When you look at today’s times in boxing and indeed many professional sports the concept of trash talking or hyping a fight has been around for quite some time.
Whether it is directly from the boxers or those involved with the event itself.
Many believe this can be first traced back to Muhammad Ali as the first successful trash talker in boxing.
Perhaps in any sport really.
The cultural impact Ali left on boxing in this regard was significant but very different with how it is today.
Ali seemed to always do his trash talk in a good way and with no malice in it.
Certainly no foul language like today’s times, or very rarely if he ever did.
Indeed, one of his greatest rivals George Foreman told one fan on Twitter that he can’t ever remember Ali using bad language before they fought:
Great stuff.
Really, when you go back over all the Ali footage, it’s very hard to see him using any bad language at all.
Perhaps this art could be passed on once again to boxers of today’s times.
Or anyone for that matter.
Bad language shows nothing really, certainly in business or any walk of life, and from an entertainment point of view in boxing, it is negligible.
There’s no intelligence in it — and Foreman’s point above speaks volumes to how good a promoter Ali was.
The best promoter of all time in fact was Muhammad Ali.
Still maybe offering a good lesson for boxers of today’s times who need promoters less and less — who’s importance is not what it was at all — due to the continued growth in social media for boxers promoting themselves.
This will only continue and the above a great anecdote from Foreman in that regard in how to do it.
No one will ever beat Ali in this realm.
A boxer, and man, way ahead of his time.
Imagine how big he would be today if he was around today.
Ali said one time:
“The man who has no imagination has no wings.”
A champion fighter and a class act:
