The real reason Muhammad Ali refused the draft

I couldn't care less. I would have avoided the draft as well.

I wonder if Trumps bone spurs are ok?

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fear of disobeying Elijah Muhammad, who had stipulated that the champ not serve in a “white man’s war.”

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Also, Malcolm X had been killed a few years before for breaking with Elijah Muhammed....don't think that did not enter is mind.

Look, trying to draft Ali was a political ploy at the time.

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 Ali refused induction not out of principle but from fear 

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Exactly.

I'm more concerned about his lost soul.

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The real reason Muhammad Ali refused the draft

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What if everyone refused to participate in war?

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The truth, though hard to make out under the thick moss of mythology, is that Ali refused induction not out of principle but from fear of disobeying Elijah Muhammad, who had stipulated that the champ not serve in a “white man’s war.”

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What's the problem? Vietnam was totally a bullshite war and any reason to avoid it was legit and admirable, including the belief that the Spaghetti Monster approves of the way that Vietnamese boil their rice noodles and so to attack them would be to attack the Holy Pasta himself.

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is that Ali refused induction not out of principle but from fear of disobeying Elijah Muhammad, who had stipulated that the champ not serve in a “white man’s war.”

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well it's to bad that Elijah Muhammad couldn't convince him that "rope a dope" while being effective as a strategy might not be in his best long term health interest.

i was in high school from 75-79 and i remember it like it was yesterday.

the forman fight the rumble in the jungle was when he first rolled out rope a dope.

really it was the ernie shavers fight that was the beginning of the end and followed by the two spinks fights and then ending with larry holmes

Holmes was a former Ali sparring partner and came in as an undefeated champion. The famed Mayo Clinic had found that Ali had “mild ataxic dysarthria,” a problem using the muscles required to coordinate speaking, and that he had trouble even conducting a basic finger-to-nose coordination test. Ali was beaten for eight rounds, even though Holmes had backed off and later cried about beating a man who had given him his start and probably never should have been in the ring. Dundee mercifully stopped the fight after the 10th round.

hard to watch.

I can't imagine the courage it must have taken for a black man at that time to even have an opinion much less be outspoken as a worldwide figure while holding a very unpopular opinion.

Men like Ali, X and King are simply on another level and should be treated with reverence.

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The Truth

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Uh...maybe he had an awesome high paying fruitful boxing career laying ahead of him as the biggest celebrity on the planet...

And as Norm McDonald would say...

"Didn't want to die!"

"Cause...money was better than dying!"