by Phil Pepe
“I’m just Joe Frazier, a fighter who wants to be a real good champion. But one thing you got to remember. Inside, I’ll always be Joe Frazier.”
The Buildup
There were still five weeks to go before The Fight and interest was escalating hourly. A flashy, well-dressed man, probably a press agent, walked into the sports department of the New York Daily News. Stammering with anxiety and desperation, he pleaded, “I must have two tickets for The Fight. A very important client is coming in from Chicago and I have to deliver.”
There were no tickets to be had, he was told. Madison Square Garden was sold out. The only possibility was a scalper, but the price would be astronomical.
“How much?” the man said.
“I’ve heard they’re going for as much as six hundred dollars each,” he was told.
“Do you know where I can find a scalper who’ll sell me two?” he asked without blinking.
Teddy Brenner, the Garden’s matchmaker, had suggested ringside seats be sold for $200, “a hundred dollars for each champion,” he reasoned. But Harry Markson, its director of boxing, was much more conservative: “Most people buy two tickets,” Markson said. “That means they’ll be paying four hundred dollars for a pair. That’s too much. We’re in an inflationary period in this country and I don’t want Madison Square Garden to be put in a position of contributing to inflation.”
It was decided to charge a top price of $150 per ticket, with a scale down to $20. A sellout, which was assured, would bring receipts of $1,250,000—twice as much as the existing record take for an indoor fight.
Within a week after The Fight was announced, the Garden had enough mail orders to fill requests for 15,000 seats. The remaining 4,000 or so tickets were held back to give the average fan a chance. They would be placed on sale at the Garden box office at ten o’clock on the morning of January 25. By 6:45 a.m. there were enough people in line to sell twice the number of available tickets, so the box office was opened early and two hours later all 4,000 had been sold. With forty-two days to go before The Fight, it was a complete sellout and the Garden began offering tickets at $20 apiece for the closed-circuit television showing at the Felt Forum, a 5,000-seat arena adjacent to the Garden and part of its complex.
The live gate was merely the tail on the dog. The big money would come from television, across the country and around the world. Four days before The Fight, Rumania became the last of thirty-five countries to reach an agreement that permitted it to receive television rights. Included in the thirty-five were countries from A (Argentina) to Y (Yugoslavia). Zanzibar, apparently, was not interested.
And the way things were going, it appeared likely that Jerry Perenchio, a novice in the boxing business, would be accurate in his prediction that 300,000,000 people would pay $30,000,000 to witness The Fight all over the world.
Until December 15, 1970, Perenchio’s association with boxing was nil—his interest was that of a fan and his involvement in the Ali-Frazier fight confined to the date he made when he learned the match was imminent to attend The Fight with his good friend, Burt Lancaster.
But Perenchio was well qualified for his destined role. His business was entertainment and what was Ali-Frazier if not entertainment? He was president of Chartwell Artists, Ltd., a personal management firm based in Los Angeles, with offices all over the world. He had worked for and with such show business giants as Marlon Brando, Glenn Campbell, Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Andy Williams, José Feliciano, The Smothers Brothers, Sergio Mendes and Brazil ’66, Henry Mancini, and Nancy Wilson. And now, Muhammad Ali.
Perenchio was in London on business on December 15, 1970, when he received a telephone call from a business associate, Frank Fried, owner of the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago and a successful concert promoter. Fried was intimate with many of Chicago’s black businessmen, through whom he had met Herbert Muhammad, Ali’s manager. In conversations with Herbert Muhammad, Fried learned that a promoter willing to put up enough money for The Fight had not been found. Fried said he knew a man.
Yes, Perenchio told Fried over the transatlantic telephone, he was interested. How much did Fried think it would take?
“Five million dollars,” Fried said.
Perenchio did not have $5,000,000 with him at the time, but he thought he knew where he could get it. He asked Fried to set up a meeting with Herbert Muhammad and Frazier’s people for December 23, when he was scheduled to return to the United States.
