HBO?s ?Thrilla in Manila? is a buzz killah.
If you?re dying to understand why Joe Frazier still hates Muhammad Ali, HBO’s report is the most persuasive document existent. In Thomas Hauser?s 1991 biography of Ali, the September 1975 ?Manila? chapter is perhaps the only one that makes Ali unlikeable, but the documentary digs much harder at Frazier?s many scabs that never healed.
Feel-good nostalgia, this ain?t. Frazier had been a true friend to Ali during his 1967-70 exile, only to be portrayed by Ali as an Uncle Tom, an ignorant bumpkin and even a gorilla over the five-year span of their three fight campaigns.
Frazier could never accept Ali?s subsequent apologies for laying it on so thick. Who can blame him, the documentary seems to say.
?Whatever you did as a young man,? Frazier says of the prematurely infirm Ali, ?it can come back to bite you in the butt.?
Well, that certainly adds a sober component to HBO?s month-long orgy of intriguing fights (including Paul Williams-Winky Wright and Juan Manuel Lopez-Gerry Penalosa) during a buildup via its ?24/7? series for the Manny Pacquiao-Ricky Hatton collision that is only four weeks away. On HBO pay-per-view, natch. ?Thrilla? and the new ?24/7? premiere April 11, the night of Williams-Wright.
Let?s hope for a better look at the Philippines on ?24/7? than we get on ?Thrilla,? despite courtly on-camera appearances by Imelda Marcos and the eminent boxing writer Ronnie Nathanielsz, the latter explaining why Ali?s cavorting with Veronica Porche became too overt for the press ? or wife Belinda Ali — to ignore.
The second-half of the 90-minute presentation is more ring-oriented, making a good case for Frazier winning the 1971 battle of unbeatens more convincingly than Ali fans might remember, but then rather ungallantly insinuating that Frazier really deserved to win the ?Thrilla? too and came closer do doing so than conventional wisdom will admit.
Well he didn?t win. Ali did. (If only he had retired then and there.)
In his supporting role, Ali steals the show of course, even though Frazier is on camera circa 2008 several times to speak his piece and the present-day Ali is virtually not represented. Frazier?s speech, by the way, is just as slurred as Ali?s. HBO should add subtitles when the senior-citizen Frazier is on camera.
Frazier was more eloquent in the day and often funny. ?I think God?s gonna slap the hell out of him one of these days,? Frazier said of Ali?s antics.
But he doesn?t show much perspective. Son Marvis has been urging Joe to turn the other cheek all these years, and the bitter tone of ?Thrilla in Manila? lets up only for him. Marvis recalls his adolescent self, in a passable Howard Cosell impersonation yet, watching his invincible father get crushed by George Foreman and needing about four knockdowns (?down goes Frazier!?) to be convinced his father wasn?t going to turn it around.
After raising such a mensch, Joe Frazier needn?t be so bitter.
