Muhammad Ali

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"Don't count the days. Make the days count."

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016)

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Nothing lasts forever.

Muhammad Ali himself said that when he retired from boxing. I knew at the time that he was right, but I didn't want it to be true. I wanted him to continue to box — and to win — just as I had wanted Roger Staubach to continue playing football and how, many years later, I wanted Brett Favre to continue playing.

I knew he wouldn't live forever, either, but, again, I didn't want it to be true. His death yesterday affected people everywhere, even people attending a Paul Simon performance.

Somehow, though, it seems appropriate that he should be taken from us this year of all years — when so many have already been taken. And when many more, no doubt, will be taken from us before this year is over. It seems to be that kind of year, a deviation from the norm from politics to mortality. The political process has been the same, but it has yielded two unusually unpopular nominees.

And mortality is about the same as usual, but it seems to be taking more influential prominent people than it does in an ordinary year. Actually, that probably isn't true. It just seems that way.

Muhammad Ali was a human magnet, drawing people to him more through the force of his personality than his boxing skills (although they played a role in it, too, make no mistake about that).

The thing about magnets, though, is that they repel as well as attract. And Muhammad Ali certainly repelled a lot of people. It was a divisive time in America, the late '60s. From the vantage point of half a century later — and with a black president in the Oval Office — it is easy for those who weren't there to think that the '60s were all about civil rights, but that was really only one issue that divided Americans in those days. The war in Vietnam divided people, too, and it was Ali's refusal to fight in Vietnam that exacerbated the situation.

It was often claimed that Ali said, "No Viet Cong ever called me nigger" as justification for his refusal to be conscripted into the Army, but that isn't what he said.

What he really said was, "My conscience won't let me go shoot my brother or some darker people or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America. And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger. They never lynched me. They didn't put no dogs on me. They didn't rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father. Shoot them for what? How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail."

There were a lot of people in America who didn't like Ali when he refused to go to Vietnam. They derided him for what they saw as arrogance in the ring and cowardice outside of it. Some people attributed that to racism, just as some people today dismiss opposition to Barack Obama's policies as thinly veiled racism, too. I didn't buy it then because I knew many people in my small hometown in Arkansas who supported the war and spoke critically of antiwar demonstrators, too, and most of whom were white.

Race can be a convenient scapegoat, and I have no doubt it plays a role for some people but not all. For most of the people in my hometown in the late '60s and early '70s, race really had nothing to do with it. It was all about politics.

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When Ali fought Joe Frazier for the first time, in what was widely called the Fight of the Century, it became more than just a fight for many people. Folks who were against the war tended to support Ali, and folks who supported the war effort tended to support Frazier.

That, too, was called racism by many people, which never made sense to me, either. How could it be racist? Both Ali and Frazier were black.

Maybe it is true what they say about time healing all wounds, though, because I have heard nothing said about that time in Ali's life and career — except for the facts that he refused to serve and was stripped of his title. Nothing more than that.

Even from people who probably would be expected to be critical of Ali for his politics.

Remarkably, considering his chosen profession, Ali was a peacemaker. At the very least, that seems odd for a professional fighter, doesn't it? In trying to resolve this contradiction, comedian George Carlin described Ali's refusal to serve this way: "That's where I draw the line. I'll beat 'em up, but I don't wanna kill 'em."

Now, at the end of his life, Ali is being remembered for his pursuit of peace after his violent career. Part of his refusal to fight in Vietnam was grounded in his recent conversion to Islam, and he maintained his core beliefs throughout his life.

Last December, after the shootings in San Bernardino, California, Ali told NBC News, "I am a Muslim and there is nothing Islamic about killing innocent people in Paris, San Bernardino or anywhere else in the world. ... True Muslims know that the ruthless violence of so–called Islamic Jihadists goes against the very tenets of our religion. ... We as Muslims have to stand up to those who use Islam to advance their own personal agenda. ... They have alienated many from learning about Islam. True Muslims know or should know that it goes against our religion to try and force Islam on anybody."

There was a time when Ali was regarded as the most recognizable man in the world. Many saw him as an heroic figure.

Heroes usually need a reliable sidekick (i.e., Robin to Batman) or an arch rival (here I guess Larry Bird and Magic Johnson would fit the bill). Solitary heroes tend to have short lives in the spotlight.

In the ring, I suppose, Ali will always be remembered for his three epic fights with Frasier. As for sidekick ...

Broadcaster Howard Cosell was Ali's reliable sidekick, I suppose. He wasn't part of Ali's entourage, his traveling roadshow, but he always seemed to be ringside, providing the commentary at Ali's fights. It wasn't unusual to see the rich and the famous attending Ali's fights, but Cosell owed much of his fame and personal fortune to his association with Ali — as well as his Monday Night Football gig.

If you ever saw Cosell interviewing Ali, you could see what a symbiotic relationship they had. Ali had considerable skills and probably could have succeeded without Cosell. Cosell, though, might have found it much more difficult to succeed alone, being limited to only four months per year of Monday Night Football and Dandy Don.

Together they were an iconic pair, and now they're both gone.

Time doesn't march on, folks. It sprints.

Rumblin' in the Jungle

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"If you were surprised when Nixon resigned, just watch what happens when I whup Foreman's behind."

Muhammad Ali
October 1974

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"Forty years ago this month, the eyes of the world turned to Kinshasa [Zaire] to watch the 'Rumble in the Jungle,' the legendary boxing event that saw Muhammad Ali and George Foreman slug it out for the world heavyweight title," writes Thomas Yocum for The Guardian.

Muhammad Ali was a great fighter, one of the greatest of all time, as he frequently told anyone who would listen. He wouldn't stop there, though. Often, he would tell folks who did not want to listen.

He was also a master showman, and I guess he figured — correctly — that most people believed that a 32–year–old boxer who had been prevented from competing during his prime years because he refused to fight in Vietnam would be unable to stay with the heavyweight champ.

George Foreman was young and powerful. He had grabbed the title in 1973 with a hammering of Joe Frazier, and, in his second defense of his title, he brought down one of the top contenders for the title, Ken Norton, in similarly dominant fashion. Seemed he barely worked up a sweat in either. At times, you could have sworn he was actually bored.

Frazier and Norton, it is worth noting, were the only two boxers who had beaten Ali up to that time. Norton broke Ali's jaw.

In the three years prior to his bout with Ali, Foreman fought in 11 fights — all but one were done in two rounds or less, and that single exception was finished in five rounds. Foreman was used to fights that were scheduled for 15 rounds; he simply wasn't accustomed to fights that actually went that long.

Therein lay the key to Ali's upset victory. He knew that the longer he could keep the fight going, the more he would frustrate Foreman. Foreman would make mistakes, and Ali would wait for those mistakes, then exploit them. It was his "Rope–a–Dope" strategy.

Well, there was more to it than that, but that's a pretty good summary of the strategy. The "Rope–a–Dope" strategy was to force Foreman to use a lot of his energy pounding away at Ali, who would lean back on the ropes and cover his face with his gloves while Foreman hammered his midsection. Few, if any, observers thought Ali could take punches anymore, especially the powerful punches Foreman threw, but he surprised them all.

