Camera-buff Frank Sinatra, working as a photographer-by-the-ropes for LIFE Magazine, circa Fight of the Century 1971.
By Geoff Stanton
It was March 1971 and Madison Square Garden teemed with celebrities, punters, police and paparazzi. The venue was thick with carnival. At its core, a fission of Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier preparing to clash. Celebrated artists waiting to paint the event. Burt Lancaster sat in the commentators chair for the closed-circuit broadcast. Frank Sinatra jostling ringside, taking photos for LIFE Magazine. Norman Mailer took the words, with an article aptly titled EGO.
“It is the great word of the twentieth century. If there is a single word our century has added to the potentiality of language, it is ego. Everything we have done in this century, from monumental feats to nightmares of human destruction, have been a function of that extraordinary state of the psyche that gives us authority to declare we are sure of ourselves when we are not” (Norman Mailer)
Muhammad Ali, in a fight that was pitched as the clashing of cultures - "draft dodger" Ali vs "establishment hero" Joe Frazier.
It was more than a meeting of two heavyweights – it was a culture clash. The signature showdown between “draft-dodging” Ali and the Establishment’s hippy-humbling hero, Smokin’ Joe Frazier. The freaks had a hero in Ali, but Frazier was a rolling mass of brute punishment waiting to unfurl.
Ali: “You don’t understand, Frazier will be easier than Quarry or Bonavena. I’ll just hold his head and I’ll tell him, ‘Come on, Champ.’ I’ll just play with him. He’ll be trying all those short hooks and not reaching me and I’ll be moving and saying, ‘Come on, champ. You can do better than that.’”
"Joe Frazier is an Uncle Tom. He works for the enemy." Muhammad Ali-Training in Miami. The fighter that Norman Mailer said "invented the psychology of the body". Image John Shearer/TIME & LIFE Pictures
- Ali taunts Frazier at his own training headquarters in Pennsylvania. The photographer John Shearer wondered if Ali realised what was happening here – it would be war. John Shearer/TIME & LIFE Pictures
“The two places Frazier communicates best,” wrote LIFE’s Thomas Thompson in a March 1971 cover story, “are in the ring, when a cloak of menace and fury drops over him, and on a nightclub stage, where he sings with strength and sincerity.”
Joe Frazier with his Knockouts. John Shearer/TIME & LIFE Pictures
"Frazier felt that he was every bit as articulate as Ali," photographer John Shearer said, "and every bit the showman that Ali was." John Shearer/TIME & LIFE Pictures
Ali sparing playfully outside a Miami grocery store, February 1971. As Shearer said: "The man's appeal -- his charisma, his confidence, his strength, his beauty -- drew to him people of all classes, races, and creeds". John Shearer/TIME & LIFE Pictures
“Heavyweights are always the most lunatic of prizefighters. The closer a heavyweight comes to the championship, the more natural it is for him to be a little bit insane, secretly insane, for the heavyweight champion of the world is either the toughest man in the world or he is not, but there is a real possibility he is. It is like being the big toe of God. You have nothing to measure yourself by.” (Mailer)
The War Machine, Joe Frazier. "A Knockout combs and blacks Frazier's beard before a performance," read the caption in LIFE. One of the Knockouts said "Music has brought Joe out, made him a little nicer to people, a little more comfortable to be around." John Shearer/TIME & LIFE Pictures
“Sooner or later fight metaphors, like fight managers, go sentimental. But there is no choice here. Frazier was the human equivalent of a war machine. He had tremendous firepower. He had a great left hook, a left hook frightening even to watch when it missed, for it seemed to whistle.” (Mailer)
Ali with his personal trainer, American boxing cornerman Angelo Dundee, resting before the fight.
“It was electric in the Garden that night,” Shearer told LIFE.com. “You know, it was the night of the great showdown between the era’s two gladiators, and there was a sense that the unprecedented hype for the fight might actually fall short of the reality.”
It didn’t.
About to be humbled? "People were there in all their finery," Shearer said, "from the outlandish to the most elegant imaginable. And without a doubt it was a very, very pro-Ali crowd. They all came to see him win, to see him destroy Joe Frazier." John Shearer/TIME & LIFE Pictures
Miles Davis mixes in the crowd for the Ali-Frazier fight, Madison Square Gardens 1971. John Shearer/TIME & LIFE Pictures
Ali with close friend and assistant, Bundini Brown, shortly before the fight. Brown was the street poet who helped phrase Ali's greatest catechism: "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee" John Shearer/TIME & LIFE Pictures
Many of the greats have shown us that it takes the power of the event, and the fulcrum it generates, to bind the spirit, guide us through turmoil; create sense, certainty, politics, art. Life is uncertain, sure. But nature abhors a vacuum. Or, as Mailer put it: “Within 45 seconds the pattern had begun”.
