At the Custom House in Houston, Texas on April 28th, 1967, Muhammad Ali was invited to take a step forward and be inducted into the US Army. He refused.
His objection to the Vietnam War was conscientious, religious and, oh so memorably-put: “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet-Cong – they never called me nigger.”
This cost the 25-year-old his title and livelihood for more than three and a half of the prime years of his career. It took a trip to the Supreme Court to have his subsequent conviction overturned.
A couple of years back, Conor McGregor decided to give up a plumbing apprenticeship.
He didn’t like the hours or the conditions or having to be driven to the site by a hillbilly (his words).
In one telling, he could no longer summon the will to rise from his bed in the morning. In another, he refused to get out of the car one day.
Either way, he ended up having a fight with his father about the whole thing. “He might have whipped my ass but I still didn’t go back.”
Just like Ali with the American government, he stood up for what he believed in.
Selling point
It’s coming up on a year since one of the UFC carnival barkers first called McGregor “the Irish Muhammad Ali”, a line that became a selling point on television promos for his fights. We used to think this comparison ludicrous until we happened upon an archive photograph of Ali wearing a pair of shorts with “MacGregor” emblazoned across the waistband. Even if the ‘a’ was superfluous, we suddenly realised the Fox television and UFC hyperbolists were right all along. The paths of the two men are indeed remarkably similar.
When 18-year-old Cassius Clay arrived back in his hometown of Louisville after the Rome Olympics, he had a gold medal, a team jacket that spelt USA and a misguided notion that Louisville might treat him differently.
“We don’t serve negroes,” said the waitress at one deli.
“That’s okay, I don’t eat them,” he replied.
Following a run-in with a white supremacist biker gang and ill-treatment by the mayor of the town, he now knew Olympic glory wasn’t going to impact on the reality of racism and segregation in his life.
But, he would use his growing fame to combat both in a way that would elicit as many death threats as Martin Luther King, cause the KKK to send him a dog’s severed head, and inspire the FBI to start keeping tabs on his social activism.
After McGregor won his first UFC fight in Stockholm in 2013, he too had to deal with some serious issues back home.
Having trousered a bonus of $60,000, he was forced to sign off the dole or as he mused, “I suppose I’m gonna have to tell them to fxxk off!” To add insult to injury, Boylesports then offered to sponsor him. Imagine the ignominy. The same bookmaker that had once turned him down for a part-time job. For the modern athlete, the civil rights war, it turns out, is fought on many different fronts.
In November, 1990, Ali flew to Iraq to try to secure the release of American hostages being held by Saddam Hussein as insurance against a possible invasion.
President George H.W. Bush, the latest White House incumbent with whom the boxer crossed swords, condemned his trip and Ali was forced to hang around Baghdad for days as Hussein played hard to get.
Eventually, the pair met and Ali returned home with 15 freed hostages in tow. Fifteen more than anybody else from the West could have got at that juncture in history.
The other week, McGregor tweeted “Fxxk you and the Queen” in an online spat about wearing the poppy. The other day, he reacted to criticism of Ronda Rousey by stating, “I don’t give a fxxk about Donald Trump.”
Political activism comes in all shapes and sizes. Of course, there are differences between the two.
Ali (or “the American Conor McGregor” if you like) rose in spite of the establishment, his fame growing organically until he could draw crowds chanting his name from Kinshasa to Kiltiernan, this wattage of celebrity a by-product of what he achieved in the ring and represented outside it.
McGregor’s ascent has been stage-managed and carefully choreographed from the moment UFC, a sport starved of loquacious English-speakers realised they had a gifted salesman in their midst.
Two different sportswear companies and Fox Television have also pushed his brand relentlessly. But these are only minor quibbles far outweighed by the uncanny similarities between these almost identical icons.
Memorable moment
Each is rightly lauded for their ability with a microphone. Who will forget Ali going on live television after the September 11th terrorist attacks, his body shaking, his speech soft and slurred, explaining the nature of true Islam to a reeling nation?
A memorable moment in history, certainly, but then again, the Irish Ali is capable of stringing quotes together too.
“These custom-made suits aren’t cheap,” said McGregor. “This solid gold pocket watch, three people died making this watch. I need to put people away. I need those big fights. I’m going to end up in debt pretty fast.”
About the only thing left to do now is to figure out which one of them can truly lay claim to be ‘ the greatest’.
