\u201cWe\u2019re just two colored boys from the ghetto and we have the whole world watching us in the greatest event of all time!\u201d<\/p>\n
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Thus did Muhammad Ali describe himself and Joe Frazier hours before they faced off at Madison Square Garden 50 years ago this week in a highly-anticipated rematch, the second in a trilogy of iconic slugfests between the pair of champion boxers.<\/p>\n
Promoters dubbed the contest \u201cSuper Fight II,\u201d a title that never stuck.<\/p>\n
Seldom does the second Ali-Frazier fight make it onto boxing historians\u2019 rankings of history\u2019s greatest heavyweight title bouts, or of Ali\u2019s best performances\u2014an honor routinely accorded the first and third matches.<\/p>\n
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It\u2019s time that changed.<\/p>\n
The previous Ali-Frazier meeting, hailed as \u201cThe Fight of the Century,\u201d also held in the Garden, in March 1971, had been an event of global significance: The first fight between two\u00a0undefeated<\/em>\u00a0heavyweight champions, fraught with the fiery politics of the late \u201960s and early \u201970s.<\/p>\n
Ali was pretty-faced and fleet-footed, a rhyming-and-jiving convert to Islam attempting to regain the belt after three-and-a-half years of exile, imposed after he resisted military induction into the Vietnam War as a conscientious objector.<\/p>\n\n
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Plodding and poorly spoken, Frazier was the hard-luck son of a South Carolina sharecropper who had captured Olympic gold back in 1964.<\/p>\n
A decade later, Frazier was now a favorite of\u00a0Richard Nixon\u2019s Silent Majority, which viewed the conflict in Vietnam more favorably.<\/p>\n
For 15 grueling rounds, Ali worked his left jab during that first match, firing off blinding combinations to his opponent\u2019s face, while Frazier, bobbing and weaving, a hard target, moved in relentlessly, punishing Ali\u2019s head and midsection.<\/p>\n
Less than a minute into the final round, Frazier uncorked a left hook to Ali\u2019s jaw that briefly floored The Greatest.<\/p>\n\n
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The Garden erupted.<\/p>\n
Frazier drew the unanimous decision \u2014 and a three-week stay in the hospital.<\/p>\n
Now, as the Age of Sequels dawned\u2014 \u201cThe Godfather Part II\u201d was soon to debut \u2014 Ali and Frazier agreed to meet, on Jan. 23, in the Manhattan studios of ABC\u2019s \u201cWide World of Sports\u201d to review the videotape of that first match alongside host Howard Cosell.<\/p>\n
As usual, Ali taunted Frazier cruelly about his looks and education, and the latter, three-and-a-half inches shorter than Ali \u2014 his reach a full\u00a0six<\/em>-and-a-half inches shorter \u2014 had enough.<\/p>\n\n
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Boy, how you figure I\u2019m ignorant?\u00a0<\/em>asked the casually-clad Frazier, standing menacingly over his rival.<\/p>\n
In an instant, Ali, in a dark three-piece suit, rose to pre-empt Frazier\u2019s aggression with a headlock \u2014\u00a0Sit down quick, Joe!<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 as producers, technicians, and flunkies dove onto them, muffled microphones scraping and scratching as the duo tumbled from the foot-high riser to the concrete floor, wrestling like school kids.<\/p>\n
Citing \u201cdeplorable conduct\u201d that \u201cdemeaned the sport of boxing,\u201d the New York State Athletic Commission later fined them each $5,000.<\/p>\n
So when the bell sounded to open Super Fight II a few days later, there was already bad blood and the Garden audience \u2014\u00a020,748 strong, larger than the first Ali-Frazier bout, celebrities shimmering in extravagant Soul Chic threads<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 expected war.<\/p>\n\n
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But of what intensity?<\/p>\n
Super-Fight II was to be a 12-round match.<\/p>\n
Frazier, then 30, had lost the heavyweight championship in Jamaica a year earlier, when George Foreman pummeled him to the canvas\u00a0six times<\/em>\u00a0in two rounds, prompting Cosell\u2019s legendary call:\u00a0Down goes FRAY-zhuh! Down goes FRAY-zhuh!<\/em><\/p>\n
Ali, at 32, had fought 139 rounds since the first Frazier fight in 1971, including two matches with a young ex-Marine named Ken Norton, who broke Ali\u2019s jaw in March 1973.<\/p>\n\n
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Moreover, Ali\u2019s right hand was injured and weak, requiring cortisone shots.<\/p>\n
Of the third man in the ring, referee Tony Perez, Cosell said he possessed \u201cthe youth, the know-how, the swiftness, and the strength to execute his job.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lithe and limber, Ali danced like the Ali of old: a balletic, backward-circling motion from which he struck like a cobra.<\/p>\n
He was first to connect, 35 seconds in, with a right-left-left combo that thrilled the crowd.<\/p>\n
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