interview, the tone is slightly different.

Speaker 2 (52:54):
Right on the one hand, you can tell.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
Ali, if he wasn't feeling himself before, he's feeling himself now.
On the other hand, Parkinson is kind of different, and
he knows that Ali is going to say some wild
things that he's going to double down on them.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
And you can see he has come with sort of
like a clear.

Speaker 1 (53:14):
Sort of line of questioning that is going to make
up basically our final test here in this episode that
I'm going to walk you through. At one point, he
asked Ali about a book that has come out about
him with this guy but Schilberg has written basically about
well how he thinks Ali is a major hypocrite.

Speaker 7 (53:35):
But he points out one of two things that are
interesting about you. I mean that all the contradictions in
you that are fascinating that people forgive you. Now, can
I just put one to that?

Speaker 2 (53:44):
He says.

Speaker 7 (53:45):
He says he's devoted to a religious movement that looks
on the white race as devils whose time of deserved
destruction is at hand, and yet keeps in almost daily
touch with white friends like Geene Kilroy and Hal Conrad.
In fact, he's got more genuine white friends and almost
any black fighter I've ever known. Now, isn't there a
contrast there? You'll belong to a faith which teaches separatism,

(54:06):
which we talked before about when you came on my program,
Get here, you see and I know it's true. I've
seen it.

Speaker 2 (54:12):
You have white friends.

Speaker 3 (54:14):
You say I got white friends. I say the associates.

Speaker 7 (54:17):
You don't have a single white friend.

Speaker 5 (54:18):
No, Angelo Dundee, No, as associates.

Speaker 3 (54:21):
I don't have one black friend, Harley.

Speaker 2 (54:26):
What are you feeling? Tell me?

Speaker 4 (54:28):
He caught me at the ear and I was like, okay,
you could you know, like he said, he has no
white friends. This is unbelievable, but okay. But then like that,
I don't have black friends either.

Speaker 1 (54:37):
I feel like it's a different question, but the exact
sort of formula that Parkson used the first interview, right
in the sense that you're gonna I'm gonna push you
on something. I know that you are gonna double down,
And the difference in his interview is by doubling. In
the old interview, doubling down before Alie was able to

(54:58):
sound kind.

Speaker 2 (54:58):
Of convincing, yeah, and winning.

Speaker 1 (55:00):
In this one, it sounds like he's doubling down a
little bit just for the sake of doubling down.

Speaker 3 (55:06):
It sounds a little desperate.

Speaker 1 (55:07):
He sounds a little bit best Britt and the two
go back and forth about this.

Speaker 2 (55:12):
Right.

Speaker 1 (55:13):
Ali adopts a strategy that essentially amounts to fake news. Right,
And Parkinson keeps on going on this line of questioning,
and at one point in the interview he literally holds
up this book to Ali and gestures at it as
if to say, listen, it's here. Because Ali is basically like,
I don't even believe these things you're saying are even

(55:35):
in that Before's this guy, I barely know this guy whatever.
And Parkinson's like, no, this guy says he knows you
really well, and he's written this stuff and he was
here and here, and he's come of receipts and he's
literally like.

Speaker 2 (55:45):
Read it. You can read it. It's right there right now.

Speaker 6 (55:48):
I'm a hypocid because I got a white fellow working
for me in all white countries.

Speaker 5 (55:52):
I'm hypocirls. I got white fans. This is silly.

Speaker 6 (55:55):
So why do you read something like it seems to say,
ain't you read?

Speaker 5 (56:00):
You came on you?

Speaker 1 (56:02):
And he doesn't take it well Kai, because it's pretty
well known at this point, if you know boxing, if
you know something about Ali, He's pretty open about it.
But Ali's dyslexic, and so you can tell there's a
real shift in Ali's body language where essentially he's like, Oh,
this white guy who I have made look dumb on

(56:23):
this television show a bunch of times now is calling
me dumb.

Speaker 3 (56:28):
Literally, try to show the world that I'm.

Speaker 2 (56:30):
Done and let me just play you this next part.

Speaker 6 (56:32):
You ain't used to no black man, and mainly no
boxer having no sense.

Speaker 5 (56:36):
I'm not just a boxer.

Speaker 6 (56:37):
I'm taught by Elijah Muhammad. I'm educated even Oxer University,
your biggest seat of learning. Offer me professorship in philosophy
and poetry to come in to teach. I'm not just
starting a fighter. I can talk all week on the
millions of subjects. And you do not have enough wisdom.

