Fifty years ago, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier competed in what turned out to be one of the most brutal fights in the history of boxing.
The pair met in the ring for “Thrilla in Manilla,” the third bout of their epic trilogy, to settle the intense rivalry at last and determine the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.
The historic rubber match took place on Oct. 1, 1975, in front of a crowd of 28,000 at the Philippine Coliseum in Quezon City, Philippines, and viewed on television by an estimated one billion people around the world.
Ali reigned victorious by technical knockout (TKO) in the 14th round after Frazier lost sight in his left eye. The fight was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated's Oct. 13, 1975, issue.
Ali and Frazier first entered the ring in 1971 at Madison Square Garden for “The Fight of the Century,” the first time in history two unbeaten boxers competed for the heavyweight title. Frazier defeated Ali by unanimous decision to retain the crown, which Frazier won after it was stripped from Ali, and thus vacated, in 1967 following Ali’s refusal to serve in the Army during the Vietnam War.
Madison Square Garden staged a non-title rematch for Ali and Frazier in 1974 titled “Super Fight II”. Ali avenged his former loss in 12 rounds, winning by unanimous decision.
Muhammad Ali Brings the Prefight Drama
Ali taunted Frazier unsparingly leading up to the Philippines fight, attempting to enrage his opponent.
On Sept. 26, less than a week before the bout, Ali openly mocked Frazier while training at the Folk Arts Theater in Manila. Ali played a recording of Frazier’s newly released song, “First Round Knockout,” over the public address system, as if to insinuate the irony certain to come when Ali knocked out Frazier.
“Most people, including me, thought Ali was going to win easily because Frazier had aged more than Ali had,” says photographer Neil Leifer, who covered the fight for Sports Illustrated. “Frazier appeared to be beyond his best years. Most journalists did not expect a great match, just a pretty one-sided Ali victory.”
The irony Ali sought almost did materialize. After a sequence of brutal punches to the head, Ali was confident Frazier was finished in the first round, stating over and over to himself, “What kind of man can take all those punches to the head?” Frazier didn’t relent though, forcing another 13 rounds.
Frazier is Dubbed 'Manila Gorilla' Ahead of Fight
Ali’s endless public vilifications of Frazier included words such as ugly and ignorant, but nothing popularized more than "The Gorilla".
“Up to [the fight], [Ali’s] attitude had been almost frivolous,” Mark Kram wrote in his poetic account of “Thrilla in Manila”’ in SI’s Oct. 13, 1975, issue. “He would simply not accept Joe Frazier as a man or as a fighter, despite the bitter lesson Frazier had given him in their first savage meeting … By Ali's standards, Frazier was not pretty as a man and without semblance of style as a fighter. Frazier was an affront to beauty, to Ali’s own beauty as well as to his precious concept of how a good fighter should move.”
Ali nicknamed Frazier the “Manila Gorilla,” his team donning t-shirts with the slogan. It was a derivation of his rhythmic taunt ahead of the fight: “It’s gonna be a thrilla, and a chilla, and a killa, when I get the Gorilla in Manila,” which also came to determine the name of the fight itself.
In a July 17 news conference, Ali carried a butterfly net, a tool Frazier would allegedly need to combat Ali’s swift, butterfly-esque boxing style, and a toy gorilla, to represent Frazier himself.
“It built up the fight,” Leifer adds about Ali’s taunts. “That’s what Ali always did. It made it, ‘Boy, you shouldn’t miss this one.’ ”
The Hottest Ring in History
Frazier arrived in Manila on Sept. 13, dawning a white floral lei. The boxer was engulfed in fanfare as security navigated him to his hotel suite. Ali touched down on Sept. 15, wearing a multicolored lei and experiencing similar throngs of fans on the airport runway.
Ali completed his training at the Folk Arts Arena in Manila, while Frazier took to a quiet, mountainous region outside of the city.
The fight began at 10:45 a.m. local time on Oct. 1 to accommodate international TV audiences.
The arena was poorly air conditioned, and “the heat wrapped around the body like a heavy wet rope,” according to Kram. The lack of wind put the temperature over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and the tropical climate made for suffocating humidity. Frazier later said that it may have been as hot as 120 degrees in the ring under all the lights.
14 Rounds: Frazier Doesn’t Go Down Easy
Ali (in white trunks) came out strong in the first three rounds, buckling Frazier’s legs two or three times. It looked as if Frazier (blue trunks) would fold at any moment.
“[He] opened the fight flat-footed in the center of the ring, his hands whipping out and back like the pistons of an enormous and magnificent engine,” Kram wrote of Ali. “Much broader than he has ever been, the look of swift destruction defined by his every move, Ali seemed indestructible.”
There was an unexpected shift in momentum in the fourth round. Frazier regained composure, putting Ali on his heels.
“Ali looked like he would make it an easy fight in the first three rounds, but then Frazier started hitting him with punches that would knock anybody out,” Leifer says.
Ali fought the entire fifth round in his own corner.
“Frazier worked his body, the whack of his gloves on Ali's kidneys sounding like heavy thunder,” Kram wrote. “ ‘Get out of the goddamn corner,’ shouted Angelo Dundee, Ali's trainer. ‘Stop playin,’ squawked [Ali’s manager] Herbert Muhammad, wringing his hands and wiping the mineral water nervously from his mouth.”
Frazier pounded Ali’s jaw with two of his infamous left hooks in the sixth round, but Ali came back for a seventh, saying, “Old Joe Frazier, why I thought you were washed up.” Frazier replied, “Somebody told you all wrong, pretty boy.”
