The Fight of the Century
By Chris Gibbons – Excerpt from his book, Soldiers, Space, and Stories of Life. Originally published in the Philadelphia Daily News, March 13, 2006
The year was 1971, and the priest stood at the front of the church and looked out among the elementary school students of Philadelphia’s Immaculate Heart of Mary School. He had just read a story from the New Testament which recounted a miracle Jesus had performed, and he wanted to engage the students during his homily by asking a question of them. “Who was the most powerful man who ever lived?” he asked the students. A hand immediately shot up among the first-grade students. The delighted priest, surprised that such a young child was confident enough to answer, called on the young boy, and he stood up. I looked over and saw that it was my little brother Pat. “Tell us young man,” the priest proudly intoned. Pat confidently replied, “Joe Frazier!”
That story is now legendary in my family, and we always have a good laugh when we remember it. However, those who know my family well certainly understand my brother’s response. Just a few years prior to that day, my uncle’s friend had given me and my five brothers each a photo of a promising young Philadelphia heavyweight standing in a classic boxer’s pose. Handwritten on the photos were the words: “Keep on smokin’. Joe Frazier.” All of us were in heaven, and our lifelong love of boxing was born that day. We all believed that Smokin’ Joe had personally written those words especially for us, and the heroic status he achieved in our home was unmatched by any other athlete. We closely followed his career, and when he defeated Jimmy Ellis to win the title, we celebrated as if he was an older brother. However, we also all knew that there was one fighter who Joe had to defeat before he was universally recognized as the true heavyweight champion.
March 8, 2021, marks the 50th anniversary of what many regard as the greatest fight in the history of boxing. At Madison Square Garden, for the first time in heavyweight history, an undefeated champion, Joe Frazier, would face an undefeated former champion, Muhammad Ali. It was billed as “The Fight of the Century,” and legendary boxing announcer Don Dunphy called it the greatest night in the history of sports. Luminaries from the entertainment, sports, and political worlds were seated at ringside. Ali and Frazier received record purses of $2.5 million each, the Garden was sold out a full month in advance, and an estimated 300 million watched it on closed circuit television.
The pre-fight buildup was racially charged as Ali shamefully referred to Joe as an “Uncle Tom” and the “white man’s champion.” These statements were particularly painful to Frazier who was raised as the dirt-poor son of a South Carolina sharecropper. If anyone embodied the impoverished, discriminatory experience of many African Americans of that era, it was Frazier.
On the night of the fight, as they stood in the center of the ring while receiving the referee’s instructions, Frazier and Ali continued their bitter war of words that had started nearly two years before. Ali said, “Don’t you know that I’m God and can’t be beat?” Joe replied, “Well, God’s gonna get his butt kicked tonight!”
Fight of the Century
The fight itself was nothing short of spectacular. Joe and his trainer, Yank Durham, knew that they had to avoid Ali’s piston-like jabs and punishing right hand crosses in order to get inside and land Frazier’s vaunted left hooks to the head and body. They devised a plan to neutralize Ali’s speed and reach advantage, but Joe would have to take two in order to land one.
Joe came off his stool for round one furiously bobbing his head to avoid the jab. Surprisingly, Ali, who had defeated big punchers like Sonny Liston, Jerry Quarry, and Ernie Terrell, was not intimidated by Frazier’s power, and tried to end it early by standing flatfooted and exchanging with Frazier. Joe landed a vicious left hook to the head, and Ali quickly realized that he would have to capitalize on his speed advantage by sticking and moving. The pattern for the remainder of the fight had been set with Ali dancing and landing straight right hands and short hooks behind the best jab ever seen in the heavyweight division, and Joe pursuing in his familiar crouched stance while slipping as many punches as he could in order to get inside. Joe continually rocked Ali with his left hook, but he was absorbing a lot of punishment himself.
As the contest wore on, the battered faces of both fighters revealed the ferocity of the fight, with Frazier’s face a bruised and lumpy mess and Ali’s right jaw swollen like a balloon. It became a dramatic war of attrition. Frazier was staggered by Ali in the ninth round, and Ali was nearly out on his feet in the 11th. As the fight moved into the 15th and final round, Frazier was ahead on all scorecards, and he punctuated his victory by landing a picture perfect left hook that floored the former champion. Astonishingly, Ali got off the canvas and finished the fight on his feet. Frazier was awarded a unanimous decision victory.
Throughout the night, television shows were periodically interrupted with news of the fight, and our house erupted in joy when we heard the news of Joe’s victory. The fight was shown only on closed circuit broadcasts at select locations, and my brother Mike was fortunate enough to see a live broadcast. He captivated us for hours when he returned and gave a blow-by-blow description of the fight. He was better than Howard Cosell.
Unfortunately, Joe passed away in 2011. I’ve often wondered if he ever realized that so many Philadelphians regarded him as their hero, especially six white kids from Philly’s Roxborough neighborhood who never understood Ali’s racial taunts, and didn’t care if Joe was black, white, green, or blue. He was from Philly, and he signed those photos. That’s all that mattered to us.
I’ve often watched videos of that fight over the years, and I don’t think anyone could have beaten Joe Frazier that night. Well, maybe Jesus could have…maybe.
It’s difficult to convey to people who didn’t grow up in the Philadelphia area during the 1970’s the heroic and iconic status that Joe Frazier had in the Delaware Valley. When the news of his stunning loss to George Foreman in 1973 reached our home, my brothers and I were in tears. My brother Pat was so distraught that my mother kept him home from school the following day! But, that incredible night in 1971 when he defeated Ali in the “Fight of the Century” is still indelibly burned within my memory, which is remarkable when you consider that I didn’t actually see the fight until a year later when it was finally broadcast on TV by ABC Sports. Until that day I had relied upon the descriptions provided to me by my brother Mike, and the brilliant sportswriters of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Bulletin, and the Philadelphia Daily News. I recently read a clipping from the issue of the Daily News on the day after the fight. Sportswriter Stan Hochman’s prose from his article is pure gold as he poetically described the epic left hook from Frazier that floored Ali in the 15th round: “It came whistling out of Beaufort like the Suncoast Limited, screeching on invisible tracks, sending sparks into the night. Only the wail of the whistle was missing. And it crushed into Ali’s handsome head just like the locomotive it resembled.”
More ‘stories of life’, as well as the harrowing ordeals of America’s war veterans and the wonders of space exploration, can be found in the new book by Philadelphia writer, Chris Gibbons: “Soldiers, Space, and Stories of Life”. Amazon.com link is below: