I don't think it is any secret to tell you that the world contains very few saints and even though Muhammad had posed as one for the cover of Esquire magazine, there were times he wasn't up for sainthood. Despite all the myth-making, he was a human being, flaws and all. He also was a dashing, overly masculine man with matinee idol good looks who just happened to be one of the most famous people in the world. As such he never had any trouble attracting women. In fact, you might say he was catnip to women.
While we were in Manila preparing for the Frazier fight, Ali was seen about town in the company of a beautiful young woman named Veronica Porsche—so much so they became an "item," fodder for the press. In response to the attention being paid the twosome, Ali, without any shame or sense of embarrassment, said almost matter-of-factly, "I know celebrities don't have any privacy. The only person I answer to is my wife, Belinda Ali. And I don't worry about her." Maybe he should have.
You could have posted storm warnings when Belinda heard about her husband's high-wire marital act. Hopping mad, she hopped aboard a flight to Manila and after a twenty-two-hour flight went directly to Ali's suite at the Manila Hilton to confront him. I just happened to be there watching him tape an interview when she blew in. Hitting the door with tornado force, she bellowed in a voice turned up to Volume 11, "We've got to talk!" And with that she almost dragged Muhammad into an adjoining room. When "the fit hit the shan," so to speak, I was talking to Dick Schaap, the editor of Sport magazine. Dick knew something about Ali's marital excesses having heard Ali, in response to a question about his out-of-the-ring conquests, say, "Nobody knows where the nose goes when the door close." But he had never seen a scene like this before. The two of us looked at each other, realizing that we were intruding on something that was meant to be private. As we stood there silently debating whether to put on our sweaters in the suddenly frigid room or beat a hasty retreat, I finally grabbed him by the arm and said, "Let's get the hell out of here," and made straight for the door. But not before we heard Belinda hurling curses and chairs with the sound of exploding grenades from the next room. And you ask me why I never get involved in my fighters' personal lives!
Belinda wasn't the only problem. After Zaire Ali hadn't wanted to pay the price, hadn't wanted to put in the effort, going through his training motions without any accompanying passion, merely scratching the surface. Now he found excuses not to, considering Frazier unworthy of being a challenger for his title. He thought Frazier was washed up, a mere shadow of his former self, continually asking, "What kind of man can take all those punches to the head?" He was equally contemptuous of Frazier the man, calling him "stupid" and "ugly" (as in "Frazier is so ugly he should donate his face to the U.S. Bureau of Wild Life").
Ali was so disdainful of Frazier that before the fight, looking down from the ring and spotting Herbert Muhammad with a bottle of mineral water, he shouted, "Whatcha got there, Herbert? Gin? You won't need any of that. Just another day's work. I'm gonna put a whuppin' on that nigger's head."
Ali couldn't have been more mistaken.
You might have gotten a clue of just how deep Frazier's raging undercurrent of resentment at Muhammad's slights of words was when, after a largely uneventful weigh-in, he leaned over to Ali and whispered, "I'm gonna whup your half-breed ass." But while Joe may have been burning with resentment, it was Ali who came out smokin'. Believing that Frazier was but one punch away from annihilation, at the bell he came out to mid-ring and stood flat-footed in front of Joe and, with distanced precision, began pot-shotting Frazier with cluster bombs, raking the unprotected head of his challenger with jabs, one-twos, and left hooks, jarring him once, twice, thrice in the opening minutes of the round.
It was the same in the second round as Ali continued his assault on Frazier, peppering him time and again as Frazier continued to press forward into the line of fire, head up, trying his mightiest to get within striking distance. The one-sidedness of the bombardment prompted Bundini Brown to scream out, "He won't call you Clay no more." Before the third, encouraged by the ease with which he had been able to land on the inviting target in front of him, Ali threw kisses to the crowd of twenty-eight thousand packed into the Philippine Coliseum, most in the direction of President Ferdinand Marcos.
