The history of the Heavyweight Championship- 1971

In 1971 the Fight of the Century took place at Madison Square Garden on the 8th of March.

Joe Frazier was the unbeaten world heavyweight champion and Muhammad Ali was the unbeaten former world heavyweight champion. It was a unique fight, the world of sport demanded it – the boxing world needed it.

The two boxers would make a guarantee of 2.5 million dollars each… never had a purse in the old game been anywhere near that excessive total. It was highest purse ever paid to a boxer and it was being paid to both. The promoters, however, expected to gross in excess of 40 million dollars. Boxing insiders and the business world laughed at the projected figures. This was not a normal fight: “It was the single most spectacular event in sports history,” wrote Pete Hamill, journalist and author.

The fighters had agreed terms just before New Year in late 1970. The two promoters – Jerry Parenchio and Jack Kent Cooke – had somehow found a deal from the relentless negotiations, and had come up with the incredible sums of money to make the seemingly impossible happen.

Parenchio was a Hollywood guy, a super-agent to the movie world’s most glittering stars, with Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor on his books. He had not met either of the boxers until they sat down in New York. Now that is… a shot in the dark.

Kent Cooke owned the LA Lakers and a lot of other West Coast businesses. He had met Ali.

Madison Square Garden found the necessary 500,000 to make the five-million-dollar offer a reality. This was jaw-dropping cash, make no mistake.

“It’s potentially the greatest single grosser in the history of the world. It’s like Gone with the Wind. It’s the Mona Lisa,” said Parenchio. It was a little bit special.

In the end 369 cinemas in America and Canada screened the fight live on closed-circuit. The Garden sold out – of course – with exactly 20,455 tickets sold. The celebrities came out again. Dustin Hoffman, who had been running in camp with Ali, was a late dressing room visitor. Diana Ross was there again. Burt Lancaster was part of the broadcast team and – probably most famously – Frank Sinatra was the official ring photographer for Life magazine. Old blue eyes actually had a press pass and took the Life front-cover picture. Well, that’s just one of the stories. And, believe me… it was a night of tall tales.

The build-up had been predictably fantastic: “Ali was a celebrity on the streets of the world,” wrote Robert Lipsyte in the New York Times. Ali liked Lipsyte – a lot of the press still did not like Ali.

“It goes back to the days when Clay’s posturing and preening and rancid verse and self-praise began to make total strangers yearn to see him stopped with a fistful of knuckles. Frazier is the first candidate conceded a chance to accomplish this,” wrote syndicated columnist Red Smith – Smith had been in the writing game since the late 1920s.

Ali had some real enemies – there was a lot of pressure placed on the Garden management by Veterans’ groups – men that had served in foreign wars – and the press went along merrily for the ugly ride. Ali, however, did give them some serious content to the newspaper men when he started to question Frazier’s blackness.

“Ali, in his charming and shrewd way, will paint Frazier as the standard bearer for white bigots. It is a cruel and unworthy thing he does.” Dick Young in the New York Daily News.

“It is slanderous and cruel, but Ali’s lie is still encouraged. Frazier is an honest man who is not a racial opportunist. He is black and just as proud of it as Ali.” Jimmy Cannon, syndicated columnist and Second World War veteran and correspondent.

Frazier received threats. Death threats. The police in Philadelphia were involved, treated the threats seriously – Joe Frazier, the heavyweight champion of the world had to relocate his family. This was war.

“It was cynical – an attempt to make me feel isolated – he said that 98 percent of the black people in this country are for him,” Frazier said in his autobiography in 1996. The figures were mumbo jumbo, invented, crazy…but they stuck. Ali was doing his job, selling the fight.

The press office at Madison Square Garden approved 760 members of the media and refused 500.

Once again the big fight attracted big people – masters of screen, and music, Mafia bosses, gangsters, fur-coated pimps, politicians, celebrities from all of the legal and illegal trades – it was a grand posse of the world’s finest, gathered for one night only in boxing’s ancient citadel to witness the Fight of the Century.

In Britain the tickets at cinemas in central London, Cardiff, Manchester and Leicester were on sale for between one pound fifty and 5.25 – the lights went down on the cinema aisles as the men walked to their destiny in New York. It is hard to imagine the feeling that night.

The night before the fight, Ali called Frazier for a chat. This actually happened. Ali was often bored before fights, sitting in his hotel room, Gene Kilroy, his friend and facilitator at his side.

“Joe Frazier, you ready?” he asked.

“I’m ready, brother,” Frazier replied.

That was it, the talking was over.

It was a great fight. Frazier put the pressure on from the first bell. Ali did keep moving. They were both hurt, both marked up. Ali had a good 9th round – Frazier a really big 11th. There was bedlam throughout. It was close going into the 15th and last round. Most people had Frazier up by a round or two as the bell to start the final round sounded. The crowd stood, clapped the pair to centre ring.

Round 15 was epic. It remains the fastest three minutes of boxing I have ever witnessed. I had to put a stopwatch on it to check and it is 180 seconds, actually I make it 179 seconds. It is breathtaking.