"They told me you could punch, George," Ali taunted Foreman in the early rounds. "Is that the best you can do?" An enraged Foreman tried to throw even harder punches — but with no apparent effect on Ali.

Foreman became visibly tired, and Ali was able to bring him down in the eighth round. It may have been a bigger shock to the sports world than his triumph over Sonny Liston 10 years earlier.

Originally scheduled for Sept. 24, the bout was postponed for five weeks because Foreman suffered a cut near his right eye while he was preparing for Ali.

When the men finally met 40 years ago tonight, their fight began at 4 a.m. local time to accommodate the closed–circuit audience in the Western Hemisphere.

The postponement gave Ali an opportunity to bond a little with the locals while he spent the extra time preparing for the fight.

I remember seeing footage of Ali running Rocky–like through the streets of Kinshasa, and the locals, young and old, running along with him or watching from the side, were chanting, "Ali, bomaye!" — which means, "Ali, kill him!" It quickly became one of the most recognizable sports–oriented phrases ever.

Killing people wasn't Ali's way, though. Any boxing expert will tell you that the fighters who take that mentality into the ring with them are the sluggers, and Ali was no slugger. He was a finesse fighter, more likely to win on points than on a knockout. The ironic part is that Ali did win most of his fights by knockout. That's the thing that people often forget. It's the thing that Foreman apparently forgot, and it cost him his title.

That was the key to the success of the "Rope–a–Dope" strategy. Ali had a reputation for outlasting opponents and winning on points, even though three–quarters of his wins up to that time were by knockout, so his approach likely made sense to Foreman, probably the best slugger of the time. He didn't expect Ali to go for the knockout after Foreman ran out of gas, though. He probably expected Ali to land a lot of punches in the later rounds in an attempt to pile up points — and Foreman walked right into the trap, landing punch after punch to Ali's midsection — proving repeatedly that Ali could take a punch.

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I suppose it would be natural for him to be bitter about the outcome.

"I hated Ali," Foreman told The Daily Express. "Hated him."

Understandable. Foreman was deceived. I guess everyone was.

Ali's "Rope–a–Dope" strategy wasn't evident in the first round. It was more evident in the second round — enough that Frazier, who was sitting ringside, remarked about it and wondered on the air, in response to British TV host David Frost's question, why Ali was leaning against the ropes so much.

By the end of the third round, Frazier was criticizing Foreman for being too wild in his punches and not thinking things through. He needed to be more deliberate and strategic. The champ was going to wear himself out, Frazier said prophetically.

Tellingly, when the fight was over and Ali was mobbed at center ring by admirers, Foreman and his entourage slipped quietly away almost without notice. Foreman's head was hanging in the dejection of defeat.

Nobody wants to mob a vanquished champion.

The Brown Bomber's 100th Birthday

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"This was an hour before midnight of October 26, 1951. It was the evening of a day that dawned July 4, 1934, when Joe Louis became a professional fistfighter and knocked out Jack Kracken in Chicago for a $50 purse. The night was a long time on the way, but it had to come."

Red Smith

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I've been following boxing most of my life, and I have come to the conclusion that selecting the best who ever fought in a division is a matter that — for the most part — is in the eye of the beholder.

It is easier for me to compare fighters from different eras than it is to compare teams or individual athletes in other sports, though, because boxing is largely unchanged since the introduction of gloves. There have been some rule changes, and bouts typically aren't scheduled for as many rounds as they once were, but the length of those rounds hasn't changed, and the ring is the same size as it has been for God knows how long.

In other sports, the equipment has changed — and perhaps the playing surfaces are different. That is especially true, I believe, of baseball, which has seen the introduction of indoor games, artificial turf and protective batting helmets, among other things, as well as changes in rules designed to level the playing field for hitters or pitchers.

Comparatively, boxing is unchanged, and, when you look at Joe Louis' career, it is difficult for any beholder to say that anyone else was better.

Most Americans of the 21st century probably regard Louis as a figure from a bygone era — like Babe Ruth or Jim Thorpe — someone they know only through flickering images on movie screens. If they think of someone breaking racial barriers, they probably think of baseball's Jackie Robinson.

But Louis was more than a barrier buster. The Florida Times–Union writes that Louis, who was born 100 years ago tomorrow, was an American hero.

So he was.

Louis didn't break the racial championship barrier in professional boxing's heavyweight division. That distinction belonged to Jack Johnson, the "Galveston Giant" who won the heavyweight title more than a decade before Louis was born and lost it when Louis was a toddler but never really won over white Americans.

(There was more to it, of course — mostly having to do with allegations of Johnson violating the Mann Act, allegations that were clearly racially motivated — but that is a subject for another discussion. My point is, Louis was not the first black heavyweight champ.)

Louis was a popular figure from coast to coast, though, and he was talented. Among the heavyweights of all time, ESPN ranks him behind only Muhammad Ali, just ahead of Johnson and a couple of slots ahead of Rocky Marciano, who knocked Louis out in 1951 in his final fight.

Marciano, of course, is the only heavyweight champion in history to retire undefeated. But when Marciano met Joe Louis in 1951, Louis was 37 years old. Marciano was nearly 10 years his junior. One can only wonder what might have been if they had been the same age when they faced each other.

The year that Louis was 28 (Marciano's age when he fought Louis), Louis successfully defended the heavyweight title twice within a couple of months, winning the first in a one–round knockout, the second in a six–round TKO.

The year before, he defended his title four times — including the famed bout with Billy Conn, the "Fight of the Year" in 1941.

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He didn't fight in 1943 or in most of 1944 because he served in World War II, but he experienced a surge in popularity when he was quoted as saying, "We'll win (the war) 'cause we're on God's side."

I've seen several lists that have Louis rated the best heavyweight of all time. That is appropriate, considering that his reign as the heavyweight division's champion was longer than any other.

At times, he was criticized for the quality of his opposition. The lineup of his opponents was known as the "Bum of the Month Club" when he was defending his title (in spite of their nickname, most of those fighters were ranked in the top 10 among heavyweights). But he did face some very good fighters, too, some of the best of his day — Conn (twice), Max Schmeling (twice), Jersey Joe Walcott (twice), Ezzard Charles, James J. Braddock.

In many ways, Louis was produced and presented for mass consumption. His image was tightly managed — he had certain rules he had to live by, one of which was that he could not be photographed with white women — and his handlers were even responsible for coming up with his nickname, the "Brown Bomber."

(Several other nicknames were floated, but "Brown Bomber" seemed to be preferred by most.)

Louis' triumphs in the ring were greeted as symbolic strides for the black community. There weren't many black figures for black Americans to admire in those days, but they didn't admire him just because of his race. He was a heroic figure for all Americans.

"Each time Joe Louis won a fight in those depression years, even before he became champion, thousands of black Americans on relief or W.P.A., and poor, would throng out into the streets all across the land to march and cheer and yell and cry because of Joe's one–man triumphs," wrote noted author Langston Hughes.

"No one else in the United States has ever had such an effect on Negro emotions — or on mine. I marched and cheered and yelled and cried, too."

"What my father did was enable white America to think of him as an American, not as a black," said his son, Joe Jr. "By winning, he became white America's first black hero."

