If a picture is worth a thousand words, then that of Muhammad Ali standing over a beaten Sonny Liston says it all. Much of today’s professional sports consist of trash talking, taunting, posturing, pandering, hype and glitz, classless buffoonery, idiotic celebrations, and me, me, me. What’s alarming is that many of today’s “fans” find this behavior acceptable and feed off it.

Whenever I think of Ali, what I remember most are photos of him standing over an opponent gesturing and taunting, or behaving in an irrational, braggadocio manner at pre-fight photo ops.

It’s bad enough to see these antics at the professional level, but because young athletes are great mimics, we have seen some of the lunacy that permeates the pros descend into the ranks of amateurs.

The coverage of the Ali-Liston fight in the May 22 Sun Journal was a prime example of another reason why sportsmanship is disappearing: the glorification of the above-mentioned negatives by sportswriters. Many sportswriters buy into the antics of professional athletes and laugh them off in the columns as men being boys just having a good time.

Sadly, this cheapening of sports in America isn’t going to go away. It’s here to stay and probably will get worse. Those of you who think Ali is one of the sportsmen of the century, take an honest look at what he, along with others, has done for sports and ask yourself if what we see happening today is what sports should be about.

Bitsy Ionta, Dixfield

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