Harbo "Niall" Harbison (1 Viewer)

I kinda wouldn’t put Prince in there – although you know infinitely more about him than I do, so I could stand corrected.
But Prince was more like George Best or even Maradona, propelled forward by genius-level ability from their youth.
Like in the 80s you couldn’t leave Prince alone for 5 minutes only he’d have written another song – dude was literally giving them away - he had something inside him that needed out.
George Best had to be dragged in at night cos he couldn’t stop kicking a ball against a garage door, over and over and over. The drive was coming from the muse. It didn’t have an off switch.

Those people are fascinating in their own right, and arguably rise to the level of their talent.

With McGregor and Beyonce and Roy Keane and others, it’s the Gatsby-esque drive that makes them study every aspect of the game and the skills needed and the barriers to success and how they can be overcome and never ever giving up.
Like that line in Kill Your Friends.
“In return for her fifteen minutes I guarantee you that Geri Halliwell would have risen at the crack of dawn every morning for a year and swum naked through a river of shark-infested, HIV-positive semen – cutting the throats of children, old age pensioners and cancer patients and throwing them behind her as she went – just to be allowed to do a sixty-second regional radio interview. This is the kind of person you want to sign. You’ve got a shot with that kind of attitude. Talented? Fuck off. Go and work in a guitar shop with all the other talented losers.”

It can give you Madonna, but can also give you Maroon 5.
It’s more fascinating with Madonna.

Maybe these distinctions only exist in my own head.
Maybe with 8 billion people on the planet, you need both undeniable talent and supreme drive to achieve success in these incredibly competitive fields.

But I was heading for a night train in NYC a few years back and every sidewalk with a bar was jammed with people leaning in windows – like you couldn’t walk down the street – because McGregor was fighting Mayweather (an insane proposition to start with). And yet, this gobby, short ginger from Crumlin, had brought New York City to a halt because he read a stupid fucking book and never stopped believing he could goddamn do it.
Like I said, he’s not an easy guy to like. But that bending of the world just fascinates me.

View attachment 13386

View attachment 13387
To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
 
I think we're mostly agreeing. Whether Prince got to where he did through genius or his dangerous work ethic is debatable, probably both, and a lot of luck. For him the work came before all other things, including relationships and any other form of living. Dude died alone in an elevator with no one for miles around because he pushed everyone away, addicted to a literal drug that allowed him to feed his other drug (work). Honestly it's no way to be.

I suppose the difference between McGregor and the greats in my head is McGregor has the world at his feet and spends it acting the eejit, shilling rubbish whiskey and possibly doing things much, much worse. Muhammad Ali on the other hand turned up on Irish tv quoting poetry he wrote himself.

Muhammad Ali was a renown racist bollocks to any non-Muslim black people.
Also a wife-beater among other things. So you know, listen to his poetry with that in mind

Fuck him. He’s a guy who punches people in bars because they don’t want to drink his whiskey.


He is a Cokehead scumbag
 
It’s one of the things that I find remarkable about LeBron James – he became basically the best at what he did – amazing in itself
But he’d been surrounded by hangers-on and people wanting a piece of him since he was a young teen – his high school games were put on TV - and he came from a single parent home and signed a pro contract out of high school. Mental money to give to a teenager.
But he became this solid, grounded family man – like the move to Miami was kind of dickish – but there were not long odds on him becoming a flame out a la Iverson or others who were stars when they were still teens.

“Carries the burden of talent very well”. Really nicely put.

I know nothing about basketball but I watched a LeBron compilation there and it was amazing. Kinda funny too on one score he has clearly rescued the game and runs to hug a normal sized guy and you can see the fear but must commit in the normal guy.
 
Muhammad Ali was a renown racist bollocks to any non-Muslim black people.
Also a wife-beater among other things. So you know, listen to his poetry with that in mind
On the balance of things I'm cool with Ali's supposed racism tbh, considering what he was put through. Still a hero to me
 
What’s this now about Ali being a racist? Genuine question ... news to me.
 
What’s this now about Ali being a racist? Genuine question ... news to me.
He joined the Nation of Islam in the 70s. It was quite the time to be a member. He apparently even appeared at a Klan rally at one point!

For more details google Ali, Daily Mail, Breitbart, The Telegraph, Piers Morgan etc.
 