And paved the way for those who followed.

Shaking Up the World

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"Clay comes out to meet Liston, and Liston starts to retreat.
If Liston goes back an inch farther, he'll end up in a ringside seat.
Clay swings with his left, Clay swings with his right.
Look at young Cassius carry the fight.
Liston keeps backing, but there's not enough room.
It's a matter of time till Clay lowers the boom.
Now Clay lands with a right, what a beautiful swing,
And the punch raises the Bear clean out of the ring.
Liston is still rising, and the ref wears a frown
For he can't start counting till Sonny goes down.
Now Liston is disappearing from view, the crowd is going frantic,
But radar stations have picked him up, somewhere over the Atlantic.
Who would have thought when they came to the fight
That they'd witness the launching of a human satellite?
Yes the crowd did not dream when they put up the money
That they would see a total eclipse of the Sonny."

Cassius Clay (1963)

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Sonny Liston was the most fearsome fighter of his day.

Heck, he would be fearsome in any era. Sports Illustrated ranked him third among all the heavyweights — behind only Muhammad Ali and Joe Louis.

Fifty years ago tomorrow, Liston was the heavyweight champion about to defend his title in Miami Beach against an up–and–comer named Cassius Clay (soon to be Muhammad Ali), and most observers believed the outcome was a foregone conclusion.

Modern boxing fans who grew up knowing Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield as the fiercest fighters around would be astonished by Sonny Liston. Many of his contemporaries were hesitant to fight him. There were boxing writers who believed he could not be beaten.

How tough was Liston? His nickname was "The Big Bear."

Liston was a brawler who learned to fight while serving time for armed robbery. He was sent back to prison for beating up a policeman. Through most of his professional career, Liston's majority owner was a former Mafia hit man; because of that association, Liston had a reputation for being everything that was bad about the sport even though his criminal record was a thing of the past, a relic of his reckless youth.

Clay was known to be loquacious, young and arrogant. He had won a gold medal as a light heavyweight in the 1960 Olympics, but he had struggled as a professional. Most boxing writers believed Liston would win easily.

Liston may have thought so, too. The 31–year–old Liston was a 7–to–1 favorite over the 22–year–old Clay.

Clay did everything he could to capitalize on that. He cultivated the image of a naive youngster in an attempt to lull Liston into a false sense of security.

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Any thoughts that Liston might have had about knocking Clay out in the first round the way he had disposed of the previous heavyweight champion, Floyd Patterson, disappeared quickly as Clay proved to be too slippery. He constantly frustrated Liston by backing just out of range of the champion's punches.

Then, in the third round, Clay staggered the champ. Liston didn't go down, but he was bleeding from his nose and a cut just below his left eye when the round ended.

By the fifth round, Liston's right eye was beginning to swell, but Clay was having his own vision problems. Something appeared to be in one of his eyes, and he was blinking rapidly as the round began. Sensing a vulnerability, Liston tried to move in for the kill, but Clay bounced away every time Liston tried to connect, and Liston seemed to be tired by the end of the round.

When the fighters came out for the sixth round, Liston was dragging. The fight was stopped before the start of the seventh round.

And Clay jumped around the ring, repeatedly shouting, "I shook up the world!"

Clay leaned over the ropes of the boxing ring and told the working press to "eat your words." Sports writer Red Smith wrote that "nobody ever had a better right" to demand that.

"He might have been nailed if the bout had continued," Smith wrote, "but, on the evidence of 18 frenzied minutes, Cassius was entitled to crow, 'I'm the greatest. I'm gonna upset the world.' "

Smith's words were a glimpse into the mindset of many who had been skeptical of Clay before the fight. Perhaps they felt he had been lucky. He was still a brash youngster, and upsets do happen. Clay "might have been nailed if the bout had continued," Smith had written, but he won "on the evidence of 18 frenzied minutes."

Evidence, of course, is what it is, whatever it is, not what someone might wish that it is. The fight did not continue. It was the end of the Liston championship.

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Within a few days, Clay joined the Nation of Islam and changed his name to Muhammad Ali.

It was the start of a new era in boxing. Liston got a rematch with Ali in Lewiston, Maine, in May of 1965, which he lost, and he was never to be a contender again. Less than six years later, he was found dead of what was originally ruled to be a heroin overdose. Police could find no paraphernalia that would have been necessary to inject the fatal dose, however, so his death remains officially unresolved.

For Ali, it was the beginning of a remarkable professional career.

The Fight of the Century, Part II

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Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier fought three times.

The first was known as the "Fight of the Century." Frazier was the defending world champion, and he defeated Ali on that occasion. It was Frazier's only victory in three bruising confrontations.

The third fight, the "Thrilla in Manila," was fought a year and a half after the second fight, which took place in New York's Madison Square Garden 40 years ago tonight.

Neither man was champion on this night 40 years ago. Frazier had lost his title a year earlier to George Foreman, and the winner of the second fight figured to get a shot at Foreman's crown.

In boxing lore, the second fight between the two men is seen as the least significant of the three, but I disagree with that assessment. It was scheduled for 12 rounds, and it went the distance — no quick decision. Ali was the winner by unanimous decision, but that does not mean it was a lopsided fight.

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It is an exercise in futility to rank the Ali–Frazier fights. It was a great rivalry, and each fight had its unique traits.

I always believed Ali–Frazier II was not the least significant of the three fights. True, no title was on the line, but the winner was expected to get a shot at the heavyweight championship — and, in fact, it did lead to a title shot for Ali later that year.

What's more, Ali cashed in on his opportunity, defeating Foreman in the famed "Rumble in the Jungle" in October.

But that was still nine months in the future. On this night in 1974, Ali got off to the kind of start that was typical for him — scoring enough points to be the unanimous winner of the first two rounds. That came as no real surprise to veteran fight watchers. Frazier always was a slow starter.

Frazier — who was thought to be seriously hurt near the end of the second round — began to score some points with the judges, winning the third round and doing well enough in the fourth to get two of the judges to score the round a draw.

The fifth and sixth rounds went to Ali, then the seventh and eighth went to Frazier. Ali was the unanimous winner of the ninth and 11th rounds while Frazier won split decisions in the 10th and 12th rounds.

It was a unanimous decision — all three judges had Ali winning — but it was far from unanimous as far as all observers were concerned. Sports writer Red Smith of the New York Times, for example, thought Frazier had won a narrow victory.

The rivalry had what any good rivalry should have — a healthy dose of good old–fashioned hate. At least, it appeared to have plenty of hate coming from the Frazier corner. Prior to their rematch, the men reviewed the tape of the first fight at the ABC studio, during which Ali called Frazier "ignorant," and a fight broke out in the studio.

That might have been a show. Ali was known to be a showman, and Frazier might have been persuaded to play along.

But, if it was a show, it was mighty convincing.

Ken Norton: The Often-Forgotten 'Giant'

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Ken Norton, who died Wednesday at the age of 70, was good enough to win the heavyweight championship in the conventional way.

