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Larry Bird Vs Hollywood Essay

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Larry Bird, Rocky Marciano, Bill Walton, Gerry Cooney, Joe Jefferys all these men have 1 thing in common, they are all great white hopes in sports and in the 1980’s. All this race and sports thing has a symbolic representation and that is America 's White revenge fantasy. There were many conflicts going on in the 1980’s such as black people becoming more dominant in sports and the white backlash. People like seeing representations of themselves.

In the fight Holmes vs. Cooney, Gerry Cooney was represented as the great white hope and Larry Holmes represented the African American community. Although both boxers say the fight wasn 't about race promoters kept promoting that this fight is indeed a race fight. Promoters did this especially Don King because they and he knew that this would sell tickets. The fight took place on June 11, 1982 in Las Vegas Nevada and about 32,000 paid spectators are watching ringside and more are watching at home on pay per view. On the night of the fight Las Vegas police department set up SWAT and snipers all over the area of the fight because the KKK or the black panther might try to assassinate either one of the boxers. But neither of the organizations did any of what they said they would do. …show more content…

Larry Bird was portrayed as the great white hope because of what happened with the NBA in the past before Bird got there like the NBA “Dark Ages” which is the 1978 Washington Bullets where the majority of them team was African American and not white. And again a lot of people came out to watch NBA games because of race based rivalry. Larry Bird and Magic Johnson were both in the playoffs and Larry Bird and the Celtics lost in the Eastern conference finals to the Philadelphia 76ers. This caused many white Bostonians to do bussing. White Bostonians refused to integrate

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