The NBA all-star game had stiff, and more important, viewer competition.
LeBron James opposed holding an all-star game during the COVID season right up until he tossed the rosin in the air just before tip-off. He figured no one would care to watch it.
But despite the game including scoring adjustments and other gimmicks, James never figured it would lose so much of its audience to two other programs on opposite networks from TBS and TNT.
The heavily promoted Oprah interview with Prince Harry and Megan Markle ran against the game, and it got almost 18 million CBS viewers, more than double the NBA clown show. It has been the talk of both the American media and the British tabloids ever since.
But the special that led right into that interview was over on ESPN; the replay celebrating the 50th anniversary of Ali-Frazier I at Madison Square Garden in 1971. All 15 rounds were shown, culminating with the last round in enhanced digital that showed Smokin’ Joe’s knockdown of Ali that assured a victory he was already winning on points.
The fight mesmerized, and between rounds came commentary and clips from that year including Howard Cosell with Ali and Frazier in a studio interview that erupted into a brawl when the Greatest called Frazier ignorant, as Cosell stayed seated and described the melee. Plus the stunning report that Frazier nearly died after the grueling bout.
And it had so much more important meaning than a game that most players would have preferred skipping.
First, it showed people under 50 how exciting boxing was in that era, led by the incomparable Ali, who went on the be an international figure for peace and the Muslim nation in his retirement. It also reminded us how racist was his treatment after he refused induction into the U.S. Army and lost four years of his career in his prime while appeals were thrown out or denied in lower courts.
Ali never went to prison, but sued the organizations that stripped his heavyweight title and his boxing licenses. The case took four years to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, which when getting around to it ruled in favor of Ali’s claim of conscientious objection to the Vietnam War by a vote of 8-0.
How long would a white world champion have had to wait to get his lawsuit adjudicated? It was a shameful part of the civil rights struggle that still resonates today in the Black Lives Matter movement.
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