When Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali faced off in the ring on March 8, 1971, the world stopped to watch. Dubbed “the fight of the century,” the clash ended in New York’s Madison Square Garden, grossed $ 45 million in closed-circuit tickets in the United States alone, and has been seen by more than 300 million people in the world. Even when the result was already known, half of the UK’s population watched a replay on the BBC.
And with good reason. It was a battle for the World Heavyweight Championship – a crown that has been dubbed the sport’s biggest prize – between two undefeated fighters and former Olympic gold medalists. But the fight of the century was more than just a sanctioned fight between two men: it became a proxy battle for a divided nation.
Born Cassius Marcellus Clay in Louisville, Kentucky in 1942, Ali won gold at the Olympic Games in Rome in 1960 and in February 1964 became world heavyweight champion by beating Sonny Liston. The day after Liston’s victory, Ali rejected the name Cassius Clay given to his family by a slave owner and revealed that he had joined the Nation of Islam.
Ali refuses the draft for Vietnam
Ali (first row, second from left) and a group of top African-American athletes from different sports disciplines come together to lend their support and hear the boxer give his reasons for rejecting the project, June 1967.
Robert Abbott Sengstacke / Getty Images
Ali’s reign unfolded against the backdrop of a nation tearing itself apart over civil rights and the war in Vietnam, and the champion quickly found himself in everyone’s bond when, after being initially dismissed for military service, he was ordered to appear before the Editorial Board. Confronted with reporters when the news broke, Ali wondered why he would have to travel thousands of miles to kill people in the name of a country that treated him and his African-American compatriots like second-class citizens. zoned.
“If I thought that my going to Vietnam would help one of the millions of blacks in this country,” he said, “you wouldn’t have to send for me, I would go. But it won’t. Going to war with these people will not help my people at all. I prefer to go to jail. For good measure, he proclaimed that, “I don’t quarrel with them Viet Cong.”
On April 28, 1967, Ali formalized his refusal to join the armed forces, claiming conscientious objector status. On the same day, the New York State Athletic Commission withdrew his boxing license and stripped him of his title. Boxing commissions across the country have refused to allow him to fight in their jurisdictions, effectively banning Ali from the sport.
It was not until the late 1970s, after the wave of public opinion had turned strongly against the war, that he fought again, obtained a license by a specially formed commission in the city. of Atlanta over strong objections from Georgia Governor Lester Maddox, who declared fight night. a “day of mourning”. Two courts had upheld the government’s refusal to accept Ali’s conscientious objector status, and now the case was pending before the Supreme Court, where it was due to be held in June 1971. Fully expecting this. Whether the ruling was against him, Ali knew he had little time to waste, and so after one more fight, he focused on the man who had ascended to his throne while in exile.
READ MORE: Muhammad Ali vs. United States of America
Ali rejects Frazier as ‘Uncle Tom’
Son of sharecroppers, Joe Frazier left home at age 15 to learn boxing, becoming Olympic champion in 1964. He was in many ways the antithesis of Ali: while Ali was a talkative showman, Frazier, according to the words of broadcaster Tim Ryan – who called his fight with Ali for Armed Forces Radio – “was a type of job, who lived like he fought: just get in there, throw a hundred shots fist, to be strong and to mind your own business. ”
He had made no political statement or tied his colors to any mast; he even helped Ali financially during his rival’s banishment and called on President Richard Nixon to grant him clemency. But, by dint of not being Ali, he has become the establishment’s unwitting hero. Wrote Jerry Izenberg in Once There Were Giants: The Golden Age of Heavyweight Boxing, “Many whites who disliked Ali on racial grounds adopted Frazier as their designated black representative.”
Ali piled up, ridiculing Frazier as too stupid and too ugly to be heavyweight champion and even, in the ultimate insult, dismissing him as “Uncle Tom.” Tensions were high: Izenberg, who had written several columns for the Newark Star-Ledger Supporting Ali’s stance on war, his car’s windshield was smashed. It was, he noted, hippies against hard hats, the younger generation against their elders, all using Ali and Frazier as cyphers and forgetting that, “as dramatic as the story was, it wasn’t. was still just a price fight between two very good heavyweight boxers.
Fight up to the hype
Ali walks away with a punch thrown by Frazier during their heavyweight title fight at Madison Square Garden in 1971.
Getty Images
When Fight Night came, it was as much of an event as expected.
“Everyone who was anyone was there,” recalls boxing historian Bert Sugar. “They were scalping hundred dollar bills for a thousand dollars outside… There were people coming with white ermine coats and matching hats, and it was just the guys. Limousines lined up at Madison Square Garden for what appeared to be 50 blocks.
“It wasn’t a normal fight crowd, even for a heavyweight title fight,” recalls Ryan, author of On Someone Else’s Nickel: A Life in TV, Sports, and Travel. “Here you had people like the Cardinal of New York. There you had the superstars like Diana Ross. Frank Sinatra was a ring photographer for Life magazine. Burt Lancaster was the color pay-per-view commentator. “
The fight itself lived up to the hype. Ali took control early, but by the sixth he started to tire, weakened by the long layoff and the punches from Frazier. But even in the ring, he continued the verbal taunts he had deployed during the build-up.
“Fool, don’t you know that God ordered me to be champion?” he said on the 15th and final lap.
“Well, God is going to get his ass whipped tonight,” retorted Frazier, who dove in and threw a left hook that exploded on Ali’s jaw, sending him to the web. Ali pulled himself up, but the knockdown ensured he would lose the round and the fight.
For those who not only had rooted him, but saw part of him in him, who had lifted him up as a symbol of resistance, it was a devastating blow.
“It was horrible,” sports journalist and broadcaster Bryant Gumbel said in Thomas Hauser’s book. Muhammad Ali: his life and his time. “I felt like everything I stood for had been beaten and trampled on.
In the end, for all the importance and symbolism assigned to it, the fight of the century was, as Izenberg had written, just a fight. The Vietnam War continued for another four years; 50 years later America remains torn by racial injustice and sports figures continue to use their platforms to call for social and political change
Foreman and Ali Feud Lingers
Ali had lost the fight with Frazier. But three months later, he won his battle against the US government when the Supreme Court ruled that he had not provided good reasons to deny Ali conscientious objector status. He was free to continue his boxing career, which he did successfully, reclaiming the heavyweight crown from George Foreman – who had taken it from Frazier – in the famous “Rumble in the Jungle” in Zaire in 1974. .
The following year, he and Frazier met again, in stifling conditions in Manila; the two rained punches at each other for a brutal 14 rounds until Frazier’s corner stepped in to save their man, his eyes almost completely closed, from further punishment.
The two continued to box, but neither was the same again. Ali and Frazier were made in many ways; eventually, they destroyed each other. Frazier never forgave Ali for his taunts and insults; asked what he thought of Ali lighting the cauldron at the 1996 Olympics, he hissed, “They should have pushed him.
In the eyes of others, their battles may have been representative of a larger conflict; for Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, they were extremely personal.
“They didn’t fight for the world heavyweight title,” Izenberg noted after the Manila fight. “The way they fought, they were fighting for each other’s championship. They could have fought on melting ice floes in a telephone booth. It was not settled tonight, and even if they fight again, it will never be settled.
