Ali laid out an absolute feast of tasty and hilarious quotes.Before he took the heavyweight title from ex-con Sonny Liston at age 22, he referred to Liston as "the big ugly bear" and said:
quote:
"After I beat him I'm going to donate him to the zoo."
After he TKOed Liston, he told the ringside media "Eat your words!" because they thought he might be too scared to even show up. He added:
quote:
"I am the greatest! I shook up the world. I'm the prettiest thing that ever lived."
He was the king of trash talk. It was poetry, the poetry of pure confident exuberance. Only Yogi Berra could come a distant 2nd for poetic utterances in the world of sport.
Before The Rumble in the Jungle against George Foreman in 1974, he said:
quote:
"If you think the world was surprised when Nixon resigned, wait 'til I whup Foreman's behind!" He told the press, "I've done something new for this fight. I done wrestled with an alligator, I done tussled with a whale; handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail; only last week, I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalized a brick; I'm so mean I make medicine sick."
The aging Ali beat Foreman.
In reflecting on the fight, George Foreman later said: "I thought Ali was just one more knockout victim until, about the seventh round, I hit him hard to the jaw and he held me and whispered in my ear: 'That all you got, George?' I realized that this ain't what I thought it was."
- from Ali's wikipedia page
------------------
The Declinations Guy
Rising Sign Descriptions | Expert rectification
♈ ♉ ♊ ♋ ♌ ♍ ♎ ♏ ♐ ♑ ♒ ♓