Sledging is universal, so does it need to be regulated?

Muhammad Ali was a champion boxer, and champion sledger. At his best, his trash talk was inventively cocky and funny (“I’ve seen George Foreman shadow box and the shadow won”), but he could also be prodigiously cruel.

In boxing, you have to promote fights, so some of it is showmanship (who can forget Mike Tyson promising to eat Lennox Lewis’ children?) but Ali persecuted one of his greatest opponents, the late Joe Frazier.

Frazier was not as “pretty” or articulate as Ali. So Ali called him “ignorant” and “ugly”. He hyped their fight in the Philippines with this pearl: “It’s going to be a thrilla in Manila when I kill that gorilla.”

He claimed Frazier was “so ugly that when he cries, the tears run up and then go down the back of his head” and “his face should be donated to the bureau of wildlife”. While they fought, Ali kept up a constant barrage of insults, even questioning Frazier’s “blackness”.

Ali always maintained it was not personal, but Frazier was deeply offended the rest of his life: “I understand why Ali diminished me, but he never went back to lift me up.”

Michael Jordan is considered the best basketball player of all time, and he never stopped sledging.

He called shorter players “f—-ing midgets” and anyone he beat a “loser”. He would do a running commentary as he beat an opponent into submission: “I’m going to dribble it between my legs twice. Then pump fake. Then shoot over you. Then I’m going to look at you.” And he’d do it.

Another great basketball player, Shaquille O’Neal, nicknamed his opponents with girls’ names (as in, Eric Dampier was ‘Erica’).

John McEnroe usually sledged umpires, but he also said of Ivan Lendl: “I’ve got more talent in my pinkie than Lendl has in his whole body. Do you like a robot being world number one?” He called a Czech opponent a “f—-ing communist a–hole.”

Cricket is known for sledging. The Australian wicketkeeper tried to throw Ian Botham off with a “so, how’s your wife and my kids?” to which Botham replied: “Wife’s fine. Kids are retarded.”

Mark Waugh was told his wife was an “old ugly slut.” Glenn McGrath was sledged about his wife right after he learnt she had cancer. McGrath in turn asked Zimbabwean batsman Eddo Brandes “Why are you so fat?” To which Brandes replied: “Because every time I f— your wife, she gives me a biscuit.” You would think wives would be sacred, but not in cricket.

Dennis Lillee had a habit of telling batsmen he faced that there was “excrement” on the end of their bat, as a reason why they were struggling. A few of them actually looked at the toe of the bat, and Lillee was able to deliver his punchline: “Wrong end, mate.”

Golf with mates is full of sledging, but the professionals are notoriously close-mouthed about their taunts on tour. Lee Trevino was one of the more open sledgers. After he hit yet another perfectly straight (but not very long) drive down the middle of the fairway, his playing partner Jack Nicklaus remarked slyly, “I don’t miss fairways with my five-iron either.”

Reportedly Phil Mickelson, Darren Clarke, and Greg Norman are fond of the chirp. Norman was taunting fellow Aussie Brian Jones about beating him by 10 strokes in the first round of a tournament, saying, “You’ll struggle to make the cut.”

Jones hit back: “If I’m within two shots of you with three to play, I’ll be alright.” Ouch.

Scott Hoch described Nick Faldo as “much fun as Saddam Hussein” after a Ryder Cup match, and the late, great Seve Ballesteros described the U.S. Ryder Cup team as “eleven nice guys, and Paul Azinger.”

But golf is a tight fraternity.

One of the most effective sledges – even if it was despicable – was whatever Marco Materazzi actually said to Zinedine Zidane in the 2006 World Cup which caused Zidane to lose it.

Insulting or boastful speech intended to demoralise, intimidate, distract, or humiliate an opponent is the art of the sledge. Some are cheekier and funnier than others, such as Nick Farr-Jones’ chirp to a ref who said, “Enough! There are 30 refs on the field!”

Farr-Jones came back, “Problem is, you’re not even in the top 10.” That’s funny, even though it’s disrespectful.

But it can backfire. Some athletes draw motivation from being the recipient. For instance Lewis beat Tyson, and specifically mentioned how upset Tyson made him.

Mike Phillips says Bakkies Botha’s “sexy blue eyes” chirps were designed to “try to put me off” on the 2009 Lions tour, but “I enjoy confrontation like that”.

A study of 414 university athletes in the U.S. by John Carroll University’s Psychology Department revealed that men sledge more than woman, that male athletes encounter or dish out a sledge in about one third of athletic contests (and it is relatively constant across sports), that 31.46 per cent of the time, the sledge involves sexuality or sexual orientation (for women, that figure is only 8.16 per cent), and it begins as early as age 10, for most.

Some of the best sledges I heard over the years, directed at me, were:

“I heard you were the worst player on your last team, too.”

“Does your coach know you’re out here?”

Fans sledge, too. The best I ever heard while playing was, “Rip off his leg and hit him with the soggy end!”

The worst sledge I ever dispensed was after a really bad tackle I made that injured my opponent. And I’m ashamed to remember it. My mother was really mad at me. So I’m not innocent.

I would wager most of us who have actually played the game have a few sledging moments we’d be glad to forget, and many more that still make us laugh.

Sledging is universal. Increasingly, it is regulated. This is the way it is. More clarity will probably be needed about the parameters and limits.