October 1: On This Day in World History … briefly
According to the 2009 documentary ‘Thriller in Manila’, the match, which had been dubbed ‘The Fight’ gripped the nation. “Just listen to the roar of this crowd!" thundered Burt Lancaster, “The tension, and the excitement here, is monumental!”
1975: Muhammad Ali defeats the ‘gorilla in Manila’
Muhammad Ali vs. Joe Frazier, billed as The Fight of the Century (also known as The Fight), was the boxing match between WBC/WBA heavyweight champion Joe Frazier (26–0, 23 KOs) and The Ring/lineal heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali (31–0, 25 KOs), held on Monday, March 8, 1971, at Madison Square Garden in New York City. It was the first time that two undefeated boxers fought each other for the heavyweight title. Frazier won in 15 rounds via unanimous decision. It was the first of a trilogy, followed by the rematch fights Super Fight II (1974) and Thrilla in Manila (1975), both won by Ali.
The Thrilla in Manila was the third and final boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. It was contested in 1975 for the heavyweight championship of the world at the Philippine Coliseum in Cubao, Quezon City, Philippines, on Wednesday, October 1. The venue was renamed from Araneta Coliseum, specifically for the match. Ali won by technical knockout (TKO) after Frazier’s chief second, Eddie Futch, conceded the fight prior to the 15th round.
The contest’s name is derived from Ali’s rhyming boast that the fight would be a “Killa and a thrilla and a chilla, when I get that gorilla in Manila.”
The bout is consistently ranked as one of the best in the sport’s history and was the culmination of a three-bout rivalry between the two fighters that Ali won, 2–1. The fight was watched by a record global television audience of 1 billion viewers, including 100 million viewers watching the fight pay-per-view on closed-circuit theatre television and 500,000 pay-per-view buys on HBO home cable television.
The first bout between Frazier and Ali took place on March 8, 1971, in New York’s Madison Square Garden. Frazier was the champion and won by unanimous decision over previously undefeated Ali in a fast-paced, 15-round bout, with Frazier scoring the fight’s (and trilogy’s) only knockdown, at the beginning of the final round.
When the rivals met in a January 1974 rematch, neither was champion; Frazier had suffered a second-round knockout at the hands of George Foreman a year earlier and Ali had split two bouts with Ken Norton. In a promotional appearance before the second fight, the two had gotten into a scuffle in an ABC studio during an interview segment with Howard Cosell. In the second round, Ali stung Frazier with a hard right hand, which backed him up. Referee Tony Perez stepped between the fighters, signifying the end of the round, even though there were about 25 seconds left. In so doing, he gave Frazier time to regain his bearings and continue fighting. Perez also failed to contain Ali’s tactic of illegally holding and pulling down his opponent’s neck in the clinches, which helped Ali to smother Frazier, and gain him the 12-round decision. This became a major issue in selecting the referee for the Manila bout
The fight took place at 10 am local time, in order to accommodate an international viewing audience. Though it served the business interests of the fight, it was detrimental to the fighters. Ali’s ring physician, Ferdie Pacheco, said “At 10am the stickiness of the night was still there, but cooked by the sun. So what you got is boiling water for atmosphere. Denise Menz, who was part of Frazier’s contingent, said of the conditions inside the aluminium-roofed Philippine Coliseum: “It was so intensely hot, I’ve never before felt heat like that in my life. Not a breath of air—nothing. And that was sitting there. Can you imagine being in the ring? I don’t know how they did it.” Frazier estimated the ring temperature at more than 120 °F (49 °C), taking into account the effect of additional lights used for purposes of televising the fight. Ali said that he lost 5 pounds (2.3 kg) during the fight from dehydration.
Most notable historic snippets or facts extracted from the book ‘On This Day’ first published in 1992 by Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, London, as well as additional supplementary information extracted from Wikipedia.
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