In an interview with George Plimpton, given shortly before his rematch with Liston,[8] Ali expounded on the ontological teachings of Elijah Muhammad and Elijah's instructor Wallace Fard Muhammad. According to these teachings, which Ali said he believed in, there exists a space platform operated by "men who never smile" which orbits the earth at the speed of 18,000 miles per hour. The platform contains bombs which would be dropped at Armageddon which would begin after a threshold in the earth's collective guilt had been breached.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Muhammad_Ali#cite_note-12 Ali claimed he had seen the platform on several occasions. A member of Ali's entourage, Cody Jones, who was also present during this interview, corroborated what Ali said and claimed he had seen the platform together with Ali at five A.M. one morning when the two were out jogging. Jones described the platform as "a bright light darting in the sky." According to Plimpton the "bright light darting in the sky", seen by Ali and Jones, was probably either Venus or Jupiter.[9]

On being probed further by Plimpton, Ali explained that according to this belief system the first inhabitants of the earth were blacks. Among them was an "evil genius", Yakub, the "devil" of this religion. After six hundred years of working in a laboratory, Yakub created the white race. Yakub was eventually ejected from paradise, together with 59,999 of his inventions,[c] who went on to eventually subjugate the blacks.[11]

In interviews for his 1991 biography Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times, and his 1998 biography King of the World, Ali clarified that he no longer believed in the existence of the space platform or in Yakub anymore.[12][13] According to Ali, "hearts and souls have no color", and it was wrong of Elijah Muhammad to have talked of "white devils".[12] Ali's biographer David Remnick noted that everything "threatening or obscure" about the Nation of Islam's teachings, including the space platform, Yakub, and racial separatism, had long been forgotten by Ali.[13]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Muhammad_Ali#cite_note-Remnick_303-16
 
Ali's funeral was one of the most inclusive things i have ever seen.
the best speaker at it was his friend a dissent Rabbi he met through his
civil rights activism. he was getting standing ovations for everything he said.
Ali ideas evolved hugely over the years.
i'm not defending many things he did but I can't blame someone whose ancestors
were enslaved less than 100 years earlier for being anti white as a young man.

Ali hugely regretted being loyal to the NOI people who were involved in the
murder of Malcolm X.
Malcolm was someone we'll never know where he was heading.
 
What’s this now about Ali being a racist? Genuine question ... news to me.

he was anti-white but I really wouldn’t have a problem with that given the history of his race and oppression.

His religion informed him to encourage racial segregation for all black people.
And that if you were black and not a Muslim you weren’t being true to your heritage. - That you were a white mans nigger and that you were no good.

i was referring to how he would verbally abuse and threaten fellow black fighters.
I can’t recall if it was joe Jackson or Frazier or whoever but Ali would call over to his hotel the night before the fight and stand outside his window shouting up racist abuse.

And then there’s his behaviours and attitude towards women.....

Thougheverything I mentioned was when he was heavily influenced by his religion.
 
yes, there are big issues with how Ali treated women and he should have
been far more respectful to some of his rivals especially Joe Frazier.
i don't dispute that.
Joe had a terrible later life too.
i was just making the point that his memorial service / funeral showed that
his ideas had moved on hugely.

i don't have much interest in boxing but Ali's life is fascinating - a complicated
character with many flaws to go with the greatness (nothing unusual in that).
but like Malcolm X his life tells you so much about the place and times they lived in.
 
yes, there are big issues with how Ali treated women and he should have
been far more respectful to some of his rivals especially Joe Frazier.
i don't dispute that.
Joe had a terrible later life too.
i was just making the point that his memorial service / funeral showed that
his ideas had moved on hugely.

i don't have much interest in boxing but Ali's life is fascinating - a complicated
character with many flaws to go with the greatness (nothing unusual in that).
but like Malcolm X his life tells you so much about the place and times they lived in.

100%
 
I mean when I see something like this:

Ali's biographer David Remnick noted that everything "threatening or obscure" about the Nation of Islam's teachings, including the space platform, Yakub, and racial separatism, had long been forgotten by Ali.[13]


I'm inclined to remember that Ali opposed the draft and the war against Vietnam in the 1960s while David Remnick cheered on launching the war in Iraq and I think you really have to ask yourself which is more "threatening" at the end of the day.
 
I wouldn't say I ever liked McGregor. I tend to automatically hate that type of arrogant, hyper alpha male bullshit, but I did admire what he had achieved. He used his abilities, confidence & sheer force of personality to get where he is. There are far tougher, scarier fuckers in the UFC, they just don't have the McGregor X factor. Where it went wrong was he started to morph into the exaggerated asshole he plays at the press conferences. Probably fueled by massive amounts of money & cocaine.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Activity
So far there's no one here

21 Day Calendar

Mohammad Syfkhan 'I Am Kurdish' Dublin Album Launch
Bello Bar
1 Portobello Harbour, Saint Kevin's, Dublin, Ireland
Mohammad Syfkhan 'I Am Kurdish' Dublin Album Launch
Bello Bar
1 Portobello Harbour, Saint Kevin's, Dublin, Ireland
Bloody Head, Hubert Selby Jr Infants, Creepy Future - Dublin
Anseo
18 Camden Street Lower, Saint Kevin's, Dublin, Ireland

Support thumped.com

Support thumped.com and upgrade your account

Upgrade your account now to disable all ads... If we had any... Which we don't right now.

Upgrade now

Latest threads

Latest Activity

Loading…
Back
Top