“My idea, at the time,” Perenchio said, “was to get ten people together, each putting up five hundred thousand dollars.”
Perenchio still didn’t have his $5,000,000 when he met with representatives of both fighters in Philadelphia on December 23. He presented them a certified check for $250,000 as a forfeit fee should he fail to raise the $5,000,000. The fighters, through their managers, declined the offer. However, Yank Durham, speaking for Cloverlay, said he would be willing to reopen negotiations if Perenchio could secure Madison Square Garden as the site. Both Durham and Herbert Muhammad, with Frazier and Ali in accord, agreed Madison Square Garden was the place where the match should be held.
The Garden had been turned down in its own bid with an offer of $1,000,000 for each fighter. But the arena was still willing—anxious in fact—to secure the live promotion.
On Christmas Eve, Perenchio met with Garden officials, who agreed to stage The Fight in their arena if Perenchio could land it. To help him, the Garden put up $500,000 as part of the fighters’ guarantee. Now all Perenchio needed was $4,500,000.
To find the money he was missing, Perenchio’s trail took him back to Los Angeles and to Jack Kent Cooke, the multimillionaire, Canadian-born sportsman who owned the Los Angeles Lakers professional basketball team, the Los Angeles Kings professional hockey team and the Forum, a 16,000-seat arena in Inglewood, a suburb of Los Angeles. Cooke, who began his business career as an encyclopedia salesman and built the richest empire in sports, liked the idea. He would have preferred to have it in his Forum, but since Perenchio had already made a deal with the Garden, Cooke would be satisfied if the Forum could have the first crack at the return match, if there was to be one, for a guarantee of $750,000 for each fighter. He agreed to be the guarantor, and at 10 a.m. on December 29, a letter of credit for $4,500,000 from New York’s Chase Manhattan Bank arrived at Madison Square Garden. Three hours later, the formal signing of The Fight was announced at the Toots Shor press conference.
The ballyhoo and press agentry that followed was the most flamboyant in the history of sports. So much of it was superfluous, but it was also inevitable because of the presence of Ali. This was an almost embarrassingly easy fight to sell and not only in the States. Boxing is the only professional sport that is truly international, and a fight for the heavyweight championship—particularly one involving Muhammad Ali—had enormous worldwide appeal. It was impossible to find anyone, young or old, black or white, ardent fan or casual observer, who did not have an opinion on The Fight and the fighters.
Moments after the signing was announced, a reporter took a random poll among boxing people, trainers, managers, and writers in attendance at Shor’s. Of the thirty-two people polled, twenty-nine picked Frazier and many said, “And I like him big.” Most of those selecting Frazier did so on the grounds that Ali had lost something during his three-and-a-half-year exile.
“Is that so?” said Angelo Dundee when the results of the poll were revealed to him. “Good. That’s what I like. That will make us work harder. I never like to be the favorite.”
Leaving Shor’s, the reporter and a colleague hailed a cab and headed for their office.
“Hey,” said the driver when he heard the two men talking about The Fight. “Is it true Clay’s gonna fight Frazier?”
Assured it was true, the driver said, “Good, Frazier will kill that draft dodger. Clay ain’t never fought nobody that tough. Frazier puts too much press
ure on you. Clay ain’t gonna dance against him.”
And so it had begun.
As a sporting event, it was the most natural, logical, and dramatic pairing ever made. For the first time in history, two unbeaten heavyweights would meet to fight for the championship of the world—both claiming the title, both in the prime of life, both apparently unbeatable.
“He thinks he’s unbeatable,” Ali said. “I know I’m unbeatable.”
With twenty-three knockouts in twenty-six fights, Frazier had a kayo percentage of 88.5, better than any heavyweight in history. Ali was third on the list, having kayoed twenty-five opponents in thirty-one fights, an 80.6 percentage.
If this had been just a sporting event, all those elements would have been enough to sell it. But this was more. This was a holy war, a political forum, a battle of two diametrically opposed ways of life. Ali’s problems with the law became as much a topic of discussion, as much a factor when assessing the outcome, as his left jab. These were two men with the widest contrast in styles, in and out of the ring.