Ali starts with a jab and a right cross, Frazier parries the punches, moves in, forcing Ali back and then after just 27 seconds Frazier lands his left hook- arguably the greatest left hook in boxing history – and down goes Ali, his legs up in the air, his eyes wide. Wow. There are two and half minutes left. How can Ali survive… can he even get up from the knockdown?

The referee, Arthur Mercante, sends Frazier to a neutral corner and turns round to start his count… and Ali is up!

“I never had time to pick up the count – Ali was up in three seconds,” said Mercante.

There is a standing eight count and it lasts exactly eight seconds … and then they continue fighting. Ali looks groggy. Frazier lands the exact same shot, a left hook…but, Ali is able to just lean back a fraction and take some of the power away. Ali holds, Frazier mercilessly hits away at the body. At the sixty second mark – there are still two minutes left – Frazier lands with a brutal right cross, Ali’s legs dip. Ali moves, flicks out a jab. Then at the ninety second mark …Frazier lands with another crunching left hook and Ali’s head swivels violently to the side, but he stays up. It is relentless. In the last minute, Ali makes Frazier miss and counters again and again. It is a remarkable recovery and then the bell ends the drama. The Fight of the Century is over.

“I don’t remember going down – only being down.” Muhammad Ali

“I promised him the ring would get smaller and I would get bigger.” Joe Frazier.

“Joe stayed on me, always on my chest; from out of nowhere he’d throw the hook.” Muhammad Ali.

The two judges and Mercante, who was the third judge in the fight, delivered their scores: Frazier 9-6, Frazier 11-4 and Frazier 8-6 with one even – the final score, the closest score was from Mercante.

“He ain’t the greatest. He’s been kiddin’ himself and the world all these years. I shut his big mouth,” Frazier insisted that night – the taunting was over…well, that’s what he believed.

“Ali was fooling, more than fighting. He showed the world he could take a punch,” said Angelo Dundee, Ali’s trainer. Dundee wanted Ali to move more, jab more. A plan is fine, sensible, but a fifteen-round fight can change a man, change any plan. And, as Dundee admitted, Ali “does what he likes.” Ali needed to rest, sit on the ropes to get through the gruelling fifteen rounds.

Eddie Futch, working with Yank Durham in Frazier’s corner, had repeatedly told Frazier to work the body each time Ali went back to the ropes – Frazier always obeyed orders.

“I never wanted to lose, never thought I would, but the thing that matters is how you lose. I’m not crying – my friends should not cry,” said Ali. He praised Frazier.

There was one jubilant group – the older American boxing writers, veterans and ancient columnists, a cartel of open hate.

Red Smith was ecstatic: “If they fought a dozen times, Joe Frazier would whip Muhammad Ali a dozen times; and it would get easier as it went along.” It never did, Red was wrong: They met twice more in the next four years and it got considerably harder for Frazier.

Hughie McIlvanney, the finest sports writer of his generation in Britain and a massive Ali fan, observed the lop-sided hate up close:

“They wanted a crucifixion, but if they think that is what they got they are bad judges of the genre: The big man came out bigger than he went in.”

The aftermath was as dramatic as the fight. Yank Durham went in to Ali’s dressing room to congratulate him – there was a joke about a rematch and the pair splitting six-million dollars. It was false gaiety, everybody was worn out. Frazier was actually thinking of retiring, and Durham backed the idea.

The right side of Ali’s face was swollen, grotesque. Ali was totally exhausted. “We dressed him like a drunk,” said Ali’s fight doctor, Ferdie Pacheco. Ali was taken to hospital for an x-ray on the jaw. It was not broken, just swollen. The x-rays were then stolen… and they are still missing.

Frazier went back to his hotel room, but he as was hurting all over, asking for some type of relief from the pain:

“I couldn’t urinate. I couldn’t stand up. I couldn’t eat or drink. My eyes were puffed and sensitive to light. My body had shut down from exhaustion.”

Frazier was transferred to St. Luke’s hospital in Philadelphia. His recovery was slow. He stayed, by his own admission, “several weeks” in hospital to recover. Frazier took the rest of the year off –he had made history, won the Fight of the Century and beaten Ali. And it had cost him.

“There would never be another night like it in my life,” said Frazier. He was right. He would not fight again until January of the following year. Frazier was unbeaten in 27 contests, just 27 years of age. The fight game could take a dreadful toll on committed men.

Ali was back in the ring a few months later and would fight three more times and with every fight, and in every round he was improving. His first fight after Frazier was a strange one. He met his old friend and one-time amateur opponent from Louisville, Jimmy Ellis.

It gets odder. Angelo Dundee was in Ellis’s corner! Angelo managed Ellis, trained Ali – that meant he got a third of Ellis’s purse. Angelo cleared it with Ali and the fight took place in front of 31,947 people at the Astrodome in Houston in June.

