Keep in mind that the approximate temperature in the ring during this fight was 120 degrees fahrenheit. That’s because it was very hot in Manila at 10am when the fight started, and the lights added even more heat.
I have no idea how either man survived.
This is my favorite clip because it’s from 1966, at age 25 and the very height of his talent. The opponent was a Brit named Brian London. What’s amazing is the speed of Ali’s fists. He gets off 13 punches in about a second. That’s amazing for any fighter but especially for a heavyweight. Was also amazing the way he could duck a punch. It was that combination of speed and power that Ali so great.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU2YPXghFkU
Now that I know how to do a hyperlink:
13 Lightning Punches
One of my favorite pieces of journalism is Mark Kram’s report on this penultimate Ali-Frazier battle. Remember when Spots Illustrated was often a great and important magazine?
http://www.si.com/boxing/2014/08/11/si-60-thrilla-manila-muhammad-ali-joe-frazier
The beginning of Kram’s report:
“It was only a moment, sliding past the eyes like the sudden shifting of light and shadow, but long years from now it will remain a pure and moving glimpse of hard reality, and if Muhammad Ali could have turned his eyes upon himself, what first and final truth would he have seen? He had been led up the winding, red-carpeted staircase by Imelda Marcos, the First Lady of the Philippines, as the guest of honor at the Malacañang Palace. Soft music drifted in from the terrace as the beautiful Imelda guided the massive and still heavyweight champion of the world to the long buffet ornamented by huge candelabra. The two whispered, and then she stopped and filled his plate, and as he waited the candles threw an eerie light across the face of a man who only a few hours before had survived the ultimate inquisition of himself and his art.
The maddest of existentialists, one of the great surrealists of our time, the king of all he sees, Ali had never before appeared so vulnerable and fragile, so pitiably unmajestic, so far from the universe he claims as his alone. He could barely hold his fork, and he lifted the food slowly up to his bottom lip, which had been scraped pink. The skin on his face was dull and blotched, his eyes drained of that familiar childlike wonder. His right eye was a deep purple, beginning to close, a dark blind being drawn against a harsh light. He chewed his food painfully, and then he suddenly moved away from the candles as if he had become aware of the mask he was wearing, as if an inner voice were laughing at him. He shrugged, and the moment was gone.
A couple of miles away in the bedroom of a villa, the man who has always demanded answers of Ali, has trailed the champion like a timber wolf, lay in semi-darkness. Only his heavy breathing disturbed the quiet as an old friend walked to within two feet of him. “Who is it?” asked Joe Frazier, lifting himself to look around. “Who is it? I can’t see! I can’t see! Turn the lights on!” Another light was turned on, but Frazier still could not see. The scene cannot be forgotten; this good and gallant man lying there, embodying the remains of a will never before seen in a ring, a will that had carried him so far–and now surely too far. His eyes were only slits, his face looked as if it had been painted by Goya. “Man, I hit him with punches that’d bring down the walls of a city,” said Frazier. “Lawdy, Lawdy, he’s a great champion.” Then he put his head back down on the pillow, and soon there was only the heavy breathing of a deep sleep slapping like big waves against the silence.
Time may well erode that long morning of drama in Manila, but for anyone who was there those faces will return again and again to evoke what it was like when two of the greatest heavyweights of any era met for a third time, and left millions limp around the world. Muhammad Ali caught the way it was: “It was like death. Closest thing to dyin’ that I know of.”
How do you get the hyperlink?
I merely copied and pasted the link to the web page. Is clicking on the link not bringing up the story for you?
When I post a link, it isn’t click-able.
Here;
how to make a hotlink in HTML
.
Thanks, nalbar. This was nice of you.
Yes, thanks nalbar.
Thanks for posting. That’s fine writing.
Kram was a great writer who was inspired by the dramatic, unforgettable events in Manila.
