In a seething, divided country preoccupied with race, they were freighted with meaning, each made a proxy for something larger than himself.Īli's standing was earned the hard way, by refusing induction into the Army during the Vietnam War. But Ali and Frazier remain the fighters to whom fighters compare themselves. As other sports are metaphors for what boxing actually is - combat - other athletes inevitably compare themselves to fighters. 'If anything happens to Joe,' he said, 'I'll never fight again.'įive decades later, well into a new millennium, the 'Fight of the Century,' as Ali-Frazier I was billed (watch on ESPN+), remains the fight of any century.

Oh my God.'Īli got on his knees, pressing his head to the floor. 'He was scared to death,' Kilroy recalls. But even as Kilroy grimly repeated what the writer had heard, the most confident man on the planet began to crumble. Schulberg heard a rumor that Frazier's condition was fatal.Īli heard Kilroy and Schulberg on the call.

Packed in ice, his blood pressure racing, the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world was unable to stand or urinate, eat or drink.

Though Ali had just suffered his first loss, it was Joe Frazier who was in perilously bad shape at St. On a March morning, in a suite at the Essex House, half a century ago, Muhammad Ali's longtime friend and adviser Gene Kilroy received a call from the late Budd Schulberg, a writer whose contribution to the American canon includes 'The Harder They Fall,' 'On the Waterfront' and a line most famously recited by Marlon Brando but seemingly uttered by just about every failed fighter before or since: 'I coulda been a contender.' You have reached a degraded version of because you're using an unsupported version of Internet Explorer.įor a complete experience, please upgrade or use a supported browserĪfter 50 years, Ali-Frazier I remains the fight that transcends the sport

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