Ali had Bundini Brown and a veteran called Harry Wiley in his corner. It was a 12 round fight for the vacant NABF heavyweight title. Ellis was stopped in round 12 with just 50 seconds left on the clock. Ali had not even tried to carry his friend in those final seconds. When Ali had been in boxing exile, Ellis had paid him to be a sparring partner, a few hundred dollars to help with the bills. Ali was ruthless.

Bundini – the man who invented “Float like a Butterfly, sting like a Bee” – was often a divisive man in the corner. He had several run-ins with Dundee over the years. Bundini had been suspended by the New York commission after the Frazier fight because he had thrown water at Ali when he was knocked over in the last round. He was Ali’s man, make no mistake, but on occasion he would even upset his boss.

In November, Ali met Buster Mathis. Now Mathis was a man mountain. Tough. Ali dropped him twice in the 11th and twice in the 12th, but he let Buster survive… and Buster was swaying, finished and waiting to be knocked out. In Ali’s corner, Dundee was screaming: “Take him out, damn it, Ali.” The press were critical of Ali for not finishing Buster Mathis. Ali was not moved by criticism: “How can I go to sleep at night, knowing I have killed a man?”

On Boxing Day – December 26th – Ali was in Switzerland to fight German Jürgen Blin. Ali won in the seventh and went on a little trip to the Middle East. He sat with President Gaddafi in Libya, telling stories. Gaddafi reminded Ali that they had met – it was London, Highbury Stadium after Ali beat Henry Cooper in 1966. “I came to your dressing room for an autograph,” Gaddafi said. Ali remembered. It is hard to invent this stuff. At the presidential palace in Tripoli, Ali also met President Idi Amin. They chatted, the Ugandan despot had been an amateur boxer. Crazy times.

Gene Kilroy always talked about kings, queens, presidents, rulers, bums, taxi drivers… Ali met them all, treated them all the same.

There was one other fight that Ali came close to having in 1971 – I thought this was nothing more than a joke, but it was very, very real in the end. Bob Arum – a promoter then and still a promoter four decades later – signed basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain to fight Ali. It was done and agreed. Wilt was in special training, working with Cus D’Amato, manager and trainer of Sixties heavyweight world champion Floyd Patterson and soon to shape, build and create future champion, Mike Tyson. Big Wilt – he was seven foot two inches tall and weighed nearly twenty stone – fancied the job.

However, at a press conference to announce the fight – it was in April – Chamberlain arrived and Ali hollered: “Timber”. Big Wilt was finished, he turned, he left the room and the fight was off.

In January of the year Ali and Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson had all gathered in Las Vegas with 700 other mourners for the funeral of former heavyweight world champion, Sonny Liston. His wife, Geraldine, had found him dead in their apartment a few days earlier. Suicide, murder, mistake, natural causes – the debate continues.

The old and new were lining up in a heavyweight business transformed by Ali’s return: Patterson was still punching, Cleveland Big Cat Williams was in his 21st year as a pro, Oscar Bonavena, Jimmy Ellis, George Chuvalo, Jerry Quarry – all still fighting, all dreaming of one more chance. It was a time for heavyweight dreamers.

In Britain, Henry Cooper had his last fight, his 55th fight of a career that started in 1954, when Joe Bugner – who was still only 21 – beat him in front of 10,000 at Wembley Arena over 15 torrid rounds. It was a tight decision and Bugner received a lot of abuse. “What did I do wrong, I was just a young fighter doing my job,” Bugner told me in 2007 when I got him and Cooper together – it was the first time they had been together to talk about their fight. Cooper was still quite angry, Bugner still bemused by the abuse.

There were wins for Ken Norton, Earnie Shavers and Ron Lyle made his debut and stopped nine of his eleven victims: The future was looking very good.

However, there was one man out in front, fearsome, huge and already the number two ranked contender, second only to Ali: George Foreman was 22 in 1971 and finished the year –he had seven wins and seven knockouts – with a record of 32 unbeaten. The week after the Fight of the Century, with Frazier recovering in hospital, the Boxing News in Britain ran a font cover. There was a cut out – dreadful bit of cropping to tell the truth – of Foreman’s face, a malevolent look, a nasty glare and the headline: The Face that Haunts the Champ. The Frazier and Foreman fight was still nearly two years away.

The heavyweight championship had some fantastic nights to come.

The extraordinary year ended. Ali and Frazier would do it all again in two more fights. Foreman would get his chance, so would Bugner, Shavers, Lyle and Norton. Champions, great fighters and men that would never be forgotten – the decade was two years old and already iconic.

By November, Frazier had recovered and agreed a defence of his heavyweight championship in January 1972. The big guns were ready to get back in the ring.

Arthur Mercante, the referee of the Fight of the Century, had a great line about Ali – Mercante refereed a few of his fights: “If you could move with Ali, you had the best seat in the house.” Not everybody could be that close, but everybody wanted to be part of the heavyweight boxing revolution.

They were very special days and Ali, Frazier and Foreman had some serious business left.