On March 8th, 1971, boxing legends Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier stood toe to toe in a brutal 15-round event that gave pugilism its “Fight of the Century”.
That fight was the culmination of months in which boxing displayed its ugly promotional side, where everything is fair game in order to sell tickets, attract a crowd, and secure the night.
The purse, which is dwarfed by modern-day fights featuring names like Tyson, Mayweather, and Canelo, was a then-record $5 million. That was a significant number at the time, particularly because of the fighters and the period’s historical significance. You see, that fight wasn’t just for the heavyweight title of the world. That wasn’t just a boxing match to entertain an audience.
No, that fight was a manifestation of Black American history.
Clay, Ali, and Joe
The lives of the two fighters are well known and more intertwined than realized.
Muhammad Ali was born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. on January 17, 1942, in Louisville, Kentucky. He entered boxing at an early age and rose to become an amateur champion. He won a Gold Medal at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome and turned pro a few months later. On February 24th, 1964 Clay knocked out a then-undefeated Sonny Liston and became the WBC and WBA heavyweight champion of the world. That’s when life hit warp speed for the young fighter.
Shortly after the fight, Clay announced he had converted to Islam and changed his name to Cassius X, in deference to his friend, Malcolm X. But Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam, coerced him into changing his name to Muhammad Ali. The Nation’s feud with Malcolm X was boiling over and they did not want their coveted convert to be associated with their once rising, now deemed toxic, star.
Religious politics then gave way to American politics when Ali refused to be drafted in 1967. “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong,” he famously said. As a result, he was stripped of his titles, found guilty of violating Selective Service laws, and sentenced to five years in prison. But he remained out of jail while he appealed the verdict. He finally returned to the ring in 1970 and a year later the Supreme Court overturned his conviction. Despite losing three years from his professional career, Ali would proceed to secure his place in boxing, sports, and global history as the GOAT.
Joe Frazier was also born in the South. One of twelve children, Frazier was raised on a farm in Buford, South Carolina. He eventually moved north, took up boxing, and also became an amateur champion. Frazier, like Ali, also won an Olympic Gold Medal (1964 Olympics in Tokyo), with a broken left thumb no less, and turned pro a year later.
Choosing Sides
When Ali was finally granted a license and returned to the ring, everyone knew the two heavyweights would eventually clash. And when the fight was agreed upon in December of 1970, sides were taken and Ali pounced almost immediately.
He was the original master at racially charged promotion and he proved it in the three months leading up to the fight. He hit Frazier below the belt with taunts he knew would inflict the most damage psychologically and while simultaneously attracting the most attention.
Ali called him a gorilla.
He physically jumped him on live TV.
And worst of all, he called him an “Uncle Tom”, arguably the worst insult a Black man could suffer.
But it worked as the fight became the biggest event in the world. The Vietnam War was still raging, the wounds from the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King were still raw, “white flight” was plunging urban areas into despair, heroin was destroying communities and massive urban projects were further increasing the economic divide. These were all issues plaguing and devastating Black America, yet those issues took a backseat to a boxing match.
With Ali was running off at the mouth and taunting and torturing Frazier at every turn, Black America was forced to choose a side.
Were you team Ali or team Frazier?
Were you with the Jack and Jill crowd or the everyday people? Were you white-collar or blue-collar? Were you an Uncle Tom or a field hand?
Were you Martin or Malcolm?
Were you down with Black Power or pro establishment?
The terminology was defining extreme and damaging. But it was a reality and the fight exasperated an already wide chasm separating Black America.
“Black guys were afraid to say they liked Joe Frazier because they’d be afraid to be called ‘Uncle Toms,’ ” said Jerry Izenberg, author of Once There Were Giants: The Golden Age of Heavyweight Boxing. “Ali turned Frazier into a white fighter. Guys who hated Ali had even more reason to root against him.”
Sports have always had two sides, but Ali vs. Frazier I forced sides to be chosen for reasons that were alarming. And it all came to a head on March 8th, 1971.
Fight Night
The night of the fight has been well documented.
Star studded, with celebrities such as Frank Sinatra, Bill Cosby, Diana Ross, Miles Davis, Barbara Streisand, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Walt “Clyde” Frazier in attendance. If you had the money and the flair, you had to be there and be seen.
