![\"Muhammad](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/ae984d60-9eed-11f0-acff-0d42c164c06c.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\nMuhammad Ali was just barely into his 40s and still pretty freshly retired for good. He was having dinner one evening with a writer who couldn\u2019t help but notice the way the chicken leg trembled in his hand, resisting his attempts to bring it to his mouth.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know what\u2019s wrong with me,\u201d Ali told Mark Kram, who\u2019d covered so many of his fights for Sports Illustrated throughout the 1960s and ’70s. Kram had come to the fighter\u2019s home and had been shown all the pictures and posters, memorabilia from Ali\u2019s time as the greatest fighter of his generation.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
But there was a glaring omission in Ali\u2019s little shrine to his own career \u2014 Joe Frazier wasn\u2019t anywhere to be found. No pictures from their great trilogy. No little reminders of the way they transformed one another from champions to legends. Nothing.<\/p>\n
Kram tried asking, was this intentional? Just an oversight, maybe? As he wrote in his book \u201cThe Ghosts of Manila: The Fateful Blood Feud Between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier,\u201d Ali stayed tight-lipped, but grew increasingly morose as the evening wore on and the chicken leg failed to cooperate. Maybe it would be interesting to watch some of their old fights, the writer suggested. How about \u201cThe Thrilla in Manila,\u201d the final installment in their rivalry? If Ali preferred, they would only watch the good rounds.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat good rounds?\u201d Ali replied. He\u2019d watch the other fights with the writer if he wanted, but not that one. \u201cIt was the greatest fight of my life, and it wasn\u2019t about style,\u201d Ali explained. \u201cIt was where I had to go for it, a place where you drop through a trapdoor.\u201d<\/p>\n
So why not watch it again? His answer was simple: \u201cI don\u2019t wanna look at hell again.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Oct. 1, 1975: Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier trade punches in one of boxing’s most legendary bouts.<\/p>\n
(Bettmann via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
It was 50 years ago today, on Oct. 1, 1975, that Ali and Frazier met for the third and final time in what many boxing fans and writers would later regard as the most brutal fight they\u2019d ever witnessed. Fernando Marcos, then the president of the Philippines but ruling it as a dictator under martial law, forked over millions of dollars to bring the fight to Manila, hoping to show that the capital city was safe for tourism and foreign investment of all kinds.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
It was also 105 degrees Fahrenheit by the time the two fighters stepped into the ring just after 10 o\u2019clock in the morning, in order to accommodate a prime-time broadcast schedule in North America. The added crush of the humidity made the air feel like \u201cboiling water,\u201d according to Ali\u2019s personal physician Ferdie Pacheco. Under the arena\u2019s aluminum roof, conditions were almost painfully suffocating even for those whose activities that morning were confined to chairs.<\/p>\n
But the heat was only part of it. What transformed it into more than just a boxing match was the history between the two men. Jerry Izenberg, now 95, still remembers being ringside on that October morning. He covered the bout for The Newark Star-Ledger, and later included an account of it in his excellent boxing history book \u201cOnce There Were Giants: The Golden Age of Heavyweight Boxing.\u201d In that chapter, Izenberg referred to the bout as “a walk through hell.”<\/p>\n
Ali may have been the reigning heavyweight champ at the time, having recaptured the title with his dramatic win over George Foreman in the \u201cRumble in the Jungle\u201d bout in Zaire two years earlier, but here the belt was essentially just an added trinket.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were fighting for the heavyweight championship of each other,\u201d Izenberg told Uncrowned. \u201cThose two, they would have rather died than lose to the other guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Izenberg didn\u2019t necessarily show up in Manila expecting to see a great battle. The first Ali-Frazier bout in 1971 \u2014 dubbed \u201cThe Fight of the Century\u201d \u2014 was a cultural phenomenon. Only part of that had to do with the fact that it was a clash of undefeated champions. Mostly, it was a culture war battle. Ali had only recently been reinstated, having lost his title and very nearly his freedom for refusing to be drafted into the armed services during the Vietnam War some four years prior. Ali would eventually win this battle after the Supreme Court unanimously overturned his conviction in the summer of 1971, but to much of the nation he was still despised as a draft-dodging radical.<\/p>\n