“I have this visceral belief that he just can’t be beaten,” LIFE’s sports editor, Steve Gelman, said of Ali before the fight. “He’s one of those guys, like [Bob] Cousy in basketball, or Willie Mays in baseball. In their prime they were able to come up with exactly the right physical improvisation necessary to do the job. Ali has more of this quality than any athlete I’ve ever seen. No matter how good Frazier is, Ali will manage to win.”
The fight more than matched the juggernaut of hype. It ran the full 15 round championship distance. Ali weaved his way through the first three rounds, catching Frazier with a series of jabs and hooks as he ducked and dodged.
But Frazier slowly began to dominate.
Catching Ali with a barrage left hooks Frazier squared the champ up against the ropes, delivering a sermon of body blows.
Joe Frazier serves Muhammad Ali a sermon of blows. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis
Ali was visibly wilting after the sixth, putting together a flurry of punches, but unable to keep step with the pace he had set himself at the start. But agility and eloquence kept him on an even footing with Frazier. The fight was close until late in round 11.
Frasier and Ali retire into their camps during the middle rounds. Photo: John Shearer/TIME & LIFE Pictures
During the 11th round Frazier caught Ali, backing him into a corner with a bruising left hook, tacking him onto the ropes. Ali survived, but the War Machine claimed the next three.
“Frazier moved in with the snarl of a wolf,” Norman Mailer wrote of the middle rounds. “His teeth seemed to show through his mouthpiece … Ali looked tired and a little depressed … At the beginning of the fifth round, he got up slowly from his stool, very slowly. Frazier was beginning to feel that the fight was his. He moved in on Ali, his hands at his side in mimicry of Ali, a street fighter mocking his opponent, and Ali tapped him with long light jabs to which Frazier stuck out his mouthpiece, a jeer of derision as if to suggest that the mouthpiece was all Ali would reach all night.”
At the end of 14 Frazier held a lead on the three scorecards. Early in round 15 Frazier landed a tremendous left hook that put Ali on his back.
Ali, right jaw swollen, recovered quickly from the blow quickly. He stayed the course for the rest of the round, weathering the powerful blows from Frazier.
Boxer Joe Frazier is directed to the ropes by referee Arthur Marcante after knocking down Muhammad Ali. A few minutes later the judges made it official: Frazier retained the title with a unanimous decision.
Herb Scharfman / Sports Illustrated / Getty Images
It was Ali’s first professional loss. He would not win another world title fight until three and a half years later, on October 30, 1974.
Donald McRae wrote for The Guardian: “There was, of course, a price to pay – for both of them – and the Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City, Manila, on the morning of Wednesday 1 October 1975, was the settling place. The Thrilla in Manila – conceived by Don King, embraced by the dubious regime of President Marcos – reached and maintained such a level of raw intensity that it is regarded by an overwhelming majority of respected observers as the most brutal of all heavyweight title fights. It is no exaggeration to say that either or both combatants could have died.”
Frazier straightens himself up after the fight. Photo: John Shearer/TIME & LIFE Pictures
After the Great Fight both Frazier and Ali spent time in hospital. Rumors circulated that Frazier had died. Ali vowed to retire from boxing if they turned out to be true.
They weren’t.
Smokin' Joe and his camp after the main event. But despite his victory, Ali remained the prominent name in Ali-Frazier phenomenon. Ali's shadow stalked Frazier for years. Photo: John Shearer/TIME & LIFE Pictures
Mailer went on to write ‘The Fight’, about Ali’s confrontation with George Foreman during the 1975 World Heavyweight Boxing Championship in Kinshasa, Zaire. In contrast to the wrecking ball of Frazier, Foreman’s deadly character has been described as a potent of “silence, serenity and cunning”. Foreman had also never been defeated. His hands were his instrument, and “he kept them in his pockets the way a hunter lays his rifle back into its velvet case”. In Mailer’s own hands, it was another monumental clash of Egos.
Sinatra pursued his singing career.
Towards the end of his life, Frazier claimed he was badly out of pocket – lost many millions lost on land deals and a swindle of business partners. He walked with a cane, but continued to tour with The Knockouts. Of Ali, Frazier commented in 2011 “If I had a loaf of bread, I’d give it to him”.
On hearing of Frazier’s death shortly afterward, the Ego of the battle was perhaps finally laid to rest. Ali said: “The world has lost a great Champion. I will always remember Joe with respect and admiration. My sympathy goes out to his family and loved ones.”
