“That old Clay is crazy,” Frazier claimed in a 1971 interview for Sports Illustrated. “He’s something else. He goes around the country, preaching that so-called Black talk. He’s a phony. You know what I mean. He calls people ugly. Now what do that have to do with anything?”
Ali had accused Joe Frazier of being an Uncle Tom, a black man who scrapes and bows before whites. It was an unfair charge, and one of Ali’s cruelest accusations, meant to take away Frazier’s respect among his own people.
Ali also called Joe ugly. Ali called all of his opponents ugly, but with Frazier, he went further. At press conferences, Ali got reporters laughing at Frazier. Before the fight in the Philippines, he carried a little toy gorilla around with him and pulled it out for reporters. He would say that it was Joe Frazier and would hit it while reciting his poems. There had never been a fighter who could talk like Ali. Liston, Patterson, Foreman, and Frazier all fell silent at press conferences while Ali ridiculed them. The only way any of them could shut up the Louisville Lip was to beat him decisively in the ring. Frazier couldn’t wait for another chance.
Ali and Frazier — these were warriors. They knew why they were in the Philippines. Ali at thirty-three could see his star in descent. There were few fights left in the legs, and when the legs went, the body would be punished. With each fight he would threaten to quit the game, and after each fight he would be drawn back into the sport he loved. A final fight with Smokin’ Joe would be a fitting end.
Frazier had been beaten badly by George Foreman. At thirty-one he had already taken too many beatings, had already spent too much time under medical care. He had little hope of regaining the championship if Foreman held it. Foreman’s big punch and youth would impose itself easily on Frazier’s style of taking punches in order to give them. Sportsworld, the English sports magazine, reported that Frazier’s handlers were advising him to retire. What better way out of boxing than a win over Muhammad Ali.
* * *
A way out of boxing. Young fighters look for a way in, a way to reap the big rewards that boxing promises. But there comes a time when every fighter needs a way out. To most fighters, that way comes easily. They are never good enough to carry the fighting into that stage at which it becomes truly profitable. They fight a few minor fights, lose, and move on to other jobs. Ironically it is the best of the fighting world who face the most dangers. The questions begin to mount: How many punches are too many? How much wear and tear on the body is too much? When will the body stop healing itself?
“You only have so many fights in you,” Archie Moore once said.
A man reaches his physical peak between the ages of seventeen and twenty-eight. During this time he is not only strong, but his body heals quickly. The kidneys recover faster from body punches and resume their task of filtering the blood. The muscles heal and lift the arms to ward off new blows. However, the brain, battered over and over within the skull, does not renew itself, and does not show its damage. When the mind is foggy after a blow it is because the brain is injured. No one knows exactly how much injury a human brain can take before normal human functioning is compromised.
This is no mystery to anyone in the fight game. As Ali himself once observed, “A young fighter doesn’t like to look in the face of a scarred, punch-drunk member of the tribe. He might see his own future.”
By the time he was thirty-three, Ali had been fighting for over twenty years. Moreover, he had been training all those years, and many in the fight game believed the gym to be more dangerous than the ring.
When would Ali leave boxing?
There were no secrets between Frazier and Ali. Ali knew Frazier would come in relentlessly, throwing bombs from every angle. Frazier knew Ali would move away, and when he couldn’t move, would lie on the ropes and hold and grab.
When any fight could be the last, the one to determine the fighter’s place in history, the stakes reach almost desperation level. On September 30, 1975, at the Thrilla in Manila, they did.
The beginning of the fight saw Frazier moving in, moving in, pushing Ali back against the ropes. He would take one, two, sometimes four or five punches to the head to get close enough to throw blistering left hooks toward Ali’s body. Ali would tie up Frazier as soon as he could, then push away and find another position near the ropes, and let Frazier come in again. This was the rope-a-dope again, but by this time everyone understood what it meant. Ali was willing to lay on the ropes, taking the enormous pain being inflicted on him by Frazier in hopes of being able to retaliate when Joe tired. For the first four rounds Ali looked good, as expected. Then Joe began to get through Ali’s defenses. Whomp! Whomp! The punches landed on Ali’s arms, against the arms he held close to his side.
