VARIETY
461
Norman Mailer
I'm working on something else now, so don't want to get
started writing about Muhammad Ali, because I could go on for a
book. Suffice it that the most interesting original talented and artistic
prizefighter to come along in at least a decade has been cut off by the
bully-boy mentality of the American sporting world. A great athlete
is almost always an extraordinary man, but a mediocre athlete has a
character which is usually no prettier than the life-style of a mediocre
writer. The sort of mugs and moguls who run our amateur and pro–
fessional sports and write about them are invariably mediocrities,
second-rate athletes, rich boys-they gravitate to running sports and
writing up the canons of sports, and they ran Muhammad Ali right
out of boxing. Their basic reflex is, after all, to kiss ass (it is their
connection to the primitive) and patriotism is thus their head-on
sublimation for such kissing. Therefore we are all deprived of an
intimate spectacle which was taking place in public-the forging of a
professional artist of extraordinary dimensions. Yes, I could write a
hook about Cassius: he was bringing a revolution to the theory of
boxing, and bringing it into that monarchical spook-ridden class where
every theory runs into a bomb--the heavyweights. Those who don't
know boxing don't know the frustration one feels that he couldn't
have the run ,of his own true career for the knowledge he offered
was mint.
Richard Poirier
Cassius Clay is not the first American heavyweight champion
of the world to be accused of draft-dodging. That honor goes to the
now beloved Jack Dempsey, rumored in WW I to have evaded
the
draft by falsely claiming dependents and prosecuted to be found in–
nocent in 1920. But Clay
is
the first champion of any kind in this coun–
try who
has
refused to bear arms out of religious and humanitarian
