The heavyweight championship fight between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali happened March 8, 1971. It was billed as The Fight, and 25 years later, it still is The Fight, secure in its place in boxing legend.
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| Joe Frazier and his manager, Yank Durham, celebrate Frazier's victory over Muhammed Ali in March, 1971. |
"No fight in the world can touch it," Frazier said recently. "We were both undefeated. It was an exciting feeling that no one can explain."
"This was to determine the real championship of the world," remembered Arthur Mercante, who refereed.
Irving Mitchell Felt, president of the Garden, wanted to charge an unheard-of top ticket price of $250. Instead, the unheard-of price of $150 was settled on.
By contrast, the ticket prices for Frank Bruno's WBC heavyweight title defense against Mike Tyson on March 16 range from $1,000 to $200.
"I said to charge $250 for a boxing match, even if it's Cain and Abel, is an obscenity," Markson said. "It was a colossal mistake. We could have charged $500."
On the night of the fight, top-price tickets were going for $400-$600, while scalpers were getting $200-$300 for $100 tickets. The $75, $50, $40 and $20 seats were commanding 2 1/2 times their face value. A Garden executive turned down $20,000 for 20 $150 tickets.
"It's a once-in-a-lifetime job," a ticket scalper said outside the Garden on fight night.
A packed house of 20,455 paid an official $1,352,951 to watch Ali and Frazier earn their record purses of $2.5 million each.
Jerry Perenchio, who promoted the match with Jack Kent Cooke and Madison Square Garden, predicted at a Dec. 28 news conference that the fight, to be shown on closed-circuit television, would gross $20 million.
Ali bellowed in response: "Five million dollars! Frazier, we've been taken."
Tyson will get at least $30 million and Bruno about $6 million for their bout on pay-per-view television.
The Fight was shown on closed-circuit television in the United States and those watching on the big screen, including a worldwide audience of 300 million people, saw was an event that lived up to the hype. It was a fight of ebb and flow, an exhibition of skill and courage punctuated by one of the most famous knockdowns in boxing history.
The 15th-round knockdown is burned into the memory of Tom Kenville, an assistant to the late John F.X. Condon, the great boxing publicist for the Garden.
It was Kenville's job to get as many sports writers as possible to the interview area to avoid the crowd crush at the end of the fight, and he had them moving before the start of the 15th round.
"Suddenly there was a roar, and guys were shouting, `What the hell happened?'" Kenville recalled. "They were running back to their seats, falling down and dropping typewriters."
Twenty-five seconds into the final round, Frazier knocked down Ali with a left hook packed with power and pride. Madison Square Garden was bedlam. Pride pushed Ali upright, but Frazier won a unanimous decision and was still undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.
Frazier had claimed the undisputed title Feb. 16, 1970. Smokin' Joe's claim, however, was disputed by Ali's fans and people who felt Ali had been denied due process by having been stripped of the championship and banned from boxing after being convicted for refusing the military draft.
"It was The Fight because it had the luxury of having Muhammad Ali," said Angelo Dundee, Ali's trainer.
Ali tried to portray Frazier as the establishment champion, which infuriated Frazier.
"A lot of 'em want me whipped because of the draft," Ali said at one of several pre-fight gatherings. "A lot of 'em want me whipped because of religion. A lot of 'em want me whipped because I'm black ... and for other reasons that I might not even know about."
Ali's 3 1/2-year exile from the ring had ended when he stopped Jerry Quarry in the third round Oct. 26, 1970, in Atlanta. He then got a New York license and stopped Oscar Bonavena in the 15th round Dec. 7 at the Garden.
The controversy surrounding Ali added to the hype, and so did the fact that his bid to become champion again could be his last fight. At the time, the appeal of his draft-dodging conviction was still before the U.S. Supreme Court and Ali was facing a five-year prison term. The conviction would be overturned June 28 of that year.
The crowd that turned out to watch Ali fight Frazier was as flashy as the fight itself. It was a diamond-fur-cigar crowd.
"I never saw so many ermine coats on guys in my life," said Allen Baker, then vice president for public relations and advertising at the Garden.
"The celebrities, they were all over," recalled Eddie Futch, who worked in Frazier's corner. "Anybody who was anybody was there."
Frank Sinatra was up front shooting pictures for Life. Burt Lancaster was the color commentator on closed circuit. Former heavyweight champions Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney were on hand.
Woody Allen, Diahann Carroll and Count Basie were among the many celebrities in the crowd. Up front sat fight regular Frank Costello, reputed boss of the Luciano crime family, who could only get two tickets instead of his usual four.
This time, the celebrities came to see, not to be seen.
What they saw was a drama of 15 acts that had the crowd standing while the fighters sat down between rounds. By the ninth round, many fans were standing all the time.
Ali clowned and conned, buying time for his aging legs. He would back and jab and occasionally attack with straight-arm combinations. Frazier pressed, forsaking the jab and throwing hard shots to the head, especially left hooks, and working both hands to the body.
In the fifth round, Frazier dropped his hands, grinned, said something and got hit with a smart left-right to the head.
"Ali! Ali!" echoed through the arena in the ninth round when Ali landed a seven-punch combination.
During the 10th round, as Mercante was breaking the two fighters from a clinch, he stuck his pinky finger into Frazier's left eye. Frazier turned and shouted to manager-trainer Yank Durham.
"He shouted, 'They're two guys beating me!'" Mercante remembered. "I thought, 'Uh, oh, he might go back to his corner and sit down.' It would have been the greatest controversy ever."
Early in the 11th round, Ali slipped on a wet spot in Frazier's corner. Then with a minute left in the round, Frazier landed a left hook to the head that bowed Ali's legs. Ali was hurt, but he wobbled and conned his way to the bell.
"Ali conned him out of it," Futch said. "Ali exaggerated how much he was hurt, and Joe bought it."
Frazier later admitted as much.
Finally, it was the 15th round and time for Frazier to put an exclamation point to The Fight he already had won on all three official scorecards.
Frazier landed a left hook to Ali's arm, then caught him with the hook that knocked him down and left him looking as if he had a grapefruit in his right cheek. Ali got up at the count of four.
"He HAD to get up," Frazier said.
Late in the round, Ali landed a two-handed flurry, but Frazier answered with a big left hook, and it was over.
It was The Fight. Still is to many people.