It was an even fight by the end of the 10th, with brutal assaults from both sides and both fighters completely overcome by the heat. It wasn’t until the 12th round that Ali found renewed strength beneath the exhaustion and pain.
“Ali dug deep down into whatever it is that he is about, and even his severest critics would have to admit that the man-boy had finally become a man,” Kram wrote. “He began to catch Frazier with long right hands, and blood trickled from Frazier's mouth.”
Frazier’s bloodied mouthpiece was sent flying into the press row, and his left eye swelled shut. With Frazier unable to see his opponent’s right side, Ali finished him off with nine straight right hands in the 14th round.
Frazier would have continued fighting until completely blind, but his trainer, Eddie Futch, called it quits.
"Sit down, son," Futch said, pressing his hand on Frazier's shoulder. "It's all over. No one will ever forget what you did here today."
Ali Reigns Victorious
Frazier begged Futch for a 15th round: “No, no, Eddie, you can't do that to me." But it was no use.
Ali, with his face heavily bruised, could hardly rise from the stool after being announced the winner, collapsing into the arms of his team members. He weakly raised one fist to the air, swaying side to side to keep his body upright.
“It was like death,” Ali later said. “Closest thing to dying that I know of."
The president of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, handed Ali the “President’s Trophy.”
"Ali fought a smart fight,” Futch said after the match. “He conserved his energy, turning it off when he had to. He can afford to do it because of his style. It was mainly a question of anatomy, that is all that separates these two men. Ali is now too big, and when you add those long arms, well . . . Joe has to use constant pressure, and that takes its toll on a man's body and soul."
Ali and Frazier Face the Press Post-Fight
“It was a heck of a fight,” Frazier said to the press afterwards. “It was hot. It was tough. I thought my man [Ali] fought a good fight, and I guess we will be beating each other again sometime, I hope anyway. When you see him and I, it will always be a good fight I promise.”
Added Frazier about Futch ending the fight: “I wasn’t very pleased about it, but Ed is always the boss, and he can see when things are wrong.”
It was a long time before Ali came down for interviews.
“[Frazier’s] greater than I thought he was,” Ali finally told the press. “He’s great. He fought a good fight. It was close during that last round. It could have gone either way, and it was my rally that pulled it out and the constant pounding that finally took effect.”
Ali was a different man, though, than before he stepped into the ring.
“I’m so tired,” he said. “I don’t want to do nothing. I want to rest for one week. My hips are sore. My arms are sore. My sides are sore. I am going to take a rest now … There’s a great possibility, fellas, that this might be my last fight tonight. A great possibility that you saw the last of Ali.”
Although both Ali and Frazier continued boxing until 1981, they never met again in the ring.
Ali later added, “We went to Manila as champions, Joe and me, and we came back as old men.”
A Candlelit Celebration at the Palace
Ali joined Marcos and his wife, First Lady Imelda Marcos, for a candlelit celebration at Malacañang Palace later that night. Leifer and fight promoter Don King accompanied the Marcoses around the guest of honor’s dinner table.
Ali was too weak to fill his own plate, relying on the First Lady to slowly guide him through the ornamented buffet.
“The two whispered, and then she stopped and filled his plate, and as he waited the candles threw an eerie light across the face of a man who only a few hours before had survived the ultimate inquisition of himself and his art,” Kram wrote.
As Ali sat at the table, he “never before appeared so vulnerable and fragile, so pitiably unmajestic.”
“He could barely hold his fork, and he lifted the food slowly up to his bottom lip, which had been scraped pink,” Kram added. “The skin on his face was dull and blotched, his eyes drained of that familiar childlike wonder. His right eye was a deep purple, beginning to close, a dark blind being drawn against a harsh light. He chewed his food painfully.”
Frazier remained in the bedroom of his villa, too weak and still too blind to attend the celebration.
“The scene cannot be forgotten; this good and gallant man lying there, embodying the remains of a will never before seen in a ring, a will that had carried him so far—and now surely too far,” Kram wrote of Frazier. “His eyes were only slits, his face looked as if it had been painted by Goya.”
Ali and Frazier Forever Changed
The media flooded Ali’s hotel suite the following day for more interviews.
“[Ali was] always accessible,” Leifer says, who was present in Ali’s suite the morning after the fight. “He loved the press, people who wrote great things about him and even people who wrote negative things about him because he wanted to challenge them and win them over.”
Ali wore his sunglasses inside—his face still heavily bruised—and rested a newspaper with the bolded headline “ALI WINS!” on his lap.
“It was the only time I saw him with sunglasses on after a fight,” adds Leifer, who covered Ali for most of his boxing career.
“I heard somethin' once," Ali told the media. "When somebody asked a marathon runner what goes through his mind in the last mile or two, he said that you ask yourself why am I doin’ this. You get so tired. It takes so much out of you mentally. It changes you. It makes you go a little insane. I was thinkin' that at the end. Why am I doin' this? What am I doin' in here against this beast of a man? It's so painful. I must be crazy. I always bring out the best in the man I fight, but Joe Frazier, I'll tell the world right now, brings out the best in me. I'm gonna tell ya, that's one helluva man, and God bless him."
In a nearby hotel suite, Frazier had similar praise for Ali: “Man, I hit him with punches that'd bring down the walls of a city. Lawdy, Lawdy, he's a great champion."
More Photos on SI Full Frame
This article was originally published on www.si.com as ‘Thrilla in Manila’ in Photos: The 50th Anniversary of Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier’s Historic Boxing Match.