Instead he was awarded the title when the champion, Leon Spinks, refused to fight Norton, the top contender, in his first title defense as mandated by the World Boxing Council after he beat Muhammad Ali in February 1978. Spinks was stripped of the WBC title, and Norton was given the title retroactively — on the basis of a fight he won the previous year.

I'm sure Norton would have preferred to win the title the old–fashioned way — in the ring. He came so close at times. It makes you wonder, doesn't it? Ali, Norton's most noteworthy contemporary, did it three times.

Norton fought Ali three times and won the first one — when Ali was in his prime. The only other fighter to do that was Joe Frazier.

Like Frazier, Norton lost his next two bouts with Ali, but Ali's victories against each fighter were different. In each succeeding fight with Frazier, Ali seemed to get better but Frazier did not. Norton — competing "in what can now be viewed as a golden era of heavyweights," writes The Telegraph — maintained his level of excellence.

Norton came into his third fight with Ali supremely confident, and he was confident he had outfought Ali when the final bell rang. There were even those who thought Norton won that final bout with Ali. A victory would have given Norton the title, but he came up short, just as he did against George Foreman.

As I say, he eventually won the title, anyway — but not in the ring. I guess, for some fight fans, that diminishes the accomplishment, even though the WBC insisted it was based on a real victory in the ring. It just wasn't recognized at the time as a title fight.

Perhaps that is, to a degree, why the only Ken Norton who is recognized by many modern–day sports fans is Norton's son and namesake.

There was an embarrassment of riches in the heavyweight division in those days.

Or, as Gregg Doyel of CBS Sports writes, that was when boxing was "the most amazing sport around."

I read Doyel's piece on Norton a couple of times, and, both times, I found myself nodding in agreement when I read this: "[O]nce upon a time boxing was full of true sporting giants," one of whom was Norton.

It must have been hard to stand out among all those other giants.

Muhammad Ali's Third Heavyweight Crown

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Thirty–five years ago today, Muhammad Ali did something no one else has ever done. He won the heavyweight title for the third time.

Seven months earlier, Ali got sloppy and lost his title to Leon Spinks, a newcomer fighting in only his eighth professional fight. The 36–year–old Ali clearly expected an easy time with Spinks, but he wound up losing a 15–round decision.

Ali took the rematch seriously and came into it in much better shape. In many ways, he looked like the Ali of a few years earlier when he won bouts with George Foreman and Joe Frazier.

The Spinks fights were televised in those pre–cable days by one of the networks. That was one of the great things about the years when Ali was the champ. He made boxing accessible to everyone. Before and after Ali's championship years, heavyweight title fights were televised in that era's version of pay–per–view telecasts. They were shown via closed circuit in theaters, and, as I recall, tickets definitely were not cheap (in the financial context of the times).

But Joe Six–Pack could watch heavyweight title fights from the comfort of his own living room — and without paying a penny for the privilege — when Ali was champ.

I didn't get to see Ali lose his title to Spinks in February 1978. It was regarded as a foregone conclusion that Ali would win, and I accepted a social invitation of some kind — and, as a result, missed one of the great upsets in boxing history.

Seven months later, when the two of them met in a rematch, I was in front of the TV watching. I wasn't about to miss it. The Rumble in the Jungle and the Thrilla in Manila get all the attention in the Ali story, but, for me, the fight that took place 35 years ago tonight was the most anticipated fight of my life.

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As I watched the rematch, it was hard for me to believe Ali could have lost to Spinks in that first fight. Ali was sharp. He was crisp. He was in charge of the fight from the beginning.

Long before the final bell sounded, I knew Ali would recapture his title that night — barring some totally unexpected development. Not only did Ali look like he was in charge of the fight, but Spinks appeared hesitant, sluggish, even confused at times. In the later rounds, maybe that confusion was due to all the blows Spinks had taken from Ali. But I could not explain why he was that way in the early rounds.

I thought it was a mismatch. It was hard for me to believe the fight went the distance. True, it resulted in a unanimous decision for Ali, but his age was catching up to him. The Ali of even two years prior would have finished off Spinks in a few rounds, as he did Jean–Pierre Coopman and Richard Dunn (with a 15–round decision over a more highly regarded challenger, Jimmy Young, in between) in a three—month span in 1976.

But, after beating Spinks, Ali went more than two years before unsuccessfully defending his title against Larry Holmes in October 1980.

The Era of Ali was over.

Jaw Breaker

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For nearly 40 years, ABC's Wide World of Sports was a fixture on Saturday afternoons.

Its mission was really twofold. Ostensibly, I believe it began its existence as a catch–all for offbeat sports that were rarely, if ever, shown on the Big Three networks, but it also showed popular sports, primarily individual competitions, like boxing or figure skating or gymnastics.

As such, it filled a niche in those days before cable.

Everyone knew the intro in which the narrator spoke of "the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat."

As a boy, I often watched Wide World of Sports. The sports it showed really were off the wall most of the time, but, once in awhile, there was some good mainstream sports event on the program.

Such was the case 40 years ago today.

I don't remember much about that day except that my parents went somewhere that afternoon — they probably went to Little Rock to see a movie and have dinner — and a young couple had been hired to look after my brother and me.

As a college professor, my father often recruited his students to look after us when he took my mother out. My memory was that one, if not both, of the young people who came over that day had been in at least one of his classes.

Anyway, as I recall, the four of us started playing a board game of some kind after my parents left. Then, an hour or so later, the young man suggested that we watch Wide World of Sports. Muhammad Ali, who was only two years removed from his first fight with Joe Frazier, was to fight Ken Norton that afternoon.

That was fine with me.

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I don't recall if I had ever seen Ali fight live before, but I had seen him on TV. Interviews. Fight highlights. That sort of thing. I liked him. He always seemed to be symbolic of the era in which he competed.

On this occasion, I got to see him fight — impressively, too, even though he didn't win.

It was a competitive fight, one that Ali lost in a split decision. It went the scheduled 12 rounds, and, after the fight had been awarded to Norton, it was revealed that Ali's jaw had been broken at some point. Norton has always contended that it happened near the end of the fight, probably in the 11th round. Angelo Dundee, Ali's trainer, insisted it was earlier.

Ali and Norton fought two more times. Ali won both — even though some observers will tell you they thought Norton actually won their last fight in 1976 — when Ali was heavyweight champion for the second time. If Norton had won on that day, he would have been heavyweight champ.

As it was, Norton did join that elite club of men who have been heavyweight champion. The title was awarded to him retroactively a couple of years later — after Ali had lost his title to Leon Spinks in early 1978. The crown did not remain on his head for long. In his first title defense, Norton was defeated in a very tight decision against Larry Holmes.

On this day 40 years ago, Norton was only the second professional fighter to defeat Ali (Joe Frazier was the other).

Talk about an exclusive club.

Down Goes Frazier

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Ever since his victory in his much–anticipated bout with Muhammad Ali in 1971, Joe Frazier had stood atop the boxing world.

He defended his title twice in 1972 but against inferior opponents who required him to spend little time in the ring before stopping both on TKOs. I remember hearing nearly all the grown–ups in my world say that, since Ali had been turned back, no one could topple Frazier.

(That was just fine with many of the men I knew, too. Many had pulled for Frazier against Ali, largely because the majority of adults in Arkansas supported the Vietnam War. Ali, of course, had spoken against the war and refused to fight in it.)

