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LONDON. — Five years and five fights involving three Americans added up to the golden years of heavyweight boxing.
During that period, from 1971 to 1975, Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, and George Foreman starred in The Fight of the Century, The Rumble in the Jungle and The Thrilla in Manila.
Those years are still regarded as the greatest era in the history of heavyweight boxing and the three giants of sport were later all inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
It was also, of course, the time of Watergate, Vietnam, and Richard Nixon.
Richard Hoffer has written an excellent book about those years, the boxers and the fights. The title is Bouts of Mania — Ali* Frazier* Foreman and an America on the Ropes.
In the prologue, Hoffer writes: “Muhammad Ali, fresh off a political exile, his hands still as quick as his mouth; Joe Frazier, the sharecropper’s son, the heavyweight champion in Ali’s absence, a virtual threshing machine; George Foreman, the huge, thunderous puncher who was promising to make both his elders, and maybe even the sport, obsolete.
“Each an Olympic gold medal winner, each undefeated, and each in his time heavyweight champion of the world. Pick one and he might have dominated boxing during a period when the game still mattered, galvanised his country for years with oversized exploits. He might, in other words, have dominated the sports and celebrity culture that then was taking full bloom, all on his own.”
Ali won the heavyweight world title when he stopped Sonny Liston in 1964. But he had to relinquish it after refusing to be drafted into the US military forces. He was in boxing exile from April 1967 until October 26, 1970 when he stopped Jerry Quarry in the third round.
Frazier won the WBA title when he beat Jimmy Ellis, who had been installed as champion after winning a series of fights to find a successor to Ali.
Frazier and Ali clashed in March 1971 in what was called “The Fight of the Century”. Frazier won on a unanimous decision but lost to Foreman on January 22, 1971.
Ali regained the title on October 30, 1974 when he knocked out Foreman in the eighth round of the “Rumble in the Jungle” in Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo).
The fight took place in Africa after President Joseph Mobutu Sese Seko, who had come into power in 1965, had put up US$9.6 million from the national coffers. The tournament was promoter Don King’s first big promotion.
Ali defended his crown three times before meeting Frazier for the third time. They fought in the “Thrilla in Manila” on October 1, 1975 after Ali had beaten Frazier in a bout for the North American Boxing Federation title in January 1974 when neither held a world title.— AFP.
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