Speaker 5 (56:52):
To calling me on television. You do not have enough.

Speaker 6 (56:55):
You are too small mentally to tackle me on nothing
that I represent. I'm serious you and this little TV
show is nothing to Mhammad Ali. If you got some
more questions, I ask them, and I bet y'all eat
you up right here on there.

Speaker 5 (57:07):
It ain't no way you can tackle me. All of
you are tricky. That's how you. John Hawkins, a white Englishman,
tricked us out of Abarca.

Speaker 3 (57:16):
You get me on your shoulders and asked you read
it for me.

Speaker 5 (57:21):
This was a big bomb. He's gonna drop for me now, boss,
you got white man working in your camp and your
teacher to white men, the devil? How was supposed to
be trapped now and look bad? How are you gonna
trap me?

Speaker 4 (57:32):
You know the distinction between obviously between that in which
you played me earlier, right like it's there's no joke,
you know, he doesn't.

Speaker 3 (57:39):
It's not a laughline.

Speaker 1 (57:42):
And it's interesting because I actually remember being told about
this specific interview and this specific moment by my dad
as a kid. My dad, like was born in Ghana,
moved to the UK when he was eight, right, and
he would have arrived in the UK not too long
before this interview. It's like a big part of his
core memories about blackness and especially black related to like

(58:06):
the UK as a country, and he remembers this moment
as sort of being a great defense for him right
in this big way. But I and so where I
was heard of it was like they called Ali dumb
and like he gave no quarter and like came out
of his headhold high.

Speaker 2 (58:25):
And I think that is true.

Speaker 1 (58:26):
I think, yeah, you know, there was something happening there
where you do understand and I think you even see
it actually in Parkinson. Parkinson's laid the trap and he
sees Muhammad sort of walking into it. And that trap
is that he successfully made a black man angry on television.
That's right in like a major, major way, and.

Speaker 4 (58:49):
He's failed by his own standard, right like his whole
career has been like you know, you can't you don't
see me sweat here, Like I don't know that I've
ever heard Ali sound like that, like actually angry and shouting,
you know, as opposed to being like you can't rough
on my feathers, you know.

Speaker 1 (59:05):
Like literally Ali is you know, he's turned his body
towards Parkinson. He has a finger in his face. Parkinson's
was like he's about to wet himself, which is kind
of enjoyable.

Speaker 2 (59:16):
I got to say, but do.

Speaker 3 (59:17):
You know did he know that Ali was dyslexic? Do
you know?

Speaker 1 (59:20):
Yes, he did know about Now the question is for
on Parkinson's end, is whether he meant to rub that
in in that way there.

Speaker 2 (59:30):
I actually don't think he did.

Speaker 1 (59:32):
I'll give him because he's on the record in interviews
afterwards saying basically, oh, it was an O shit moment
of Oh I kind of messed up, and this is
kind of getting out of control, and like he seems
legitimately afraid. You see this light bulb in Parkinson's head
go off, which seems to be like, I have just
pissed off a guy who hits for a living.

Speaker 3 (59:53):
I've gone too far total.

Speaker 1 (59:56):
But even if he didn't mean to do it, you
can tell that, and Parkerson will later admit this. He
didn't like Ali, sure, and he thought he was kind
of boyisous and needed to be called out on some
things and take down a peg. And you can tell
that that is what he wants to do. It just
so happens that the moment he sort of gets our
lead in this trap, he has a little bit of remorse, is.

Speaker 3 (01:00:19):
What I think TV He's turning bad. Honestly, it's not
good TV.

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
It's not good TV. It's uncomfortable, it's weird.

Speaker 4 (01:00:24):
You know. So he's failed the test that you say
that we're all got to go through.

Speaker 3 (01:00:30):
And I do want to wrestle with did he really fail?
Right like this?

Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
I'm glad you brought that up because I think there's
different ways to look at this. I think if you
are speaking to your black person at home, there is
something very triumphant about that moment of him pushing back
and saying, right through life circumstances, through your people's racism.
I don't have the educational resources that you have, but listen,
I am learned in this other way. I'm a special person.

(01:00:56):
How dare you try and insinuate that I'm not? I
think there's will power in that. And yet it is
clear from the vibe in the room, this thing that
is happening in front of a room full of white
people in a major way that Ben sentences.

Speaker 2 (01:01:10):
Ah, you got him.

Speaker 3 (01:01:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:12):
There's this bit here.

Speaker 1 (01:01:13):
There's a section of the show where they turned to
questions from the audience, and this question actually happens to
come from a guy who's a huge celebrity in British
football the famous football coach Brian Cloth.

