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A DAUGHTER OF boxing colossus Muhammad Ali has said she was “amazed” by footage of her father’s fight in Croke Park in 1972, contained in an award-winning Irish film.
When Ali Came To Ireland, which will be screened tonight on RTÉ1 at 10.05pm, aired at a Chicago film festival attended by Jamilah Ali this year. Following the screening she said:
I’ve seen so much footage of my father over the years but the amazing thing about watching this film was that I had seen none of the footage of him in Ireland… I loved this film from the beginning to the end.
Ali said she hoped to show a copy of the documentary to her father, who is now 71 and battling Parkinson’s disease.
In the documentary, Ali is shown staging a career comeback, taking on Al ‘Blue’ Lewis at Croke Park. Both men were out to prove a point: Ali had been recently released from prison after he had refused as a conscientious objector, to fight in the Vietnam War. Lewis had just been released on parole after serving time for murder in Detroit and had vowed to use his boxing career as a path to a new life.
The film – which won an IFTA this year – charts the incredible spectacle in Croke Park, Ali’s reaction to the Irish and the Irish public’s reaction to his charismatic presence in town. It also explores how Ali came to fight in Dublin in the first place, in a match organised by a former Kerry strongman called Michael ‘Butty’ Sugrue.
Jamilah Ali, daughter of Muhammad Ali, with Ross Whitaker, co-director of When Ali Came to Ireland, at a screening in Chicago earlier this year. Image: Docology
Sugrue’s story is also a revelation and Ross Whitaker, who co-directed the film with Aideen O’Sullivan, told TheJournal.ie that as with the experience of Ali’s daughter, Sugrue’s remaining family were moved by seeing Butty on screen.
Whitaker said: “We were amazed when we screened the film in London to find that Butty Sugrue’s granddaughters had never heard their grandfather speak. He had died before they were born and they’d never seen footage of him in which he had spoken.”
This image shows Sugrue and Ali in Dublin ahead of the 1972 match:
Image: The Irish Post/Docology
Following that 1972 encounter, however, the fortunes of the two men – Ali, and the Irishman who had helped him orchestrate the high-profile return fight – diverged. While Ali returned to the ring and further glories before his retirement and gradual decline into ill-health, Sugrue lost a small fortune on the Dublin fight and, after dying in London, was eventually laid to rest in an unmarked grave in his home town of Killorglin, Co Kerry.
Since the doc was first shown on RTÉ on New Year’s Day this year, a local committee in Killorglin has said it will fundraise to erect a memorial to Sugrue at his final resting place.
Video via TrueFilmsTV. Funded by RTÉ.
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Some neck on these two.
@The Viking: I guess if you were in their situation and facing years in prison we all chance your arm at anything.
The arrogance of these people is hard for me to take. It’s obvious there guilty
@Paul O Riordan: They didn’t offer any real defence in court as they knew it would be ripped apart by the prosecution.
I have to say I was shocked to see the jury members say what they were saying on the TV. I thought there would be some sort of instruction not to speak to the media about their jury duty.
@Paul Mc Nulty: it’s certainly not the way things are done here. But apparently the judge would have needed to issue the jurors with a gag order, which he didn’t.
@Donnachaín Ní Uallacháin: or issue the media with an order not to harass jurors in any trial. The media is at fault here not the jury. Media are supposed to be professional the jurors are lay people not used to dealing with the law or madia outlets.
I just hope the conviction is upheld but if a new trial is called i hope they are convicted of murder 1
I had several issues with the claims of the two. The number of blows, time elapsed before calling for aid, and her rubbing at her neck during police custody. Additionally, if my father were in the position of hers, he would come to my defence with fists, not a bat. He would be up and running, not stopping for a weapon.
@Rathminder: also telling is the fact that he told police that he woke to hear them arguing and stomping around upstairs and he went up with the intention of telling them to ‘knock it off’. Why would he bring a baseball bat to do that? And he was still wearing his watch which is unusual as most people would take their watch off before going to bed. Unless he stopped to put it back on again before going for the baseball bat.
As he is a former member of the FBI, i would have thought he would have been able to commit, cover up and justify the murder in a more professional manner
@Anne Marie Devlin: He may not have been very good at his job. The police said the crime scene was altered.
It was obvious that Molly Martens was told to wear loose-fitting dresses, flat shoes and a ponytail to portray the small, innocent schoolgirl look. They tried to portray Jason Corbett as a big, violent Irish lout. They banked too heavily on the typical Irish stereotype. I think it would have been prudent for the judge to issue a gag order in this case because this pair will stop at nothing. They just can’t accept the fact that they are not above the law.
So two murderers are putting their faith in a technicality to get off.
@Niallers: Unfortunately it is often more thsn enough to get away with murder.
US attorneys go out of their way to tell their clients how to look and act, and pick jurors based on their estimates of their prejudices based on age, gender and background.
When their sociopath clients show no remorse in the courtroom they then complain that the same jurors judged their clients based on prejudice against sociopaths.
As much as I like hearing jurors talk about their cases after the fact, they should have some advice from judges about how to phrase any statements so as not to leave open doors to appeal from public statements.
I don’t think the jurors were swayed by outside influences.
More like the the fact that they were bloody guilty!
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