* * *
Whomp! Whomp! A punch to the midsection makes Ali wince. A hook to the side of the head makes him turn his head as he clutches and grabs, trying to get away from Frazier.
Smokin’ Joe is confident. He knows he has hurt Ali. He moves in again. The punches from Ali come in bunches. Ali is hurt, but he fights back ferociously. Survival is what counts, but who will survive the punishment? Frazier is still a believer and doesn’t think anyone can withstand the blows he is throwing. Ali hits Frazier again and again and again. He wonders how many punches Frazier can take.
Prior image: Thrilla in Manila.
* * *
For a while it seemed that this time it would be Frazier who would impose his style on Ali. Pound and pound this man, Frazier thought, this Louisville Lip, this stealer of his respect, and he would fall to the canvas, forever beaten.
Ali was in pain, unable to stop the onslaught, his legs no longer moving as he leaned against the ropes, which he hoped could lend the bounce his legs no longer had. He knew he had to somehow find the strength and courage to battle through the pain and keep his own offense going.
The physical pain was excruciatingly intense. Fans who watch a boxing match often think that fighters don’t feel pain the way that “normal” people do. The truth is that professional fighters live with the pain and continue performing at times when most men would be glad to quit and walk away.
* * *
What keeps Ali going? The level of oxygen in the air is low and the fighters gasp for breath. Both fighters are hurt and neither wants to quit. Frazier knows that Ali is in agony. Ali, in turn, can see the swelling in Frazier’s face and head. He knows that Smokin’ Joe is coming into him on little more than courage. Courage that ignites his last bit of strength with body blows that send waves of misery through Ali.
* * *
Round twelve. Ali began hitting Frazier with more combinations. Frazier’s legs were suddenly as tired as Ali’s; his arms were just as heavy. He had thrown his best punches, punches that would have knocked down a wall, and still Muhammad Ali was standing.
Now Ali pushed Frazier’s head back with his left hand, measuring the distance between them for the right hand that followed. Frazier staggered once, and again. He wouldn’t go down. This was an epic clash of wills, and Frazier would not give in.
The next round saw Frazier slightly disoriented, his eyes puffed up and nearly shut, Ali swinging at will. Smokin’ Joe’s mouthpiece went flying. Ali moved to the right, toward the closed eye, and sent right hand after right hand into Frazier’s badly swollen head. His face was so distended that it looked monstrous under the glaring ring lights.
Frazier’s cornerman realized that he couldn’t see out of his left eye. His mouthpiece was covered with blood. He was behind on points, and it was obvious that he was too tired to score a knockout. Against his wishes, Joe’s corner called the referee over and ended the fight. The contest was scored a technical knockout for Ali.
In Ali’s corner there was a sigh of relief.
Sitting on the stool, utterly exhausted, Muhammad Ali had won his most courageous fight. Everything he had, and everything Joe Frazier had, they gave to that fight. “It was the next thing to dying,” Ali said later. Neither man would ever be the same again.
After the Thrilla in Manila, Ali and Frazier exchanged expressions of respect and amazement for the other’s physical stamina and courage. Ali left the fight with even more respect as a ring warrior than he had previously enjoyed. But people were wondering how much more he could take.
The objective of a fighter is to impose his style on his opponent. If he is a “brawler,” then he must turn his fights into slugfests in which the ability to punch and take a punch outweighs finesse. In a brawler’s career the peak years might well be shortened by the amount of punishment received. The absolute decline of a brawler comes as his major physical skills, the ability to punch and to take a punch, are overcome by younger fighters just reaching their peak.
Ali’s style, unique for a heavyweight, was largely dependent on foot and hand movement as he “floated like a butterfly” out of harm’s way and moved in quickly to “sting like a bee.” The bad form he showed in the ring — leaning away from a punch, keeping his hands too low — was offset by his amazing ability to move. This was the style he imposed with relative ease before his forced layoff in 1967. In the twenty-nine fights he won between 1960 and 1967, he had never been hurt. He was twenty-five, at his physical peak, when he was forced out of boxing.