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
I'll just play this for you.

Speaker 12 (01:01:27):
Well, Ham, I nice to see you again. Are you
having a nice time in England?

Speaker 5 (01:01:31):
Yeah?

Speaker 12 (01:01:32):
But now, well I'm sorry about that. If it had
been a fight, of course, in the last quarter of
an hour, you blew your top and you would have
lost You lost your You lost your cool with Michael,
and I lose cool.

Speaker 6 (01:01:45):
I want to tell the truth. It's a lot of
black people watching this. I want them to hear all this.
How I know what I'm doing. How this show is
gonna be played all the country and a lot of
my people gonna see it, and it's gonna help a
lot of them. I'm not losing no cool. I'm just
in England and I'm getting out of here tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (01:02:00):
And so yeah, this white guy is growing almost that
Muhammad Ali has lost his cool in this moment and.

Speaker 2 (01:02:07):
He's like, I don't know, oh man, I'm not talking
to you.

Speaker 4 (01:02:12):
But I think he might have a point, you know,
Like that's the thing. Did he fail the test or not?
I don't know, because like he failed to bring white
people along absolutely, you know, which was something he had succeeded.

Speaker 3 (01:02:25):
At his whole career.

Speaker 4 (01:02:26):
But he says pretty explicitly, like I'm not talking to y'all, right,
and you tried to make me look dumb. And I
think there's a lot of black people like your father
Manuel who need to hear me say fuck.

Speaker 3 (01:02:39):
You, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:02:40):
And I don't know, I'm intruens, but it's interesting you
bring it up because I'm just like, let just talk
about what it means to be angry as a black person, Like,
you know, I feel like to this day, right, And
I feel like in my career as a journalist interviewing
black people sometimes right, Like, I feel like the voices

(01:03:01):
we put on air as journalists, whether they're activist and
protest movements, whether they are athletes who stick to sports, like,
we tend to prioritize voices that and especially black voices
that are not seen as angry.

Speaker 2 (01:03:17):
We don't.

Speaker 1 (01:03:17):
It makes me upset to say this, but I feel
like the minute a black man gets angry on television
in a genuine way, it's like a scandal of bit
something wrong. Right, that scand obviously does not apply to
white people at all. And we have a right to
be angry. And I think Muhammad Ali and so many
men of keys particular generation had so much right to
be angry.

Speaker 4 (01:03:38):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's funny when you say
right to be angry?

Speaker 3 (01:03:41):
Right if Ali is the embodiment of that.

Speaker 4 (01:03:44):
And in this moment, you know, it's also that is
the rallying cry of hip hop as it, you know,
just as a cultural forces, I have the right to
be angry. There's actually, you know, public in emy lyric.
I think you know that is exactly that. And Ali was,
in fact, you know, really a patron saint to early

(01:04:05):
hip hop as well too.

Speaker 3 (01:04:06):
You know, so the right to be angry is a thing.

Speaker 4 (01:04:09):
And just I don't know, maybe to underline your point,
I mean we I was hard on Barack Obama earlier,
you know, but just think about the fact, dear listener,
have you ever seen Barack Obama angry?

Speaker 2 (01:04:20):
Right? Well, one, and think about right?

Speaker 1 (01:04:24):
And honestly, the less we say about his first debate
against mont Romney the beta right.

Speaker 4 (01:04:30):
But it's considered the one low moment of his political career. Yes,
was when he was shown to be angry in his
debate with Mitt Romney.

Speaker 3 (01:04:37):
Because not even angry, he just was annoyed.

Speaker 2 (01:04:39):
Yeah, he was like.

Speaker 4 (01:04:42):
And uh, and think about every other president of the
United States. Some of their greatest moments, you know, and
are considered when they got righteously mad.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
Right the entire politics of the current it happened. All
the White House is built upon anger.

Speaker 3 (01:04:58):
But you ain't got to get that far.

Speaker 4 (01:04:59):
George Bush mad about nine to eleven, and I'll haunt
him down and kill him. Bill Clinton, you know what
could be stand up and be tough, you know, against crime,
and just down and down the list, like Ronald Reagan's
standing in the face of communism. Like part of what
we wanted from that paternal figure was their righteous anger,
and you never saw that from Barack Obama, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:05:21):
So that's to your point. And I, as I said,
I've never heard that Ali clip. I had never heard
Ali sound angry if.

