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March 20, 2006

The Odd Couple -- Ali and Cosell

cosell and Ali.jpgIn this NY Times article, Boxing author Budd Schulberg reviews Dave Kindred's new book about the fascinating relationship between Muhammad Ali and Howard Cosell, Sound and Fury : Two Powerful Lives, One Fateful Friendship (Free Press 2006). Schulberg gives the book a hearty thumbs up, and notes that Kindred opens by describing the Ali-Cosell relationship in the context of Edith Wharton's famous quotation about light:

"There are two sources of light, / The candle, / And the mirror that reflects it." The homely kid from Brooklyn and the black Adonis from Louisville alter-egoed each other so perfectly that each seems both candle and mirror to the other.

Schulberg also notes in his review two of best lines about Cosell:

[T]the gifted columnist Jimmy Cannon skewered Cosell as the only guy who ever "changed his name and put on a toupee to 'tell it like it is,' " and the boxing historian Bert Randolph Sugar said, "He demonstrated again and again that he knows very little about the game but is not afraid to describe it" . . .

Posted by Tom at March 20, 2006 06:19 AM

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