The Greatest

by Walter Dean Myers

  Even when a fighter turns professional and is good, there is no reason to believe he will get the kinds of fights that will offer him a large purse. Fighters and their managers form a team that competes for purses and titles. A good young fighter, someone with the skills to be matched with the better fighters and therefore get more money, will simply be avoided by the other fighter-management teams. The object of pro boxing is not to win matches, but to make money. Why should a manager at the lower levels of boxing sign his fighter to a match he might lose? Good fighters who are not well connected with a management team can be on the shelf for years waiting for a chance that will never come. One way to get around this is for the fighter to draw attention to himself during his amateur career by winning either a Golden Gloves championship or a medal in the Olympics.

  Charles “Sonny” Liston won the Golden Gloves heavyweight crown in 1953. Ernest Terrell won the championship in 1957. Jerry Quarry was a Golden Gloves champ in 1965. Muhammad Ali won both the Golden Gloves championship and the Olympic gold medal in 1960. And, in 1964 the heavyweight Olympic champion was a young fighter out of Philadelphia named Joe Frazier.

  Even a major amateur title doesn’t guarantee financial success in the professional ranks. However, thanks to his charisma and popularity, one of Ali’s major influences on the sport was on the income of fighters. He attracted crowds, television viewers, and most importantly, advertisers.

  A typical “gate,” or profit from ticket sales, for a championship fight might be estimated at $500,000. One fighter, the star attraction, might get as much as 50 percent of the gate while the other fighter might sign for 20 percent. The other 30 percent went to the owners of the facility and the fight promoters. When the fight was over and the actual gate was counted up, minus expenses, the money realized might be as little as $200,000. The main attraction would then get 50 percent, or $100,000. Out of this money he would have to pay his management team as much as half, and he’d have to cover all of his own expenses. If he cleared $20,000 or so, he was lucky.

  The fighter who signed for the lesser amount might end up with as little as $5,000. Not much payment for spending an evening in a ring with a man trying to knock you senseless.

  One of the cruel aspects of boxing to this day is the reporting of incomes. Very often contracts offering a percentage of the gate wildly overestimate the anticipated income. This is done to build excitement for the fight. It’s clearly desirable for a promoter, trying to attract viewers, to say that the fighters are vying for so many millions of dollars — a typical figure is $9 million to the champion, and $5.5 million to the challenger. This is usually a nonsense figure, but newspapers traditionally report it as if it were real.

  Muhammad Ali, with his flamboyant style, his charm, and even the controversy swirling around him, brought a new level of interest to the sport and dramatically changed the income levels of boxing matches. He did this by a deep understanding of the media. Before Ali, fighters did not speak, they were spoken for. Few fight fans who lived during the era of Joe Louis could ever quote the man who had held the championship for so many years. What fans knew about Louis they learned from reporters. But Ali used the media to promote his bouts and himself. It was the new media, television and its sponsors, that provided the increased revenue that all fighters could hope for in the future.

  Also, Ali had a unique insight into one popular aspect of boxing. Fighters often saw themselves as very macho, and the fight business as a sport for men of their kind. Ali looked at boxing as pure entertainment. His antics were those of an entertainer, and he knew exactly what he was doing with them. He brought people around him who had entertainment value to the media, including Drew “Bundini” Brown, with whom he would stand toe-to-toe and shout his “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” slogan. He hired an ailing Stepin Fetchit, the black entertainer, as a handyman around his camp. Even Ali’s relationship with the press was that of an entertainer. He avoided those reporters who kept trying to pry for insights into his relationship with the Nation of Islam. But reporters who appreciated Ali’s entertainment value were allowed in his camp. In particular, the sports television journalist Howard Cosell admired Ali as an athlete and embraced his antics, and the two men became close friends.

  Muhammad Ali made more money than any other boxer in history. He also allowed the fighters he faced in the ring to make more money than they could have even dreamed of without him. Ironically, many of them didn’t realize this fact.

