The Persecution of Floyd Mayweather

I've come to feel that Floyd right now occupies about the same place in the boxing universe that Ali did in the 60's, pre-Vietnam period (keeping in mind that the boxing universe today occupies a considerably diminished space of the cultural stratosphere at large). In this analogy, 50 Cent is Floyd's Malcolm X, which I don't think is a stretch at all. For middle-class white America, hip hop today represents pretty much what the Nation of Islam did in the 60's - black, dangerous, violent, anarchic, contemptuous at every turn of white bourgeois values and proud of that contempt. In fact, hip hop is probably more loathsome and terrifying to the white middle-class now than the Nation was back in the 60's. The Nation was a small fringe movement with little real cultural capital other than its capacity to shock whenever the media gave it a platform, which was rarely. Today, hip hop permeates the bourgeoisie and has become the veritable religion of its children. We must remember that before Vietnam, Ali's only political stance was to associate himself with the Nation, and if we are going to celebrate him solely for that, we are going pretty damn far down the "all things black and militant are cool" hipster road, because the ideology of the Nation makes Mormonism seem like the work of John Locke. I also don't believe that Ali was tremendously concerned with aligning himself with the struggle of his black brothers and sisters - if the man was anything, he was a raving megalomaniac, and the only struggle on his mind was his own. What black nationalism really seemed to provide Ali at a crucial moment of his mega-stardom, and what in retrospect seems brave about his decision to ally with the Nation despite their legitimate nuthood, was a way to signal with extreme authority to the white media and the white fanbase they represented that he would never take instruction from them, that he would never play by their racist rules - that he was his own proud, powerful black man who would never be their "boy." For years after he took his Muslim name, most of the media continued to refer to Ali as "Clay" and the significance of that was plain. Oh no you don't. We won't let you. Of course, there always was something comic and unsettling about Ali's revolutionary self-creation, because that revolution was indeed televised. No other athlete ever has so thrived on, so craved, and so brilliantly manipulated the media's attention. Outside of the Nation conversion and the name-change, the main thing Ali was known for in his prime was talking ridiculous amounts of smack about himself in a manic, clownish fashion, ridiculing his opponents with a genuine sense of humor and theater but also with a pointed cruelty rarely seen before or since, and for calling the rounds in which he would score knockouts and then frequently delivering on his promises. In short, Ali didn't even need the Nation to make him a villain because he was already White America's Darth Vader, the boastful black man that nobody could shut up - in essence The Black Man You Love to Hate. He rode an entire country's outrage straight to the bank, laughing all the way. As I've written before, this is why I'm so offended now by the media's creation of the mute, Parkinsonian Ali as The Black Man We Love to Love. It seems like an almost Soviet-level of historical revisionism, and in my mind it takes considerable edge off of what Ali actually did, what he dared to do, because it makes it seem like we were all behind him all along, rather than telling the truth, which is that most of us (and with "us" here I figuratively address my own demographic - white sports fans, white media) were passionately against him. Most people, I think, are going to be offended that I even begin to compare Floyd to Ali, and on one score I agree that offense is warranted - Floyd's self-creation is in no way as brave or bold as Ali's was, because Ali paved the way before him (and then if you really want to talk bold, there's Jack Johnson... but I digress). But the fact remains that Floyd is a trash-talking egomaniacal loudmouth genius of a boxer defiantly aligned with hip hop and all the dangerous blackness that it represents. The money-flinging, the conspicuous-blinging, and the endless bringing of rhythmic disses and self-mythologizing and preposterous nicknames - to me it is hilarious, playful, pure promotional perpetration that at its best is worthy of The Greatest himself, and yet the media and the fans and just about everybody around seem to revile the guy and all that he represents. There is a wellspring of love out there for "rap," the so-called Ali edition, circa 1963. But in 2007 it's pretty much the same old story when a black athlete takes this guise - how dare he? Watching the fight last night, I felt some shame on this count. Floyd seemed like the loneliest man in the world walking into that ring, and I couldn't help but feel it was simply because, to paraphrase Larry Holmes, he just didn't have the complexion to make the connection. Money May now reigns as The Black Boxer We Love to Hate and I think the word "Black" in that title tells much more of the story than anyone would ever care to admit. If Floyd were white and that were the only difference in this fight, if all the hype was the same, 24/7, etc. - I have no doubt that the terms of the contest and the tenor of the coverage would have been considerably different. There would have been a thunderous uproar of flag-waving fervor when he walked into the ring to "Born in the U.S.A." There would have been violence in the crowd when Hatton's throng of British louts had the predictable class to boo the American national anthem, because the British louts wouldn't have ruled the arena. If Floyd were white, there would have been an overwhelming angle of national conflict to the portrayal of the bout and some genuine national pride in his victory. This would have happened whether he played up that angle or not, and the fact is, he did play up that angle, he did try to identify as an American in the build-up to this fight and did it often. But it didn't take. I wonder why. Back in 1963, Americans hated Cassius Clay so much that they universally rooted for Sonny Liston to defeat him, one of the most genuinely evil human beings prizefighting has ever known. A bad black man, but a quietly bad one, one who seemed to know his place in the world. Somewhere in the distance, Little Johnny Cougar sings "this is our country..." (Thanks to everyone who commented or wrote emails to congratulate me on my successful prognostification. I will sing my own praises a little bit and give a full re-cap of my thoughts on the fight tomorrow - L)