Perhaps you were watching on closed-circuit television in a movie theater or arena, or maybe even lucky enough to be in the World’s Most Famous Arena on that magical evening on March 8, 1971.
It’s remembered as “The Fight of the Century,” Muhammad Ali vs. Joe Frazier in perhaps the most famous boxing event in the modern history of the sport. Frazier, now 67, remembers it like it was yesterday.
“I remember all of the moments,” he told The Post. “No. 1, it was one of the greatest things that ever happened in sports. It was one of those times that something great happened in our life. You’re always going to remember that.”
Frazier returned to the Garden last night to watch the Knicks play the Jazz and earn a salute from the crowd for a fight between two undefeated champions whose performances exceeded the hype of one of the most hyped fights ever.
“Many big events turn out to be anti-climactic,” said Larry Merchant, HBO’s veteran boxing commentator. “They turn out to be just another game or another fight. This fight exceeded impossibly high expectations with its drama. That’s what makes it so indelible, singular and memorable.”
Merchant was among those in the building that night, covering the bout for the New York Post. Also at ringside was George Kalinsky, who has served as the Garden photographer for the last 44 years. It was Kalinsky who arranged for the two boxers to get together for a photo shot at Frazier’s gym in Philadelphia a few weeks before the bout.
“Ali was a great showman, giving me all those looks like they were really fighting,” Kalinsky said. “I asked Joe to make it look more real and Joe hits Ali with a left hook to the stomach. Only a wall stopped Ali from going down. He told Joe, ‘You son of a gun. You can really hit.’ Joe told him, ‘That’s the way it’s going to be the night of the fight.’ ”
The showdown had been building for the three years. Ali (31-0, 25 KOs) was in exile from boxing, having been stripped of his title for refusing induction into the Armed Forces. Frazier (26-0, 23 KOs) succeeded him as champion and later petitioned President Richard Nixon to have Ali’s boxing license reinstated.
When they finally met it was the era of the civil rights movement, the women’s movement and the Vietnam War. Having changed his religion from Christian to Muslim, Ali and his rebel persona appealed to the anti-war, anti-establishment segments, while Frazier (26-0, 23 KOs) was cast as someone with more conservative and traditional values.
“Rightly or wrongly the world was taking sides depending on where you were socially and politically,” Merchant said. “It built to an enormous crescendo. I couldn’t imagine anybody breathing who didn’t know this fight was going to happen and didn’t have a choice that was almost personal in who won.”
An electric Garden crowd added to the pageantry. Countless celebrities including Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Diana Ross, Dustin Hoffman and Burt Lancaster were in the building along with notables from the political world and the underworld.
“People wore furs, high boots and diamonds and that was just the men,” Kalinsky said.
Sinatra approached Kalinsky a few days before the fight to ask if he would teach him all he knew about photography “in five minutes.” The singer had been hired by Life Magazine to shoot the fight even though he knew little about working a camera.
“He could have winged it, but he wanted to be the best photographer that night that he could be,” said Kalinsky, whose five-minute lesson turned into a near 30-year friendship.
Frazier spends most of his time in Philadelphia these days. He’s lucid, quick to crack a joke and is talking about putting back together his old singing group: Joe Frazier and the Knockouts. Seriously.
“Everything in the old body still works,” Frazier said. “I’ve still got two legs, two hands, and two feet. I just need to do a little running.”
Meanwhile, Ali, 69, has been slowed by Parkinson’s disease, but remains active in humanitarian efforts and the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville. They haven’t spoken in “a good little while,” Frazier said, and are a long way physically from that night 40 years ago when they were two undefeated athletes in their prime, looking to determine the best boxer on the planet.
The fight began in predictable fashion with the shorter Frazier bobbing and weaving, trying to land his punishing left hook. Ali countered by peppering Frazier’s face with his hard left jabs and solid right hands. But Frazier was relentless, constantly moving forward, and willing to take two or three punches to land one.
“He was a guy that moved back,” Frazier said. “But I made him move back faster than he wanted to go. If you make people move back faster than they want to, they’re not going to remember the plan of what they’re trying to do.”
The punishment exchanged was especially brutal in the later rounds. Frazier’s battered eyes were grotesquely swollen, while Ali’s cheeks, the target of Frazier’s hooks, ballooned to the size of two softballs. But through his lens Kalinsky said: “There was beauty in the brutality.”
It was two skilled warriors giving their all. Ali went down in the 11th, but referee Arthur Mercante ruled it a slip.
“He got hit with a left hook, that’s what happened,” Frazier says to this day. The lone recorded knockdown came with 2:34 left in the 15th round when Frazier’s lunging left hook crashed into Ali’s jaw sending him to the canvas.
“If there was any question about who won the fight that knockdown was the answer to the question,” Merchant said.
Years later Ali admitted Frazier was the better man that night.
“I watched the fight over and over trying to find excuses, saying they robbed me or didn’t like me because of this or that,” he told Marv Albert during an interview. “But I watched the fight and the first fight he did win.”
The animosity Frazier carried for Ali because of the taunts he endured during their epic trilogy has been well documented. But Frazier told The Post he only wishes the best for his former rival.
“I don’t have the burning hate anymore,” he said. “I hope he lives a pleasant part of his life. We all don’t make three scores and 10. But with the little time we have left, I’d like to live it clean and live it fine and enjoy some of the things we all like to enjoy. I can’t see nothing wrong with that. I’m hoping he can do these things, too.”