In the third Ali caught Frazier with two lead lefts, jerking Frazier's head back. But Frazier, an Energizer Bunny in boxing trunks, kept coming forward, forcing Ali into the ropes where Ali grabbed his shorter foe, pushing his head down. Referee Carlos Padilla would have none of that, batting Ali's hands off the back of Joe's neck. (I never understood that, freeing up one man's hands in a clinch does the fighter a favor, giving him a hand he can now use.) Separated, Joe finally got through with a left to Ali's chin, but Ali went into one of his little charades, giving Joe and the crowd the impression it was only a glancing blow.
That one blow signaled a subtle shift in the fortunes of the two combatants, sort of a balancing of the ledgers as the human fireplug named Frazier began to close the real estate. He got closer and closer to his tormentor and started to land his patented left hook, almost as if he were testing Ali's temperature for fighting.
Although my bride, Helen, was always worried I'd make myself permanently hoarse by constantly screaming at ringside, I couldn't help myself now as I continued to scream to Ali, "Get off the ropes! Get off the ropes!" But screaming couldn't help Ali. Frazier had almost lashed him to the ropes with his left hook, snorting as he ripped it home, time and again. All of a sudden the man Muhammad had thoroughly discounted was now so alive his breath could cloud a mirror, and Ali couldn't believe it. At the bell ending the fourth, all he could do was sniff at Joe, "You dumb chump, you!"
The fifth was Frazier, Frazier, and more Frazier. Now a whirlwind of pure short-fused energy, he trapped my guy in his own corner and raked his body with thunderous-sounding shots. My screams became shriller and more insistent: "Get off the goddamn ropes. Get out of the goddamn corner. Stop playing!"
By the sixth any and all thoughts of an easy victory for Ali had vanished as Frazier attached himself to Muhammad's chest and let fly with several left hooks from hell, catching Ali with two that caused the crowd to gasp, President Marcos to wince, and Imelda Marcos to stare down at her shoes. All of a sudden Muhammad's legs acted like strangers to each other as he momentarily staggered, showing the effects of Frazier's blows.
For the first time in the fight, Muhammad sat on his stool as I searched for the right words to tell him "We blew those rounds. You don't rest on the ropes against Joe Frazier ... you take a licking."
Coming out for the seventh Muhammad, knowing he was now in a fight, grabbed Frazier and whispered in his ear, "Old Joe Frazier, they told me you were washed up." Frazier merely snorted back, "They lied, pretty boy," and punctuated his answer with a bone-rattling left.
Having tasted Frazier's power, Ali got back on his toes, snapping out his jab. Muhammad would land and then tie Frazier up whenever he could, feeling Frazier's heat and relentlessness. He now knew how wrong his prefight assessment of his old foe had been.
For the next couple of rounds Joe continued his assault, taking the measure of Muhammad, testing the depths of his ability and his will to survive. An army of acupuncturists couldn't have applied more pressure than Joe as he hammered away, doubling up on hooks to Muhammad's kidneys and head. Muhammad was neither floating nor stinging, merely covering up on the ropes. At the end of the tenth, his once-delicate legs leaden, his head bowed in agony, his eyes clouded with exhaustion, Muhammad slumped on his stool. "Force yourself, Champ!" Bundini screamed into his ear. "Go down to the well once more! The world needs ya, Champ!"
Bundini's exhortation seemed to have little effect on the pattern of the fight as Frazier continued his attack on Ali, catching him in the corner and raining blow after blow to Ali's head. The brutal beating continued throughout the eleventh and brought a cry of "Lawd, have mercy!" from Bundini, but nothing in the way of retaliation from Muhammad.
Somehow, someway, somewhe
re with both gladiators running on empty, Muhammad found that something extra in his gas tank in the twelfth after I had exhorted him to "got get him." Using his long right, he reversed the by now all-too-evident flow of the fight by getting back on his toes and pummeling Frazier's face, turning it into a mass of lumps, bringing a trickle of blood from his mouth and closing his left eye. It was unbelievable! Here was Muhammad, who in the eleventh round looked like he could have tossed it in, sucking it up and dominating Frazier.
Now we were up to the thirteenth, the beginning of the championship rounds, three more rounds in a fight that had had more plot turns than a Russian novel and a chance for my guy to close the show and prove both to himself and to the world that he was the better fighter of the two. Sensing that Frazier's punches had lost their power, I screamed at Muhammad, "Look at him ... he ain't got no power left. Go get him!"
