Forty years ago Tuesday, the nation and much of the world was fixated on a boxing match that was probably the greatest sporting event of its time.
That’s hard to believe today — almost mythical actually, given how boxing has fallen off the sports landscape.
But make no mistake about it, the showdown between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali on March 8, 1971 at Madison Square Garden in New York was an event that was incapable of being over hyped.
Burt Lancaster was the analyst on the closed-circuit telecast. Frank Sinatra, the chairman of the board, was the photographer covering the fight for Life Magazine.
The two undefeated fighters would split a record $5 million purse, put up by a familiar name to Washington Redskins fans — Jack Kent Cooke. It was an event for the times, when the nation was still in turmoil following the turbulent 1960s and the divide over race and the Vietnam War.
Ali was the most polarizing sports figure of that era because of the politics of the country and the politics of the fighter. He became a symbol of the changing times when, upon beating Sonny Liston for the heavyweight championship in 1964, he declared he was changing his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali after joining the Nation of Islam.
Ali became the symbol for protests against the Vietnam War. In 1967, he refused to enter the military after being drafted because of his religious beliefs against war. He was arrested and found guilty of evading the draft, stripped of his championship and did not fight again for more than three years while he appealed — ultimately successfully — his conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court.
While Ali was out of boxing, Frazier became the dominant heavyweight of the division. And even that was political. He refused to take part in a tournament for a successor to Ali’s belt and mapped his own route, which included winning a fractured version of the title. He unified it in 1970 to become the undisputed, and undefeated, heavyweight champion.
In the remarkable lead up to their first fight, Ali became the symbol of those who opposed the war and fought for civil rights, while Frazier became the symbol of the ruling class — even though Frazier, the son of a South Carolina sharecropper, had a far more difficult life than Ali, the son of a middle-class Louisville sign painter.
Frazier would win the fight in a unanimous decision with his machine-like pressing style, landing a dramatic left hook in the 15th round that sent Ali crashing to the canvas. They would meet twice again over their careers — in a lackluster second bout that Ali won and then their epic third fight, the “Thrilla in Manila” in 1975 that Ali won when Eddie Futch, Frazier’s trainer, would not let his fighter come out for the 15th round.
Ali has become one of the most celebrated and beloved athletes in the world, though he has been silenced and limited by Parkinson’s disease — believed to be related to the beatings he took during his boxing career.
But that celebration would not be the same without Frazier, whose epic battles helped change the legacy of Ali from outcast to icon.
Examiner columnist Thom Loverro is the co-host of “The Sports Fix” from noon to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on ESPN980 and espn980.com. Contact him at [email protected].
