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March 8 1971
New York
Of all the fighters Muhammad Ali has faced during his professional career, Joe Frazier has doubtlessly been his hardest rival. These two men fought three dramatic and brutal battles and they both gave everything every time.
Their first meeting in the ring took place on March 8, 1971 at Madison Square Garden. Ali had just absolved two fights after his three-and-a-half year exile. Frazier - undefeated like Ali - had been holding the title since 1970.
Back in August 1970, Ali - still banned from boxing - had arranged an interview with Joe during a car trip from Philadelphia to New York. He wanted to collect material for his autobiography since he didn't know if he would ever be allowed to fight again. Soon after this meeting they almost dueled in a Philadelphia park for promotional purpose. Frazier drew back in the last minute.
When Ali finally was granted a license, Frazier was supposed to be Ali's first opponent but the champion's camp declined.
Finally, in December 1970, they were willing and a contract was signed. Ali and Frazier were guaranteed 2.5 million dollars, an incredibly high sum at that time. The boxers had preferred this offer to another that had looked worse at first sight: 1.25 million against 35 % of the gross fight income. What they did not know was that, if they had taken the other offer, each fighter would have made nine instead of two-and-a-half million dollars.
The bout got the attribute \"fight of the century\". For the first time in the history of the heavyweight division, two undefeated boxers faced each other in a title bout. Before the fight, Ali provoked Frazier, for example by calling him dumb and ignorant. He also mocked him because Frazier, who had once worked in a slaughterhouse, was not as eloquent as himself. The champion seemed not impressed or intimidated by these verbal attacks in opposite to Sonny Liston, for example.
Plus, during the fight, Ali could not discourage Frazier with his \"that-didn't-hurt\"-stuff. Frazier ducked under Ali's jabs, kept grinning and showed no impact on Ali's blows. He gave Ali a sample of his own medicine.
After losing the early rounds, Frazier took the control and hit Ali as hard as no one else had hit him before. But he had to take a huge amount of blows himself.
In round eleven he almost knocked Ali out. Ali staggered back into the ropes and was rescued by the bell.
In the last round Ali was knocked down by a left hook to the chin - it was one of three knockdowns in Ali's entire career. He stood up immediately and resumed the fight although probably almost every other boxer would have stayed on the canvas.
Ali described the knockdown: \"I can't remember going down. Just being on the canvas, looking up, hearing the count and knowing that I had nothing to do down there.\"
Frazier, whose face was noticeably ragged after the fight, won an unanimous decision and provided for Ali's first professional loss. For the first time, Ali had lost his title in the ring and had to admit that Frazier had been too strong that night and that he was not yet in the shape he had been before his exile. The fight had a visible impact on the health of the two men. Both Ali and Frazier had to be x-rayed at hospital where some of Ali's ribs showed contusions as a result of Frazier's punches to the belly.
After this stunning defeat, Ali could book a very important victory. On June 28, 1971, his conviction of refusing to be inducted into the army was reversed and he got his passport and license back. The belt he had been stripped of could of course not be returned to him by the judges. Ali had to win it back on his own.
In the following 18 months, Ali won ten fights in a row with just one goal in mind: a rematch against Joe Frazier. His opponents were his friend Jimmy Ellis, Buster Mathis and the German Jurgen Blin in 1971, Mac Foster, again George Chuvalo and Jerry Quarry, Al Lewis, Floyd Patterson and Bob Foster one year later, and in 1973 Joe Bugner in Las Vegas.
Ali did not get more than $ 500,000 for any of these bouts. His next opponent was to be Ken Norton, an absolute no-name. Ali didn't take the fight too seriously and trained just three weeks.
This arrogance led to Norton breaking Ali's jaw in the second round and winning the fight on points. It was incredible that Ali continued for ten rounds with a broken jaw but in the end it proved to be a fruitless effort. Ali was ahead by one point on the scorecards before the last round, but Norton won the last round and the fight.
After this defeat that had been even more painful than the one against Frazier, Ali was down on the floor and not many people thought that he could ever rise again.
Muhammad Ali, however, did not think about quitting. After his jaw was healed, he resumed training and prepared for the rematch against Ken Norton.
The rematch against Ken Norton took place on September 10, 1973 in Los Angeles. Ali had trained longer and harder for this fight than for their first encounter. Nevertheless, it was a very close bout again. After round eleven the judges saw it even and the winner of the last round was to be the overall winner. This time, Ali won and took revenge successfully.
After an unimportant victory against Rudi Lubbers in Jakarta, Ali faced his steady rival Joe Frazier the second time.
Frazier, however, wasn't champ anymore. He had been dethroned in Jamaica in 1973 by a young, unknown fighter who had knocked the champion down six times in two rounds before the referee stopped the bout.
The name of the newcomer: George Foreman who proved his immense strength one year later by also knocking out Ken Norton in two.
It was not about more than Ali's honor that he wanted to restore when he fought Frazier in 1974. Before their first fight both boxers - especially Ali - tried to make each other nervous in the weeks leading to the fight. Five days before the bout, the situation escalated when an appearance at a TV show almost turned into disaster. Ali had called Frazier ignorant after had made a remark about Ali having to check into hospital after the first fight, and they were not far from getting it on in the studio. The bout itself was not as brutal as the first one and Ali won an unanimous decision.
A fight Ali versus Foreman was unavoidable. It was to be held in Zaire, a country in the \"heart of darkness\", in central Africa. Zaire had been a Belgian colony for long, and was trying to get international attention, now that it was freed. Zaire's dictator Mobutu provided for five million dollars for each fighter which was twice as much Ali and Frazier had gotten for their first fight.
While Ali was feeling well in the land of his ancestors and collected sympathies from the Africans whenever he could, Foreman couldn't show his disrespect more obviously. He lived in the Kinshasa Inter-Continental and always had German shepherd police dogs around to prevent strangers from coming closer. At press conferences, Ali was funny, witty and smart in opposite to the mute Foreman.
When the two heavyweights entered the ring on October 30, out of sixty thousand African throats came the slogan \"Ali, boma ye!\", meaning \"Ali, kill him!\". Foreman held little to no sympathies.
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