  Prior image: Training, 1970.

  * * *

  Each time a fighter steps into the ring he knows there will be a cost. For the glory of the possible win there will be a price measured in units of pain. He will have an idea, if he is honest with himself, of just how much pain he will have to endure on a given night, how much blood he will lose, and just how long it will take for his body to recover from the inevitable battering. Every fight hurts. Every fight damages the body. Some damage the soul.

  Fights are often decided in the dressing room as the fighter extends his imagination to the glare of ringside. The image of the impending battle flickers through his mind, and he visualizes himself winning, punishing his opponent more than he is punished. He sees himself using his style, using those tools most comfortable to him, to control the fight. Muhammad Ali could see himself moving quickly, throwing out lightning jabs, leaning back, just out of the reach of the desperate hooks. He saw himself frustrating his opponent, imposing his will on the fight. But even if he was convinced that he could win the fight, convinced beyond the hype and the false bravado he offered to the press, he must still have assessed how much suffering he could bear to carry it off.

  When the pain comes, it can be excruciating. A two hundred-pound heavyweight at the top of his form can deliver a devastating blow. A good single blow to the face can break the neck of an ordinary person. Those watching on television or at ringside can scream at a fighter who lies helplessly against the ropes or who has stumbled heavily to the canvas, to get back into the fight. But few fight fans have ever been hit with even a glancing blow from a real fighter. They don’t know the courage it takes to continue when the body is screaming to give it up.

  Body punches bruise the muscles that help a fighter turn and lift his arms. They push the ribs out of shape; they bruise and tear the internal organs. Hours after the fight the torn tissue and bleeding show up as a bloody tint in the urine.

  A fighter’s head throbs. Cuts are alive with pain as they are slammed again and again or as a glove is scraped across the exposed nerves. Forehead cuts bleed into the eyes and give color to the violence. Fighters hurt. They survive by accepting the agony of fighting as a way of life.

  In the top ranks there are trainers and doctors at ringside, and other doctors to examine and care for the boxer. At the lower end of the spectrum there is less medical attention, less time to heal between fights, less money for good treatment.

  Whether the medical treatment received before and after a fight is good or bad, the damage to the body is still done. Mostly, the body is forgiving. It will usually heal. The major physical problems that fighters encounter are with the eyes and with the brain. Physicians have long studied the effects of fighting, and especially of taking blows to the head. Some feel that boxing can be made safer. Others disagree: They feel that as long as the aim of professional fighting is to do damage to the head and body, it will be a dangerous sport. Just how destructive is fighting to the human body? Doctors debate, but fighters know.

  If there is such a thing as a stereotypical fighter, it was Joe Frazier. Born into a dirt-poor family in Beaufort, South Carolina, on January 12, 1944, Joe had moved to Philadelphia and an amateur boxing career by his mid teens. The inner-city streets of Philadelphia are brutally tough, and the fighters that come from the area are known for an aggressive, bruising style. In 1964, Frazier came to national attention by winning the Olympic heavyweight championship.

  Frazier, a compact five feet eleven, was a “busy” fighter,
coming after an opponent relentlessly, head bobbing, moving into the action, always trying to set up his powerful left hook. His style was simple: He inflicted brutal punishment on any fighter he faced. If his opponent were a wall, he would knock down the wall. If his opponent were a mountain, he would knock down the mountain. Like all champions, he worked hard in training. When other fighters trained by sparring three rounds a day, Frazier would spar eight. He also maintained a steady job, working in a slaughterhouse, to support his family.

  Smokin’ Joe, as he was known, turned professional in 1965. He won four fights in that year and nine the next, scoring four one-round knockouts. By the end of 1967, with Muhammad Ali out of boxing, Frazier was considered to be the number one contender for the heavyweight championship. In March 1968, he defeated Buster Mathis, a tall, lumbering fighter, and was crowned heavyweight champion.

