Opinion

The fight of the century

‘The hour of truth has uh- rahhhvvvd!” said Muhammad Ali, with sly grin and eyes a-flicker, that way he had of putting you on and simultaneously telling you the truth. Majestic in red robe, he towered above the mob hustling him down the corridor to ring center in Madison Square Garden to meet Joe Frazier in The Fight of the Century on March 8, 1971.

So many hours of truth seemed packed into that magical evening — for the Vietnam War, race relations, notions of beauty and ugliness, religion and society, right and wrong — it was unbearable.

“Just listen to the roar of this crowd!” thundered Burt Lancaster, the play-by-play man. “The tension, and the excitement here, is monumental!” Also at ringside were Life magazine’s reporter-photographer team — Norman Mailer and Frank Sinatra.

Two undefeated champions, complete opposites, were earning an unprecedented $2.5 million each to produce one true champion. Who would prevail? Ali, the beautiful dancer and poetic defier of convention and authority, the conscientious objector to the Vietnam War who exalted the Koran above all else? Or Frazier, the grinding, unstoppable workingman who exemplified the grunting ethos and endurance of President Richard Nixon’s Silent Majority?

With the opening bell, it was instantly clear that true primacy would be established without reference to all that, in savage fashion: with fists.

Ali — fresh from his three-year exile and a grueling 15th-round knockout of Oscar Bonavena, executed 90 days earlier in the same ring — came out shooting pistons but found Frazier, relentless bobber and weaver, hard to hit.

“Muhammad Ali, crazily enough, is not trying to make use of the ring,” observed announcer Don Dunphy in that first round. “He’s standing there with Frazier, and that’s not considered healthy!”

Frazier connected with three signature left hooks, and Ali thrilled the 20,455 in attendance, and the 300 million watching via satellite TV, by shaking his head no.

Over time, though, Frazier, the plodding plumber — “I come to get the job done,” he would say of his performance — would assuredly hurt Ali. But first he would absorb obscene punishment: four or five of Ali’s head-snapping, cobra-like whips to the face for every one he landed. Two rounds in, Joe was spitting blood.

The combinations Ali unleashed! Five at a time, from all angles — whup! whup! whup! whup! WHUP!

“It’s amazing that Frazier can stand up against that battering!” cried Dunphy. “Anybody else would have been on the floor!”

In the middle rounds, Frazier took command. Here was born the rope-a-dope and the confounding sight of Ali playfully patting Frazier’s head. Joe owned the seventh, eighth and ninth, had Ali in big trouble in the Terrible 11th. Two minutes in, he scored a left hook to the face that wobbled Ali, sent him staggering across the ring, falling into the ropes: on Queer Street, the old-timers said. On autopilot, Ali ducked another left that, had it connected, would have ended it all.

The crowd was berserk.

“I underestimated Frazier,” Ali would later say. “I clowned too much. I didn’t train like I should. . . . My mind told me what to do, but my body couldn’t do it.”

Amazingly, Ali spent rounds 12, 13 and 14 dancing, throwing pistons, scoring heavily, closing Frazier’s eyes. Then, 30 seconds into Round 15, arrived the hour of truth: a boomeranging left to the jaw by Frazier — the 30th he had landed — that felled Ali and wrote, to Hunter S. Thompson’s eye, “a proper end to the ’60s.”

Ali was up in an instant, but he knew he’d lost The Fight of the Century, a verdict the judges unanimously affirmed. A new real ity! Truth upended! The uglier, less interesting man had triumphed — and therein proved himself as beautiful and profound as Ali, mere mortal.

Their battle was just beginning, of course, and twice more Ali and Frazier, those two lonely star voyagers, would catapult themselves into fantastical explorations of the outer reaches of pain and endurance.

For the moment, however, one devastating left, thrown 40 years ago, encapsulated everything and changed the world.

“That,” Frazier would later say, “was probably just an act of God.”

James Rosen is Washington correspondent for Fox News.