October 1, 1975 was the day that Muhammad Ali died, while conquering his greatest foe, Smokin’ Joe Frazier. Being Muhammad Ali, he lived 41 more years.
The Thrilla in Manila is the greatest fight this Blogger has seen in his lifetime; this Blogger has also seen on his father’s old black and white television: Moore vs. Durelle, Sugar Ray Robinson vs. Olson, then on color television, Hearns vs. Hagler, and Aaron Pryor vs. Alexis Argüello.
The Thrilla in Manila was greater than all those. It ended in an incident which allowed Muhammad Ali to be victorious, and literally killed him.
Muhammad Ali was born Cassius Clay Jr; Ali claimed that he changed his name to Muhammad Ali because Cassius Clay was his slave name. Ironically, the white Cassius Clay of Kentucky, the original Cassius Clay, was an abolitionist, who was a "lion" against Slavery.
Muhammad Ali was the greatest heavyweight in History; and if Sugar Ray Robinson had not lived, the greatest boxer in History. He was also the most beautiful, the smartest, the most intellectual, the most honest, the funniest, and the most courageous.
He was the most seminal boxer in American History, and rivals Jackie Robinson as the most seminal sports figure in American political, social, and cultural History.
How do we know that Muhammad Ali was the greatest heavyweight in History? Look at whom he beat: Ken Norton, Smokin Joe Frazier, Ron Lyle, Sonny Liston, Floyd Patterson, Leon Spinks, Henry Cooper, George Chuvalo, Ernie Shavers, Zora Folley, Cleveland “Big Cat” Williams, Archie Moore, Jerry Quarry, Jimmy Ellis and George Foreman.
Any one of those men defeated by Muhammad Ali would be Heavyweight Champion today; in fact George Foreman won the heavyweight title at the age of 45, after losing it to Ali twenty years earlier. Foreman knocked out a 27 year old to do it.
Muhammad Ali was the greatest ever; because he was the greatest in the greatest era of heavyweights.
Cassius Clay won the Light Heavyweight Gold Medal, in Boxing at the Rome Olympics in 1960, at only 18 years old. He defeated Zbigniew Pietrzykowski , a THREE time European champion to win it. Ali was a prodigy.
Later he threw his Gold Medal into the Ohio River, angry at segregation.
This Blogger first came across Ali in an article in TIME about his fight with Doug Jones, a very capable fighter, at Madison Square Garden.
“I’ll Annihilate Him.” “That Jones!” hooted Cassius. “That ugly little man! I’ll annihilate him! You know what this fight means to me? A tomato-red Cadillac Eldorado convertible with white leather upholstery, air conditioning and hifi. That’s what the group is giving me for a victory present. Can you picture me losing to this ugly bum Jones with that kind of swinging car waiting for me? I get sore, and Jones fall in four.”
He said it everywhere—in the newspapers, over the radio, on the Tonightshow. He even said it in the Bitter End, a Greenwich Village poetry-and-coffee house peopled by curiosities in faded jeans anti beards. In his tuxedo, at noon, Clay was a curiosity himself.
"My secret is self-confidence, a champion at birth.
I’m lyrical, I’m fresh, I’m smart, My fists have proved my worth.
Marcellus vanquished Carthage, Cassius laid Julius Caesar low,
And Clay will flatten Douglas Jones With a mighty, measured blow."
Madison Square Garden was sold out five days before the fight for the first time in history. In Room 1049 at the Plymouth Hotel, Cassius Clay was in a happy mood. “The Garden is too small for me,” he crowed. “Where are the big places? That’s what I need. Maybe the Los Angeles Coliseum. I was up in Harlem today, arguing with 500 people on the corner. I get them to come down here and see Cassius in the Garden. Boxing people are paying their way in. They’re wiping off the seats where the pigeons used to sit.”
…It was still afternoon, but across the street from the Garden, the fight mob began to gather. It was always like that in the old days, when there were fights worth going to and fighters worth talking about. Then the mob gathered on Jacobs Beach, the sidewalk at 49th and Broadway. Now they sit at grey Formica tables in the Garden Cafeteria gulping matzo-ball soup, or at Jack Dempsey’s bar sipping Rob Roys. Promoter Jack Solomon was in from London to see the fight. Lester Collins, ten years a manager and now a California businessman flew to New York because “I heard so much about Clay I had to find out if he’s really that good.” Ernie Braca, Sugar Ray Robinson’s ex-manager, said that even the scalpers were out of tickets. “The wires are red-hot,” he said. “Businessmen that never called before. They’re offering $75 for a $12 ticket. There are 19 million people out there trying to get into 18,000 seats.”
