By Ronnie Nathanielsz
TOP Rank promoter Bob Arum, who played a major role in the staging of the “Thrilla in Manila” between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier at the Araneta Coliseum on Oct. 1, 1975, blasted the producers of the fight's documentary that was recently telecast by HBO.
In an interview with this reporter, who was the liaison officer assigned to Ali and was even interviewed for the documentary, along with former First Lady Imelda Romualdez Marcos, Arum blasted the producers, saying: “It was the worst piece of journalism that I have seen.”
He said the documentary demeaned Ali, who was his friend.
“It was horrible,” said Arum, who referred to the segment, where Ali showed up for a courtesy call on President and Mrs. Marcos at the Malacañan Palace with Veronica Porsche. “They said Ali brought his mistress.”
Arum pointed out that three months later, Ali married Porsche. “She is the mother of Leila Ali and a couple of his other children, but they never said that.”
He also took exception to the idea that Ali, in the 15th round would have quit if Frazier got off his stool. “Ali was tired between the 14th and 15th round, but why was he tired? He was tired because he beat the hell out of Frazier in the 13th and 14th rounds. Frazier wasn’t firing back with anything. He couldn’t see the punches.”
Arum lamented the attempt to rewrite history and said the people who were really around Ali and Frazier knew the real score. Arum singled out Butch Lewis, who he said “claimed he carried messages from one dressing room to another. Come on, he carried my bags. I mean, that’s a joke.”
He referred to “this guy Abdul, whatever his name, who I’ve never seen before. He said that he gave Ali the line ‘I got nothing against the Vietcong. They never called me nigger.’ Come on. That is a line that Ali used spontaneously when Bob Halloran, who was working for CBS in Miami, interviewed him before anybody knew other than Halloran, that Ali had been re-classified. This was not a planted line. It was a line that came out of the blue. All that stuff got my blood boiling.”
The world’s top boxing promoter didn’t spare the “Fight Doctor” Ferdie Pacheco for saying: “’I would never work for Ali again.’ Hello! Wasn’t he in the corner for the [Ken] Norton fight about a year-and-a-half after the Frazier fight? Who are we kidding here?”
Arum insisted he was not angry, but just “pissed off,” which, in fact, is the same sentiments of both Mrs. Marcos and this reporter, but not about the documentary because we haven’t seen it yet.
The British producers, who came to Manila to interview those of us who had a role in the fight, promised to send us a copy of the program, but they haven’t kept their promise up to now despite several reminders sent to the producers by international journalist and TV reporter and contact person Sol Vanzi.
“Ms. Marcos is pissed!,” e-mailed Vanzi to this writer, to which Arum said: “She should be also because it is poor, poor journalism.”
Arum didn’t disagree with the effort to paint Frazier as a hero. “It’s because Joe was a hero. Frazier is a good guy. I like Joe. But I disagree with the idea that when Ali said ‘I am gonna beat the gorilla in Manila,’ was a racist statement. They are racists for saying that was a racist statement. What has that got to do with race?“
Arum added: “Frazier would come ahead like a gorilla unlike Ali, who moved and whose speed made him a prettier fighter. It had nothing to do with race, but what the people who did that are saying is, it was racist because when you use the word gorilla to talk about an athlete, you are saying that black people are gorillas. Come on. Give me a break!”
