A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal
"Lord Save Us from Champions like This": The Sonny Liston-Muhammad Ali Heavyweight Championship Bouts as Transnational Sporting Culture in 1960s Finland
Authors: Heiskanen Benita, Salmi Hannu
Publisher: Nordic Association for American Studies
Publishing place: Odense
Publication year: 2021
Journal: American Studies in Scandinavia
Volume: 53
Issue: 1
First page : 43
Last page: 64
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22439/asca.v53i1.6225
Web address : https://www.universitypress.dk/shop/american-studies-in-3882p.html
The two championship bouts between Sonny Liston and Muhammad Ali in 1964 and 1965 are among some of the most controversial events in the history of boxing. While their significance has been interpreted in the United States against the backdrop of the Civil Rights era, this article opens up a pathway for discussing transnational meanings and functions that African American heavyweight champions assumed in faraway lands, such as Finland. Contextualized within a Transnational American Studies research paradigm, the article considers the multiple ways in which Finnish media reporting made sense of and imposed significance on transnational sporting culture in the 1960s. The article argues that prizefighting served as a lens through which reporters negotiated Euro-American relations, national identity, and the global spread of professional sports at the expense of amateurism. In addition to providing a site for negotiating ethnic and racial differentiation, prizefighting offered a locus for constructing performative, class-based sporting whiteness.