Ali’s Thrilla in Manila revisited
The following is an updated version of an earlier ‘Thrilla In Manila’ article, written as the world pays tribute to the late great Muhammad Ali.
Two images remained embedded in the mind, on top of a myriad sights and sounds that gave a surreal mix for the Thrilla in Manila between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in October 1975.
There was the bespectacled Ed Schuyler, the noted boxing writer of the Associated Press, leaning over to our press box side at the apron of the ring at the end of the bout.
“You should be proud this fight happened here… 25 years from now they would still be talking about this fight and
Manila,” he said.
The other was of a throbbing sea of humanity on the bleachers of the Big Dome ebbing and flowing as momentum shifted during the fight: “Ali! Ali! Ali!” thundered the crowd as the champ dominated the challenger and just as quickly there would be a roaring “Frazier! Frazier! Frazier!” as Smokin’ Joe came back the next round full of steam and fury.
That was in 1975. It seems like an eternity. But it came as vividly as if it happened only yesterday. The “Thrilla” would later rank as one of the top three all-time best fights. I couldn’t recall the very best but I am certain the Joe Louis-Max Schmeling showdown – enshrined in the prose of Bob Considine – was one of the three.
(And before fight purists would raise hell, I’m sure one of Manny Pacquiao’s ring masterpieces would rank high in the New Book of Boxing, according to the Ring).
But the Thrilla for sure had sealed itself a niche in the book of prizefight. And it got better and better in the retelling, in the remembering.
And yet, until Schuyler made the verdict, we never realized that the 14 rounds of whiteknuckle action and drama, which Ali aptly described as fate “worse than death” was one epic bout for all time.
It was sheer two weeks of exhilarating experience. The gods and wordsmiths of sportswriting were in our midst – Red Smith, Will Grimsley, Dave Anderson, Dick Young, Schuyler, Mark Kram, and The Man himself, Norman Mailer (with a svelte nymphet in tow) – all in flesh and blood, driven to these distant shores by the promise of sweet mayhem. The sweltering day There were close to 27,000 fans at the Big Dome – renamed Philippine Coliseum by the Marcos regime at that time seeking legitimacy to its martial rule. The bleacher section was packed to the last seat as early as 3 a.m. as fans poured in from all over.
One fight fan took an eight-hour bus ride from Daet in Bicol, watched the fight from the nose-bleed tiers and endured the same travel time back home for the experience of a lifetime.
“He never got tired of talking about it. It was one of the highlights of his life,” said STAR business writer Rica Delfinado of her father’s doggedness to witness the bout and unwittingly gained a piece of sporting history.
By dawn there was a mammoth crowd in Cubao, which was crawling with security, cops highly visible everywhere and presidential guards looking mean in every corner.
Writing for Grimsley would fire a one-liner of a fight-day lead: “Everybody was searched at the gate.” He would move on to describe how the protagonists’ motorcades would reach the Coliseum for the fight.
Coming from across town, the long line of cars would be headed by black limousines, which ferried Ali and Frazier. From a distance, one read Grimsley, “It looked like a funeral. In a sense, it is, but for whom? That’s the question.”
The Thrilla was a duel at midday. Television prime time in US decreed it would be held close to 11 a.m.”
And with a capacity crowd restless and impatient, and all the TV cables and ring lights trained on the two, and with 14 rounds of brutal punishment, it was as Ali would later say… “closer thing to dying that I could think of.” Some of the phrases that came out after the fight would pass the test of time. Who could ever forget Sports
Illustrated’s Kram’s “Lawdy, Lawdy, he’s great” and “I hit him with blows that could have felled the walls of the city.” An all-out Frazier man, Smith would say “when time heals the passion of the sweltering day, an objective historian would say Joe Frazier was still standing in the end.”
Bludgeoned and battered, Ali might have drawn some inner strength from the devil himself to absorb the gut-crushing blows and he showed it at the finish as he hit the canvas the moment Smokin’ Joe’s trainer Eddie Futch decided his boy, with an eye beaten to a pulp and now half shut from the constant drilling from Ali’s hands, had had enough.
By noon, most of the local media bannered Ali’s win and chronicled one of the greatest fights ever.