And "go get him" he did. In the intensity of the battle in that heated auditorium, Ali picked up where he had left off, landing a solid left that froze Joe and following with a right that staggered him, sending his mouthpiece flying out into the farthest reaches of the press row. Joe did a little three-step retreat to keep from falling and came back in again in the only gear he knew, forward, only to be caught with another combination. Then another and another. With hands held low and head held high, sucking air like a fish out of water, Frazier kept coming in through frightful punishment, unable to defend himself.
Incredibly, Frazier was still there at the bell. Barely. His face now had the look of an apple that had been halved and pieced back together off-center. He was in need of a tin cup, his left eye closed and his right eye, as he later admitted, impaired. His legs were barely keeping their promise of keeping him upright. But anyone who knew Joe Frazier knew that this gallant man would only go out on his shield. Still, I thought now was the time and as the bell rang for the fourteenth, I shoved Muhammad out of the corner shouting, "He's all yours. Go get him!"
Muhammad did just that, connecting with nine straight rights against his unseeing opponent, slashing him with combinations that dug deeper and deeper into Frazier's flesh and ripping him with everything he threw. At the bell ending the fourteenth, referee Padilla had to guide the all-but-blind Frazier back to his corner.
"Sit down, son," Frazier's trainer, Futch, said as he slowly lowered him onto his stool. Then "Joe, I'm going to stop it." Frazier, who would walk through a minefield to get at Ali, started to plead, "I want him, boss... ." But Futch was adamant. "You couldn't see in the last two rounds, what makes you think you're gonna see him in the fifteenth?" Joe began to rise, ready to go back into action again. But now Futch, putting his hand on Joe's shoulder, said, "Sit down, son ... it's all over. Nobody will ever forget what you did here today." And with that the greatest two-sided fight in boxing history came to a close.
Over in our corner, Kilroy saw Futch waving his hand in surrender to referee Padilla and hollered, "It's over ... it's over.... " And as we tried to raise a bone-weary Ali off his stool to accept the plaudits of the crowd, he collapsed, his legs giving way to fatigue, his body to pain, totally drained. It was a question whether he could have gone another round. Bundini lifted him up off the canvas and I cradled his legs as we plopped him back on his stool, where he sat slumped, too exhausted to move.
Afterward, the two gallant warriors, who had just gone through what Ali called "the next thing to death," threw bouquets rather than punches at each other, Frazier saying, "Lawdy, Lawdy, he's a great champion." Then, turning to Ali, he said, "You one bad nigger. We both bad niggers. We don't do no crawlin'." Muhammad returned the compliment, "I'll tell the world right now that's one helluva man and God bless him." And then stated the obvious: "I have nothing bad to say about Joe Frazier. Without him I wouldn't be who I am and without me he couldn't be who he is. We've been a pretty good team for four, five years." The two had forever cemented their names together as a boxing hyphenate.
The next morning, still nursing his pains and barely able to move, Ali said, "You may have seen the last of Ali. I want to get out of it. I'm tired and on top."
You would have thought that Ali, having had fifty-one fights and a career that spanned sixteen years—about the same career average as the twenty-two heavyweight champions who preceded him—would, as he said, "Get out of it." He had made a convincing argument for being "The Greatest" with his hat trick over Liston, Foreman, and Frazier. He had beaten every fighter he ever faced—including the two who had beaten him, Frazier and Norton, in rematches. After all, he was no longer the dancing master of years past. He was showing signs of wear and tear, slowing down and, when compared to the Clay-Ali of old, looking merely mortal. And, most important, there was no telling how much the third Frazier fight had taken out of him, how much of the mortgage on his body he had paid by absorbing the many brutal body shots from Frazier.
There's one clear message that applies across the board: when you're fighting, you think you're going to be fighting forever. There's no eye on the inevitable end. And here Muhammad Ali was no different from any other fighter.
Having given supporting documentation for his claim that he was "The Greatest," Ali had no plans to retire, to step away from the spotlight. It was not merely a case of him not knowing how to fill his leftover life once retired. It was more that he understood that accomplishments begin to fade over time and that his idol, Sugar Ray Robinson, had become irrelevant once he had retired, his name and feats unknown to many of the younger fans. Knowing that he was the most famous name and face in the world, Ali wanted to remain in the spotlight as long as he could, continuing to be the center of attention. He wanted to stay relevant.
