Most cowardly performance?

[Rick Farris]

He was just blown away. While he may have been
intimidated. He was still KO'd.

Tyson would have done that to alot of prize fighters
that night.

Once again, great post. And TRUE!!!!!

[I Feel Fine]

Any real difference between that fight and the Liston/Patterson fights? I think all four came to fight. Just happened that two of the fighters had no good answers to the other's game plan.

I agree.

Hopkins-Hakkar is a good one. Another one like that in more recent years is JMM-Gainer. When the fight was stopped Larry Merchant called the match "an abortion" because of how Gainer had been so unwilling to fight.

[Robinson]

Thanks Rick.

[granberry]

I appreciated Robinson's first post in this thread a lot; thought the second was nonsense. Being willing to kill foreigners when your government tells you to is extremely overrated as a virtue. Refusing to do so is not cowardly.

Read the post you are attempting to comment on and learn something.

As the poster said,

Ali would have given exhibitions for the troops, just as Joe Louis did in World War II.

Ali would not have been in combat.

[granberry]

Yes, Michael Spinks lasted 91 seconds against Tyson (that includes the ten count)

despite having the benefit of having the news media's "great" Eddie Futch showing him "secrets" in "secret" training sessions before the fight on how to beat Tyson.

Before the fight the news media devoted most of their ink to Futch--and what he said about how he was showing his fighter Spinks "secrets" in "secret" training sessions.

The news media stooges devoted whole columns to that.

After the 91 second "fight" not a one of them mentioned Futch.

At least Spinks lasted longer than the 58 seconds (two seconds less than a minute)

that Futch's fighter Duane Bobick lasted against Ken Norton

in another Futch special where the excited newsmen wrote before the fight about how their great Eddie Futch was showing Bobick "secrets" in "secret" training sessions on how to beat Norton, whom Futch had formerly trained.

After the fight Futch was nowhere to be seen.

Poor Duane Bobick had to face the media alone after that fight.

One of the "secrets" Futch forget to teach Bobick was to keep his chin down.
Bobick was hit in the throat with the first punch of the fight, something that is pretty hard to accomplish.

Once I was talking to Wesley Mouzon about a fighter he was training.
I told him he ought to think about bringing in Eddie Futch to help train his fighter.

He was surprised at that and said he never heard me say anything plus about Futch before.

I told him that if he did bring in Futch, he should be sure to find out beforehand if he were getting Futch's 58 second special, or the 91 second special.

.

[dr_devious]

Luis Resto's performance against Billy Collins must be one of the cowardliest in boxing history

[Jaybee From The Castle]

In recent times, Barrera's parody of Boxing against Pac. He disgraced himself, and Mexico with that jelly-bellied effort. If here were a Columbian he'd have been shot on returning.

[granberry]

Jack Johnson's refusing to defend his title against Sam Langford.

[Robinson]

You have to feel for Langford.

I guess one can argue the whole colour line. And fighters
drawing it.

Dempsey for not defending his title for 3 years.

Willard for sitting on his also.

There are ALWAYS challengers.

[I Feel Fine]

Dempsey for not defending his title for 3 years.

Willard for sitting on his also.

There are ALWAYS challengers.

It was a different time.

[Robinson]

IFF

Does that work in reverse?

[I Feel Fine]

IFF

Does that work in reverse?

I'm not sure what you're thinking of specifically, but depending on what you mean I suppose it could.

[Ambling Alp]

Ali certainly wasn't a coward for not going to Vietnam.
For someone to be a coward, they have to be afraid of something.As mentioned he wouldn't have seen any combat (like Louis, Robinson etc.)
He would have just been boxing exhibitions, entertaining the troops etc.
There was nothing for him to be afraid of.

In fact it was a couragous thing to do. He knew his title would be stripped and he knew that he would be banned from fighting. He didn't know if he would ever fight again. This War wasn't like World War II. He gave up a lot of money because he didn't believe in the war. He chose what he believed in over a fortune; knowing that he would get a lot of criticism for it. Very few people would have done this.

[Ambling Alp]

I agree, Seldon shoped some guts against McCall. He also showed that while didn't have a good chin, he didn't have a glass jaw either.
It's hard to say why a guy goes down from a punch that doesn't seem to be enough to hurt him.
Remember Tua-Moorer? Moorer was clearly past his best, and never had a good chin even at his best. Tua of course had a reputation as a guy with a great lefthook.
However, if you look at the punch that Tua hit him with, it's difficult to imagine anyone going down from that.
Alex Stewart didn't seem to get that hard by Tyson either.
Sometimes, a guy (who probably doesn't have a good chin) is so intimidated by an opponent who has a reputation as a big puncher, that he freezes, doesn't do anything offensively, and goes down before he is even hit with a good punch.

