The script for the “Thrilla in Manila” – the final act in the three-part blood feud between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier – was written half a world away, in the sweltering heat of Zaire, Africa, in the summer of 1974.
Three years earlier, in his third fight since returning from a 40-month forced exile from boxing for refusing to go to war in Vietnam, Ali lost a unanimous decision to Frazier, who had been crowned champion in his absence. Billed “The Fight of the Century,” it was the first time two undefeated heavyweight title holders faced each other, and Smokin’ Joe won it going away. He punctuated his claim to the undisputed crown by flooring Ali with a monstrous left hook in the final round.
Frazier was dethroned in 1973 by the hulking and seemingly invincible George Foreman, and by the time Ali-Frazier II rolled around on Jan. 28, 1974, both men were perceived to be in the autumn of their careers.
Ali won the rematch easily, then promptly challenged Foreman. The “Rumble in the Jungle” was set for Sept. 24, 1974, in Kinsasha, Zaire, until Foreman suffered a cut in training. The injury forced a five-week delay, during which Ali and Foreman were not allowed to leave the country. Zairean dictator Joseph Mobutu put the fighters, promoter Don King and more than 100 people in their entourages under house arrest. With some $20 million invested in the spectacle, he wasn’t about to let them get away.
CALLED FOR JOE
That’s when Ali, having trained harder than at any time in his career, called for Frazier one more time. “If The Mummy (his nickname for Foreman) can’t fight, bring old Joe over,” Ali said. “We’ll put on a show they’ll never forget.”
It seemed a ludicrous request. Frazier had been knocked down six times in two rounds by Foreman, and even his most ardent supporters doubted he had anything left to offer Ali. It was only after Ali’s stunning knockout of Foreman on Oct. 30 that the rest of the world came to appreciate the returning champ’s uncanny prophecy.
To put Ali-Frazier III in perspective, think of this: More people around the world watched the Thrilla in Manila on Oct. 1, 1975, than watched Neil Armstrong step on the moon six years earlier. And though it was Ali who almost single-handedly transformed it from a mere heavyweight title fight between two past-their-prime warriors to an indelible benchmark of the 20th century, he couldn’t have done so with anyone but Frazier.
Once close friends, by the fall of ’75 they were bitter enemies. Their most famous incident was a brawl during a live television interview with Howard Cosell a year earlier. Ali called Frazier “ignorant,” causing Joe to blow his cool and attack him.
Ali’s merciless taunting carried over to Manila, where he cracked up the first news conference by pulling a small rubber gorilla out of his pocket and repeatedly smacking it in the head. “It’s gonna be a thrilla and a chilla and a killa when I get the gorilla in Manila!” he bellowed. Frazier seethed, vowing to make the champion “pay with his heart.”
As it turned out, the fight didn’t need any extra hype. With the temperature at ringside a searing 110 degrees Fahrenheit, the 33-year-old Ali came in at 225 pounds. Frazier, 31, tipped the scales at 216.
From the opening bell, it was brutal. Ali dominated the first three rounds, twice staggering Frazier with titanic hooks. By the fourth, however, Frazier found his rhythm. Bobbing and weaving, he pressed the fight inside, trying to lure Ali into throwing the uppercut that would leave him wide open for the same sledgehammer hook that floored him in their first fight.
It never happened.
Ever since Zaire, Ali’s primary strategy was absorption – what he called his “rope-a-dope.” Content to allow an opponent to relentlessly batter his midsection, he thus protected his head. When fatigue finally slowed the other man’s salvos, Ali could tap herculean energy reserves to unleash salvos of his own. He threw bullets to Frazier’s bombs, but by Round 10 the bullets were winning. In Round 11, Frazier’s lips oozed blood and both his eyes were puffy. He hooked and missed, hooked and missed, while Ali countered with cobra-like jabs that landed with sickening exactitude.
By the 13th, the story was all but written. Each man had silently declared himself impervious to the other’s violence, and it simply became trench warfare. Reeling within the blood-flecked confines of the 18-foot ring, each became his own worst enemy. Too tired and too damaged to knock the other down, they could only hope for one to push himself over the edge, to knock himself out.
And so it ended. Only someone as tough as Frazier could defeat Frazier, and Ali went to the well one last time to tap that toughness.
“It was the closest thing to dying that I ever felt,” he said afterwards. Three decades removed, the residual scars on The Greatest are sad testament to Manila’s terrible toll.
For Frazier, who wept through the slits of his eyes when trainer Eddie Futch refused to allow him off the stool for the 15th round, it was career-defining. Though battered and defeated, he was no longer the man who was knocked down six times by George Foreman. Instead, he became the man who got up six times – and went on to scale new heights.
COURAGE AND SPECTACLE
Thirty years later we remember Ali and Frazier for their courage and spectacle. But we continue to celebrate them because together, inextricably bound by their era, they created three of those ultra-rare freeze frames when sport and social history intersect and are magnified.
In Manila, where they waged the greatest championship fight in the sport’s history, we witnessed the social and cultural power that boxers and boxing could create and share with the whole world.
And it’s from that vantage point we today can measure how much we learned – or how much we’ve lost.