The Ali who returned to the ring in 1970 was twenty-eight, still physically strong, but with a marked difference. His foot speed had slowed considerably during the layoff, as was apparent in his first fight on his return against Jerry Quarry. Against Oscar Bonavena it was a tired Ali who finally stopped the heavyweight from Argentina in the final round.
The fight against twenty-seven-year-old Joe Frazier on March 8, 1971, was a classic match of styles. Frazier kept coming in and, even though he took punches along the way, he was still able to do quite a bit of damage to Ali. Ali could not move quickly or consistently enough to avoid Frazier’s blows.
Ali’s style began to change. The man who had dominated boxing with his “dancing” speed now began to spend more time flat-footed, using his hand speed to block punches and tie up, or hold opponents who caught him against the ropes until the referee separated them. His 1973 loss to Ken Norton was marked by very little movement on Ali’s part, and his win against the plodding muscular ex-marine showed little more.
By 1974, at thirty-two and in the rematch with Joe Frazier, Ali was spending more and more time leaning on the ropes, tying Frazier up when he could, and taking more and more punishment. Ali was using his will — the idea that no matter what punishment he received, he still would not be defeated — as a substitute for his foot speed. Nowhere was this more evident than in the fight against George Foreman.
Prior image: Ali at thirty-two – still in the game.
Ali’s new “style” was based on raw courage, a courage he had shown all his life. As twelve-year-old Cassius Clay in Louisville, he had taken up fighting with Joe Martin, putting himself in harm’s way at an early age. He mastered his fear of pain and accepted the discipline needed to become a champion.
His Olympic victory showed Ali exactly what he had. He understood as well as the men wishing to “handle” him that his Olympic gold medal could be turned into a lucrative fighting career if he maintained himself as Cassius Clay and took the route that Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Sugar Ray Robinson, and other fighters he admired had taken. He would have been wealthy, respected, and could have had a predictable career by merely accepting what was being offered to him in exchange for his skills. But Ali lived by his own beliefs. Some sportswriters suggested that he had been “fooled” by the Nation of Islam — that Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali was being manipulated by people more clever than he was into taking an unpopular stance. But young black men in the 1960s struggled for manhood against often overwhelming odds. In order to maintain the courage of his convictions, Muhammad Ali was willing to take whatever punishment America was willing to hand him.
Ali also had the courage to change the fight game by taking on every fighter on the scene. Few champions had ever done this in the history of fighting. No fighter at any level of the game had the excuse of Ali ducking him to avoid a tough fight.
In the celebration that followed his knockout of George Foreman, the sports media and the world in general exclaimed Ali’s genius, though few acknowledged that the rope-a-dope — the technique of resting against the ropes while one’s opponent tired himself out swinging — was born more out of necessity than wisdom.
Ali’s next three fights after Foreman — against Chuck Wepner, Ron Lyle, and Joe Bugner — saw him extended for longer and longer bouts. At the end of his grueling fourteen-round final fight, the Thrilla in Manila with Joe Frazier in 1975, Ali talked about quitting. But in 1976 Ali fought four more times, two of them fifteen-round fights that took an awful lot out of him. His handlers knew he was being seriously hurt. In 1977, a thirty-five-year-old Muhammad Ali was still fighting. Again, the fights went the full fifteen rounds with Ali winning on decisions.
In 1978, Ali, once more leaning against the ropes and taking far too much punishment from a mediocre but strong fighter, Leon Spinks, lost in fifteen rounds. People watching the fight actually cried to see him being pounded by someone who couldn’t have lasted five rounds with The Greatest in his prime. Ali’s pride brought him back to the ring with Spinks in September 1978, and he regained his world heavyweight crown. This fight, too, was a long fifteen rounds.
Prior image: How many punches are too many? Ali vs. Spinks, September 1978.
Even sportswriters who had not liked Ali during his career now begged him to retire before he was seriously injured. Ali did not fight in 1979, but came back to lose to Larry Holmes on October 2, 1980.
In December 1981, in Nassau, in the Bahamas, an exhausted, beaten Ali lost his last fight. The opponent was Trevor Berbick.
Ali’s decline as a fighter was inevitable. The man who loved boxing held on to the sport too long, gave too much credence to the will that had sustained him for so long.