Always in the distance, though, was the imposing figure of George Foreman, the gold medal winner at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. He turned pro the following year, and, once in awhile, I heard a grown–up speculate that Foreman could beat Frazier.

Even though Foreman was five inches taller than Frazier (who won an Olympic gold medal in Tokyo in 1964) and enjoyed a 10–inch reach advantage, Frazier was a 3–to–1 favorite when the two men met in Jamaica 40 years ago today. I suppose that was based on his years of experience as a pro — as well as his triumph over Ali (who was in every boxing conversation in those days, even if he wasn't on the fight card).

But both men entered the fight undefeated. And it didn't take long for observers to conclude that Foreman's height and reach advantage really did make a difference.

I've heard people ask if Foreman's victory on that night was an upset. I can't really say it was a big upset, even though it was regarded as an upset by many. I presume that was because Frazier was the champion and Foreman was younger, less experienced but already seen as a man who would one day be heavyweight champion of the world. Whether his win 40 years ago tonight was seen as an upset depended, I suppose, on whether the observer believed his time had come.

As it turned out, Foreman's "time" to be heavyweight champion came twice — on this night in 1973 and again 21 years later. He lost the title to Ali about a year and a half after winning it from Frazier.

The three–knockdown rule had been waived for the bout, but Frazier almost immediately became the poster child for why such a rule has a valid purpose. He went down three times in the first round and three times in the second before the fight was stopped.

"Foreman's last punch, a perfect right uppercut, lifted Frazier's stocky body into the air for an instant before he hit the canvas yet again," recalls The History Channel. "Frazier struggled to his feet, but at that point, 1:35 into the second round, the referee Arthur Mercante called an end to the bout."

It was during that brief bout that sportscaster Howard Cosell, doing the blow–by–blow for that era's equivalent of a pay–per–view audience, uttered what may well be the most memorable line of his career:

"Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!"

Years later, Foreman confessed that Frazier was the only fighter he ever feared.

The End of the Macho Man

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During his lifetime, I sometimes heard Hector "Macho" Camacho compared to Muhammad Ali.

And I could see certain similarities. Both were dynamic and charismatic. Matt Schubel writes in the Washington Post of Camacho's "theatrical presence" in the ring.

Like Ali, he was also a gifted fighter, faster than any of his contemporaries and possessed of a style unlike any of his rivals.

Some people would even extend the comparison to include both fighters' brushes with the law — but, while the law is the law and, technically speaking, there is no real difference between a violation of one law and a violation of another, there are differences between Ali and Camacho.

Justice is supposed to be blind. In that sense, all laws are created equal.

But not all crimes are created equal.

With the exception of claiming conscientious objector status during the Vietnam War, Ali has — to my knowledge — observed the laws of his homeland, even those with which he may have disagreed.

He became a cultural lightning rod with his refusal to fight in Vietnam, and there are still those who berate him for it. He served no time in prison, but he was stripped of his title and did not fight for nearly four years — a boxer's prime years — until the matter had been resolved in court.

No court ruling could restore to Ali what had been taken from him, but he went on to become the first three–time heavyweight champion, anyway.

Camacho, on the other hand, "was continually shadowed by drug problems and legal entanglements," writes Schubel. That may well have been what brought about the end of his life.

Camacho was shot in the face Tuesday while he sat in a car in Puerto Rico and was taken off life support yesterday. A companion also was killed in what was an apparent ambush, and cocaine reportedly was found on the scene.

He embraced the persona of the "Macho Man" with the same relish that Ali boasted that he was "The Greatest," but there was a difference between them.

When he was growing up, Camacho was always getting into trouble of some kind. He claimed to have been expelled from half a dozen schools by the time he was 15. He had served time in jail by the time he was 17, and the self–professed "gutter kid" brought the behavior he had learned to the ring.

He was often criticized for using dirty tricks in the ring, but he was also capable of extraordinary things — like the time Julio Cesar Chavez won a brutal decision over him 20 years ago. Chavez was on a mission to knock out Camacho, but Camacho took everything that was thrown at him and was still standing at the end — "snarling through the blood," wrote Sports Illustrated's Pat Putnam.

Ironically, street crime did play a role in Ali's decision to take up boxing. At the age of 12, Ali had a brand–new bicycle, which was stolen when he left it unattended, prompting him to rant about what he would do to the thief if he caught him.

Ali was encouraged to "learn something about fighting," and Ali had found his path in life.

I always felt Camacho had more in common with Mike Tyson than Muhammad Ali.

Capturing the Color of Competition

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When I heard that sports artist LeRoy Neiman had died at the age of 91, I knew I wanted to write about him — but I was torn.

I didn't know if I should write about him on my sports blog or my arts/entertainment blog.

After all, Neiman produced paintings and prints of musicians and other celebrities, too.

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And he did it well.

He brought their personalities to the canvas in colorfully descriptive ways — but he also did that with sports topics.

And, as someone who worked for several years as a sports copy editor, I have an abiding appreciation for the magic that photographers make with the topics they are assigned to cover.

Many of the most exciting, most dramatic photos I have ever seen were of sports events. Neiman simply did with a brush what photographers once did with film.

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They used to call the great Secretariat Big Red. Well, I guess I'm using the word they a bit loosely. Secretariat's owner, Penny Chenery Tweedy, called him that — but the rest of the world called him Secretariat.

In his portrait of Secretariat, Neiman emphasized the red in his coloring (which was never that obvious to me when he was running — that may have been the quality of the color in our TV set, but he always looked chestnut brown to me). I guess you could say he exaggerated it, much as a cartoonist would exaggerate an unusual physical characteristic of a human subject.

I first became acquainted with Neiman's work in magazines like Sports Illustrated, which often showcased his paintings of memorable moments, like Dwight Clark's reception in the January 1982 NFC championship game.

Or great Olympic performances. Or golf tournaments.

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Mostly, though, I associate Neiman's artwork with Muhammad Ali. Neiman often did a painting following a big fight, and his work was always in great demand whenever Ali fought another big–name boxer, like George Foreman or Joe Frazier.

I kind of got the impression at the time that Ali was one of Neiman's favorite subjects. Perhaps he was. Artists are human, after all, and they certainly have their preferences, just like anyone else.

But I don't know that for certain. If Neiman ever spoke in an interview about preferring to paint Ali more than anyone else, I never read or heard it.

Perhaps William Grimes of the New York Times put it best when he wrote that Neiman "cast himself in the mold of French Impressionists ... chroniclers of public life who found rich social material at racetracks, dance halls and cafes."

Neiman may have been sort of like Red Smith, who once said that he believed that people went to sports events to have fun, then they picked up the newspaper the next day to read about it and have fun all over again.

Perhaps Neiman's way of having fun was to re–create great sports moments on his canvas.

His work is, in its way, iconic — moreso, I think, than Andy Warhol's paintings of Campbell's soup cans because at least it captures the color of life. It isn't merely a painter's version of the negative of a still life.

I will miss Neiman every time a memorable moment occurs in sports.