Speaker 1 (01:05:28):
We look at this exam but I've drawn up here.
But I would admit, if poorly made by me, to
describe a series of media traps that I feel like
famous black people can fall into, or that's what a set.

Speaker 2 (01:05:40):
Up for us.

Speaker 1 (01:05:42):
The aim of that is, can you get through these
situations via interviews and still a have your career intact,
but also be be the sort of famous black person
you wanted to be, to bring pride to our people,
you know what I mean, to keep your self respect,
to be who you want to be.

Speaker 2 (01:06:02):
And if that's the metric of it, right, like, I
think it does pass I totally just.

Speaker 1 (01:06:08):
The way you described because ultimately I totally agree my
dad watching that as a kid, took what he needed
to get from it, which was basically, your life in
this country is gonna be hard. They're gonna be a
lot of white people that are going to try and
paint you into all sorts of directions as a dumb brute,
as somebody who like isn't really about what they say

(01:06:30):
they're about, who is full of contradictions, even if you're
just a person trying to navigate how you fit in
this society that really does not want you, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:06:40):
I think.

Speaker 1 (01:06:42):
By virtue of the very fact that I was then
told about this as a child, that I was then
like handed down this sort of knowledge about right, there
was this guy once who existed who what he meant
to on on television was that you could be yourself,
and that to be yourself fully is a beautiful thing.
To be fully black is beautiful, and that's what we

(01:07:02):
know Muhammad Ali for.

Speaker 3 (01:07:04):
That's what we know him for.

Speaker 4 (01:07:06):
And I have to say, like, you're talking about the
celebrity version of it, but all of us who are
black and have spent any time trying to be thoughtful
and ambitious and have things to say of any sort
outside of black spaces, have faced all these tests.

Speaker 2 (01:07:26):
So Kin, what what do you? What do you have
for me? Next time?

Speaker 3 (01:07:30):
I have something I'm really excited about.

Speaker 4 (01:07:33):
Somebody who like is a lot cooler than I think
most people realize.

Speaker 3 (01:07:39):
Here, try this one first.

Speaker 16 (01:07:40):
It's something that was given by God to me, the
King of rock and roll. I'm not the King of
kings and the Lord of lords, but I'm the King
of rock and roll.

Speaker 2 (01:07:50):
Who is this band? This braggadacious band.

Speaker 4 (01:07:54):
Okay, it's not Elvis Presley. I'll tell you that. If
you're thinking, is that a weird Elvis Presley voice?

Speaker 3 (01:08:02):
No, it's not Elvis Presley. Here's another one.

Speaker 16 (01:08:05):
I met a singer and Atlanta jawge you by the
name of Billy Wright, a black singer, and he will
make up Pancake thirty one. But he didn't want the eyelashes,
so I went I wore the eyelashes in the head
bands and and I have so much.

Speaker 3 (01:08:18):
Mess caro on when I would cry. I had to
close my eus for a week.

Speaker 1 (01:08:22):
I have no idea what pancakes, but he's talking about
makeup and wearing makeup.

Speaker 3 (01:08:26):
Wake makeup, wearing makeup, being a kick of rock. All right,
here's the last one.

Speaker 13 (01:08:31):
I was a dishwasher at the Greyhound bus station in
my hometown, Macon, Georgia. I had been washing plates for
so long I was tired, and I wrote.

Speaker 5 (01:08:41):
Two the fruity and good Golli and smile and bless
your soul.

Speaker 3 (01:08:46):
I got out of the kitchen.

Speaker 2 (01:08:49):
I know who this, Okay, I'm excited.

Speaker 3 (01:08:52):
Most people probably know.

Speaker 4 (01:08:54):
Now this is a man who is so much more
i'm gonna say, punk rock than most people understand.

Speaker 3 (01:09:02):
So that's next time.

Speaker 1 (01:09:06):
Big Lines is a production of BBC Studios I'm pushing
into is hosted by me Emanuel Jochi and Kay Wright.
Our team over at BBC Studios includes producer Emma Reverel,
archive producer Samira Chowdery, sound design by Melvin Rickerby. Our
executive producer is Annie Brown. Our production coordinator is Galen
Davis Connolly. Our apprentice is Amy Woods, and our production

(01:09:29):
manager is Mabel Finnegan Wright.

Speaker 2 (01:09:32):
The team over at Pushkin Industries includes.

Speaker 1 (01:09:34):
Executive producer Costanzo Goyardo producer Daphne Chen.

Speaker 2 (01:09:38):
Our legal advisor is Jake Flanagan. Our marketing team includes
Morgan Ratner and Jordan McMillan