THIRTEEN
Boxing's "Greatest" Leaves the Stage
Copyright © 2008 by Angelo Dundee and Bert Randolph Sugar Click here for terms of use.
There was another reason over and above Muhammad Ali's need for attention and relevancy for him to continue fighting. With his win over Joe Frazier, Ali had established a going price for his appearances: $1 million, no matter whom he fought.
With this in mind, we scraped the bottom of the heavyweight barrel and came up with one of those "no matter who's," Jean Pierre Coopman, for Ali's next title defense. Called "The Lion of Flanders" for no apparent reason, Coopman proved to be one of life's losing stuntmen, a pussycat instead of a lion. He was so small that to make him look like a heavyweight we had to put high heels on him for the weigh-in. In the ring he was even worse than we had anticipated. After the first round, Ali made his opinion of Coopman's limited abilities known by leaning over the ropes and shouting at Tommy Brookshier and Pat Summerall who were broadcasting the fight for CBS-TV, "You guys are in trouble ... this cat's got nothin'.... Ain't no way you gonna get all your commercials in." Four rounds later, after toying with Coopman to eat up TV time and just slapping him around because of his sore hands, Muhammad took him out. It was embarrassing.
Next up was Jimmy Young, a fighter who could do the most with the least. A steady technician, Young was a real cutie, a member of the jab-and-grab club who would do anything to keep from being hit. He would bend his body, stick his head out between the ropes, and, on occasion, even turn his tush toward his opponent. But even then you couldn't hit him in the backside with a handful of buckshot. It was almost as if he wore an invisible cloak. Ali tried to get him, oh how he tried, but, no matter how hard he tried, there was no there there to be gotten. For fifteen rounds Ali chased the slick Young, never quite catching up with him, but he still won the controversial fifteen-round decision, one that was hardly pleasing to the eyes or the fans.
In dizzyingly quick order, the month after Young Ali defended his title against Richard Dunn, the British and Commonwealth heavyweight champion. The lantern-jawed Dunn went "down as he must" as Red Smith once wrote about all such "British heavyweights" in five rounds.
Ali's next "fight" was not a fight in the traditional sense. Nor was it one that shows up on his record. It was a novelty fight, a mixed bout against Anonio
Inoki, a Japanese wrestling champ. The so-called "fight," which I considered just one step removed from taking on a dancing bear, appealed to Ali's ego, one that gave him a chance to prove he was not only the best boxer in the world but also the best fighter.
This was not the first time Ali had entertained such a cockamamie idea. Back in 1971 he had come thisclose to taking on Wilt "The Stilt" Chamberlain in the Houston Astrodome. But the fight never came off. Some say it was because at the last minute Wilt had demanded $500,000, tax free. Ali said it was because the 7′ 1″ Chamberlain had heard his claim that he only needed two words to predict the outcome: "Tim" and "Ber."
Jack Dempsey and Jersey Joe Walcott had taken on wrestlers for ring superiority, so it was nothing new. But it was to Ali, who didn't know what to do. You see, before we left for Japan we had agreed on the rules, only now nobody seemed to remember what they were or what was allowed. Early in the first round, after trying to grab Ali and drag him to the canvas where he could practice that voodoo he did so well—and being caught with several stinging jabs as a result—Inoki decided to drop to the canvas and, from a safe position, kick at Ali. Getting the hell kicked out of him, Ali, in turn, jumped up on the ropes to escape Inoki's kicks. This went on for ten rounds, Inoki on the canvas kicking up at Ali and Ali on the ropes flailing down at Inoki. Halfway through Ali wanted to forget the whole deal and go home. I reminded him that he was the world champion and talked him into finishing the farce to the very end. Ten rounds of this crap and the bore-snore was finally over. Now it was the referee's turn to render a decision of who did what and to whom. As he was trying to make up his mind, I went over and said, "Hey, pal, let's call it a draw." And that's what it was, a draw.
My View from the Corner Page 25