Ali was flashy, Frazier was steady, Ali was swift, Frazier was methodical. Ali danced like a butterfly and stung like a bee, Frazier plodded like an elephant and kicked like a mule. Ali was loud and brash, Frazier was soft-spoken. Ali pushed to the forefront, Frazier stayed in the background.
Frazier was the reigning champion, yet somehow the burden of proof was on him. He was the champ in the eyes of boxing authorities, yet he was the challenger in the eyes of the public. He was the favorite among the gamblers and boxing people, yet he was the underdog among people in the street.
Public sentiment seemed to side with Ali. He was an idol among blacks and liberals, a hero among college students and hippies and yippies, a martyr among Muslims and peaceniks.
Frazier unwillingly carried the colors of the establishment, the patriot groups, the silent majority, the hardhats and the hard-nosed corps of boxing authorities. He was the white man’s champion. He was boxing’s “white hope.”
He resented it and he rebelled against it, but there was nothing he could do about it, and Ali kept beating a steady staccato on that theme.
The irony of it was that it was Joe Frazier, not Muhammad Ali, who grew up in the depths of poverty. It was Joe Frazier, not Muhammad Ali, who escaped from the ghetto of the Deep South. Ali came from relative affluence in Louisville, Kentucky. His father was a successful sign painter who always worked and provided well for his family.
As a boy, Muhammad Ali lived in a rather comfortable home, while Joe Frazier lived in a shack. Muhammad Ali had his own bicycle and never had to work, while Joe Frazier picked vegetables on a farm for a dollar a day and made his own punching bag; Muhammad Ali had plenty to eat and wear, while Joe Frazier worried about starvation and a pair of shoes, hand-me-downs, became a special treat.
Without letup, Ali belabored that single theme until, finally, Frazier found himself abandoning his natural reserve and replying to the taunts. Not the staged banter of the television commercial that saw Joe Frazier on the telephone on one-half of the screen, Muhammad Ali on the telephone on the other side of the screen and Muhammad talking a blue streak until Frazier finally hangs up with a click and Ali stares incredulously at the receiver. Ali’s insults were the real thing, and if they were designed to force Frazier to blow his usual cool, they achieved their purpose.
“I’m gonna give Joe Frazier a ghetto whipping,” Muhammad Ali said.
“What he know about the ghetto?” Joe Frazier answered.
“Everybody in his right mind who’s black wants me to keep winning,” Muhammad Ali said. “And anybody black who thinks Frazier can whup me is an Uncle Tom.”
“I’m no goddamned Uncle Tom,” answered Joe Frazier, misunderstanding. “I’m black. I’m blacker than him. Next time I see him I’m gonna ask him to show me one black spot on his brown body.”
“Joe is no Uncle Tom,” said a friend. “And he won’t let any promoters or press push him into that position. He’ll simply be there to do a job as he always does.”
There was a time, some years before, when Ali tried to get Frazier to attend a Muslim meeting. Joe refused to go when he found out the leader of the Muslims, Elijah Muhammad, and his sons lived in big houses and drove expensive cars, while followers of the sect were poor and were required to buy copies of its official organ, Muhammad Speaks.
That turned Frazier off, but he had tolerance for Muhammad’s religion and he was not unsympathetic to Ali’s plight with the draft.
“If Baptists weren’t allowed to fight,” he said, “I wouldn’t fight.”
With his tolerance and sympathy, and despite Ali’s harassment, Frazier could find no hate in his heart for the man he planned to destroy in the ring on March 8.
“I like him as a person,” he admitted. “But I think he’s a phony. I’ve seen pictures of him in cars with white guys, huggin’ them and laughing. Then he goes and calls me an Uncle Tom. Don’t say ‘I hate the white man,’ then go to the white man for help. A lot of what he says about the white man is true. There’s a lot of things they done wrong. A lot of things they still doin’. But his trainer is white, a lot of guys around him are white. Well, my manager is black, all the guys in my band are black. What about that?”