Among the things he got in this report was a foreshadowing of Ali’s sharp physical decline. Muhammad gave so much of himself for our entertainment and inspiration, but all his greatness didn’t allow him to avoid the siren call almost all great fighters have fallen for. When a great fighter avoids a sad denoument, it’s unusual.
Been a while since I read that, but every word came back like I’d just read it yesterday.
That Ali survived that onslaught in that heat is just beyond words, and that he got Frazier’s corner to throw in the towel two seconds before he forced his own to throw in the towel?
Amazing luck.
Re. your reaction to re-discovering Kram’s reporting, same for me on both ends. SO many evocative turns of phrase:
“Dancing was for a ballroom; the ugly hunt was on. Head up and unprotected, Frazier stayed in the mouth of the cannon, and the big gun roared again and again.
…
Came the sixth, and here it was, that one special moment that you always look for when Joe Frazier is in a fight. Most of his fights have shown this: you can go so far into that desolate and dark place where the heart of Frazier pounds, you can waste his perimeters, you can see his head hanging in the public square, may even believe that you have him, but then suddenly you learn that you have not.
…
Whatever else might one day be said about Muhammad Ali, it should never be said that he is without courage, that he cannot take a punch. He took those shots by Frazier, and then came out for the seventh, saying to him, “Old Joe Frazier, why I thought you were washed up.” Joe replied, “Somebody told you all wrong, pretty boy.”
…
Now, Frazier’s face began to lose definition; like lost islands reemerging from the sea, massive bumps rose suddenly around each eye, especially the left. His punches seemed to be losing their strength. “My God,” wailed Angelo Dundee. “Look at ‘im. He ain’t got no power, champ!””
Brilliant, exciting reporting.
Amazing luck? Perhaps not. Here’s a round by round account by Jerry Izenberg, retold in 2015. http://www.nj.com/sports/ledger/izenbergcol/index.ssf/2015/09/muhammad_ali_joe_frazier_thril.html
The luck was that Ali’s corner didn’t start cutting off his gloves before Frazier’s corner told the ref it was over. Ali has admitted that he told his corner after the 14th that he couldn’t go on.
More reporting on the level of distress Ali was in at the end of this fight:
https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/25/specials/ali-price.html
“To appreciate the extent of Ali’s weariness in Manila, it is necessary to know that he usually recovered quickly after a hard fight. The year before Manila, for example, Ali had dethroned George Foreman in Zaire with an eighth-round knockout after his body had absorbed dozens of hard punches with his “rope- a-dope” style. Less than five hours later, Ali was twirling an ivory-inlaid mahogany cane as he clowned outside his villa along the Congo River.
“For weeks I kept hollerin’ ‘Be ready to dance,’ ” he said, his eyes wide. “But I didn’t dance. That was the surprise, that was the trick.”
About eight hours after the Manila fight, in contrast, Ali appeared at a reception arranged by President Ferdinand Marcos, but he resembled someone who had been mugged. The skin on his face was drawn tightly, as if it were a mask. His narrowed eyes appeared to be underlined in purple crayon. He had lumps on his forehead. His nose was scraped pink. He moved stiffly, almost in a limp.
When he shook hands with a softly folded right fist, he winced. When he sat, he was hunched in soreness.
“Death is so near,” he wrote in a visitor’s book for . Marcos, “and time for friendly action is so limited. Love and peace always.”
Perhaps an hour later, Ali was more like himself, joking and laughing. But not when he talked about the fight.
“This’ll kill you,” he said. “This is next to death. I’m a super human. So when I’m that tired, it’s dangerous.””
That’s how I remember Ali goofing off in Manila … it cost him dearly fighting bruising Joe Frazier. For me it was the rumble in the jungle that was Ali’s toughest fight and where he got hit to the head with Foreman’s big hammering fists. Ali wasn’t in fighting shape in Manila as this account clarifies …
My diary – Ali’s Honeymoon In Manila.
See my earlier post – Turkish President Erdoğan invited to speak at Muhammad Ali’s funeral .
Down Goes Frazier!
That’s from his fight with Foreman.