Recent books: Ali and Rousey biographies
I’ve recently been reading Thomas Hauser’s 1992 biography Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times. Also, Ronda Rousey’s recently issued autobiography titled My Fight/Your Fight.
Ali/Peter parallels (I didn’t make notes of them until after page 450, but there were a pile of them):
Ali: “There are billions of people in the world, and every one of them is special. No one else in the world is like you. No one else looks the same. … Ain’t that amazing? Billions of people, and every one of them is special.” Page 481
Dundee (Ali’s trainer): “…outside the ring, it was him who taught me. He taught me patience; he taught me decency. I watched how he reacted to everything. I saw things done to him that made me sick to my stomach [people taking advantage of Ali, using him for their own profit and exploiting him]. And all he’d say was, ‘You have to forgive people.’” Page 460
Cope (one of Ali’s doctors): “He has a bit of denial in him, which is one of the things that made him great. I mean, here’s someone who could jump into the ring with Sonny Liston [heavyweight champion of the world] and say, ‘There’s no way this guy can hurt me.’ To do that, you have to have some denial, and part of that denial is a belief in his ability to do the impossible.” Page 494
Ali, talking about why he so tirelessly tries to be a good person: “I can’t save other people’s souls; only God can do that. But I can try to save mine.” Page 501
The book was a very good, but long read. It wasn’t something a person could breeze through, either. There was a lot to think about and it gave me insight on a period of US history that I could stand to know more about - the 60s and 70s. Ali was inside the civil rights movement and took different stands as he matured and situations changed. He was a man of principle and honor throughout, willing to go to prison rather than fight people who had done him no wrong (the Viet Cong). Because of his refusal to answer the draft, he lost his heavyweight title that he’d fought so hard to get and lost the best four years of his fighting career while he was banned from sports. They never did send him to prison, with the Supreme Court eventually deciding that he qualified for conscientious objector status even though he was a Muslim and a boxer, both of which were being held up as reasons why he didn’t qualify. Muslims were not against war as a faith, like Quakers, and boxers obviously weren’t against violence. But they missed the point that Muslims (just like most devout religious people) are steadfastly against any war that doesn’t involve their God, and boxers are very selective about who they punch in the face. Essentially, you know, consent matters. Essentially, what the Viet Cong did was their business and they hadn’t picked a fight with Ali or anyone he knew, not even the US as a whole. Instead, the US had gone over and started shit with them, and that wasn’t something Ali wanted any part of. Him being a boxer as a reason why he couldn’t be a conscientious objector was ridiculous and showed the way people saw fighters at that point in history - as animals putting on a show. There’s a whole lot I learned in BJJ about contact sports, touching, fighting, being content in one’s skin, and having a fuller sense of humanity that I never would have had without the experience in fighting. It shows how ignorant people are when they try to say fighters are unfeeling brutes.
It was fascinating to contrast Ali’s story with that of Ronda Rousey. I think I mentioned I’d read her autobiography lately. She’s only 26 or 27, rather than the 50ish Ali was when Hauser wrote The Life and Times. You can tell. You can tell she’s not a professional author, but she’s a decent storyteller. Either that, or maybe she was writing to her audience, which is mainly martial arts and MMA aficionados, a crowd not known for being well-read. Rousey’s sentences were short and to the point. Her paragraphs were direct. Chapters were titled plainly with what stage of her journey she was talking about. Each chapter started with 1-3 paragraphs that basically gave the tl;dr version of the chapter to come. Big words were not in use. Complicated topics weren’t brought up. Detailed philosophy wasn’t an issue. Things were not nuanced. However, it was a fun, fast read that showed a lot of interesting insight on her as a person and the journey she’d taken to get where she was.
She has been compared to Ali on many fronts - as being as dominant and game-changing to the sport as he was, to being as much an athlete, and as much better than all competitors, as he was. I don’t know enough about boxing or MMA to argue for or against that, but I’d say she and Ali both had a lot of similarities in their drive to be champions. Here and there in both books we’d get a glimpse at the philosophy of some other fighter, either through their conduct (in Rousey’s book) or their words (in Hauser’s about Ali). They don’t all have that drive to be dominant, to be the greatest, to own the ring and everything and everyone in it. Ali has that; Rousey has it.
I found a lot of parallels between Ali and Peter Petrelli. There are no such parallels between Rousey and him. There just aren’t. Even her determination and take-no-prisoners attitude isn’t really a match for Peter’s. She’s more Sylar, although there aren’t as many parallels between her and Sylar as between Peter and Ali. The main one being despite Rousey’s fights and dislocating the occasional arm along the way, she’s not a killer and feels no guilt whatsoever, or internal conflict, over what she’s done. She beats herself up for her mistakes, which is something we don’t see Sylar doing much (if ever). Obviously Sylar changes his mind over the seasons as to the rightness of his actions, but not only does Rousey never have that shift, but Sylar doesn’t beat himself up over the mistakes he’s made - he just struggles to earn a second chance at life. Rousey beats herself up, but she also hasn’t worked out what she’s doing wrong in the first place. (Which is, to my point of view at age 43, that she’s picking her friends, lovers, and trainers haphazardly and not according to what they can do to help her and what she can do to help them. As a result, she’s occasionally lucky with a good trainer or friend, but frequently runs afoul of unreliable losers and users. She doesn’t see the red flags.)
So Ali and Peter are a match, but Rousey and Sylar are their own things, unique and special.
I wish like hell I’d written it down, but there was a quote in the Ali book somewhere about how there was nothing in the world like Muhammad Ali, which reminded me of Nathan’s comment that the world hadn’t seen nothing yet in regards to Peter. (Amusing side note: Cassius Clay had the same superhero/villain name alliteration as Peter Petrelli, Gabriel Grey, etc.)
