Joe Frazier vs Eddie Futch: Manila

'Eddie, listen up! Whatever you do, whatever happens, don't stop the fight! We got nowhere to go after this. I'm gonna eat this half-breed's heart right out of his chest. I mean it. This is the end of him or me' -Joe Frazier He had been urinting blood since the fight. 'Everything in me is on flame,' he said. 'He stood there gazing at the sun bleeding a dark, tragic red, eased down over the brown water of Manila Bay. His right hand hurt and was swollen, his eye whites streaked with blood. He looked at his right hand, tried to make a fist but could't. 'What this man do to me?' He asked with a rasp as he guided my hand over the ridge of bumps on his forehead. 'Why I do this?' He searched the horizon as if looking for an answer. 'It was insane in there,' he said. 'Couple of times like I was leaving my body. The animal could've killed me. That man weren't human in there I must be crazy. For what?' He took in th sunset again, thn said:'This is it for me. It's over.' The Thrilla in Manila The fallout between Joe Frazier and Eddie Futch http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Sunrise_over_the_sea.jpg A couple of ghosts, if you aske me. One is still in the ring in Manila, the other doesn''t even know there was a Manila. It was a bad reckoning for both that day. - Burt Watson The fourteenth round: The fourteenth was the most savage round of the forty-one Ali and Frazier fought. It brought out guilt (not felt since Joe wrecked the face of Chuvalo) that made one want to seek out the nearest confessional for the expiation of voyeuristic lust. Nine straight right hands smashed into Joe's left eye, thirty or so in all during th round. When Joe's left side capsized to the right from the barrage, Ali moved it back into range for his eviscerating right with crisp left hooks, and at the round's end the referee guided Joe back to his corner. Eddie Futch was a man in thought. 'Never fade a guy who's sneaked his own dice into the game,' Yank liked to say. But ...he remembered their fifteenth round in the Garden; did Ali have another round in him? If not Joe might win it. He looked at the swollen, purple slit of Fraziers eye. In the old days, trainers- not Eddie- would use a razor blade to pop the balloon and release the pressure. Not with this eye, it was beyond help. He remembered, too, the several fighters he had seen killed in the ring. There was a sudden commotion in Joe's corner. The lover of the Lake Poets was signaling to stop the fight. 'No, no, no!' Joe kept shouting. 'You can't do that to me!' 'Sit down , son,' Eddie said.'It's over. No one will forget what you did here today.' With the only strength they had left, both fighters stumbled to their dressing rooms to a continuous roar. When Ali hit the passage leading toward his room, he was draped around the shoulders of his handlers, his feet dragging, his face one of terminal exhaustion. The first thing they saw in the room was a dead man, part of his head blown away. The cop on duty there had been twirling and fanning his gun in front of a mirror, accidently offed himself, and now he was in a heap below the mirror, with a Jackson Pollack scatter of blood on it. 'Is he dead?' Ali asked, barely able to speak. 'A dead man. Get me outta here.' An omen! His handlers moved him to a sofa in another room. Tears trickled down Joe's face in the other room. He was being embraced by Eddie when Bob Goodman, the press liason, entered, asking:'Joe, can you talk to the press?' Joe agreed, and Goodman went to Ali and asked:'Champ, you up to the press?' Bundini went ballistic: 'You insane? Look at him!' Ali was a clump on the sofa, his skin a grey color. 'Joe's out there,' Goodman said. With that, Ali raised his head and asked, as if incredulous:'He is?' He added:'Get me my comb.' Ali would be a long time coming out. The day after: http://www.sweetfights.com/joefraz.jpg After the press conference, Joe retired to a private villa for rest. He had been sleeping for a couple of hours when George Benton entered with a vistor. The room was dark. 'Who is it?' Joe asked, lifting his head. 'I can't see. Can't see. Turn the lights on.' A light was turned on, and he still could not see. Like Ali, he lay there with his veins empty, crushed by a will that had carried him so far and now surely too far. His eyes were iron gates torn up by an explosive. 'Man, I hit him with punches that bring down the walls f a city . What held him up?' He asked lowered his head for some abstract forgiveness. 'Goddamn it, when somebody going to understand? It wasn't just a fight. It was me and him. Not a fight.' He dropped his head back to the pillow, wincing, and soon there was only the heavy breathing of a deep sleep slapping off the shoreline of his consciousness. He was correct. No mere fight, whatever the talent, could REACH SUCH CARNAL ROOTS AND PRODUCE SUCH FULL-BODIED GREATNESS, THE KIND THAT ALI WOULD MAINTAIN LONG YEARS LATER HAD CARRIED HIM TO parts unknown in himself and had no portfolio equal. http://www.myhero.com/images/guest/g203230/hero48007/g203230_u53456_MuhammadAli.jpg It was evening, the next day, in his Hilton suite, his body bent and listing to the right, so badly had his organs been seared; He had been urinating blood since the fight. 'Everything in me is on flame,' he said. 'He stood there gazing at the sun bleeding a dark, tragic red, eased down over the brown water of Manila Bay. His right hand hurt and was swollen, his eyewhites streaked with blood. He looked at his right hand, tried to make a fist but couldn't. 'What this man do to me?' He asked with a rasp as he guided my hand over the ridge of bumps on his forehead. 'Why I do this?' He searched the horizon as if looking for an answer. 'It was insane in there,' he said. 'Couple of times like I was leaving my body. The animal could've killed me. That man weren't human in there I must be crazy. For what?' He took in the sunset again, then said:'This is it for me. It's over.'