-
Recent Posts
Categories
Twitter Updates
Tweets by ThinGhostArchives
- 1960s 1970s Advertising Advice America Argentina Art Big Mama Thornton Billie Holiday Blues Bob Dylan Books Boxing Buddy Guy Charles Mingus Civil Rights Copy Creativity Credits Design Directors Documentaries Education Essays Fashion Film Filmmaking Film technique Harlem Heavyweight Heavyweight champion Hemingway History Hollywood Humour Inspiration Interview Jaws Jazz Letters LIFE Magazine Live Blues Live Music Memes Montage Movies Muddy Waters Muhammad Ali Music Music Video New York New York Times Nina SImone Paris Review Photography Photojournalism Poems Poetry Psychology Quotes Race Short FIlm Soul Spike Lee Sport Steven Spielberg Supercuts Thelonius Monk The New Yorker The Rolling Stones Van Morrison Video Words Writing YouTube
Tag Archives: Heavyweight
50 Years Ago Today: Cassius Clay v Sonny Liston
Muhammad Ali v Oscar Bonavena, 1970 (Amazing LIFE Photos)
As was perhaps befitting of a man who had evolved from merely a cosmically gifted champion into a genuine global superstar, by the 1970s Muhammad Ali’s fights had become so much more than merely international sports events. As his fame grew and grew, so his fight-nights morphed into something extraordinary, almost surreal, somewhere between a catwalk show, a film premiere and a Harlem grindhouse. They became an irresistible whirlpool for celebrities, hustlers, pushers and pimps. Where the rich and not-so-famous came to strut, jive and swagger. To be seen and photographed. Where vanity and ego swelled cavernous arenas, the smell of greenbacks and chinchilla threatened to overwhelm. And where, frankly, what happened in the square ring was almost incidental.
The zenith of this ringside showboating was almost certainly Ali’s iconic 1971 championship fight against Smokin’ Joe Frazier, at Madison Square Garden, NYC (famously photographed, again for LIFE magazine, by a ticketless Frank Sinatra.) But here are some fantastic photographs of a slightly earlier contest, from 1970, against the cast-iron Argentine Oscar Bonavena, also at MSG.
They are a wonderful document of the time, the place…and the intoxicating attitude.
(For the record, Ali knocked out Bonavena in the 15th round. The only time the Argentine was stopped in his craeer.)
Posted in Photography, Sport
Tagged 1970s, Argentina, Boxing, Harlem, Heavyweight, Heavyweight champion, Madison Square Garden, Muhammad Ali, Oscar Bonavena, Sport