They were fighting for the heavyweight championship of each other. Those two, they would have rather died than lose to the other guy.<\/p>\n
Jerry Izenberg<\/p>\n
Frazier was not a particularly political man, but he had captured all the relevant forms of the heavyweight title in Ali\u2019s absence. He was a natural rival for Ali, and in the lead-up to the fight he was also drafted into a war he did not choose, but a sociopolitical one rather than an armed conflict.<\/p>\n
\u201cJoe Frazier was an available symbol behind whom people who hated Ali could unite,\u201d sports broadcaster Bryant Gumbel once noted. Ali, always in search of a compelling antagonist who he could set himself in dramatic opposition to, was only too willing to play into that narrative. He branded Frazier as an ignorant tool of the white establishment, calling him an \u201cUncle Tom\u201d and a white man\u2019s champion.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
The irony, Izenberg pointed out, was that in many ways Frazier had lived the harshest aspects of the Black experience in America far more than Ali had.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrazier told me a lot of things over the years, but one of them he always came back to was how he despised Ali for what he was,\u201d Izenberg said. \u201cYou know, he heard the story about how Ali got into boxing because somebody stole his bike when he was 12 or 13 or something like that. Joe would say, \u2018Yeah, I really weep for him. When I was that age, I was plowing fields for two white guys, doing a man\u2019s day of work.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The way Frazier told it later, his childhood in South Carolina meant showing up to work as a farm laborer and being told \u201cto the mule.\u201d When it was lunchtime he was told \u201cin an hour.\u201d At quitting time, they said \u201cin the morning.\u201d That was his life, day in and day out, until he eventually moved north to Philadelphia and took up boxing while working in a slaughterhouse.<\/p>\n
\u201cAli, he lived a whole different experience,\u201d Izenberg said. \u201cHe had a nice upbringing. He was spoiled by his aunts. Not his father. Maybe his mother a little bit. But definitely his aunts spoiled him. So when he said those things about Frazier, you know, Joe\u2019s son was getting into fights at school because kids were repeating things they\u2019d heard Ali say about his dad. Joe was not ever going to let that go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
Frazier won the first fight in 1971, flooring Ali with a late left hook that cemented his decision victory on the judges\u2019 scorecards. But the fight took a brutal physical toll on Frazier. His style depended on getting in close enough to uncork his best punch \u2014 a short, cracking left hook. That meant wading through the snake bite of Ali\u2019s jab and the snapping right hand that often followed it. Ali left Madison Square Garden that night with a sore jaw from Frazier\u2019s left hook, but he was back on TV and talking to reporters the next day, framing the decision as a robbery and reveling in the attention while Frazier recovered in the hospital.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not like I even won,\u201d Frazier would say later. \u201cHe\u2019s robbing me. Like nothing changed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Frazier lost the title two years later in devastating fashion, with Foreman knocking him down six times inside of two rounds before the fight was stopped. Frazier also lost a decision in the rematch with Ali the following year in a 1974 fight that saw Ali repeatedly tie Frazier up in close while holding him behind the neck and battering him with uppercuts.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
By the time Ali reclaimed the title from Foreman in late 1974, he was intent on cashing in on the belt while he could. Fights against a rotating crop of heavyweight contenders were bringing in decent paydays, but also seemed to be a game of diminishing returns. Izenberg recalled seeing Ali at a fight in Malaysia, where he easily defeated Joe Bugner while also announcing his retirement (one of them, anyway).<\/p>\n
Two days before, Izenberg said, he was walking down a hotel hallway when he heard Ali shouting: \u201cI\u2019ll knock him out. I\u2019ll knock the sucker out.\u201d<\/p>\n