  What Frazier wanted from boxing was to make a living, but he also wanted to be part of a tradition that had taken poor black men from southern farms and city ghettos to the big time. Fighting on a championship level meant good money, but it also meant a kind of respect that a black man with little education couldn’t get anywhere else. It meant having your picture taken with celebrities, and signing autographs. It meant having reporters ask you questions about topics they wouldn’t have dreamed of discussing with you if you hadn’t been the champion. It meant being called “champ” instead of “boy.”

  “It’s like a fraternity,” Jimmy Dupree, former light heavyweight contender and trainer observed. “You get initiated in the wars you fight with somebody as good or better than you. Then you learn who you really are deep inside. After you’ve been through those wars, and you still have the heart to continue in this game, you’re in the fraternity and everybody else that knows what those wars are about owe you respect.”

  When Frazier assumed the championship in March 1968, however, a huge shadow hung over his title. That shadow was Muhammad Ali. It was Ali people were still talking about. Ali had beaten the fearsome Liston, the reigning champion, twice. He had also beaten and humiliated the former champion, Floyd Patterson. He was still the star the reporters were going to for interviews. He was still claiming the championship that had been taken from him by the World Boxing Association.

  After the March fight that earned him the championship, Frazier went back into the ring two more times in 1968. The first fight was against Manuel Ramos, whom he stopped in two rounds on June 24. The second fight was a December 10 decision against Oscar Bonavena, a rugged if uninspired fighter from South America. Neither fight attracted much attention. To make matters worse, there was a dispute over who exactly owned the championship. The New York State Athletic Commission claimed it was Frazier, but the competing World Boxing Association disputed the claim and had their own box-off, eventually naming Jimmy Ellis, from Louisville, as their champion.

  In 1969 there were only two fights for Frazier: one against Dave Zyglewicz on April 22, in which Frazier scored a first-round knockout, and the other against Jerry Quarry on June 23. There was little to gain for Frazier in the fight against Zyglewicz, an unknown who had practically no drawing power.

  A white contender would have attracted attention by bringing more white fans to the arenas. People who weren’t fight fans needed to identify with the fighters before they would purchase seats to watch the bouts. Quarry, a good, tough boxer, was just below the championship level in skills and stamina. He had the courage, but had a tendency to get cut badly. Boxing, without a major personality, is not a very lucrative sport.

  To their credit, Frazier’s handlers did not try to get him a lot of low-level fights. The fight game was about money, and there was no reason for Joe to risk himself if the money wasn’t there. Meanwhile, a number of fighters were being touted as possible contenders for the throne that Ali had vacated, virtually ignoring Frazier. Even when Frazier defeated Jimmy Ellis in February 1970, uniting the two championships (the New York State Athletic Commission and the World Boxing Association), there was still little interest in the talented but colorless Philadelphian. But rumors had it that Muhammad Ali was going to be allowed to fight again. There was still opposition, opposition that included such high-powered names as Senator Strom Thurmond and Ronald Reagan, then governor of California. But in October 1970, a deal was worked out in Atlanta when Ali was signed to fight Jerry Quarry. A month later Frazier fought and knocked out a good light heavyweight, Bob Foster. In December of the same year, Ali wore down a determined Oscar Bonavena. Ali and Frazier had fought and defeated the same two fighters, Quarry and Bonavena. All the talk was for a match between Ali and Frazier. The match for the world heavyweight title was set for March 8, 1971, in New York City.

  “Come on up, work hard, and I’ll make you rich,” Ali had said to Frazier after the 1964 Olympics.

  The two men knew each other. Frazier, two years younger, understood that Ali would be the man to beat. He had seen Ali’s fights; he knew what he could do. He had also respected Ali, even when fighters like Floyd Patterson were jumping on the anti-Muslim bandwagon. Ali, on the other hand, couldn’t stand the idea that prominent black men chose to be “nonpolitical.” He bad-mouthed Frazier in public, saying that Joe didn’t stand up for the black man, that he was an “Uncle Tom” — a black who went along with whites to be accommodating. Ali was setting himself up as the true black champion while Frazier was, at best, a pretender who did not deserve the support of black people.

