“I did that to him” Joe Fraizer would morosely repeat to any journalist when asked about Muhammad Ali’s early onset Parkinsons Disease. The damage sustained in their timeless three fight trilogy was more than that of physical for Fraizer, its was mental as well, his mind poisoned from there on in, clutching a overwhelming resentment that he could never let go of, a grudge that he would take to his grave.

“Look at him now. He’s damaged goods. I know it; you know it. Everyone knows it; they just don’t want to say. God has shut him down. He can’t talk no more because he was saying the wrong things. He was always making fun of me. I’m the dummy, I’m the one getting hit in the head. Tell me now. Him or me, which one talks worse now?”

Muhammad Ali is one few men who has transcended the history books within their lifetime, he has come to represent much more than just a sport, he is a symbol for taking a stand for what you believe in even when everyone is against you, he represented the working class and afforded a lot of men dignity in a time when there was little but it seems that history has sanitised him somewhat, time does that, remember the good that people do, but the bad is often greyed out. Muhammad Ali was a man who accomplished a lot of great things in his time but he was also a man that was capable of inexorable cruelty and this was never more prescient than in the first Frazier fight.

“Any black person who’s for Joe Frazier is a traitor. The only people rooting for Joe Frazier are white people in suits, Alabama sheriffs and members of the Ku Klux Klan. I’m fighting for the little man in the ghetto.”

Whether it was by accident or design when promoting the fight Muhammad Ali made Joe Frazier into a symbol of the white man, he became the oppressor simply because he was opposing Ali in the ring, the irony of course was Frazier’s upbringing made Ali’s look middle class by comparison. The youngest of eleven children he grew up dirt poor in Beaufort South Carolina. Working on his family’s farm, he would practise punching a make shift heavy bag filled with dirt, rags and Spanish moss, his makeshift hand wraps consisting of his father’s necktie and mother’s underwear and at the tender age of 15 would leave home and head to New York, alone. Ali’s remarking of Frazier as an ‘uncle tom’ isolated him from the black community and equated him with the white power structure, a tag that would follow him long after the fight, whether motivated by his three years in limbo, promoting the fight or whether he actually saw Frazier as a symbol of white power there was a sadistic bullying quality to what Ali did in the build-up, Frazier could never stand with Ali verbally, nobody could, but the effects of Ali’s constant mockery lasted long beyond their fights, so tarnished by the ‘Uncle Tom’ brush was Frazier that he never really received the same sort of sporting endorsements that other athletes at the time did. Each comment made cut further into the public perception that this was a different kind of fight; the little guy vs the big guy, the establishment vs the counter culture, a black man vs a white man except it was being fought between two black men and nobody seemed to notice.

“When he gets to ringside, Frazier will feel like a traitor. When he sees those women and those men aren’t for him he’ll feel a little weakling. He’ll have a funny feeling, an angry feeling. Fear is going to come over him, and he’ll lose a little pride. The pressure will be so great that he’ll feel it. It’s going to be real frightful when he goes to his corner. He don’t have nothing. But me, I have a cause.”

A lot had changed in the three years that Ali had spent in exile, whereas at the beginning Ali was largely seen as cowardly and unpatriotic the public opinion of the war had slowly begun to shift. Before exile Ali’s public profile was nearing an all-time low, he wasn’t commanding the same type of earning power that he had in the past and a substantial proportion of America disliked him due to his religious beliefs. Ali was a member of the Nation of Islam, and to understand the perception of Ali pre Vietnam you have to understand the perception of them. At the time the Nation were seen as an extremist group akin to that of the Black Panthers, in 1963 after Kennedy was assassinated the leader of the Nation of Islam the prophet Elijah Muhammad asked his followers to make no comment on the subject but when asked Malcolm X made his famous “Chickens coming home to roost” comment and in early 1964 following escalating tensions between Elijah and Malcom X, that encompassed more than one isolated incident, Malcolm X left to create the “Organisation of Afro-American Unity”. After the split whenever questioned Malcolm X was convinced that members of the Nation of Islam were going to kill him and when asked why he would reply “I know they are going to kill me, because I taught them” and he wasn’t wrong either.

But if before his exile Ali was unpopular during, his perception began to change, Ali’s draft dodge and subsequent stripping of the title made him seem sincere, a man of his word, he became a political symbol to people who had not prior been interested in boxing. During his exile to make money Ali would give talks around various college campuses in America allowing him to further his message across the country and increase his popularity. For what it’s worth during his exile Frazier had been good to Ali, despite taking the title he was stripped of, Frazier would engage him in pre-arranged publicity confrontations allowing him to remain squarely in the limelight and when asked about Ali’s conscientious objector status in regards to the war he was quoted in saying “If Baptisms weren’t allowed to fight, I wouldn’t fight either”.

“He can keep that pretty head; I don’t want it. What I’m going to do is try and pull those kidneys out. I’m going to be where he lives in the body. Then I’ll be in business”

But if his exile had been good for Ali’s PR it had been disastrous for his skills, he couldn’t dance for 15 rounds anymore. In the time between his return from exile and the first Frazier fight Ali had fought 5 times, three exhibition fights to test the water followed by two professional bouts, and he’d looked unspectacular in all five, but whereas he realised he couldn’t dance for all fifteen rounds anymore, he learned something else; he could take a punch. In the Oscar Bonavena fight (the penultimate bout before Frazier) Ali absorbed more damage arguably than he had in his 30 fights prior, taking rounds off to converse energy, lying on the ropes, blocking and trying absorb punishment rather than dancing, the warning signs were there.