As for Michael Spinks against Tyson, it's important to remember a few things.
1. Spinks did get up after the first knockdown. He could have just stayed down. A coward wouldn't have.
2. After he got up, he didn't try to clinch Tyson or run away. He tried to land a haymaker. Maybe not smart (he left himself wide open), but certainly not cowardly.
3. After the 2nd knockdown, Spinks did try to get up before he was counted out.

[The Great John L]

Ali certainly wasn't a coward for not going to Vietnam.
For someone to be a coward, they have to be afraid of something.As mentioned he wouldn't have seen any combat (like Louis, Robinson etc.)
He would have just been boxing exhibitions, entertaining the troops etc.
There was nothing for him to be afraid of.

In fact it was a couragous thing to do. He knew his title would be stripped and he knew that he would be banned from fighting. He didn't know if he would ever fight again. This War wasn't like World War II. He gave up a lot of money because he didn't believe in the war. He chose what he believed in over a fortune; knowing that he would get a lot of criticism for it. Very few people would have done this.

If you didn’t grow up during that period it’s pretty hard to understand. The percentage of combatants and casualties for black soldiers was multiples of the percentage of blacks in the general US population. This was due to many “rules” in affect at the time; some written and some not.

First were the many “deferments” such as college and jobs which basically only helped the wealthier Americans, few of which were black.

Then there was the matter of who was sent to Germany or Italy for their overseas assignment versus Vietnam. Not surprisingly, this was predominantly the white soldiers.

So while many younger people may quickly judge Ali, or any other black American during that period, it’s likely they really don’t understand the whole issue.

[granberry]

If you didn’t grow up during that period it’s pretty hard to understand. The percentage of combatants and casualties for black soldiers was multiples of the percentage of blacks in the general US population. This was due to many “rules” in affect at the time; some written and some not.

First were the many “deferments” such as college and jobs which basically only helped the wealthier Americans, few of which were black.

Then there was the matter of who was sent to Germany or Italy for their overseas assignment versus Vietnam. Not surprisingly, this was predominantly the white soldiers.

So while many younger people may quickly judge Ali, or any other black American during that period, it’s likely they really don’t understand the whole issue.

Such 'knowledge' on display here.

Unfortunately it is dead wrong.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Re ... 5537658353


Consider the issue of African Americans who fought in the Vietnam War, which was the subject of Mr. Horowitz’s November 5 article "Black America at War." In that piece, Horowitz took issue with the popular contention which has become part of modern "conventional wisdom" that black soldiers fought and died in disproportionately high numbers in Southeast Asia during the war years.

Horowitz wrote that whites comprised 88.4 percent of those who served in Vietnam, 86.3 percent of those who died there, and 86.8 percent of those killed in actual battle (as distinguished from those who died from accidents or illness). Blacks, he added, comprised 10.6 percent of those who served in Vietnam, 12.5 percent of those who died, and 12.1 percent of those killed in actual battle. Finally, he pointed out that 13.5 percent of our country’s military-age males during the war years were black meaning that there is no basis upon which to claim that a racist American government was indiscriminately rounding up large numbers of black men to be used as cannon fodder in the jungles of Southeast Asia. The National Archives and Records Administration, the Vietnam Helicopter Crew Members Association, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) confirm these statistics. In their meticulously researched book Stolen Valor, B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley also corroborate Horowitz’s numbers. It is necessary only to clarify that according to the VFW, Hispanics, who were originally counted as whites, comprised about 170,000 (or 5 percent) of the 3,403,100 personnel who served in the Southeast Asia Theater Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. They also accounted for 3,070 (or 5.3 percent) of the casualties.

While many of the reader responses to Horowitz’s article thanked him for bringing to light some facts that were not widely known, many others strongly rebuked him for allegedly misrepresenting reality. He was accused of being, among other things, "unlearned," "unintelligent," a "liar," a "coward," and a "racist" traveling down a "dark path of ignorance and hate."

It is by no means surprising that some readers would react so hotly to Horowitz’s assertions. Like so many Americans, their opinions about the Vietnam War have been shaped by the claims of inaccurate though wildly popular sources. One such source is Wallace Terry’s best-selling 1984 book Bloods, which states that blacks in the war died in numbers far exceeding their representation in the U.S. population. "Black soldiers were accounting for more than 23 percent of American fatalities in Vietnam," says the book jacket, "although blacks comprised only 10 percent of America’s population." This myth was further reinforced in the popular culture by such media presentations as a 1986 Frontline television program called "The Bloods of ’Nam," which gave viewers the overall impression that our government was figuratively parading impoverished ghetto youngsters into the very crosshairs of Vietcong rifles.

Isn’t racism problematic enough without having to "invent" it where it doesn’t exist? The fact is that 7,257 black American soldiers were killed in Vietnam, a figure representing 12.5 percent of all American fatalities. As Burkett and Whitley point out, "an examination of the casualty records indicates that the highest rate for black servicemen was [16.3] percent in 1965, and almost all of those killed [during that year] were volunteers in elite units, not reluctant draftees involuntarily assigned to combat units. Black casualty rates dipped under their [13.5 percent] proportion in the population [of draft-age males] in most other years. In 1969, the war’s peak, black deaths accounted for 11.4 percent of the total." In short, black deaths in Vietnam were, overall, roughly proportional to what would be expected if they were drafted and sent into combat on a color-blind basis. If anything, their casualty rates were slightly lower not higher than their representation in the overall population of draft-age men.

In 1993, researchers Cynthia Gimbel and Alan Booth conducted an important study for the Population Research Institute at Penn State University. They examined several previous studies of black participation in the war and concluded that the literature simply did not support claims of disproportionate black service, combat exposure, or casualty rates during the war. In fact, their investigations indicated that black draftees had a significantly lower risk of being given a combat arms assignment than did white draftees. If we examine the numbers on a year-by-year basis, we find that black casualties comprised the following percentages of total casualties: 1962 (1.8 percent); 1963 (4.2 percent); 1964 (5.8 percent); 1965 (14.4 percent); 1966 (16.3 percent); 1967 (12.5 percent); 1968 (13.2 percent); 1969 (11.4 percent; 1970 (11.0 percent); 1971 (11.4 percent); 1972 (10.1 percent; 1973 (2.4 percent); 1974 (1.6 percent); 1975 (4.4 percent). In the earliest years of the conflict, America’s military presence in Vietnam consisted largely of advisors some 16,000 as of November 1963. March 1965 saw the first arrival of American combat troops, who would not be completely out of Vietnam until March 1973.

Burkett and Whitley note that "the early [combat] units to go into war [in 1965] were elite troops of the Marine Corps, the Special Forces, and the 173rd Airborne, units almost exclusively populated by highly motivated volunteers including higher proportions of blacks. Seventy-five percent of blacks who served in Vietnam volunteered to go. In fact, blacks tended to volunteer for combat at higher rates than whites." This explains the higher black casualty rates in 1965 and 1966, when heavy American combat began in earnest.

In sum, blacks were not in Vietnam because a racist government had summoned them from the ghettos in order to waste their supposedly expendable lives in remote jungles 8,000 miles away; they were there in large measure because of their own courage and patriotism, notwithstanding the fact that they often experienced racism back home. It is a great indignity to the legacy of those brave and selfless individuals for the Left to now insist on portraying their courageous march into Southeast Asia’s battlegrounds as the functional equivalent of powerless captives being herded because of their government’s disdain for their "genetic undesirability" into Hitler’s death camps.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Perazzo is the Managing Editor of DiscoverTheNetworks and is the author of The Myths That Divide Us: How Lies Have Poisoned American Race Relations. For more information on his book, click here. E-mail him at [email protected]

[The Great John L]

Just the facts.

http://members.aol.com/warlibrary/vwc10.htm

[granberry]

Read your own source, halfwit.

It says whites made up

83.5 per cent of US Army enlisted men killed in Vietnam

85.5 of US Marine Corps members killed in Vietnam

94.7 per cent of US Navy members killed in Vietnam

81.1 per cent of US Air Force members killed in Vietnam.

[Knucklez]

Ray Robinson said that Ali was more afraid of the Muslims than he was of 'Nam or the courts.

Bravery, or following orders..?

[Jaybee From The Castle]

Ray Robinson said that Ali was more afraid of the Muslims than he was of 'Nam or the courts.

Bravery, or following orders..?