Good books. I recommend them.
Ali/Peter parallels (I didn’t make notes of them until after page 450, but there were a pile of them):
Ali: “There are billions of people in the world, and every one of them is special. No one else in the world is like you. No one else looks the same. … Ain’t that amazing? Billions of people, and every one of them is special.” Page 481
Dundee (Ali’s trainer): “…outside the ring, it was him who taught me. He taught me patience; he taught me decency. I watched how he reacted to everything. I saw things done to him that made me sick to my stomach [people taking advantage of Ali, using him for their own profit and exploiting him]. And all he’d say was, ‘You have to forgive people.’” Page 460
Cope (one of Ali’s doctors): “He has a bit of denial in him, which is one of the things that made him great. I mean, here’s someone who could jump into the ring with Sonny Liston [heavyweight champion of the world] and say, ‘There’s no way this guy can hurt me.’ To do that, you have to have some denial, and part of that denial is a belief in his ability to do the impossible.” Page 494
Ali, talking about why he so tirelessly tries to be a good person: “I can’t save other people’s souls; only God can do that. But I can try to save mine.” Page 501
The book was a very good, but long read. It wasn’t something a person could breeze through, either. There was a lot to think about and it gave me insight on a period of US history that I could stand to know more about - the 60s and 70s. Ali was inside the civil rights movement and took different stands as he matured and situations changed. He was a man of principle and honor throughout, willing to go to prison rather than fight people who had done him no wrong (the Viet Cong). Because of his refusal to answer the draft, he lost his heavyweight title that he’d fought so hard to get and lost the best four years of his fighting career while he was banned from sports. They never did send him to prison, with the Supreme Court eventually deciding that he qualified for conscientious objector status even though he was a Muslim and a boxer, both of which were being held up as reasons why he didn’t qualify. Muslims were not against war as a faith, like Quakers, and boxers obviously weren’t against violence. But they missed the point that Muslims (just like most devout religious people) are steadfastly against any war that doesn’t involve their God, and boxers are very selective about who they punch in the face. Essentially, you know, consent matters. Essentially, what the Viet Cong did was their business and they hadn’t picked a fight with Ali or anyone he knew, not even the US as a whole. Instead, the US had gone over and started shit with them, and that wasn’t something Ali wanted any part of. Him being a boxer as a reason why he couldn’t be a conscientious objector was ridiculous and showed the way people saw fighters at that point in history - as animals putting on a show. There’s a whole lot I learned in BJJ about contact sports, touching, fighting, being content in one’s skin, and having a fuller sense of humanity that I never would have had without the experience in fighting. It shows how ignorant people are when they try to say fighters are unfeeling brutes.
It was fascinating to contrast Ali’s story with that of Ronda Rousey. I think I mentioned I’d read her autobiography lately. She’s only 26 or 27, rather than the 50ish Ali was when Hauser wrote The Life and Times. You can tell. You can tell she’s not a professional author, but she’s a decent storyteller. Either that, or maybe she was writing to her audience, which is mainly martial arts and MMA aficionados, a crowd not known for being well-read. Rousey’s sentences were short and to the point. Her paragraphs were direct. Chapters were titled plainly with what stage of her journey she was talking about. Each chapter started with 1-3 paragraphs that basically gave the tl;dr version of the chapter to come. Big words were not in use. Complicated topics weren’t brought up. Detailed philosophy wasn’t an issue. Things were not nuanced. However, it was a fun, fast read that showed a lot of interesting insight on her as a person and the journey she’d taken to get where she was.
She has been compared to Ali on many fronts - as being as dominant and game-changing to the sport as he was, to being as much an athlete, and as much better than all competitors, as he was. I don’t know enough about boxing or MMA to argue for or against that, but I’d say she and Ali both had a lot of similarities in their drive to be champions. Here and there in both books we’d get a glimpse at the philosophy of some other fighter, either through their conduct (in Rousey’s book) or their words (in Hauser’s about Ali). They don’t all have that drive to be dominant, to be the greatest, to own the ring and everything and everyone in it. Ali has that; Rousey has it.
I found a lot of parallels between Ali and Peter Petrelli. There are no such parallels between Rousey and him. There just aren’t. Even her determination and take-no-prisoners attitude isn’t really a match for Peter’s. She’s more Sylar, although there aren’t as many parallels between her and Sylar as between Peter and Ali. The main one being despite Rousey’s fights and dislocating the occasional arm along the way, she’s not a killer and feels no guilt whatsoever, or internal conflict, over what she’s done. She beats herself up for her mistakes, which is something we don’t see Sylar doing much (if ever). Obviously Sylar changes his mind over the seasons as to the rightness of his actions, but not only does Rousey never have that shift, but Sylar doesn’t beat himself up over the mistakes he’s made - he just struggles to earn a second chance at life. Rousey beats herself up, but she also hasn’t worked out what she’s doing wrong in the first place. (Which is, to my point of view at age 43, that she’s picking her friends, lovers, and trainers haphazardly and not according to what they can do to help her and what she can do to help them. As a result, she’s occasionally lucky with a good trainer or friend, but frequently runs afoul of unreliable losers and users. She doesn’t see the red flags.)
So Ali and Peter are a match, but Rousey and Sylar are their own things, unique and special.
I wish like hell I’d written it down, but there was a quote in the Ali book somewhere about how there was nothing in the world like Muhammad Ali, which reminded me of Nathan’s comment that the world hadn’t seen nothing yet in regards to Peter. (Amusing side note: Cassius Clay had the same superhero/villain name alliteration as Peter Petrelli, Gabriel Grey, etc.)
Good books. I recommend them.