More Than a Trainer

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I've heard it said — by more than one person — that Muhammad Ali never would have become who he was if not for trainer Angelo Dundee.

I guess Dundee, who died yesterday at the age of 90, will always be remembered as the man who was in Ali's corner in all but two of his fights, but, in fact, Dundee worked with many noteworthy fighters, including Sugar Ray Leonard and George Foreman.

He left his fingerprints all over the sport of boxing. While his name probably will always be linked to Ali's, he was really so much more than that. He was even more than a man who trained more than a dozen champions.

Did you happen to see "Cinderella Man," the movie about the life of James J. Braddock starring Russell Crowe? Dundee was too young to have trained Braddock — but he was hired to train Crowe to portray Braddock in the film.

" I think I would have to go so far as to say Russell is Jim Braddock," Dundee said. "I'm amazed the way Russell picked up his mannerisms, his smoothness, the legs, the way he slides, that slip, slide, block, slide, jab — boom! Like Jim, he has just about the greatest left hook I've ever seen. He's got the speed, the rhythm, the determination and especially the will. Best of all, he has learned to think like a fighter. One thing about Braddock is that he was a smart fighter, and Russell uses his noodle just like Braddock did. I do think if he wasn't an actor, Russell could have been a great fighter."

Dundee was generous with his praise, but he just might have been able to train anyone.

A decade ago, he was portrayed on the silver screen by Ron Silver in the 2001 biopic "Ali."

Ali was certainly the most high–profile fighter with whom Dundee worked, but he might never have become the figure he became if not for Dundee.

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Steve Springer describes the scene: "At the end of the fourth round of a 1963 fight against Henry Cooper, Ali, then known as Cassius Clay, was surprised by a left–hand punch that floored him and left him dazed. Fortunately for Clay, it was the end of the round, allowing him to stagger back to his corner.

"It was there that Dundee, trying to buy time until his fighter's head cleared, stuck his finger in a slight split in the seams of one of Clay's gloves, causing a slightly bigger split. That allowed Dundee to ask the referee for another pair of gloves. None were available, but the incident added valuable seconds to Clay's rest time, allowing him to recover and go on to win on a fifth–round technical knockout.

"His next fight, against heavyweight champion Sonny Liston, might not have occurred if Clay had lost to Cooper."

Springer goes on to observe that Dundee applied more creativity when Ali fought Sonny Liston for the title in 1964.

Dundee was an old–school kind of guy.

The Greatest Is 70

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When I was growing up, Muhammad Ali — who was born in Louisville, Ky., 70 years ago today — was an inspiring figure.

In the eyes of many, he was a braggart, a smart aleck, the embodiment of the antiwar movement — even though, to my knowledge, he never participated in an antiwar march or protest after being stripped of his heavyweight title for refusing military induction during the Vietnam War.

It is appropriate, I suppose, that this milestone birthday comes one day after the national observance of Martin Luther King's birthday. Ali's stand, it was said, persuaded King, who had been hesitant to speak out against the war, to reverse his policy.

He took his share of scorn from those who supported the war, though, and, as I wrote last year on the 40th anniversary of Ali's first fight with Joe Frazier, the war was the reason most of those people rooted against Ali when he was in the ring.

They said he was arrogant, and they called him names like "the Louisville Lip" — an anti–Ali spin on his own declaration that he was "the Greatest" — but I always felt it was mostly a case of transference. The war was the real reason for their opposition.

Maybe they really did dislike Ali — he could be abrasive at times — but the war was their excuse.

I don't know if Ali was the greatest of all time, as he claimed. Perhaps the very suggestion was offensive to those who remembered Joe Louis or Rocky Marciano.

But I felt then — and I still feel today — that he was the best in my lifetime. Admittedly, some of that may have been due to my youth and susceptibility. But not everyone who saw him fight was as young as I was — and even many of those who disagreed with his politics acknowledged, however grudgingly, how talented he was.

His talent was never an issue for me. When Ali said he was "the Greatest," I never thought he was boasting. I thought he was stating a fact.

And today he is 70. And, strangely, I am the one who feels older.

Happy birthday, champ.

The Dawn of the Iron (Mike) Age

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My overwhelming memory of Mike Tyson's reign as heavyweight champion is that he was reckless in the ring.

But the problem is that reckless doesn't really seem to be the right word for "Iron Mike" in his heyday.

See, reckless — for me — conjures up the image of the Tasmanian devil from the old cartoons spinning his way through whatever happened to be in his path — trees, houses, mountains, whatever.

Tyson — for those of you who are too young to remember or may not have been born yet — was a powerful man, all right. When you watched him in the ring, even if he was simply standing in his corner of it, you saw muscles rippling all over his body — in his arms and legs and his torso.

Boxing's aficionados have mentioned Tyson with history's greatest punchers — comparable to Joe Frazier, Sonny Liston, Rocky Marciano, George Foreman. He was entirely capable of ripping into anyone and anything that got in his way.

To be sure, he looked reckless at times. But he was no Tasmanian devil. That was just his way.

I never really got the impression that Tyson was much of a thinker or strategist in the ring. To me, he seemed somewhat disdainful of pursuits of style points.

Style points were for fighters who didn't expect to knock the other guy out, who expected both fighters to still be standing at the end of the final scheduled round.

And Tyson always gave the distinct impression that he expected to knock the other guy out. I don't think he ever believed that an opponent was capable of going the distance with him.

He acted more on instinct, like a wounded bear defending his turf. His objective was never to outwit a foe. His objective was to hurt his foe and finish the fight as quickly as possible.

He never seemed to care if his opponent knew what he was going to do. He did it, anyway.

And most of the time, Tyson did finish off his opponent in a round or two.

That's what happened 25 years ago tonight. Tyson was in his prime and as disciplined as he was ever going to be during his boxing career, finishing off Trevor Berbick quickly to become the youngest man to win the WBC, WBA and IBF world heavyweight titles.

It was a "watershed moment," writes Tim Smith in the New York Daily News.

"Not since Tyson," Smith writes, "has any heavyweight champion captured the attention of the sporting public with a unique brand of ring menace and concussive force."

Tyson was barely 20 when he defeated Berbick by a second–round technical knockout. When I watch the film of the fight, I can see the intense focus in Tyson's eyes. Maybe it was really naivete — maybe he was just too young to comprehend that he was trying to do something no one his age had ever done before.

And I can sense growing trepidation in Berbick's eyes.

When Tyson lost the title forever in a stunning upset at the hands of Buster Douglas in 1990, it was in large part due to the fact that Douglas used his own version of Muhammad Ali's famous rope–a–dope strategy that forced a fighter who was accustomed to getting the job done in a round or two to wear himself out. Douglas wore Tyson down, then put him away in the 10th round.

It was reminiscent of the night in 1974 when Ali took the heavyweight title from another two– or three–round specialist by the name of George Foreman.

By the time Douglas beat Tyson, many things had changed in Tyson's world. His mentor, Cus D'Amato, died about a year before Tyson claimed the title in his fight with Berbick, but Tyson was still fighting under D'Amato's influence with his protege, Kevin Rooney, stepping into the void after D'Amato's death.

Tyson and Rooney came to a parting of the ways in 1988, and Tyson's career, and life in general, started spinning out of control.