Worldwide, the fight was seen by an estimated 300 million people. It was so significant that it caused ceasefires in political violence.
“The feud ended as quickly as it began, and one of the reasons was that the Frazier-Ali fight was coming on television,” said Jack McKinney in the documentary Ali-Frazier I: One Nation Divisible of the conflict between the Provisional IRA and the Irish National Liberation Army. “And nobody was going to be out in the street gunning for somebody else when that fight was coming on.”
Back in Madison Square Garden where the fight was held, Frazier was holding his own. Yet while he was leading on the scorecard, neither fighter asserted himself.
But then in the 15th round, the months of torment endured by Frazier erupted and shook the world through a vicious left hook that floored Ali. It was the only knockdown in the fight, but it was one that reverberated throughout the globe. All of the rage and personal turmoil was unleashed by Frazier’s haymaker and when the bell rang to end the fight, you could see the emotion pour out of the champion as he confronted an equally exhausted Ali in the middle of the ring.
Frazier retained the title and reclaimed his dignity that Ali momentarily stole during the three months of antagonizing promoting. But while his manhood was restored, his physical condition worsened. As he suffered in a hospital in Philadelphia, rumors circulated that he was in perilous shape and that his condition looked to be fatal.
When word got back to Ali, he crumbled. He prayed as the emotions coursed throughout his body over the possible death of the opponent he mercilessly tormented.
“If anything happens to Joe,” he said, “I’ll never fight again.”
You see, to Ali the fight was a show. No matter who he faced, it was for the benefit of the sport.
But as a Black man, as a Muslim, hurt and death outside of the ring were never personal goals. Frazier was the target of his venom, but his prayers were reserved for him. He didn’t want another Black man to suffer outside of the ring and that was evident in his reaction to Frazier’s reported condition. Fortunately he recovered.
They went on to fight two more times, with Ali winning the trilogy, but that fight maintained implications far beyond the ring.
50 Years After The Bell
50 years ago, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier gave the world the greatest boxing match in history. But it also bestowed lessons to be learned.
They exposed the social differences separating Black America. Outside of the fight for basic human rights, it was not a unified community. Economics, finances, environment and philosophy all played a role in forging the Black American chasm.
This was not a simple fight. It was a fight that symbolically represented disenfranchisement and social status. It showed how two men with so much in common could actually be on opposite sides, and how their differences could be exploited for financial gain.
But it also exposed the ugly side of America.
The fight served as a well-timed distraction used by a group to break into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, and steal FBI documents which illustrated the extent of the government’s surveillance and infiltration of Black social and political movements. The spying on Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party (who was later assassinated by the FBI and Chicago Police), Martin Luther King Jr., and Muhammad Ali were all documented in a program called COINTELPRO.
It demonstrated the division between the “haves and have nots”. The suburbs and the ghetto. Upper class and working class. The fight peeled back the camouflaging layer of America’s “land of the free” mantra to showcase just how far inequality had permeated throughout the country, particularly as it pertained to the Black community.
So 50 years later, where do we stand?
Unfortunately, we’ve lost both men who gave us that legendary moment in history. Both men suffered for years from debilitating conditions. Frazier died from liver cancer Nov. 7, 2011. Ali died on June 3rd, 2016 from septic shock.
While they are no longer with us, Black America is still fighting. But now it’s a different type of fight. One that has always existed but not covered.
Black America fights against a system designed to suppress. It fights against voter suppression, racism, and economic inequality. It fights against and biased and corrupt justice system.
But now the players have changed and the fight is more unified.
50 years later, Black people are more aware, persistent, and refuse to be silenced. The murder of George Floyd (ironically, the trial of the officer who killed him was scheduled to begin today) unified groups who might normally pass each other by. The corruption of the former president brought people together to erase the stain that he caused. And the attempted coup at the Capitol Building has further cemented the need for unity.
50 years later, Black women are leading the charge, helping to secure both the national election and the senatorial election in Georgia for the Democratic Party. And now the second most powerful person in the White House is Vice President Kamala Harris
50 years ago, Ali vs. Frazier I was the Fight of the Century. But even more so, it demonstrated the fight that Black Americans faced every day.
50 years later, it’s a fight that we’re still fighting today.
