The defensive playground boast Stick and stones may break my bones but words will never harm me was always unconvincing protesting, as it did, far, far too much. In case you doubted this, consider the sorry example of Joe Frazier, lion of Manila and the Garden, forever embittered and broken by Muhammad Ali’s taunting.
All before my time, of course, and boxing will never capture the imagination in Britain (or the United States) as it did back then. The 1970s were a golden era and not just in the heavyweight division either. The confluence of colour television and a phalanx of genuine stars prepared to fight one another anytime, any place helped captivate much of the planet. Ali and Frazier were pre-eminent, of course, but there were plenty of other champions.
It’s tough to avoid feeling sorry for Joe Frazier, even if you fancy he’d thank you to avoid expressing such or any pity for him. Nevertheless, when you look back at the circuses surrounding his bouts with Ali, it’s Frazier who comes out the better man. Ali’s taunting – which, incidentally, encouraged other fighters to try and emulate him, leading us to the desperate, goonish, childish “trash-talking” we endure today – looks worse the older it gets. Frazier, according to Ali, was a “gorilla” and worse still an “Uncle Tom”. All this prompted one magazine to ask if Frazier was a white champion in a black skin. It was meant to hurt and it did and why should Frazier have been expected to forgive and forget? He wasn’t the contemptible bully; Ali was.
Perhaps he should have “moved on”, if only to ease his own discomfort. Ali belittled Frazier and Frazier’s grudge-holding diminished him but Ali was also diminished by his own taunting and cruelty (not too strong a word at all). Even in their respective declines they were locked together just as they had been in their pomp. Just as they needed one another to reach greatness, so they matched one another in soured gracelessness. That’s boxing. Ali’s kind words about Frazier this morning are only a few decades late.
Meanwhile, not the least of YouTube’s pleasures is that so many of the great fights from that era are available online. You could spend hours watching them and be transported back to a time many of us weren’t around to experience but when boxing seemed vital and giant champions and kings stepped into the ring. Even all these years later there’s still something thrilling about those fights.
UPDATE: Dave Anderson has a nice piece on Frazier too. And, obviously, you should read David Remnick.
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