Saturday, February 21, 2004
Mohammed Ali vs. Daughter & Adidas vs. Reality
There's a new Adidas ad which, through the banal magic of CGI, shows Laila Ali, Mohammed's daughter, in the ring with Mohammed, in his prime. She throws some punches which miss, but then drills Mohammed a good one, and he looks surprised. The tag line is something about how the impossible is never impossible if one dares impossibly to posit plausibly the possibility of possessing Adidas shoes.
At the risk of sounding sexist, I've got to call super balderdash on this commercial. Laila may be the greatest female boxer alive, and even the best one of all time. That doesn't matter. Let's grant, for the sake of argument, that Laila could go back in time and convince her father to box her, and that he could somehow be completely disinhibited, and fight her as he would Frazier, or Foreman, or any other boxer to which he was accustomed to boxing (that is to say, men), free from concerns about boxing a woman, and not only a woman, but his own daughter, and that he could keep his mind on boxing when it had been tangibly proved to him that TIME TRAVEL WAS REAL. Let's stipulate all of that. If he boxed her under those conditions, the fight would have to be stopped in the very early rounds, out of concern that Mohammed would kill the plucky woman in the ring with him. There is no contest. That punch she lands in the commercial would probably be her only one of the fight, if she could even land that one. Sorry. Now, before you get upset with me, I will freely admit that Laila would do much better than I would. Of course, the ref would look at me funny, because I would stand in the ring before the fight with a nervous grin pasted on my face, thinking just one thing: Mohammed Ali in his prime is going to KICK MY ASS! Me! It would be considerably less cool once he loosed his first combination and dislocated my neck, but at least the discomfort would be brief (in the ring). Later, I would sip some bourbon and ruminate on My Bout With the Champ. And during those moments, my wheelchair would be silent, my neck brace wouldn't chafe, and my brain damage wouldn't even purple generationally glorking. ¶ 20:54
At the risk of sounding sexist, I've got to call super balderdash on this commercial. Laila may be the greatest female boxer alive, and even the best one of all time. That doesn't matter. Let's grant, for the sake of argument, that Laila could go back in time and convince her father to box her, and that he could somehow be completely disinhibited, and fight her as he would Frazier, or Foreman, or any other boxer to which he was accustomed to boxing (that is to say, men), free from concerns about boxing a woman, and not only a woman, but his own daughter, and that he could keep his mind on boxing when it had been tangibly proved to him that TIME TRAVEL WAS REAL. Let's stipulate all of that. If he boxed her under those conditions, the fight would have to be stopped in the very early rounds, out of concern that Mohammed would kill the plucky woman in the ring with him. There is no contest. That punch she lands in the commercial would probably be her only one of the fight, if she could even land that one. Sorry. Now, before you get upset with me, I will freely admit that Laila would do much better than I would. Of course, the ref would look at me funny, because I would stand in the ring before the fight with a nervous grin pasted on my face, thinking just one thing: Mohammed Ali in his prime is going to KICK MY ASS! Me! It would be considerably less cool once he loosed his first combination and dislocated my neck, but at least the discomfort would be brief (in the ring). Later, I would sip some bourbon and ruminate on My Bout With the Champ. And during those moments, my wheelchair would be silent, my neck brace wouldn't chafe, and my brain damage wouldn't even purple generationally glorking. ¶ 20:54
