With four sanctioning bodies dispensing belts these days, boxing fans have become somewhat inured to the prospect of two "world champions" facing one another in the ring. In the space of three weeks at Madison Square Garden next February, there will be two such bouts, writes George Kimball
IBF champion Wladimir Klitschko has signed to meet WBO titleist Sultan Ibragimov on February 23rd at the Mecca of boxing, and just three weeks earlier Oleg Maskaev will defend his WBC title against the WBC's "Interim" champion, Samuel Peter. (The Mexican-based organisation has ruled the Maskaev-Peter winner must face the WBC "champion emeritus", Wladimir's brother Vitali).
Eight years have elapsed since two heavyweight claimants last met to ostensibly settle this undisputed business, and on that occasion - Lennox Lewis-Evander Holyfield I - thanks to an incompetent judge named Eugenia Williams, the fight ended in a draw, and Lewis was obliged to beat Holyfield again six months later in Las Vegas to lay claim to the unified title.
Boxing fans wistfully recall the good old days when there were only two heavyweight champions. When they met at the Garden on March 8th, 1971, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier could make legitimate claims upon what had been regarded the most coveted title in sport.
Ali had been relieved of his championship belt (as well as his boxing license and his passport) minutes after he refused to be inducted into the Army three and a half years earlier, but he had never lost his title in the ring and was widely viewed as the legitimate heavyweight champion.
Frazier was also undefeated. In 1968 he had knocked out another unbeaten heavyweight, Buster Mathis, to assume the title involuntarily vacated by Ali, although at the time Frazier's "championship" was recognised in just four states. Two years later, Frazier would solidify his claim by knocking out Jimmy Ellis, who had prevailed in an eight-man tournament staged by the World Boxing Association to determine Ali's successor. Frazier's bona fides were bolstered when the newly-formed WBC sanctioned the Ellis fight for its championship, and Ali himself had offered to present his belt to its winner.
Now, a year later, Ali was singing a different tune. Having emerged victorious from a protracted battle to restore his boxing licence, he had beaten Jerry Quarry and Oscar Bonavena to set up a collision with Frazier in which both men were guaranteed $2.5 million apiece. Memories of that historic encounter have been recently revived in Michael Arkush's Fight of the Century.
Don King was still in jail when Ali-Frazier I took place, but you didn't need a Don King to promote this one. The promotional rights had secured by music impresario Jerry Perenchino and sports mogul Jack Kent Cooke. Although they had the hottest property in the world of sports, it was an exercise fraught with risk. Ali was out on bail pending a final appeal to the US Supreme Court of his five-year prison for draft evasion. Had the court elected not to hear his case, or ruled against him, he would have immediately been imprisoned without recourse.
The tickets were snapped up in a matter of hours. The live attendance topped out at 20,455, at the time a Madison Square Garden record. The biggest bloc of seats were assigned to the singer James Taylor, who had been contracted to perform a concert at the Garden on March 8th. It took 15 pairs of tickets and the promise of another engagement to persuade Sweet Baby James to release the date. Celebrities and politicians were tripping over one another.
There were 1,500 applications for press credentials. Only 600 were granted. Among the "journalists" was Frank Sinatra, who photographed Ali-Frazier for Life magazine.
The ringside reporters included Budd Schulberg, who covered the fight for Playboy, Norman Mailer (Life), and William Saroyan (True) for a fight that transcended boxing and was fraught with social, political, and even - though both participants were African-Americans - racial overtones.
Ali might be a beloved figure today, but in 1971 with the Vietnam War still raging he was despised by more than half of his countrymen. Ali actually turned his unpopularity with mainstream America to his favour and rounded up the black vote by casting Frazier, somewhat unfairly, in the role of establishment candidate.
Not only was Frazier "too dumb and ignorant to be the heavyweight champion", said Ali, he was also the establishment's lapdog: "The night before the fight he's gonna get telephone calls and telegrams from folks in Georgia and Alabama and Mississippi saying 'Joe Frazier, you be a white man tonight and stop that draft-dodging nigger!' Maybe Nixon will call Frazier if he wins," added Ali. "I don't think he'll call me. Anybody black who thinks Frazier can whup me is an Uncle Tom." Frazier was in fact black and proud, but he played into his adversary's hands by his insistence on referring to Ali as "Clay". As television host Bryant Gumbel recalled to Arkush, "Only those who were bigots, rednecks, and hard-liners continued to call him Clay, almost as in insult".
At the end of 15 gruelling rounds, both men needed medical attention. Frazier, who knocked down Ali in the 13th, captured a unanimous decision to hand Ali his first defeat, but, as Ali reminded Smokin' Joe when they met in a TV studio six weeks later, "I went to the hospital for 10 minutes. You were there for a month".
The Fight of the Century turned out to be the first of three Ali-Frazier fights over the next four years, and it wasn't even the best of the trilogy. Ali prevailed in the rematches, but that 1971 remains the only one in which both entered the ring as champions.
And, it says here, left it as champions as well.
