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HBO Captures A Classic:
The “Thrilla in Manila”
of TheColumnists.com
The annals of sports documentaries are enriched by “Thrilla in Manila” HBO’s chronicle of the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier rivalry, ending with their brutal third fight in Manila Oct. 1, 1975. The film continues on HBO outlets this week.
It is noteworthy for its poignant portrayal of Frazier. Ali comes off less sympathetically than he has in most accounts since he emerged as a hero for his opposition to the Vietnam war and his brilliance as a ring warrior.
“This,” says narrator Liev Schreiber, “is the story of the other man in Manila, a man unable to let go of the bitterest and most intense rivalry ever seen in sports.”
A sadness about Frazier underscores the film. He is seen living in an apartment above his gym in a poor section of Philadelphia, talking and mumbling, still believing he had won the last fight between them. The film underscores his mindset by showing him in his gym, wearing his boxing robe, still shadow boxing, still hitting a punching bag. (If HBO shows the DVD commercially, it might do well to add subtitles because it is occasionally difficult to make out what Frazier is saying.)
Tom Hauser, Ali’s biographer, who admires both men, says, “Ali is sold an 80 per cent interest in the use of his name and likeness for commercial purposes and earns $50 million. Joe is living in a room above his gym in Philadelphia.” He said of the fight won by Ali when Frazier’s corner wouldn’t let him come out for the 15th round, “They were fighting not only for the heavyweight championship of the world but for the heavyweight championship of each other.”
There is one memorable vignette after another. Among them:
* The famous comment by Ali about the fight: “That’s the closest thing you will ever to see to death.”
* Butch Lewis, one of Frazier’s men, tells about a time when Ali and Frazier were still friends, when Ali was in financial straits, and Lewis in a limousine in New York passed some money from Frazier to Ali. Both of them called the other man “champ,” he said.
* When an English reporter suggested that Manila was an unusual place to hold such a big fight, the irascible Ferdie Pacheco, Ali’s fight doctor, chastised him. “Are you in boxing at all or do you come from covering Wall Street or something.” And he explained that dictators paid for fights like these to get their people’s minds off revolutions and the like. Ali, being Ali, and being the champion, was reportedly paid $6 million and Frazier half that for this fight.
*Though Frazier had helped him in his time of need when his title was stripped from him, Ali reverted to form before their first fight in 1971 and we see one instance after another of Ali insulting, abusing, demeaning Frazier. He calls him an Uncle Tom, he ridicules his intelligence. He invades his training sessions and succeeds in getting under Frazier’s skin.
*
I am ambivalent about director John Dower’s emphasis on
Ali likening Frazier to a gorilla. Given Ali’s puckish sense
of rhyme and his almost compulsive need to put down an opponent
before a fight (as he surely did with Sonny Liston and Floyd
Patterson) it was inevitable he would come up with a handy rhyme
for this fight. We see him saying:
“It will be a thriller and a killer and a chiller when
I get the gorilla in Manila.”
Of course there is no excuse for one black man to call another an Uncle Tom and to liken the other to a gorilla--complete with life-sized gorilla doll-- but there always was the impish, funning instinct in Ali.
* There is an irrepressible Ali talking about appearing at a Ku Klux Klan rally because they and he, as a Muslim, had the common purpose of keeping the races separate. He says that at one point the Kluxers came up to “the champ” with a rope for a mock lynching, but that it was just joke between them.
* Abdul Rahaman, who claims to be the man who converted Ali to the Nation of Islam, says he fed Ali the line about not wanting to fight the Vietnamese because they had never done anything to black people.
* The carnival that was the scene at Manila included Ali leaving his wife home, bringing his mistress to the fight, and then his wife coming to Manila to berate him.
* The fight clips are memorable, showing Ali winning the early rounds, Frazier taking the middle rounds and then Ali rallying to overcome Frazier in the later rounds when Frazier can hardly see. The brutality is remarked upon again and again by eyewitness reporters.
* Pacheco reveals that Ali told him after the 10th round, “I think this is what dying is like.”
*The 14th round is called the most brutal of the 41 rounds they fought over three fights. Frazier says, “I was dead but I was fighting on instinct.”
* Frazier’s trainer Eddie Futch wouldn’t allow his battered, almost blind warrior to come out for the 15th round, (“I had seen eight men die in the ring,” he said later). Frazier, when asked in the film, “Would you have been willing to risk your life for that final round,” answers, “Yes.” Ali in his corner was telling his people to cut his gloves off.
* Frazier would curse his corner men for not allowing him to fight on. And at the end of the documentary, watching the fight, he is saying, “I clearly won the fight; the proof is in the pudding.”
* A postscript has Ali saying many years later, “I said a lot of things in the heat of the moment I shouldn’t have said. Called him names I shouldn’t have called him. I apologize for that. I am sorry. It was meant to promote the fight.”
* After an earlier apology, Frazier had said, “Why didn’t he say it to me? He said all those nasty things. Let him come to me.”
It is sad to see that Frazier won’t
let the bitterness go. In an allusion to Ali’s Parkinson’s
affliction, Frazier says, “God marks it down. He is paying
the price.”
©2009 by Stan Isaacs.
The Stan Isaacs caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. This
column first posted April 20, 2009.
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