A 14 year-old and sworn Cassius Clay fan, I listened to the fight on the radio in rural Oregon and than waited anxiously for what seemed like a slow eternity for my Sports Illustrated to show up days later in the mailbox.
After that, I did not care that Clay changed his name and found the Muslim faith and resisted the draft while admonishing, "I got nothing against no Viet Cong. No Viet Cong ever called me 'nigger.'"
I did care that he couldn't fight for a long time when the dust settled. That bugged me. A lot of things began to bug me thenceforth, not the least of which was that I too had nothing against no Viet Cong, even though my country very much wanted me to blindly follow its leaders into a disaster.
For kicks, someone posted this link to When We Were Kings at another site.
TS
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