Ali-Frazier: Kilroy was there

AS MUHAMMAD Ali's longtime business manager and a former employee of the Eagles who knew Joe Frazier for over 45 years, Gene Kilroy has maybe as much personal knowledge of the legendary archrivals as anyone.

Sadly, Smokin' Joe died yesterday after a brief fight with advanced-stage liver cancer at 67.

Recently, I called Gene in Las Vegas, where he is an executive host for the Luxor, to ask for some of his memories of the Ali-Frazier relationship, which at times has been as surprisingly tender as it is publicly tempestuous.

Take the aftermath of "The Fight of the Century," the March 8, 1971, first meeting in Madison Square Garden in which Frazier floored Ali with a leaping left hook in the 15th round en route to scoring a unanimous decision. Although he won, and deservedly so, Frazier, whose blood pressure had shot up to the danger level, spent several weeks in St. Luke's Hospital to rest and recuperate.

"I was contacted by Budd Schulberg [the noted writer] who said he heard a rumor that Joe had died," Kilroy recalled. "Ali, who also was pretty beaten up after that great fight, started shaking like a leaf when I told him what Budd said. He said, 'If Joe dies, I'll never fight again. I'll quit boxing.'

"Everybody talks about how Ali and Joe supposedly hated each other, but Ali didn't hate anybody. He respected Joe. He'd always say that in that first fight, nobody could have beaten Joe. He said, 'Joe Frazier would have knocked out King Kong that night.' And he really believed that.

"But Joe - and I love the guy - couldn't get past some of the things Ali, being Ali, said to the media for publicity purposes. Joe told me, 'How would you like it if your kids went to school and the other kids were calling you ignorant and a gorilla?' He always thought Ali carried the act way too far."

Kilroy first met Frazier when Gene was attached to the Army fighters competing at the 1964 U.S. Olympic Boxing Trials. Frazier, who initially lost out on an Olympic berth to Buster Mathis (Frazier later replaced Mathis, who had broken his hand, and won the heavyweight gold medal in Tokyo), became fast friends with Bobby Carmody, a 112-pound soldier who also was on the Olympic team that went to Japan.

"Bobby, who later was killed in Vietnam, told me that the athletes in the Olympic village were provided with packets of soap so they could wash their clothes," Kilroy said. "Bobby said Joe was one of the nicest individuals he ever met, but that he'd ask everybody for any extra soap they might have so he could send it back home to his family in South Carolina because they didn't always have enough money for the essentials. True story."

Another true story, Kilroy swears, is the time he was a passenger in a car driven by Ali that was zipping along the Pennsylvania Turnpike at 90 mph, on the way to Ali's training camp in Deer Lake, outside of Reading.

"Ali got pulled over by a state trooper," Kilroy said. "The cop says, 'Where do you think you're going?' And Ali goes, 'I'm looking for Joe Frazier! Where is Joe Frazier?'

"The cop starts cracking up and he lets us go with a warning. He tells Ali, 'Well, Joe Frazier isn't here, but I hope you find him.'

"When I told Joe about how he had saved Ali from getting a ticket, he smiled and said, 'I'm glad I did something for the sucker other than whup up on him.' "

Kilroy said it had been his dream to sit down with his two friends on a park bench so they could quietly reflect on their shared history and admit to that which has united them more than anything that could serve to divide.

Sadly, that won't happen now. But, Kilroy said, the two men will be forever linked.

"Like bacon and eggs, Ali and Joe are meant to go together, "Kilroy said. "Now and forever."

It's not quite as compelling as a Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather Jr. fight would be, but there are a lot of people who figure Saturday night's pay-per-view third matchup of Pacquiao (53-3-2, 38 KOs) and Juan Manuel Marquez (53-5-1, 39 KOs), for Pac-Man's WBO welterweight championship, will be a humdinger along the lines of their first two wars.

Pacquiao is 1-0-1 against Marquez, having battled the Mexican standout to a draw in 2004 and winning a very close split decision in the 2008 rematch. Marquez claims he should have gotten the nod in both bouts, and he insists he will prove he's the better man by winning big this time around.

Except that Marquez is a shopworn 38, his best fighting weight is 135 pounds and he didn't impress in his only previous appearance as a welter, losing a one-sided decision to Mayweather on Sept. 19, 2009.

I look for Pacquiao, irked by Marquez' claims he was robbed in the two earlier fights, to put a major beatdown on him at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

"I've never seen Manny as motivated as he is for this fight," said Pacquiao's trainer, Freddie Roach.

North Philadelphia's Teon Kennedy (17-1-1, 7 KOs) might have tasted defeat in his most recent ring appearance, but he scored an important decision on Oct. 27, when multiple felony charges, against him, including one for attempted murder, were dropped by the presiding judge for lack of evidence.

"He was present [at a shooting], but he was not the shooter," Kennedy's attorney, Daniel R. Stevenson, said of Kennedy, who lost his NABA super bantam title on a unanimous decision to Alejandro Lopez on Aug. 15, while the charges against him were still pending.

Kennedy's promoter, J Russell Peltz, said his next bout should be in January or February.

Former WBA junior middleweight champion Robert "Bam Bam" Hines and promoter/matchmaker Don Elbaum will be among those inducted into the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame on Thursday night in Garfield. N.J.