What the hell does Robinson know about anything outside his little tree? Regardless of whether Ali's reasoning was right or wrong, his ACTION was correct - he refused service.

Ali's religion very much aside, I applaud his brave refusal during a dark, uninformed era when otherwise normally people actually considered you a coward for NOT going!!! I repeat, NOT going!

[I Feel Fine]

Check out Seldon versus McCall, he took some big whacks that night. I don't think he is a coward, in quitting he committed a cowardly act but then again how many of us have had to face the type of stress he was facing versus Tyson?

I think there is a difference between committing a cowardly act and being a coward. The odd boxer may committ a cowardly act (hitting someone after the fight) but by definition they are not cowards.

I agree. Sort of like Duran against Leonard. Taking Duran's whole career into consideration, he could not reasonably be called a coward by any standard.

[granberry]

What the hell does Robinson know about anything outside his little tree? . . .

Ray Robinson was around Ali during the time the muslims took over his management as a fighter and after.

The muslims who took Ali over were the US Nation of Islam, who had just killed Malcolm X when he broke away from them, and had killed a number of women and children at the Hanafi muslim (rival sect) home in Washington, DC.

What the hell do you know about anything outside of your little tree?
.

[Knucklez]

Ray Robinson said that Ali was more afraid of the Muslims than he was of 'Nam or the courts.

Bravery, or following orders..?

What the hell does Robinson know about anything outside his little tree? Regardless of whether Ali's reasoning was right or wrong, his ACTION was correct - he refused service.

Ali's religion very much aside, I applaud his brave refusal during a dark, uninformed era when otherwise normally people actually considered you a coward for NOT going!!! I repeat, NOT going!

Ali confided in Robinson and they spent a great deal of time together in and around that era. So maybe Ray had an idea of what the kid said to him.

But you clearly know better.

[Robinson]

Jaybee see's all from his castle.

The Vietnam conflict is now viewed as being wrong,
immoral and unjust. Perhaps it was, one thing for
certain it is not so simple as to say it was either
or either/

Had the US followed similar actions as to the British
in Borneo, Malaya, Kenya etc and not go 'all out'
perhaps many would have viewed it differently.
Less casualties, localised support, no media, low
intensity, true COIN ops and regular forces in
country as opposed to consripts.

Communism was a very big threat, and tyranial
expressions of this ideology still enslave and threaten
many parts of the world. It is no longer the monster
in the dark to us now. It is easy us now to so easily
forget the past, but what it was, was a very real
threat to many.

How the US conducted itself in this period is easy
to question and was in many cases wrong.
But it really was an instance of a lesser of two
evils.

Ali not wearing the uniform of his country and standing
up to the great racist machine of the period is a
romantic creation for many who think that way.

It was also a proud moment no doubt to those in
Hanoi, Beijing, Havana, Moscow and in the university
lecture hall where upper middle class kids embraced
Marx and Engles as the next great Utopian trend.

To have Ali as a poster boy for what is heroic alongside
Che Guevre, Castro and to many Mao really sums up
one's stance and where the agenda lies.

The nation of islam as small as it was in relative
terms was alot more offensive, racist and decadent
than the United States Government and its policies.

I like Ali as a fighter and like all men, feel that he was
as complex as the next. But his not enlisting seems to
be viewed these days as being heroic and galant. To me
that is not the truth.

Sure I was wrong for suggesting it was the 'most cowardly
performance' and I admit this. I threw it on the table
as one that could be viewed outside the box.

Kym

[Collins2000]

Check out Seldon versus McCall, he took some big whacks that night. I don't think he is a coward, in quitting he committed a cowardly act but then again how many of us have had to face the type of stress he was facing versus Tyson?

I think there is a difference between committing a cowardly act and being a coward. The odd boxer may committ a cowardly act (hitting someone after the fight) but by definition they are not cowards.

I agree. Sort of like Duran against Leonard. Taking Duran's whole career into consideration, he could not reasonably be called a coward by any standard.

Didn't he shit his pants in that fight

Duran is no cowards. Given Leonard's dancing the 'No Mas' was practically dripping in machismo.

Tyson was scaring a few top lads at that time. No one has yet mentioned Bruno's 2nd 'fight' with Mike. Frank 'fought' like he was fekkin petrified. I remember someone saying his ring walk resembled a man who believed he was being led to the scaffold.

All the wise after the event poseurs in here say they 'knew' Holyfield would beat Mike but I recall at the time that view was was NOT the commom one held.