But, on this night in 1986, it was vintage Tyson. Bleacher Report calls it one of the 10 strangest knockouts in boxing history, but I never saw it that way.

Granted, it wasn't pretty. In fact, it was often primitive. But it got the job done. Tyson was disciplined enough to do that much.

And when one watches the footage of the Berbick fight, one can only wonder what Tyson might have been if he had continued to be as disciplined long after D'Amato was gone.

Rest in Peace, Joe Frazier

If you were a sports fan in the 1970s, there were certain athletes, certain teams, certain events that will remain in your memory forever — Muhammad Ali, the Pittsburgh Steelers, the tragedy of the 1972 Summer Olympics, the list goes on and on.

You can't think of those Olympic Games without seeing, in your mind's eye, hooded terrorists and a somber Jim McKay telling viewers that the Israeli athletes had been killed.

You can't think of the Steelers of that time and not think of the team they beat in two classic Super Bowls, the Dallas Cowboys.

And you can't think of Ali without thinking of his three epic fights with Joe Frazier.

Frazier died of liver cancer late Monday. He was 67 years old.

He was an intense battler in the ring, a great champion in his own right, but he will always be remembered for those three fights he had with Ali. Smokin' Joe actually won the first one, much to the delight of right–wing boxing fans who felt Ali should have gone to Vietnam, and survived their grueling finale in the Philippines, dubbed "the Thrilla in Manila."

I suppose it's that first Ali–Frazier fight that people think of the most when they think of Frazier — and that is ironic, I guess, because, as I say, that is the only fight of the three that Frazier won. But it was the third fight that Ali said was the closest he ever came to death.

I always felt that first fight was too mired in politics. The two men became political symbols, whether that was what they desired or not. Supporters of the Vietnam War gravitated to Frazier, opponents gravitated to Ali. Very few seemed to be interested in the fight from a purely athletic perspective, and, consequently, relatively few recognized it for its boxing brilliance. It was called the "Fight of the Century," and many fights have been called that, but that first Ali–Frazier duel really lived up to it.

Frazier took a lot of abuse from Ali in public, and he resented it for much of his life. But those who should know say that he forgave Ali for everything in recent years, and the two apparently became friends.

Much will be said about Joe Frazier in the days ahead, and he deserves all the accolades he will receive. I'm sure some of the warmest will come from Ali, who is forever linked to Frazier — like Affirmed and Alydar, they were thoroughbreds whose legends would have been incomplete without the other.

The Death of Our 'Enry

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Henry Cooper has died at the age of 76.

Most people may not remember Cooper, a former boxer from England. There probably isn't much reason to remember him, I suppose, but nearly 48 years ago, he fought Muhammad Ali (then known as Cassius Clay) and did something that few men did during Ali's career.

Cooper knocked him down.

It wasn't the kind of knockdown you probably imagine when you hear that. The men weren't in the middle of the ring when it happened, and Ali didn't go down like a bag of wet cement; rather, they were near the ropes, and Ali's arm got snagged in them, keeping him from falling to the canvas, where his head might well have struck the boards concealed beneath.

If that had happened, it is easy to imagine that Ali might have been knocked out — and Cooper (known affectionately as "Our 'Enry" in the United Kingdom) might have won. The history of heavyweight boxing would have been changed forever.

Ali's next fight was against the heavyweight champ, Sonny Liston. But it might have been Cooper instead.

Ali was spared that because his arm got caught in the rope and held him up as the fourth round came to an end. He was woozy, though, and his trainer, Angelo Dundee, used smelling salts to revive him.

The use of smelling salts was in violation of existing rules, but it wasn't the only questionable tactic Dundee used on that occasion. He also made a tear in one of Ali's gloves and told the referee that new gloves were needed, which further delayed resumption of the bout.

By the time the fighters returned to the ring, Ali had shaken off the fog and was able to concentrate on open cuts on Cooper's face. Before long, blood was streaming down his face like perspiration. Cooper was leading on the judges' scorecards, but the referee nevertheless had to stop the fight and award the decision to Ali.

I've only seen that fight on film — and I never saw it until I was an adult — but I remember seeing pictures of Cooper's blood–streaked face in boxing magazines when I was a child. I found the image very disturbing.

I found it even more disturbing later in life when I saw Dundee being interviewed about the fight, and he readily admitted to both offenses. He seemed proud of what he had done — and I suppose he was. He had kept a young boxing prospect on his path of destiny.

However, Cooper did have a lasting impact on the sport. Spare gloves were required at ringside, but he couldn't make the use of smelling salts illegal. It was illegal already. It just wasn't rigidly enforced on that evening in 1963.

The Fight of the Century

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Forty years ago tonight, Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali met in the much–anticipated "Fight of the Century."

Technically, I guess you could call it the first "Fight of the Century" — at least in my lifetime.

There have been other fights that have been known as the "Fight of the Century" — the 1910 bout between Jack Johnson and James Jefferies was known by that name, and so was the 1938 fight between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling — but most modern fight fans would tell you it can only apply to a showdown between Ali and Frazier.

Ali and Frazier met three times in the 1970s, and their first bout was on March 8, 1971. I guess some folks would say it was the best of the three — but, to reach that conclusion (when the third fight was the famous "Thrilla in Manila"), one was required (practically) to be pro–Frazier and/or anti–Ali.

It was, after all, the only one of the three fights that Frazier won.

It was an epic showdown. Both men were undefeated as professional fighters. Frazier was the defending champion. Ali was a former champion.

In 1971, though, if one was pulling for Frazier, it said more about that person's politics — specifically, one's position on Vietnam — than anything else. It was as telling as the length of one's hair or the style of one's clothes.

Ali had served a suspension from pro boxing in the very prime of his career for refusing to serve in the military during the war. He had been stripped of his title in April 1967 and then allowed to return to pro boxing in October 1970.

Frazier, on the other hand, was a darling of the pro–war elements in American politics in those days. He said that he didn't serve in the military because he was a father, but he would have no problem serving if called upon to do so.

Before he retired from boxing, Ali became the first man to win the heavyweight championship three separate times. He is considered by most boxing observers to be one of the greatest heavyweights — if not the greatest — of all time.

But, in 1971, he was really no more significant than any other man who had held the heavyweight title at one time — just more flamboyant than most, certainly more controversial than most. He had fought twice since 1967, and he was being thrust into the ring to face the defending heavyweight champion, a fighter who was known to be a punishing puncher.

It was often suggested that he hadn't had enough time to get into peak condition for a shot at the title. That was a fair assessment, I suppose.

It certainly was better than many of the things I heard people say about Ali at the time, that's for sure.

Perhaps no challenger up to that time had been as reviled as Ali. I've heard that Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion, took a lot of abuse while he held the title (but not, I believe, before that time) whereas Ali was always a lightning rod, whether he was the champion or the challenger.

Whether his surname was the one he chose (Ali) or the one to which he was born (Clay).

In 1971, there was a lot of residual anger directed at him from those who supported the war in Vietnam — and resented it when Ali refused to be drafted into service.

