Muhammad Ali described his third and final fight with Joe Frazier as “death.” “Closest thing to dyin' that I know of,” he said. Frazier recalls their brutal matchup outside Manila as something much less grandiose. “We just did our job,” he said. The two great heavyweights always have been the ying and yang of boxing. Why should things change nearly 35 years later? Now 65 and walking with the use of a cane, the slightly stooped Frazier reflected on the iconic fight in Quezon City in 1975 during a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press. He also talked about the contentious relationship between the starring characters, which is the subject of the new HBO documentary “Thrilla in Manila” premiering Saturday night. “I don't think Manila was my greatest fight,” Frazier said forcefully. He ticks off several others in vivid detail, from the Golden Gloves to his gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics, to the “Fight of the Century” – when he beat Ali at Madison Square Garden in 1971 to retain the heavyweight title. “The greatest fight was ‘71, when we were all undefeated,” he said. “There was more money, more people. I don't know why they make this one out to be the biggest fight.” When it comes to his longtime foil, Frazier is sympathetic to the suffering Parkinson's disease has caused Ali. “I respect him as a guy who did a fine job in the fight game,” Frazier said. “I don't think he really loves me. I didn't like nothing he done, you know?” That lingering tension can be traced to their epic trilogy, which turned former friends into enemies and culminated with an event that became as much about politics as prizefighting. Filipino President Ferdinand Marcos actively sought their 1975 bout to divert attention from the social turmoil that was raging in his country, and promoter Don King – ever one to put on a spectacle – consented to holding the fight at the Araneta Coliseum. It was the rubber match between two bigger-than-life heavyweights on the decline, Ali having beaten Frazier in their 1974 rematch. Following that bout, the tongue-whipping Ali regained the title by beating George Foreman in Zaire, the famed “Rumble in the Jungle.” Frazier was hanging on for one more shot at the title – and one more at Ali. The animosity that grew over the pair's first two fights reached a climax when, after the Philippines bout was announced, Ali pulled out a black rubber gorilla and famously launched into a poem: “It will be a killa and a chilla and a thrilla, when I get the gorilla in Manila.” “He kept saying, ‘Joe Frazier, I'm going to whup you,”' Frazier recalled, still pained by the race-baiting attacks. “I said, ‘Alright, I'm going to wrap your butt up.' People loved him on the basis of his noise.” The fight was scheduled for 10:45 A.M. to accommodate television in the United States, and the morning broke hot and humid. Thousands of people packed the arena, filling even the aisles, and for 14 rounds the two titans clashed – Ali winning the early rounds, Frazier asserting himself over the middle rounds. Ali staggered Frazier in the 12th, then again in the 13th, one clean punch knocking his mouthpiece into the crowd. Frazier's left eye was swollen shut, his right eye closing. Even though the scorecards were virtually tied, and against Frazier's objections, his trainer Eddie Futch called a stop to the fight. After throwing his arms up in celebration, an exhausted Ali collapsed to the canvas. Ali later tried to make amends, calling the mocking use of a gorilla a promotional ploy. But the wounds ran deep, and while the two men have alternated apologies with attacks over the years, their relationship is still raw. “I don't mind people want to think Muhammad is the greatest fighter around,” Frazier said. “Everybody wants to make him great because of his mouth, that he was the best. He was good, but that doesn't make him great. I proved that.” While the aftermath of a career spent inside the ring left Ali a broken man physically, it left Frazier broken financially. He lost much of his hard-won fortune in real estate dealings gone awry, and gave away untold thousands of dollars, generous to a fault. While contemporaries like Foreman and Larry Holmes – and yes, Ali – are living comfortably, Frazier has only a humble Philadelphia apartment. He hangs around the gym and spends time with young fighters, but he's no longer interested in the sport at its highest level. There are too many so-called champions in too many weight divisions, and the heavyweights – long considered the most glamorous – have become a joke. The sport's popularity has waned considerably from the days of his historic battles with Ali, when the “sweet science” was forefront in newspapers and the American psyche. Now, boxing has become a niche sport followed mostly by the devoted. “It just doesn't interest me anymore, the guys aren't exciting anymore,” Frazier said, while holding out hope that its luster might one day be restored. “Sure it bothers me. I'm going to wait until (President Barack) Obama gets a little quiet in Washington, and then I'm going to see if he has a meeting with me, or take a few guy with me, and seen and be heard about it. “Let's see if we can get this back to where it needs to be.” Perhaps back to where it was in 1975.