…. The lights dimmed. A spotlight caught Jones, a black fireplug of a man, in a yellow and purple robe. The crowd cheered. Then the spot swung around and picked up Clay, dressed all in white—white robe, white trunks, white shoes. The crowd hooted. There was warm applause for the ring introductions—Gene Tunney, Jack Dempsey, Sugar Ray Robinson, Rocky Graziano, Barney Ross, Dick Tiger—champions all. Then more boos for Clay. And still more, as he danced and waved and made faces at his tormentors.
“Get Cassius! Go get him, Doug!” the fans chanted. “Get that loudmouth!” And in the first round, Doug almost did. Cassius leaned back, and a looping right caught him flush on the side of the jaw. Clay’s knees buckled, his eyes glazed, and he grabbed the ring rope for support……. The boos followed him back to his corner….TIME”
Cassius Clay won a decision.
“Fix! Fix! Fix! Fake! Fake! Fake!” A photographer at ringside was knocked cold by a flying object that creased the back of his skull Peanuts rained onto the ring. Casually, Cassius Clay picked up a handful, cracked the shells, and tossed the nuts into his mouth…TIME, March 22, 1963.”
This world will never see the likes of Muhammad Ali again.
Ali’s next big test was for the Heavyweight Championship against Sonny Liston.
Liston was a brutish monster, a former convict, and an enforcer for the Mafia( it was rumored he had beaten a man to death on orders from the Mob; ths Bloggers Father believed it).
People in the know had heard rumors that the Clay was dabbling with Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam; people in the know understood that Liston had orders,from the Miami mob, to beat Clay to death in the ring, with the referee allowing it.
Clay would be neither intimidated nor beaten. He psychologically defeated Liston by his fearlessness, and Liston caved in. Clay then beat Liston again.
Liston met his fate in a mysterious death, supposedly by the Mob for failure.
Then the Southern Baptist Clay became a member of the Nation of Islam, becoming fast buddies with Malcolm X. Clay became Muhammad Ali. That name change is a major cultural event; for the first time in American History an American cultural colossus had an Islamic name. That name change paved the Jungian way for a half Kenyan raised in Indonesia, Barack Hussein Obama, to become President of the United States, for it made common and familiar Islamic names to the American public. Muhammad Ali was seminal on many levels.
When Malcolm X broke with the Nation of Islam to go off and become assassinated by said members of the Nation of Islam, Clay stayed with the Nation of Islam, eventually segueing into becoming a mainstream Sunni Muslim.
His conversion to Islam, paved the way for American Blacks giving up Black Christianity for Islam in a major way. Muhammad Ali put Islam on the American Cultural Map.
There is one anecdote about Ali during this period which contains one of the best lines about an American icon ever.
A reporter was to meet Ali in a hotel, and Ali was late. The Reporter asked one of Ali’s entourage where the Champ was?
The member replied with a great Hemingway line: “He has discovered women.”
The Champ was busy going from room to room in the hotel servicing eight women; he had discovered the joys of women, as a rich, beautiful and famous Champion.
Ali was drafted.
In those days, the Republic was a combination of Athens and Sparta; in those days the Republic was the most militaristic Republic since the Rome of the Punic Wars. Everyone got drafted, Elvis Presley, Ted Williams, Audie Murphy and CONRAD BIRDIE. The only way not to get drafted was to volunteer like Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart and Tyrone Power. The first letter this Blogger received from his esteemed government after college was his Draft Notice, GREETINGS.
If you did not report to the Draft, you either: a) went to jail(my buddy Bob L), b) went to Canada (Steve A.) or shot yourself in the foot, disabling yourself (Robin C.).
The heavyweight Champion during World War II, Joe Louis, had been drafted.
This was the Viet Nam War Era, and Muhammad Ali was drafted; it was expected that he would serve, pass basic training, and do exhibition fights for the morale of the troops being sent to the slaughterhouse.
Muhammad Ali refused to go, declaring himself a Conscientious Objector.
His logic was succinct, elegant and eloquent: “I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong” .
He was stripped of his title, and the wheels of the Gods prepared to grind him up, by putting him in jail as an example.
