When well known humans die.

I’m not one for all of a sudden having some sort of affinity with famous people  just because they’ve died, which then gets shared on the internet like you’ve been a lifelong fan. 

But I had this photo from the Sonny Liston fight in A2 poster form on my bedroom wall when I was growing up. It just said something like “first minute first round”. It was some perspective. 

My cousin Louis, who had a habit of getting infatuated with various different things and people when he was a child, once got a bit obsessed with Muhammad Ali. He’d read everything he could about the person or band he was currently zoned in on and watch all the films. This meant that the people around him learnt quite a bit about these people too. Queen was one of these and in turn I fell in love with the younger Roger Taylor. 

But this man stuck out as a character worth all the interest and fame. He was an example of the act that successful athletes don’t just need skill or physical ability. It was hard to tell which lead to which but he had the tenacity and the sheer drive and self belief and it seemed that it was that which the skill was born out of. 

I done wrestled with an alligator,

I done tussled with a whale.

I handcuffed lightning

thrown thunder in jail.