Decision rooted in humanity, family ended one of boxing’s greatest fights

OPINION:

The legacy of the rivalry between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier remains unrivaled.

When the debate rages over the greatest heavyweight championship bout of all time, it is a heavyweight matchup between their first and third fights, with an ugly non-title match in between.

Their first fight — March 8, 1971, at Madison Square Garden — already had its place in history before either fighter stepped in the ring.

Frazier was the undefeated reigning champion and Ali was the still-undefeated former champion who had his title stripped four years earlier for refusing his draft induction into the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, claiming conscientious objector status.

The fight divided the nation, and it was a star-studded crowd at the Garden that night, with actor Burt Lancaster doing the color analysis for the closed-circuit broadcast and singer Frank Sinatra taking pictures for Life magazine. The fight lived up to the hype, and Frazier won a 15-round decision.

Their third fight — 50 years ago, on Oct. 1, 1975, in the Philippines, known as the “Thrilla in Manila” — did not come close to matching the pre-fight frenzy that their first match did.

Ali was the champion then, after his dramatic upset victory a year earlier over George Foreman, who took the belt from Frazier in his two-round knockout in 1973. Frazier was considered on the downside of his career. It’s one of the reasons Ali took the fight — his camp believed it would be a relatively easy payday.

It turned out to be anything but. Ali would later say it was “the closest to death” he had ever been.

This time, the fight, and not the drama surrounding it, made it historic. And the most dramatic moment came when a 5-foot-6, 150-pound 64-year-old man who once sparred with the great Joe Louis declared the fight — a fight that has been said to have been for the “championship of each other” — was over.

Eddie Futch was the trainer of champions — 18 of them over his career, from Frazier to Larry Holmes to Riddick Bowe. He is considered by many to be the greatest trainer in the history of the sport.

Futch was the architect of Frazier’s first win over Ali, devising a strategy for his fighter to crouch lower than normal to avoid Ali’s right uppercut. And he directed Frazier’s strategy in Manila that stunned the champion, as Frazier dominated the fight going into the last five rounds of their 15-round bout — so much so that Futch believed Ali was ready to quit, he told me in an interview.

“At the end of the 10th round, Ali was ready to come out,” Futch said. “Angelo Dundee [Ali’s trainer] kept him in there. I thought Frazier was ahead after the 10th round, but in the 11th was when Ali came on, and that’s when the beginning of the swelling started around his [Frazier’s] eyes.

“In the 12th round, it became more pronounced, the swelling,” he said. “Joe was having trouble seeing out of the left eye. I had to move him back from the target about six inches and have him stand up more so he could see. The swelling was over the top, and he had to look up. He really couldn’t see as well.

“Ali knew … that there was something wrong, that he wasn’t staying down low,” Futch said. “That’s when he [Ali] started firing with the right hand. He hit Joe with one right hand that knocked his mouthpiece six rows back into the crowd.

“In the 13th round, a bad round for Joe, I said, ’let’s give it one more shot, maybe this guy will ease up and get hit by exhaustion,’” Futch said. “By this time, Joe was not seeing the right hand at all. He was just getting hit flush by it. This is now the 14th round of a hard fight in a hot climate, a very hot night, and it was 4 a.m. in Manila.

Ali did collapse in his corner after Futch told Frazier at the end of the 14th round, over his fighter’s objections, “The fight’s over, Joe.”

But the fight never really ended for either fighter until the day each died.

They carried the scars of Manila until the end — Frazier died in 2011 and Ali five years later. Futch lived with his decision — the only one he believed he could have made — until he died at 90 in 2001.

“Joe Frazier had a very lovely family,” Futch said. “I saw how much time, how much of himself he put into his family. He and his kids were very close. I just can’t see myself letting this man possibly wind up a vegetable or be injured fatally. Not when he had so much to live for.”

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