In hindsight, I guess the irony is that even those who opposed the war weren't necessarily supporting Ali. My mother, for example, was strongly opposed to the war, but she didn't particularly care for Ali, either.

She was a supporter of civil rights, though, so I'm sure she sympathized when Ali said, "I ain't got no quarrel with the Viet Cong. No Viet Cong ever called me nigger."

As I recall, Frazier said nothing that was in the least bit incendiary — which was a big part of his appeal to conservative Americans.

I guess the Vietnam angle spilled over into other areas. Although both men were black, Ali was something of a champion in the black community — whereas Frazier was often seen as the "white man's champion."

Tickets to the fight sold for $150 — a figure that, as Tim Dahlberg of the Associated Press remembers, was an "astonishing sum" at a time when the minimum hourly wage in America was $1.60.

There was no pay–per–view in those days. For those who were willing to part with the cash, one could see what was called "closed–circuit" coverage of a big fight at selected movie theaters. And there was no bigger event in the boxing world than Ali–Frazier I.

I don't know what tickets to closed–circuit venues went for in those days, but it was simply out of the question for me. I wanted to see the fight, but I just couldn't.

Years later, I finally saw a tape of it, a tape that included the pre–fight stuff that the people who bought the closed–circuit tickets saw that evening. Fight Night brought all the celebrities and publicity hounds to Madison Square Garden, the folks who cared more about being seen than what they were seeing — even if what they were seeing was historic — and the paparazzi of the day were only too happy to oblige.

I remember that night vividly. There was radio coverage — but each round description was broadcast after a delay, and the fact that it was delayed was announced before each round began (I always assumed that was to discourage gambling) — and I remember reclining on my parents' bed and listening on the radio in their bedroom to the announcers' descriptions of Ali and Frazier trading blows.

It was a chilly night, and, at one point, my mother, who had been listening to the fight with my brother and me, suggested that she fix mugs of hot chocolate for us. The image of the three of us sitting around that radio and the memory of that warm, chocolatey liquid insulating me against that early March evening while I listened to the fight will always be with me.

That's one of the things about my memory of that evening that is so special for me now. Mom enjoyed some sports, but she had no real interest in boxing — and, as I said, she wasn't too keen on Ali, either. On that evening, though, she listened to the radio broadcast with my brother and me — and she talked about it with us. Not because it mattered to her, but because it mattered to us.

When we started listening to the fight, I just knew we were in it for the long haul. Maybe boxing fans who were brought up during the Mike Tyson era can't understand, but Ali and Frazier always gave fans their money's worth. No first– or second–round knockouts whenever these guys were in the ring together.

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I guess the trend was established 40 years ago tonight. Ali and Frazier went the distance, 15 rounds, before Frazier was declared the winner by unanimous decision.

The speculation by the radio announcers was that Ali was trailing on the judges' scorecards as the men began that 15th round, and he probably needed a knockout — or at least a couple of knockdowns — to prevail. The men had been about even through the first 11 rounds, they said, but Frazier seemed to seize control with a shot late in the 11th round that might have knocked Ali down if not for the ropes that caught him and kept him on his feet.

As I listened to the final round, it occurred to me that it was already over and both Ali and Frazier, as well as all the folks who were in Madison Square Garden that night, knew the outcome. But I didn't. Not yet.

About 30 seconds into that 15th round, Ali was knocked down for what may have been the first time in his boxing career, pro or amateur. Already viewed by many as arrogant, he had come into the fight with red tassles dangling from each ankle, almost defying Frazier to knock him off his feet. The sight of those tassles briefly occupying the area where Ali's face had been must have seemed like justification to his detractors.

I can't describe the sound of the announcers as they reported the blow Frazier had delivered and how it knocked a startled Ali on his back. There was an excitement in their voices that I had never heard before.

It was many years before I saw a tape of the fight, but when I saw Ali knocked on his back and those tassles flying wildly in the air, it looked exactly as I had always pictured it. Frazier, who sometimes seemed to be dragging in the late stages of the fight, appeared to be revived by that and hammered away at Ali following a mandatory eight–count, landing a punch midway through the round that should have dropped Ali to the canvas again.

Ali didn't go down again, but the damage had been done — in more ways than one. Both men went to the hospital after the fight — there were even rumors, for a time, that Frazier had died. Ali swore that he would retire from boxing if those rumors turned out to be true.

Fortunately, they were not.

As a child, I always felt that Frazier and Ali really didn't like each other. Ali was constantly calling Frazier names and suggesting that Frazier wasn't very smart, and "Smokin' Joe" really seemed to smolder whenever Ali spoke to him in public.

A couple of decades later, when NBC brought the two of them together to watch a tape of the fight and reflect on that event, the two men seemed to patch things up. Ali, who had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease several years earlier, said it had all been in fun, and Frazier said there were no hard feelings.

Neither was there any doubt who won the fight.

George Willis writes in the New York Post that Ali eventually admitted that Frazier had been the better fighter that night.

"I watched the fight over and over trying to find excuses, saying they robbed me or didn't like me because of this or that," Ali said, "but I watched the fight, and the first fight he did win."

The Thrilla in Manila

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For me, it is really incredible to think that it has been 35 years since the "Thrilla in Manila," the third and final fight between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali.

Few rivalries between individual athletes could match Ali and Frazier in the 1970s. The nation truly was transfixed every time they fought. I always felt that was because they represented — symbolically, at least — each side of the cultural divide that existed in those days. Ali, with his rebellious nature and his refusal to fight in the increasingly unpopular Vietnam War, seemed to represent the doves, whereas the obedient, establishmentarian Frazier represented the hawks in American society.

I was a great admirer of Ali as a boy, and one of the things I appreciated about him was that, after he won the title from George Foreman, he brought boxing back to the people. Prior to the second Ali championship era, most fights were shown only on closed–circuit TV. But after Ali defeated Foreman, most of his title defenses were on commercial TV.

Of course, at that point in his career, few of Ali's foes were truly on his level. But that didn't matter. I remember eagerly looking forward to those fights.

But the "Thrilla in Manila" was an exception, in more ways than one. Not only did it match Ali with a worthy adversary, but the fight was televised by the fledgling HBO network — which was then, as it is now, a subscription service — and its broadcast via satellite from the Philippines can be reasonably said to have been a pioneering event in the development of modern satellite TV transmission.

And, too, I always felt that, if it wasn't the initial inspiration, the "Thrilla" must have had some influence on the story that was told in the original "Rocky." At the very least, it was a damn good example of art imitating life — or perhaps anticipating is a better word.

In Manila, the defending champion Ali and his entourage did not take the fight seriously, believing they were doing Frazier a favor by giving him one more moment in the spotlight. But Frazier took the fight very seriously and went 14 rounds with Ali before losing by technical knockout.

Ali — whose blase approach to the fight encouraged many distractions that were unrelated to what he needed to do in the ring — was suitably impressed with Frazier. Before the fight, he believed Frazier was just a shell of his formerly dominant self after his humiliating loss to Foreman two years earlier.

But after the fight, Ali told anyone who would listen that Frazier "is the greatest fighter of all times ... next to me."

That was pretty high praise coming from a man who fought Sonny Liston (twice), George Foreman and Ken Norton, among others.