  Ali’s taunts, the same ones he used against Liston and Patterson, bothered Joe Frazier more than the other fighters. To Liston, Ali was just annoying. Patterson’s dislike for Ali was based on his idea of what Ali represented. But Liston and Patterson had already gained their championships and their places in history when they first ran into Ali. Liston was the menacing thug, the baddest man in the house, a role he relished. Patterson was Mr. Nice Guy, a likable man with excellent skills. Frazier was still fighting for respect. He didn’t like it when Ali called him ugly or stupid. He also didn’t like the idea that Ali was violating a basic concept of fighting: to always show respect for your opponent.

  * * *

  Monday night, March 8, 1971: This was the night that fight fans around the world were waiting for. For many African Americans it was to be the night when the man who personified “Black is Beautiful” would regain the championship. For Joe Frazier this would be the night, finally, when he would gain the world’s respect.

  At ringside, Hugh McIlvanney, covering the fight for the British press, noted how many white American reporters were openly hostile to Ali. Everyone understood one thing: Ali had never faced a fighter with the skills and determination of Smokin’ Joe Frazier.

  The fight started with the two men both working comfortably in their styles. Frazier moving, bobbing, relentlessly aggressive. Ali jabbed and moved, jabbed and moved, floated like a butterfly, stung like a bee. Frazier had predicted that Ali would have no chance to slug it out with him toe-to-toe and would understand that.

  “He’s going to have to do two things, move backward and fight,” Frazier said. “I only have to fight.”

  Ali moved backward, fighting in flurries that made Frazier look hopelessly outclassed. But Frazier did not fall — he kept on coming. Occasionally Ali would tie him up and talk to him, as if he were utterly disdainful of Joe’s talents. Still, Frazier kept coming. When Ali tried to lie against the ropes, Frazier punished his body with blows that sometimes landed against the hips and thighs of the taller man. In the center of the ring Frazier made sure that Ali had no time to rest.

  For the first nine rounds it looked as if Ali could simply cruise through the fight, popping away at Frazier at will. Then, in the tenth and eleventh rounds, Ali began to slow, as he had done in the Quarry and Bonavena fights. The difference was in the fighter he was now facing. A left hook caught Ali and sent him reeling toward the ropes. He clutched and held on, smothering Frazier’s onslaught with ring savvy. The crowd sensed that Frazier was coming on.

  The figh
t was scheduled for fifteen rounds, and it looked as if it would only be a matter of time until Frazier got to Ali for the knockout. Among the press, Ali’s detractors were now screaming for Frazier to destroy “The Greatest.”

  The fourteenth round. Ali summoned up a new reserve of strength. For a brief time he brought the fight back to his style, jabbing, moving, hitting Frazier with right crosses that would have knocked down a less game fighter. At the end of the round both fighters, close to their physical limits, went wearily back to their corners.

  The outcome of the fight was still in doubt. It looked like Frazier was winning, but was he? How were the early rounds scored? Could Ali be ahead? Both fighters were told that they needed the final round.

  * * *

  Frazier had come too far to back down. He had trained too long and worked too hard to concede even a moment of the fight. Ali moved for the first seconds of the round, but the fabulous legs soon grew heavy, and he was leaning against the ropes and trying to tie Joe up. The speed was gone and the last round was all Frazier, capped by a thunderous left hook to Ali’s jaw that sent him to the canvas. Ali got up quickly. He had survived Frazier’s final onslaught, but there was no doubt who had won the fight.

  It was Muhammad Ali’s first professional defeat.

  Prior image: The March 1971 fight against Joe Frazier—Ali’s first professional defeat.

  The world had seen a magnificent bout conducted by two great fighters. They had seen Joe Frazier take everything that Muhammad Ali could dish out and still maintain his style. As he predicted, Ali had to do two things, move backward and fight. All Frazier had to do was fight.