But for all his tolerance and sympathy, there were still too many differences between the two, differences that made it impossible for them to be really close friends.
“Clay believes things different than me,” Frazier pointed out. “He believes Muslim, I believe Baptist. He believes black and white should be treated different, I believe everybody is the same. A lot he says and stands for is true. I know that. But I don’t want to live off hate. He got three kids, I got five. They don’t need no more problems. But that don’t make me no Tom. I’m just doin’ a job. I ain’t no white hope. I’m only a hope for them.” He pointed to a picture on the wall, a picture of his five beautiful children.
Ali continued beating on his one single theme, in prose and in poetry:
Now this might shock and amaze ya,
But Ali will destroy Joe Frazier.
Muhammad’s got such endurance,
Frazier’s gonna need some insurance.
The press, as always, loved him. They ate it all up, whatever Ali said and as often as he said it. But while the whole world knew Muhammad’s opinion on the war in Vietnam, Frazier’s remained a secret. When pressed, his basic gentle instincts surfaced—instincts that made his beliefs similar to Ali’s, yet were stated less eloquently and more simply, less defiantly, but just as sincerely.
“I don’t know anything about the war, man,” he confessed. “All I know is I’m against killing innocent people.”
“What we say on the politics,” Yank Durham interceded, “is that we’re American and Clay’s American and all Americans don’t have to think the same. We hope we can let it go at that.”
But it wouldn’t be let go . . . like that. The NAACP threw up picket lines outside the Cloverlay Gym and some young blacks came to watch Frazier train. They came to jeer at him, not to cheer him.
In his soft, quiet, deep-voiced way, Durham tried to charm them. Venturing into a group one day, he allowed them to engage him in conversation.
“When I fight Clay,” Yank Durham said, “I’m going to get him somewhere in the middle rounds.”
“You ain’t fighting him, Frazier is.”
“Why you call him Clay? He Ali.”
“His name is Cassius Clay to me.”
“What you say against his religion?”
“I don’t say nothing about his religion and he don’t say nothing about mine. I’m a Baptist.”
“You going to make money on this fight?”
“Of course. I got to make money. You don’t think I work up this sweat for nothing.”
But all the talking could not
change things. Frazier could not be transformed into a hero, even with his people, merely by the persuasive purr of Yank Durham’s sweet reason. There was the day Frazier interrupted the drudgery of training to attend a fight in Philadelphia. When the announcer called out his name, more boos than cheers erupted. In his hometown.
“A lot of people are jealous, that’s all,” Frazier said. “I just live my life. It don’t bother me none.”
But it bothered those around him, people like his assistant trainer, Eddie Futch. It bothered him because “Frazier is such a decent man. But I’m afraid when he beats Clay, Joe Frazier is going to go down as one of the most unpopular black champions of all time. I’ve seen it before. Ezzard Charles, an excellent fighter, was never accorded the recognition he deserved in the black community because he had the temerity to defeat Joe Louis. Louis was a symbol of the black man’s struggle to achieve equality and the better life. Ali is this and more. He represents a new hope—a pride, a dignity, plus an articulation that the black man has never been able to achieve in the white community, the quality of speaking and being heard. When his defeat is a certainty, the bitterness is going to be indescribable.”
As his time grew nearer, Joe Frazier became surly in training camp.
“He’s getting mean,” Durham would say. “That means the fight’s getting close. That means he’s ready.”
Even the nightly crap games ceased in camp, crap games in which Joe Frazier was the perpetual pigeon. He frequently lost thousands to a Billy “Moleman” Williams, who would be the heavyweight champion of the world if he were as good with his hands as he was with the dice. Moleman Williams was the heavyweight crap-shooting champion of the world and Joe Frazier was the heavyweight champion patsy of the world, who kept getting up only to be knocked down again. There were some who even suggested Frazier lost purposely as a means of maintaining harmony and loyalty in his camp. Nobody, they reasoned, could be that bad or that unlucky.