The fight itself was as brutal as it was magnificent; Ali possessed the physical advantages weighting in 10lbs heavier than Frazier and possessing a 5 inch reach advantage but Frazier possessed something that Ali could never deal with throughout his career, a good left hook. Ali had a tendency to telegraph his uppercuts by dropping his right hand and hold said right out too far by a couple of inches to when jabbing, and this left him susceptible to a good left hook from an orthodox stance fighter. If you look at all the knockdowns sustained in Ali’s career up until that point they were all caused by left hooks, Sonny banks – left hook, Henry Cooper – left hook and it would be Frazier’s left hook that did the damage again in this fight.

With the nation’s eyes squarely watching, on March 8th 1971 the opening bell sounded and Frazier came out gunning the same way he did in every fight. The stylistic equivalent of a threshing machine, constantly moving forward, bobbing and weaving, trying to make every exchange into a brawl, going backwards simply wasn’t in the man’s nature. Ali came out quick as well, zipping off his jab, if there’s ever been a better heavyweight jab I’ve yet to see it, speed, accuracy, snap – it had everything and he could throw it from every angle. Ali was measuring Frazier with that jab in the opening rounds, throwing a right cross every time he looked to move inside, not dancing however, standing flat footed and trading with Frazier. Frazier looking to exploit this flat footed-ness by throwing lead left hooks to come over the top of Ali’s jab and he managed to catch Ali cleanly for the first time midway through the first round, Ali in response tied Frazier up and clowned to the crowd, letting them know he couldn’t be hurt, shaking his head and such.

The opening rounds went much the same way Ali dominating by firing off his jab and ripping 1-2’s cleanly into Frazier’s face, the sound of the punches connecting was vicious and picked up clearly by even the television cameras. Frazier though, never discouraged, grinned through the punches and continued with his assault- feverous head movement followed by his signature left hook and had occasional success snapping Ali’s head back, especially in round 3 and with practically the last punch of round 4.

By round 5 Ali’s accuracy began to waver, Frazier’s head movement was getting the better of him but he was still taking a lot of damage, taunting Ali from behind the punches, letting him know that he wasn’t hurting him, but his face was beginning to tell a different story as his eyes began to swell.

Round 6 was when Ali had predicted that he would knock Frazier out but it would be from here on in that Frazier would take control, pinning Ali on the ropes and leathering him to the body. Both fighters slowed noticeably, Frazier’s head movement was much less pronounced and Ali initiating clinches whenever the opportunity arose. Ali struggled to get away from Fraizer in these rounds and found himself stuck on the ropes for pretty much the entirety of the 8th, the only time was freed was when Joe literally pulled him off them, Ali was battered from pillar to post in these rounds.

In the 9th and 10th Ali managed to rally, re-establishing his jab and throwing the type of 1-2’s that would fell a normal man, Frazier perhaps conscious of the swelling in his face tried to close the gap so that Ali’s jab wouldn’t be as effective, Ali unable to keep up the feverish pace be had set in the early rounds began to slow towards the end.

From here on in it was all Frazier, rounds 11-15 were hard times for Ali, he was knocked down with a clean left hook midway through the 11th but it was ruled a slip by the referee, Ali then put himself on the ropes and beckoned Joe back in, talking to him all the time, something he immediately came to regret as he ate a left hook that almost knocked him through the ropes and then another that staggered him across the ring, he was completely out on his feet and was lucky to make it out of the round, Ali ever the showman still clowned even when on the verge of being knocked out.

Ali had marginal success re-establishing his jab in the 14th and by this point Frazier’s face was grotesquely swollen blood seeping out of his mouth, the two traded punches like lightweights until the final round came.

The championship round began, Ali came out gunning and just as he dropped his relentless pace he got hit with a terrific left hook that sent him sprawling to the canvas, he managed to get up at 8 but he was badly hurt again, he tried to tie Frazier up but took a lot of leather in doing so. Frazier landed another left hook that snapped Ali’s entire head back and that was it, the final bell rang, the ‘Fight of the Century’ was over.

‘I said a lot of things in the heat of the moment that I shouldn’t have said and called him names I shouldn’t have called him, It was all meant to promote the fight.’

Joe Frazier had eeked out a unanimous decision, but it was close, a couple of rounds either way and it could have been a different story. But this time it was clear, the establishment had beaten the little guy, both fighters were taken to Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital afterwards, Frazier would spend the next couple of days there, Ali however, not wanting people to say that Frazier put him in hospital would only spend a few hours, even with his badly bruised jaw. Before his exile he had seemed unbeatable but Frazier had managed to pierce that veil of invincibility, this loss would play a big part in shaping the rest of Ali’s career, before he was expected to win every fight regardless of opponent, now he was written off, no longer the fighter be once was, he would be reborn as the underdog.

For Frazier he had managed, for now, to wire shut the mouth that had been taunting him so relentlessly, in the weeks after the fight he was asked to address the legislature in his birth state of South Carolina, this was the first time a black man was invited to do so in four decades. If he had been asked as Heavyweight Champion of the World it surely would have been 13 months earlier when he knocked out Jimmy Ellis to unify the titles, no, he was being asked as the man who beat Muhammad Ali.

In Ali’s Post-fight press conference he was interrupted by one overzealous reporter “Joe Frazier doesn’t seem to think you’ll want to fight him again”, Ali’s reply was typically philosophical and deadly accurate.

“Oh how wrong he is.”