Mohammed Ali, king of the trash talkers once said, “I’m so mean I make medicine sick.” Anyone on the end of Ali’s taunts; ask Joe Frazier, really had no choice but to laugh it off, or let it frustrate you to the point of distraction. In sports news this week, trash talk has popped up as a hot topic as the Chicago Bears have prepared to play the Panthers.
But I have to wonder if we’re losing our trash talking abilities as a nation. Adewale Ogunleye started it all with, “They had all the hype coming in and we felt they didn't deserve it, and again they're getting a lot more hype than they should." The newspapers took him to task for this incendiary piece of bulletin board fodder. Safety Mike Brown followed with, “We know we can beat them. I think they think they can beat us. But we know we can beat them." Na na na na na. These words are enough to send Carolina over the edge in getting fired up to beat the Bears? Enough to mentally push them for sixty minutes in front of 60,000 screaming fans and a national television audience of millions in order to outscore them? Them’s some pretty good fightin’ words, eh? C’mon, we can do better than that. I offer the words of Mohammed Ali as inspiration:
“Frazier is so ugly that he should donate his face to the US Bureau of Wild Life.”
“I'll beat him so bad he'll need a shoehorn to put his hat on.”
Of course Ali did cross the line by calling Frazier a “gorilla” and an “Uncle Tom”, but he did apologize years later. Ali reserved some of his best trash talk for the U.S. government concerning the issue of going to Viet Nam:
“I ain't draft dodging. I ain't burning no flag. I ain't running to Canada. I'm staying right here. You want to send me to jail? Fine, you go right ahead. I've been in jail for 400 years. I could be there for 4 or 5 more, but I ain't going no 10,000 miles to help murder and kill other poor people. If I want to die, I'll die right here, right now, fightin' you, if I want to die. You my enemy, not no Chinese, no Vietcong, no Japanese. You my opposer when I want freedom. You my opposer when I want justice. You my opposer when I want equality. Want me to go somewhere and fight for you? You won't even stand up for me right here in America, for my rights and my religious beliefs. You won't even stand up for my right here at home.”
Touché.
Finally I want to offer up what I think are the two best instances of trash talk in song; the first from Mr. Bob Dylan in full skewer of a rival :
“Yes, I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes. You'd know what a drag it is to see you”
The second is from Mr. J. Rotten:
“God save the queen she aint no human being”
Now that’s talking the talk.
The Shark only has a few heroes, Mohammed Ali being first and foremost among them -"Hey Gorilla- were in Manilla" -"I'm so quick I make medicine sick".........as he changed the world, stood for principles- not only that he stood for up for what he believed, but how he did so- and all while being a wonderful, fierce prizefighter -perhaps the very finest of his kind.
My favorite story about Mohammed Ali was after the Rumble In The Jungle when he had accomplished rather easily what everyone thought impossible, beating Goerge Foreman -knocking him out in the eight round, the reporter from I believe Time Magazine drove the 20 miles out to his compound looking for him; there was a deluge right as the fight ended and going was slow, when the reporter finally arrived, the sky had just cleared and as he came into the compound he saw Ali by himself, no entourage. sitting on a porch in the early morning light, showing a group of kids magic tricks.