Originally published April 12, 1991.
Muhammad Ali was trapped in the bowels of Madison Square Garden because every exit was cluttered with frenzied fans.
Joe Frazier moved grumpily, secretly, from one hotel to another, a brooding figure surrounded by a phalanx of Philadelphia cops.
That night, at Madison Square Garden, two uncaged tigers, they tore at each other, while thousands in mink and ermine and sable howled to a moon that only they saw.
And afterward, after 15 rounds of clawing and pawing and snarling and pounding, neither man was ever the same again.
Joe Frazier whipped Muhammad Ali that night. Knocked him down with a lethal left hook in the 15th round. Won an unanimous decision.
March 8, 1971. Fight of the Century.
Frank Sinatra was there, at ringside, taking pictures for Life magazine. Burt Lancaster was one of the color commentators. Hooray for Hollywood.
Counts and no-accounts cared about the outcome. The live gate was a record- setting $1.5 million. Each fighter got paid a record-setting $2.5 million.
Frazier and Ali, both undefeated. It was the only thing they had in common. That, and the color of their skin.
"You look back at that fight as a black and white thing," Joe Hand said. ''Ali had somehow turned Frazier into a great white hope.
"White people didn't like the way Ali talked about whites. They didn't like the way he talked about the (Vietnam) war.
"Joe resented the way Ali mocked him. I don't think he ever forgave him. "
They meet again this weekend, Ali and Frazier, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of that dramatic fight.
Tomorrow, they will host a community youth day at Frazier's North Philadelphia gym. Passes have been distributed, and as many as 800 youths are expected to be on hand.
Sunday, there's a black-tie dinner at the Hotel Atop the Bellevue.
Hopefully, time has healed those deep and bitter wounds.
"The buildup for that fight was incredible," recalled Angelo Dundee, who worked Ali's corner.
"And the fight lived up to the buildup. That was the beauty of Ali. I called it the threshing machine against the artist. With those styles, it had to be a great fight.
"Muhammad never had any animosity toward Joe. He pinned names on everybody. Joe called him Clay, trying to get him stirred up.
"The scuffle they had in the TV studio, that was before the second fight, and then, Muhammad was protecting his brother from getting hit on the chin by Joe.
"Anyway, we were training in Miami Beach. Now, (Garden publicist) John Condon brings us to New York.
"Books (Ali) with the Poetry Society, books him to talk to nuts in Central Park about UFOs. I had to wrestle him back to Miami.
"Day of the fight, after the weigh-in, we couldn't get out of the Garden. Too many people wanting to hug him, grab him, kiss him.
"So, he laid down on a rubbing table for a nap. And then we got to know every nook and cranny of the Garden.
"The fight itself, what Ali was gonna do was keep Joe turning in the middle of the ring.
"I told him, 'Don't uppercut. ' You never lead with the uppercut, especially against a guy with shorter arms. Never go to his power.
"Eleventh round, I don't know how he survived that round. He was staggering, like a drunk.
"I was amazed it didn't end then. Fifteenth round, before the flash knockdown, Ali was slapping him around, trying to close the show. "
"Joe's game plan," said Eddie Futch, who worked Frazier's corner, "was to bob and weave, exert pressure, stay low, work the body.
"And the most important element we stresed was to throw the left hook whenever Ali tried to throw the right uppercut.
"Ali hated to throw punches to the body, because that left his head exposed. He'd stand there, throw that uppercut, and his right hand would have to come away from his head.
"I told Joe that the moment he saw Ali's right hand come down, not to try and block the punch, or duck it, or stop it.
"I wanted him to beat him to the punch with his left hook. Joe did it successfully in the 11th, had Ali badly hurt.
"He could have knocked him out then, but he was conned. He wasn't sure Ali wasn't just playing.
"So, he approached him cautiously. Down through the years, we referred to it as the long walk.
"In the 15th, Joe dropped him again, with the left hook. A little lower and it would have been over. Hit him on the jaw and not the chin.
"It surprised me when Ali got up. As hard as that fight had been, as tired as both men were, to get up from that knockdown showed me something. "
It was a vital element because it left both men with a touch of glory.
When it was over, Ali was rushed to the hospital for X-rays of his swollen jaw.
Frazier sat through the postfight interview, clutching an ice bag against his lumpy face.
Before the week was up, Frazier would spend time at the Guiffre Medical Center in Philadelphia, his blood pressure alarmingly high.
"Frank Rizzo was the police commissioner then," recalled Hand, the ex-cop who had invested in Cloverlay at the start. "He provided security for Joe.
"Cops took his kids back and forth to school, guarded Joe's wife, Florence.
"Night of the fight, we ran a train up there with a thousand people on it. Tuxedos, evening gowns.
"There was a new restaurant in Penn Station called the Iron Horse. I booked the entire restaurant for the Cloverlay party.
"It was a great, great fight. And then, Joe wound up in the hospital and I sat there with him for two days, putting cold compresses on him, trying to bring the fever down.
"I remember crying, thinking how somebody could get hurt that bad. He was on the verge of a stroke. A couple of more points on his blood pressure and he would have had a stroke.
"I sat there, a grown man, crying, holding Joe's hand. It was touch-and- go. Joe says he doesn't even remember it, and I'm not sure he knows just how sick he was. "
Referee Arthur Mercante scored the fight 8-6-1, judge Arthur Aidala had it 9-6. Judge Bill Recht scored it 11-4.
I had it 8-6-1.
"The shot I hit him with," Frazier said afterward, "I went down home and got that one. From out in the country. "
I wrote then, "It came whistling out of Beaufort like the Suncoast Limited, screeching on invisible tracks, sending sparks into the night. Only the wail of the whistle was missing. And it crushed into Ali's handsome head just like the locomotive it resembled. "
It was a memory to cherish. The fight transcended all the nasty rhetoric that preceded it, it set the stage for two more battles, two more chances for gallant warriors to poke around each other with sharp sticks to find out what they're made of.
They were unlucky to come along at the same time, to have to endure the savage combat three times, to leave such chunks of themselves in the ring.
The rest of us, we were the lucky ones. Maybe it's time we thanked them for what they gave us. Maybe Sunday night would be a good time to start.