Exploring ESPN's 30 for 30: Muhammad and Larry

Director: Albert Maysles
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Synopsis
This documentary is a mix of two sets of film.  The first is footage shot prior to the 1980 bout between Larry Holmes and Muhammad Ali which Ali lost in the 10th round by TKO.  The footage was never used, as the directors explain, because none of the major networks wanted it.  It is paired with recent footage of Holmes, interviews with Ali's entourage, and sports writers of the time to provide perspective on the fight.



Thoughts
This is perhaps the most difficult ESPN 30 for 30 film to really get into.  I had to watch it several times before I could even form an opinion of it.  Unlike the rest of the films there is no narration which means the directors narrative is a bit more difficult to flesh out.  The fact that I was not born yet when the fight took place and am not particularly involved in boxing made the exercise even more difficult.


Ultimately this is the story of two careers.  Ali is perhaps the most remembered American boxer in the history of the sport.  He was a cultural icon and a role model for many young children, particularly African Americans.  There really isn't a fair comparison to what this fight did to Ali's reputation, but for those in my generation let's just say it is something akin to witnessing the latter part of the Brett Favre saga.  Supposedly the film wants us to ask why Ali is doing this.  Who did he still have to prove he was the greatest to and why would he do this at his age?  We see that he probably shouldn't be fighting but the film never really gives us an answer to this question other than that maybe Ali just wanted to prove it to himself one last time.

Holmes was the young up and comer, a fighter who never really got the recognition he deserved and who still carries a bit of a chip on his shoulder.  He finished his career in 2002 with a record of 69-6 with 44 knockout wins.  His 20 successful title defenses is second only to Joe Louis, but it is unlikely anyone who isn't a fan of the sport has ever even heard of him.

The films interviewers add some, but not much perspective on the fight.  We learn that Ali was taking thyroid pills which hurt his ability to fight, that Ali should have stayed retired and not taken the money to fight because he was too old, and many other micro details.  The footage gives us interesting moments of Ali doing magic for children and Holmes singing his theme song in his car, and while we get a solid picture of who they were as people, it really doesn't answer the issue of context.

This fight could very well be seen as the fight that signified the decline in American boxing.  Nobody says it explicitly but you can infer it from some of the interview commentary.  Ali was a hero, an icon, and a symbol to so many people.  His annihilation at the hands of the more down to earth Holmes was a move away from celebrity boxers in the US.  Sure we still had Mike Tyson, but at a time when guys like Frazier and Foreman were ending their careers, seeing Ali get destroyed seemed to be the beginning of the end (at least for the general public).  I understand it would have been difficult to do this story, especially since doing it would require more of a focus on the issues with boxing before that fight and after it, but I that film would also have more value since it would have information and context.

Perhaps more importantly, the fight shattered an image of one of the most revered sports figures of all time.  We see the loss blamed on age, greed, and pills but the thing that interviewers never get around to is discussing the impact on Ali now.  Ali still is an icon.  No significant portion of my generation remembers this fight but they all know that picture of Ali standing over Frazier.  Ali is still a major part of American sports mythos and it is hard to reconcile the idea that the fight hurt his image with the reality that he is still a major sports icon.  Perhaps that is why there is no narration. If there was, the director would have to directly answer the question of why they are making this film other than trying to distract us with old footage.

Review
It is incredibly hard to review this film.  I generally take issue with the lack of context but only because this is not something I am familiar with.  Maybe if I was more of a boxing fan or was old enough to remember this fight I would find the film more interesting but that just isn't the case.

The film does an admirable job of fleshing out the characters of Ali and Holmes so there is something there.  Ali is far more gregarious than Holmes (who actually isn't a bad speaker himself) so we get an idea of why Holmes never became the icon Ali was.  Getting an idea of the two men is perhaps the most intriguing part of the film.

The interviews are largely done roundtable style so we get the subjects responding to each other.  This isn't bad and it gives us some nice shots of them talking but it really doesn't help with the whole context issue since they often went on some random tangents.  Only a few of the quotes are really juicy (my personal favorite being the sportswriter who talked to the towel guy in the bathroom after the fight).  I never got the sense that the film was trying to do something other than show me this old footage and put some flimsy structure around it with the more recent interview footage.  It all adds up to a film without a context, where we end up spending the entire film asking ourselves "why do I need to watch this?".

In the end the film spends so much time asking why Ali is fighting that it really misses the macro significance of the event.  Ali chose to take that fight, he probably shouldn't have but he did and he took another fight after that.  There is nothing I can do about it, so why am I watching this?