He had to go to jail, for he was defying the Draft and everyone KNEW he was not a coward. A brave man was defying the Draft, which was the height of destabilization. The Draft could sustain cowards defying it, but not brave men; above all men, the bravest of the brave had to be punished for defying the Draft.
He was convicted of Draft evasion; Muhammad Ali appealed is case to he U.S. Supreme Court, and won, CLAY VS THE UNITED STATES.
“Clay v. United States,(1971), was Muhammad Ali’s appeal of his conviction in 1967 for refusing to report for induction into the U.S. Military during the Vietnam War. His local draft board had rejected his application for conscientious objector classification. In a unanimous 8-0 ruling (Justice Marshall recused himself due to his previous involvement in the case as a Justice department official).”
President Nixon acknowledged the power of the Court’s decision, and began the process of ending the Draft, noting privately that if brave men refuse the Draft, the Draft is doomed. No one did more to end the Draft than Muhammad Ali, changing the Punic Republic of America forever.
THE THRILLA IN MANILA
After the Court decision, Ali began boxing again. He lost a Championship fight to Smokin Joe Frazier, as Frazier’s left hook knock down shattered his invincibility.
Frazier lost the Championship to Olympic Gold Medalist, George Foreman, a beast of a man, the most fearsome champion since Sonny Liston.
In the Rumble in the Jungle, held in the sticky African nation of Congo(Zaire), Ali let Foreman punch himself out and then did the impossible, knocked Foreman out. In a world of faux amazing, it was an amazing achievement.
That led to the Thrilla in Manila, the third Ali-Frazier fight, Ali against the indomitable Joe Frazier.(After Frazier has lost to Foreman, he had lost a rematch to Ali).
It is arguably the greatest prize fight of the 20th Century, arguably the greatest prize fight in History. It is arguably the greatest struggle to the death since the greatest samurai in History, Musashi Miyamoto defeated the second greatest samurai in History, Sasaki Kojiro.
Everyone knew it was a fight to the Death, everyone just knew that, in the Hemingway way.
Frazier hated Ali; Ali had denigrated Frazier as an Uncle Tom, an illiterate Uncle Tom. Black intellectuals, such as Bryant Gumbel, had sided with Ali in the denigration. (Gumbel later recanted).
Ali did not hate Frazier per se, but he sensed Frazier’s hatred of him, and was somehow afraid of Frazier’s determination to destroy him,
Smokin Joe Frazier, the Uncle Tom, had a black trainer, Eddie Futch; Muhammad Ali had a white trainer, Angelo Dundee.
Words cannot describe the brutality of the fight; it was as if each knew the winner would get the last seat out of Hell.
Back and forth, mutual murder in front of the braying crowd.
By the end of the ninth round, Ali was a beaten hulk; he told his Dundee “"Man, this is the closest I've ever been to dying.”
Dundee told him to keep fighting.
Ali did.
Absorbing punishment, if Ali had been an animal, PETA would have stopped the fight on the basis of too much cruelty.
Close to death, Ali blinded Frazier with his punches.
But Frazier would not quit, a blind hulk he kept coming forward absorbing murderous destruction in order to land one left hook.
This Blogger was watching the fight in a movie theater in San Francisco, the girl he was with started crying and put her hands over her face as not to see the carnage.
She wailed:”Why don’t they stop it?”
But Frazier would not quit.
The 14th Round was the Battle of Verdun in three minutes; Ali threw everything he had at Frazier, now as blind as Samson from the blood in his eyes, but Frazier would not quit.
Ali’s soul was overwhelmed by it all.
He went to his stool, and asked Dundee to cut his gloves off, beaten in spirit.
Dundee ignored him.
Frazier stumbled to his stool.
Eddie Futch saw his gladiator and decided to stop the fight of the century because of the risk to his fighter.
Blind Frazier was irate, trying to fix Futch by his voice, he said” "I want him, boss."
Now Futch was blind with tears and love:, "It's all over. No one will forget what you did here today".
Futch stopped the fight.
In his corner, a dead Ali was being prepared by Dundee to keep on fighting, for fame, wealth, and glory depended on it.
Ali later told his biographer: “…. I didn't think I could fight any more.”
Ali died that night, from a broken heart, for it was the ridiculed Uncle Tom that he had mocked, who had received the love of the century.
Ali spent the rest of his life in fame, idolatry, adulation and glory, knowing Joe Frazier was truly loved. Ali died from the Thrilla in Manila, and he knew it.
Frazier was a happy man until he died.
Comments
Post a Comment