When he followed the sound through an open door, he saw Ali watching fight film of Frazier, calling him an \u201cold man\u201d who \u201ccan\u2019t fight.\u201d (Frazier was actually two years younger than Ali.) But wait, Izenberg said, wasn\u2019t Ali retired? Isn\u2019t that what he\u2019d just said?<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, just trying to sell tickets,\u201d Ali replied. \u201cWait \u2019til I get my hands on Frazier.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"MANILA](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/39fac200-9ef0-11f0-abf6-a2380c951bf3.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
September 1975: Muhammad Ali speaks to the international press during a break in training in the lead-up to his heavyweight bout against Joe Frazier.<\/p>\n
(Nik Wheeler via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
The press conference to announce a third fight between Ali and Frazier was held in New York in 1975. On the way there, Ali stopped in a novelty store and spotted a small gorilla figurine.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
\u201cHe erupted into wild laughter and immediately purchased it,\u201d Izenberg wrote in his book. \u201cWhen Ali stepped up to the podium [at the press conference], he held up the little gorilla and punched it repeatedly as he looked at Frazier and shouted, \u2018It will be a killa and a thrilla and a chilla when I get the gorilla in Manila.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
To Ali, this was just another day in the office. He knew how to hype a fight better than any boxer who had ever lived. He was a master of memorable quips and rhyming couplets that wormed their way into the collective consciousness, building public interest in each new bout.<\/p>\n
But to Frazier, it was the latest and perhaps deepest wound in a rivalry that he felt had undermined his entire career. He blamed Ali for turning so many Black Americans against him. He\u2019d been an Olympic gold medalist and then an undefeated heavyweight champion who handed Ali his first professional loss, and still he felt as if he was only known as the villain in Ali\u2019s tale of heroic triumph.<\/p>\n
Thomas Hauser, author of two books about Ali, later wrote: “Ali played the race card against Frazier in a mean-spirited way. For the entertainment of white America, he labeled Joe as ugly and dumb. And at the same time, speaking to Black America, he branded Frazier an Uncle Tom, turning him into an object of derision and scorn. The latter insult was particularly galling. Joe Frazier is not, and never was, an Uncle Tom. Yet to this day, there are people who think of him as a less-than-proud black man because of Ali’s diatribes.”<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
So when Ali labeled him the \u201cgorilla\u201d to be trounced in Manila, Frazier boiled over with anger. After the press conference, according to Izenberg, Frazier told one of Ali\u2019s friends that their man had gone too far this time. He was told that it was all just pre-fight hype, that some day they\u2019d look back on it and laugh.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat day will never come,\u201d Frazier replied.<\/p>\n
Those in his camp had worried Frazier was in decline. The vision in his left eye was never good, and it was getting worse. In a sense, his dreaded left hook had developed as a necessary tool to compensate for that weakness. It gave opponents an incentive to move anywhere except to his left, where he\u2019d no longer be able to see them well, if at all.<\/p>\n
Frazier had been an Olympic gold medalist and then an undefeated heavyweight champion who handed Ali his first professional loss, and still he felt as if he was only known as the villain in Ali\u2019s tale of heroic triumph.<\/p>\n
But for a third meeting with Ali, he\u2019d need something extra. Eddie Futch, Frazier’s longtime trainer, brought in a Philadelphia middleweight named George Benton, who helped Frazier add a right hand to his arsenal. He trained for the fight as if it were the last one he would ever have, and maybe he believed it was.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m gonna shoot it all over there,\u201d Frazier is said to have told Futch. \u201cThis is the end of the line. \u2026 I mean it. This is the end of him or me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Futch did his part both in the gym and out of it. He\u2019d been enraged by the work of referee Tony Perez in the second Ali-Frazier bout, blaming him for allowing Ali to hold the back of Frazier\u2019s neck while hitting him. It had happened a total of 133 times in that second fight, Futch said. He knew because he watched it back and counted each one. He would not put his fighter in the ring with a referee he didn\u2019t trust to be fair and impartial. When he heard that Zack Clayton, a man he knew from the Philadelphia fighting scene, had been proposed as referee, Futch threatened to pull Frazier from the bout two days prior. He\u2019d seen Clayton ringside at a fight, he said, cheering for Ali.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it\u2019s Clayton,\u201d Futch told Izenberg, \u201cthere\u2019s no fight.\u201d<\/p>\n