At Ali’s final fight, the bout against Berbick, a sportswriter turned to Wali “Blood” Muhammad, Ali’s longtime bodyguard, and said, “He’s getting hurt, Blood.”
“That’s right, he is,” was the answer.
All America felt the pain.
The cameras panned the huge Olympic arena. Floodlights, sweeping wildly across the pulsing crowd, added to the growing excitement. Then a lone figure was spotlighted. He was holding a flaming torch. Muhammad Ali, who had first come to the world’s attention at the Olympic games some thirty-six years earlier, lit the Olympic torch. The 1996 Summer Games had begun in Atlanta, Georgia.
A close-up of Muhammad Ali in 1996 showed an impassive face. The sparkle that had illuminated his expression as he mugged for the cameras of Life magazine was absent. His hands trembled as he lit the Olympic torch. He then moved slowly, rigidly, away from center stage. Still, the crowd cheered. People were quiet in front of their television sets. Some were moved to tears. Was this the same Muhammad Ali who had stunned the world in 1964 with his knockout of Sonny Liston?
This was the man known for decades as The Greatest. As a young man his star had streaked brilliantly across the skies of America, changing the face of his sport, giving impetus to the dreams of thousands of imitators. Now he seemed as slow as he had once seemed fast, as subdued as he had once been lively. He had once held the heavyweight championship of the world. Now a dread disease held him.
* * *
Parkinson’s disease is a chronic neurological condition named after Dr. James Parkinson, an English surgeon who first described the illness in 1817. The disease affects certain nerve centers inside the brain, reducing a chemical, dopamine, that is vital to human functioning. The most obvious symptoms of Parkinson’s are hands that tremble uncontrollably and a general body stiffness. The sufferer usually moves more slowly than normal, and sometimes the voice is softer. Very often even the face seems frozen in one expression for long periods of time. Well over one million Americans suffer from Parkinson’s disease.
Many people feel
that Ali’s boxing resulted in Parkinson’s, but the truth is that no one knows exactly why people get the disease. The Reverend Billy Graham has Parkinson’s, as does Pope John Paul II and the actors Katherine Hepburn and Michael J. Fox, and none of these people were fighters. The disease strikes men and women from all walks of life.
Prior image: Muhammad Ali at the opening ceremony of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.
Although the disease works very slowly and, to some extent, can be controlled by drugs, there is presently no known cure.
Is it possible that Muhammad Ali’s long fight career could have triggered the disease? The evidence seems to point in that direction, but no one can be sure at this time.
While the cause of Muhammad Ali’s condition is questionable, the physical condition of other boxers who fought in the fifties, sixties, and seventies is not. Both Sugar Ray Robinson and Joe Louis, outstanding champions of their day, ended their lives with the severe memory loss and disorientation common to Alzheimer’s sufferers. Looking back at other champions, we find that Ezzard Charles, champion after Joe Louis, died from injuries to the spine. Tommy “Hurricane” Jackson, clearly brain damaged at the end of his career, would run through the streets of Queens, New York, training for nonexistent fights against nonexistent opponents. Jerry Quarry, who had fought valiantly against both Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, was described as “childlike” when he died at age fifty-three. The number of fighters who end up “punchy,” or worse, is the sport’s dirty little secret. And it is a secret well-kept by sportswriters and other insiders.
Muhammad Ali has not surrendered to Parkinson’s disease. Ali’s high profile and his willingness to disclose his condition to the world is one of his bravest, most inspiring acts. In 1997, Ali testified via a written statement before the House Appropriations Subcommittee for the Department of Labor, Health & Human Services, Education and Related Agencies. The purpose of the hearing was to consider, among other things, whether the federal government should provide $100 million toward research for a cure for Parkinson’s disease. The condition is not, given proper care, one that shortens the life of the sufferer, but it is difficult to deal with and often leads to depression as victims find themselves no longer in control of their own bodies. But there is hope that one day the disease will be conquered. If and when that happens, it will probably be because people like Muhammad Ali are fighters. Ali is willing to fight this last, ferocious battle not simply because it will help him, but because it is the right thing to do.
The Greatest Page 9
