For when all is said and done, the games are little more than an expensive excuse for nationalism and jingoism.
The misuse of sport for propaganda purposes was very evident in Britain during the Iraq wars, when the TV news often gave football results before the war coverage and ominous death tolls.
Football like many other sports is soaked in bribery and corruption. When Britain won the world cup in 1966, the then Prime Minister Harold Wilson told the pop star Screaming Lord Sutch that he had bought the win for Britain.
This conversation is actually on record with the intelligence agencies.
Sutch who launched the Monster Raving Loony Party as an ironic jibe at conventional politics, was actually very astute politically. When he was asked to stand for Labour he refused, such was his disgust with the corruption in British politics.
Much so-called news is so slanted as to be almost unrecognisable as news, and is easily concealed behind this sport nonsense,
A Labour Government spokeswoman is actually on record as having described terror attacks in the U.S. along with sporting victories as:
“A good time to bury bad news”
And just as news is no longer impartial, sport is often used politically.
During the 1930’s economic depression, the B.B.C deliberately slanted programmes to further the cause of Russian Socialism. In fact many of the Philby and Blunt brigade used the B. B. C. and particularly sporting programmes as cover for their anti-British pro-socialist spying activities.
Likewise, communist teams at Olympic games in the past were so loaded up with steroids as to make the men indistinguishable from the women. And the Chinese are now said to be using methods on children little more than babies that are as unorthodox as they are immoral.
Muhammed Ali is said to be the greatest boxer of all time, and is still revered throughout the world for his contribution to boxing. His catchphrase: “I am the greatest” became known world wide as his trademark.
However, according to informed sources and his F.B.I intelligence files, he was chosen to become world champion because he was good looking, smart and funny and had never been in trouble with the law.
His intelligence file also says: “He would make an ideal ambassador for American sport”.
Muhammed Ali according to one source, would let the cat out of the bag by such statements as; “he will take a dive in five”. Of course this may simply have been Ali bragging, but equally it may have been because he knew the fights were fixed.
The Kray twins from the London’s East End underworld, with many boxing acquaintances were privy to insider gossip on upcoming bouts. Although it is not generally known, the Kray’s were part of the Jewish underworld and would have had links with the same mafia that ran the boxing syndicates in the U.S. And while the Kray’s made substantial donations to British boxing charities, they certainly had the pulse of every upcoming heavyweight boxer both here and in the U.S.A.
Jack Ruby is on record as saying: “boxing and criminality are two faces of the same coin” .
Ali was said by one of his trainers to have been very upset to have to fight Sonny Liston.
On paper Sonny Liston should have murdered Ali, but was not held in favour with the F.B.I. because he had killed a man and had a long police record. Like many fighters both here and in the U.S., the gangsters owned Liston and they told him that as he was a favourite to win he had to throw the fight. This meant the mafia and those in the know at the F B I would clean up big time with the bets.
Liston did not hit Ali properly once during the fight, and claimed afterwards that he had boxed with a broken wrist. This is hardly likely and over the two fights the men fought, Liston came out surprisingly badly.
As East End gangster Reg Kray put it: “as if he was a bad actor.”
Liston may have been in much trouble but he was a family loving man: a big very strong, afraid of nobody type of guy. And from what a sports journalist on the Irish Times told me in an intelligence briefing some years later, Liston believed he could walk the fight, but his family would then be put at serious risk.
Liston has never had the recognition he deserved, he truly would have made just as great a champion as Ali, but he was cut from a very different mould.
T Stokes