Thrilla In Manila

Leftsez beat me to it, but trust me, I was going to blog about the HBO documentary Thrilla In Manila anyway, a film that focuses on the relationship, fight, and aftermath of the Muhammad Ali – Joe Frazier fights.
I was too young to remember those fights-the Foreman fight too. By the time I was aware of Ali, the myth making was in full swing starting with the "Black Superman" song. It wasn’t until he lost to Spinks before I realized that he was human, particularly when Spinks was just supposed to be a toothless walk over. Sure, he came back to win against him, but even then you could tell that something was wrong. The swagger slowed. The speech was slurred. They were all symptoms created during those Frazier fights.
Without knowing the back-story, you immediately think about how hard Frazier must have hit to create that kind of long-term damage. You’re swayed by the Ali myth-that Frazier was a patsy for the white man, placed to shut the loudmouth up as he returned to the ring after being banned. The reality-as the film shows us-was much different.
Joe Frazier was the embodiment of overcoming adversity, something that was totally ignored while Ali berated him in the press. Frazier wasn’t the most intelligent fellow in the world, but he may have possessed the hardest punch-until Foreman came a year later and put him on the canvas. The talent level of the heavyweights was so awesome back then that any one of those three-Ali, Foreman, or Frazier-would be long standing champions today.
But regardless of how dumb Frazier may have been, he was smart enough to know that fighters should take care of each other, and when Ali was feeling the pinch of not being able to get fight money, Frazier dipped into his own pocket to help him out.
A year later, Ali was calling him a “gorilla” and pitting Joe as the white man’s champion.
Joe pummeled Ali in that first fight and did nearly the same thing in fight number two. Ali was ready to “cut the gloves” before Round 15 in the second fight, an indication that he couldn’t go on. Frazier, on the other hand, was ready to go the distance, even though his eye had completely swollen shut and a previous injury made him equally blind to Ali’s right hooks. Despite Frazier’s protests, his corner stopped the fight. Even Ali’s corner deemed the fight-specifically the last two rounds-as close as you could get to having to men kill each other.
We all know what happened to Ali, but we seldom hear about Frazier. The entire Ali drama apparently stuck with him-all of the verbal abuse lobbied at him took a toll to the point where even now he’s resentful of Ali and the notoriety afforded him. Even his voice mail message on his cell phone makes light of Ali’s condition and attributes it to the blows he gave the champ.
Thrilla In Manila is just as riveting as When We Were Kings, the documentary accounting the Ali-Foreman fight. The main difference is that Kings helps retain the Ali mystique while Thrilla nearly dismantles it.