Dave Meltzer, publisher and
editor of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and probably the most well-known
journalist covering wrestling, has been nice enough to give mention to both of
the larger pieces I have done so far for my blog in the “Updates” section of
his website F4WOnline.com. After attaching a link to the latest one (The Greatest and Wrestling), he commented:
Everyone always talks about Ali
learning from Gorgeous George. The week in question was a show in Las
Vegas where George vs. Fred Blassie was the main event that sold out the same
building Ali drew only a few hundred people at for a real fight. Ali's interview
style is so much more patterned about Blassie than George that I've always been
skeptical, although Ali was at the show and people say he was backstage with
George. When Blassie was put together with Ali for Japanese and American
purposes as his manager and Ali saw him, he immediately thought he was Gorgeous
George that he learned his interviews from. In 1976, Ali publicly claimed
he learned interviews by watching Blassie, after always saying George before
that time. After 1976, Ali went back to saying George while Blassie
always claimed it was him. And Blassie's friends always spoke that it was
a given it was Blassie.
Further scouring the internet for
information, I found this fan report from a 1991 Freddie Blassie appearance in
Boston:
He said that it was he, and not
Gorgeous George, that Muhammad Ali patterned his act after. He said that Ali
went to a wrestling match on a night that Blassie had sold out the place, just
3 days after Ali had drawn 1/3 capacity in the same arena. A few days later,
Ali asked a sportswriter about the guy he had seen fighting in the arena a few
days before. The sportswriter assumed that it was Gorgeous George and told Ali
that. Ali believed him. When Blassie heard Ali talk about the night that he saw
this wrestler, Blassie knew that it was he and not George that Ali had seen (according
to Blassie, George really couldn't speak too well). When Blassie told Ali that
it was he who Ali had seen, Ali agreed that he was right. Ali and Blassie
became friends; Blassie was even in Ali's corner for his "fight"
against Antonio Inoki. For a while, said Blassie, Ali did change his story
and admitted that it was Blassie who influenced him, not George, but then Ali
either started getting a little forgetful or just never bothered to correct
people when they said George.
Could it have been Freddie
Blassie selling wrestling at that Las Vegas radio station in June 1961?
While I am incredibly intrigued by just the
whole theory of this, I still think the influence being Gorgeous George has at
least a few things going for it. As Meltzer mentioned, it has been reported
over and over that the two were backstage together after the card (and that they'd met at a radio station beforehand, something Blassie does not mention in his version of events). There’s also the very simple fact
that Ali only really credited Blassie during the short period he was working so
closely with him. Unless I’m mistaken, many of these accounts (at least the verifying
of them) come from John Capouya, Gorgeous George’s biographer. Capouya
conducted research that included interviews with George’s first wife, Betty.
Back to the other side, George’s
meeting with Ali would have been ten years after he had divorced Betty Hanson. Capouya also felt it
necessary to include in his “About the Author” for Harper Collins that, “he
knew nothing of wrestling and didn’t see his first pro match until he became
intrigued by the story of Gorgeous George.” I read the book and thought that
apparent disinterest showed, so who knows how far past the hearsay he really
looked.
I suppose I had blinders on to a
degree myself. I’m a little disappointed I didn’t include something about this
opinion on the matter and Blassie’s claims in the piece. Then again, this kind
of stuff is one of the reasons I write in the first place: to get a
conversation going, find out new things about wrestling and learn.
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