THE FIGHT OF THE CENTURY

SPRING IS HERE FOR REAL??

If so, then that is cool! Many times in the Midwest, the arrival of spring has simply meant instead of snowstorms, we get ice storms and bone chilling rain. So far, so good.

I'd really like it if things segued smoothly, regarding the weather. It is good to see the sun shining brightly over head. Yesterday, it felt like it was sunny until 8 p.m.!

HONESTLY, IT LIVED UP TO THE HYPE

For the last few weeks, the first Ali-Frazier fight was kicking around in my thoughts. There was a HBO documentary about it, full of its social significance and its importance to the sports world. It was pretty good. I don't remember the fight, and I was never much of an Ali fan. I mean, I respect him as a figure and what he means to everybody other than Mark, and have no problem with his importance to American culture, African American culture in particular.

As a child, I didn't care for all his name calling. Like most personal humor, it is a fine line that separates a joke from being 'funny' as opposed to being 'mean'. Muhammad Ali may have been playful to some, but it was mean to me. He resembled all the 'cool kids' with their average grades, but like Liz Lemon's Valentine's boyfriend, no one said anything to them. Ali, IMO, lived in a bubble.

Frazier was a family man. Ali didn't just affect Joe, who said as for that, if it was just about him, it would have been different. But his wife, his young children had to endure a lot of messed up stuff. Joe, growing up the son of a sharecropper, was saddled with being called a 'Tom', when maybe he had the more authentic black experience for the time.

When they were trying to get Ali's suspension lifted and his citizenship restored, Frazier gave Ali money to get by. So when everything got straightened out and the fight made, he was truly hurt by what Ali was saying. After all the help he gave to him, the cat was saying some of the meanest, hurtful things you could say to a brother. So for that first fight, Frazier would train with the thoughts of how Ali was wounding his family ... and wounding him. Isn't that always how it goes, it isn't what you do to me, that gets to me. It is when you do something to someone I love, that gets to me.

That is how it was for Smokin' Joe. While Ali did his 'act' with so many fighters that the 'anger' scene seems like it is in the script for boxing matches, with Frazier, it was real. Getting him to be sympathetic to Ali, especially when his Parkinson's was first announced, was like pulling teeth. His position was, 'you can't say some of the things he said about a man, then act like it never happened.'

WHY IS IT LIKE THAT, ANYWAY?

Not that I want to polarize things, but most of y'all aren't black. This is not to say you can't identify, but to really understand ... eh, I don't think you can get there. Maybe Indy can, if she is reading, but I don't expect anyone else to 'get it'. What is it?

'It', is the way that folks from your own 'phenotype class' can be worse than those who aren't. Why are black people so mean to other black people?

One of the areas I lived growing up as a kid, was near Dearborn, over in the 48204. Back then, Mayor Hubbard was as racist as they came, and that is how they rolled in that town. Sometimes, my Mom would have me and my sister Jan, carry the rent payment up to the landlord over there.

In a case of 'knowing the environment', I wasn't too worried about being across Wyoming, because I knew that if anyone was coming towards me, they weren't going to be asking me about the weather! So, getting thru Dearborn wasn't the most difficult thing. It was on the Detroit side of the street that was the problem.

Same with some of the interests I have, some of the cultural interests, why is it seen as a repudiation of my 'blackness'? You can't win for losing, as Joe Frazier saw in his rivarly with Ali. Muhammad grew up in a 'safe and stable home', while it was said that Joe's hook was developed from cutting down crops in the South Carolina heat ... thought that was more common a experience for blacks in the late 50's and 60's than the one Ali grew up in, if not one that many more who could identify with.

WELL, I WAS DUE ONE LIKE THIS

A really rambling kind of entry. The stuff that I can take care of, is taken care of. This has been a ragged month for me. But I am still above .500, State is going to get a chance to beat the Jayhawks again (can they? this is so NOT the same Kansas team they blew out in East Lansing). Thinking about the first Frazier-Ali fight always bring the contradictions out of me, regarding me and my relationship with 'my people'.

For folks who have so much trouble with typing, it seems like black people are quick to pigeon hole and lable people. Some of it, I think is understandable. But for the most part, it acts as a rigid structure, that doesn't let many dream, or concieve of what could be possible.

Read Tony Dungy's book 'Quiet Strength' a couple of times now. Good read, period. Going to get start on something that is on the other side of the room from that, by reading Robert Greene's '33 Strategies of War'.

For anyone who tried to read this, I would suggest you take two Advil and get a hug or give one, to someone you love! Yikes! Can things be any messier than this?