Thrilla In Manila Aftermath
By Eddie Alinea
PhilBoxing.com
Sun, 15 Nov 2015
Thirty six years after the final chapter of their historic trilogy and up until Joe Frazier's death on November 7, 2011, the animosity between the former world heavyweight champion and his successor, Muhammad Ali continued.
"Smokin" Joe and the "Greatest" fought each other for third and final time in Manila on October 1, 1975 in a showdown called "Thrilla In Manila" and "Superfight III, and since then never ceased slugging it out no longer atop the squared arena but off it.
It all actually started five years earlier on March 8, 1971 when the two greatest heavyweights of their era fought at the Madison Square Garden in New York where the title-defending Frazier knocked Ali down for the first time in his career on the way to scoring a 15-round unanimous decision victory.
From then, the "Louiseville Lip" continously humiliated, enraged, isolated Frazier from the rest of the world, referring him as a shuffling and mumbling "Uncle Tom," an ugly and ignorant errand boy of white America and calling him a"gorilla."
But while Ali seemed to have mellowed down and owned all the insults he hurled at Frazier's direction, it was Frazier who had been on the attacking mood the longest until his demise, which all of the boxing world and the entire international sports community commemorated yesterday.
Right after he won via a technical knockout when Frazier's manager-trainer Eddie Futch threw in the towel after the bloody, brutal 14th round, Ali called the challenger's son Marvis into his dressing room and told him that he had not meant what he said about his father, all in the interest of hyping up all their three fights, including Chapter II on January 28 1974.
When informed by the young Marvis, Frazier told his son," you ain't me, son. why isn't he apologizing to me."
One time in Philadelphia, Joe's adopted home and where he operated a boxing gym, and at a time when both had long retired, Frazier, as reported by SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, was approached by a 10-year-old girl accompanied by her mother, who told the former champ, "she (her daughter) wants to know if you ever beat Ali."
For a long moment, Frazier sat still, his eyes rolled wildly from side to side and after reassembling his scattered faculities, he looked at the two and said," We locked up three times, he won too and I won one. But look at him now, I think I won all three."
In one other occasion, in New York City, Ali, who has been suffering from Parkinson's syndrome (a set of symptoms that include tremors and masklike face), was screening a documentary celebrating his life, a production entitled "Muhammad Ali, ??The Whole Story," when a man nearby said to him: I saw Joe Frazier in Philly last week."
To which, Ali retorted: Joe Frafysha? You seen the the gorilla? From Manila?"
During the opening ceremony of the centennial celebration of the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996 where Ali lit the Olympic torch, Fraizer told everyone in sight that he should have been doing the honor as an Olympian and gold medalist, too, at that. He was even heard as saying: "They should have thrown him in (cauldron)."
Indeed, since the saga of the Thrilla In Manila, every time the two appeared separately in public and even now when Fraizer is gone, the memories of that final encounter remain in everyone's minds -- Manila, the Philippines, the Filipinos and their world-renowned hospitality that endeared the whole nation to all people in the world.
Thrill in Manila. The fight of the Year. The fight of the Century. The Greatest Fight of All Time cemented for Ali the honor the "The Greatest Heavyweight of the Millennium.
For Frazier, who dealt Greatest the first of his only four losses in a 61-fight, 20-year career, it was the occasion where he earned his in the list as one of boxing's immortals in the company of hi arch-rival himelf, Johnny L. Sullivan and the "Brown Bomber" Joe Louis.
And for the Philippines, it was the time to, once again, showcase to the entire universe its capability to host successfully a sporting event as big and of such magnitude as the Ali-Frazier world heavyweight championship showdown. It needed a much-maligned President Marcos and his entire government to prove that.
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Eddie Alinea.
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