What Izenberg learned later was that Futch had reached out to Philadelphia mayor Frank Rizzo. He knew Clayton\u2019s regular job was in the civil service sector working for the city of Philadelphia. He persuaded the mayor to tell Clayton he needed to be at work in the city of Brotherly Love \u2014 and nowhere near Manila. If he went to the Philippines, he\u2019d be out of a job. It worked as a strategy to keep Clayton out of the ring, but when Futch suggested they replace him with a local referee, he was told there was concern that a Filipino ref might not be big enough to get between and separate two heavyweights.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t care if they choose a 60-pound dwarf,\u201d Futch said. \u201cIt ain\u2019t gonna be Zack Clayton.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the end, the job went to a Manila police officer named Sonny Padilla. That choice, as much as the heat, contributed to the grueling nature of the fight itself, according to Izenberg.<\/p>\n
\u201cReferees are like fighters,\u201d he said. \u201cThey all have their own style. Frazier wanted a referee who would let him fight on the inside. Ali wanted a referee who would let him fight at a distance. And if you notice in the fight, there were almost no clinches. [Padilla] got right in there, he knocked Ali\u2019s glove off the back of Frazier\u2019s neck, and he kept them fighting at just a terrific pace the whole time.\u201d<\/p>\n
At first, the fight followed a predictable rhythm. Ali came out strong in the opening rounds, as he always had against Frazier. Ali peppered him with jabs and even stung him with several early right hands. As Mark Kram put it later, Frazier\u2019s head was getting popped back so often in those first few rounds that he saw more of the arena rafters than he did of Ali.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
At ringside, Ali\u2019s supporters looked supremely confident, as if this was proof that Frazier was as diminished as they thought and Ali was in for his easiest outing yet against his old rival. But that, Kram wrote, was simply proof that \u201csome people never learned a thing about Frazier.\u201d<\/p>\n
By the fifth round, Frazier was bleeding but also surging. He could find Ali now. He\u2019d once again had to wade through some punishment to do it, but as the heat and the pace began to slow Ali, Frazier managed to bull his way in and force Ali toward the ropes. Even better, he managed to land that right hand he\u2019d developed, to the visible shock of Ali.<\/p>\n
\u201cAli had one of the greatest fight IQs of any heavyweight,\u201d Izenberg said. \u201cAnd I think Eddie Futch knew and respected that. He knew that if Frazier could hit him with a good right hand, Ali would stop and analyze that. What just happened? Where did that come from? And when Joe hit him with that right hand, you know, Ali always liked to talk in his fights. He said, \u2018You can\u2019t do that! You\u2019re an old man, you can\u2019t learn new tricks!\u2019 And Frazier yelled back, \u2018You ought to talk to George Benton!\u2019 And he hit him with it again.\u201d<\/p>\n
In those middle rounds, Frazier became relentless. He fought out of his low crouch, forcing Ali to reach down for him and expose his body to punishing blows.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
\u201cJoe shoveled into his kidneys, his liver, into his heart region, where fighters have observed the pain is excruciating,\u201d Kram wrote. \u201cWith non-stop digging, a wild boar going for a truffle, Joe jerked up out of the pit and sent out \u2014 Splat! Splat! \u2014 two evil left hooks to Ali\u2019s head. [Ali trainer Angelo] Dundee said those hooks were the hardest he had ever seen thrown, and after them, Ali was fighting for his life.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Joe hit him with that right hand, Ali said, \u2018You can\u2019t do that! You\u2019re an old man, you can\u2019t learn new tricks!\u2019 And Frazier yelled back, \u2018You ought to talk to George Benton!\u2019 And he hit him with it again.<\/p>\n
Jerry Izenberg<\/p>\n
Ali later said he almost quit on the stool before Round 11. The exhaustion and the punishment \u2014 it was, he said, the closest thing to dying he\u2019d ever experienced. Somehow, maybe because he simply couldn\u2019t allow Frazier to have this victory over him, he not only endured \u2014 but began to come back in the fight.<\/p>\n
![\"Quezon](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/92c20260-ae22-11e9-afec-142b8a69e3d1.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n