What Does Ali vs Frazier Mean 40 Years Later?
By Cliff Rold
Tuesday marked the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day.
No, really.
Not the anniversary boxing fans are celebrating?
No, apparently, there was another anniversary on Tuesday as well. 40 years ago, a pair of undefeated Heavyweight Champions, one reigning and the other never having lost his crown in the ring, locked horns for 15 of the most memorable rounds ever staged.
Joe Frazier.
Muhammad Ali.
The first time. March 8, 1971.
It was, truly, the Fight of the 20th Century.
Or was it?
On the anniversary of the event, the question comes to mind and it’s not an easy answer. It can be said Ali-Frazier I remains the best combination of fight and event in the last forty years.
Ali and Frazier might disagree.
There are those, and they may be among them, who appreciate their third battle more. Manila certainly has its place. The combination of dulled reflexes and the legend of the sauna-like conditions in the ring, make Manila a masterpiece of unmatched savagery.
Watching the two battles across the distance of time, unable to feel the heat on the ring during their final battle, it’s hard to rank Manila over the premiere engagement. The hype certainly can’t compare. Ali-Frazier I was built, largely organically, over a period of years. Unlike the long waits for fights like Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather (ongoing) or Wladimir Klitschko-David Haye (potentially culminating), there was legitimate reason for the build to drag.
Ali’s religious positions relative to the draft, and ensuing struggles with the justice system, genuinely threatened his career. When he and Frazier locked horns at ring center, fans could feel invested in the specialness of their even being there.
Then there was the action in the ring. Both men, still under the age of 30, put on a blazing affair. Frazier endured the triple hook in round nine; Ali survived the fateful eleventh; and Joe smoked the left hook home in the final round to send tassels flying. Ali made it to his feet. The night belonged to the reigning and no longer disputable king. It can be called the greatest Heavyweight title fight of them all.
Considering the shadow the Heavyweights cast across the landscape of the game, that’s pretty much all it needs to be secured as the Fight of the Century.
Right?
It depends on whether one looks to the in-ring result first. If the larger factors are examined, two other mega-events in the 20th century still stand shoulder to shoulder with Ali-Frazier: Jack Johnson-Jim Jeffries and Joe Louis Max Schmeling II. The magnitude of those events, the competitive results, and their lasting legacy, make them a powerful comparison point in understanding what Ali-Frazier I was.
And was not.
Johnson-Jeffries, staged on Independence Day in 1910, was the peak of the vile “Great White Hope” movement in boxing. Begun with the pen of author Jack London, the build to Johnson-Jeffries represented a bubbling of racial animus towards the flamboyant first African-American heavyweight champion in Johnson. It was easily the first “Fight of the Century,” an event of “Super Bowl” proportions before television or radio. The word of mouth roared.
The fight itself stunk. Johnson whupped Jeffries with ease. It the aftermath, racial attacks by bitter Jeffries backers, framed foully as race riots in media, led to changes in the law which restricted the transport of fight film for years to come. Use of the Mann Act to go after Johnson for marriages to white women would dog Johnson after Jeffries and, when he lost the title in 1915, no African-American heavyweight would get another shot for over twenty years.
That’s lasting impact.
The man who burst through the Johnson ceiling placed on Black Heavyweights engaged in a global scale “Fight of the Century.”
Joe Louis was like a firecracker thrown into a murky pond when he burst through the dense crop of inconsistent talent that had dominated the first half of the 1930s. There was but one blemish along the way, a knockout loss to former champion Max Schmeling, on Louis’s path to the crown in 1937.
Matters with Schmeling demanded settlement. That settlement would come in the summer of 1938, both fighters dueling in the shadow of a world rapidly cycling the drain towards hell. Schmeling was conscripted by Germany as a Nazi symbol of Aryan power. Louis, anthropomorphized by too much of the press in his rise, was suddenly all too human at center stage. When FDR squeezed Louis’s bicep and said America needed the muscle, the role of American hero was assigned.
Louis played his part. Unlike Johnson-Jeffries, the fight was electric. It just happened to carry the charge all on one side of the ring. Louis went through Schmeling in one sensational frame, his arm raised and much of America’s arms raised right along with him. That night allowed Louis to cross over to Ruthian levels of athletic admiration and Louis ran with the position. His service during World War II, his contribution to bond drives at the gate, and just his being Joe Louis, made him a symbol during a War generation that saw segregation of the services come to an end.
Jackie Robinson credited Louis, more than any other athlete, with changing the landscape to allow him to burst Baseball’s color ceiling. It all began with Louis-Schmeling II.
That’s lasting impact.
What was the lasting impact of Ali-Frazier I? In the ring, it was a superior contest to either of its competitors. Hype is relative to the time when something occurs; the hype and build could have been no bigger. Impact is harder to define.
Ali didn’t change the way America felt about the Nation of Islam. He in fact ultimately left the organization for more traditional Islam. His religious case was so uniquely his as to not apply much outside of the Supreme Court decision that found a loophole to bring the mess to a close.
Even the people who lived through it seem to struggle for an answer. Multiple books and documentaries have been devoted to the fight, the fighters (if mostly Ali), and the rivalry. They are at their most compelling in reflecting on the impacts on Ali and Frazier as men.
That may be where the ultimate impact was had.
Ali and Frazier did not change the world even as they fought in a changing one. Ali’s representation, in the time, to American counterculture and Frazier’s pigeonholing into establishment representative, allowed them to act as avatar’s for battles that were less tangible than the more concrete parables that could be drawn in Johnson-Jeffries and Louis-Schmeling II.
Those two bouts, the issues around them, and their aftershocks, can be more easily identified, more readily identified with as the stories are retold. Ali-Frazier is tied up, still and often, in how those who lived through it, and those who can observe the picture of it all even having not been there, feel about the characters involved.
Of course, one of the characters remains a giant.
The spot of lasting impact can be found in Ali’s value as a symbol every bit as potent as Louis and Johnson. He was brash like Johnson and, in his defiance of the more humble role Louis was forced to play for the cameras, became like a unifying point of the struggles both Johnson and Louis experienced. That impact, on those who loved him, and those who despised him only to mostly love him later, is immeasurable.
As was the quality of the fight some forty years ago.
In the ring, it was the Fight of the 20th Century. That we still talk about it with such reverence, that its 40th anniversary matters, implies an impact every bit as lasting as its compatriot battles.
Weekly Ledger
But wait, there’s more…
Judah and Canelo Strapped: https://www.boxingscene.com/judah-canelo-pick-up-straps-review-ratings-update--36783
Divisional Ratings Update: https://www.boxingscene.com/forums/view.php?pg=boxing-ratings
Sillakh Keeps His “0”: https://www.boxingscene.com/enter-contender-sillakh-puts-his-division-on-notice--36635
Picks of the Week: https://www.boxingscene.com/boxingscenecoms-television-picks-week--36745
Cliff’s Notes…Look for notes next week.
Cliff Rold is a member of the Ring Magazine Ratings Advisory Panel, the Yahoo Pound for Pound voting panel, and the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at roldboxing@hotmail.com