Originally published August 10, 2000.
Joe Frazier says he "swallowed a lot of razor blades. . .and sometimes they cut. . .inside. "
He's talking about the sharp, ominous grenade fragments that spewed from Muhammad Ali's mouth before their first fight in March 1971. Ali called him dumb, called him ugly, mocked his boxing skills. And if that wasn't enough, painted him as an Uncle Tom, the white man's champ.
It's all there in the splendid HBO documentary, "Ali-Frazier I: One Nation Divisible," which starts airing Aug. 17.
What makes this film special is that Frazier gets equal time, that Joe's stoic dignity offers a hushed counterpoint to Ali's rabble-rousing rhetoric. What makes it even more special is that Frazier looks into the camera near the end of the documentary and says he is sorry for the things he said about Ali, the razor blades he spit back at him.
"I think it's time," Frazier said in an emotional speech that followed the New York premiere of the movie. "We should all get together and embrace one another and say, 'The Lord has been good to us. ' "
Graying cynics will wonder about Frazier's change of hard heart. This graying cynic's memories of that first incredible fight are included in the film. Frazier was so angry, so bitter, felt so betrayed by Ali, feelings strong enough to last a lifetime. Is he now willing to forgive, to forget?
"I've talked to him over the years," said Marvis Frazier, Joe's devout son. "I kept saying, 'You've got to let it go, let it go. ' It's time to sit down, do something together, make something good happen out of it.
"It can be a symbol of peace. If two of the greatest nemesises in the world can come together, perhaps the world can learn from that. I believe time heals all wounds. "
Even the ones the rest of the world cannot see? The ones deep inside, the ones caused by undeserved insults, by mocking ridicule, by racist demagoguery?
I'm stuck with my theory of why Ali said what he said about Frazier before that fight. Much of it was an act, designed to sell tickets, to create a high-pitched buzz about the fight.
That puzzled Frazier because both fighters were guaranteed a record-setting $2.5 million apiece. And because the ringside seats, priced at an outrageous $150 apiece, were sold out in hours.
Ali didn't care about enriching the promoter, a Hollywood guy named Jerry Perenchio. Ali had swiped his brash persona from the wrestler, Gorgeous George. Insult your opponent, sell wolf tickets, predict the outcome in childlike poetry, shout about your own skills to the stars, and yes, get under everyone's skin by claiming to be "The Greatest. "
Ali loved the show-biz aspects of his swaggering posture. He also loved what it did to many of his opponents. He felt sure that he had rattled Sonny Liston with his manic performance at the weigh-in before their first fight in Miami. He knew that Liston would be baffled by the prospect of facing a madman, and that a baffled fighter is a vulnerable fighter.
Liston was bigger, stronger. Ali was seeking an edge. Frazier was shorter, which dictated his style, wading in, getting close enough to attack the body, getting the head to droop into target range of his devastating left hook. Perhaps, Ali thought, if he could enrage Frazier with his insults, Frazier would telegraph that left hook, throw it from a greater distance, leave him open for a straight right hand.
I'm in a lonely minority with those theories. Observers with broader agendas emphasize the turbulent times that surrounded that historic fight. . .civil-rights struggles led by Martin Luther King, a controversial war in Vietnam, Ali's allegiance to the Nation of Islam, and its stance of the white man as devil. One nation divisible, indeed.
Ali refused to be inducted into the Army. Hours later, New York's boxing commission stripped him of his license to fight. He lost more than three vital years of his career.
Meanwhile, Frazier helped, behind the scenes, to try to find a venue that would permit Ali to fight. Handed him a wad of cash in the back seat of a limo one day.
"And then," promoter Butch Lewis remembers, "Ali stepped out of the car and started putting on a show, shouting about how he would whip Joe, how Joe was nothing. "
Ali could not shed that show-biz aura. Didn't want to. What he did want was a loud, passionate cheering section, in the arena, in the nation, in the world.
Which is why, I believe, he went over the line and savaged Frazier as the white man's champ, as an Uncle Tom. It was ludicrous. Frazier countered feebly about how he was "blacker" than Ali.
Indeed, Frazier was the son of a South Carolina sharecropper. He had picked cotton in the fields, from sunup 'til sundown. The closest Ali had ever come to picking cotton was choosing a shirt out of his well-stocked drawer, growing up in Louisville.
Frazier had the sharp-tongued Yank Durham in his corner, along with the dignified Eddie Futch. Both black. Ali had Angelo Dundee in his corner, along with fight doctor Ferdie Pacheco. Both white.
The one line in this excellent documentary that troubles me deeply is spoken by Tom Hauser, who wrote the best book on Ali. He says that Ali felt that Frazier represented the forces that had oppressed him.
I don't believe that at all. I think Ali had only a small sense of the issues of the day and was willing to play the race card against another black man, to force people to take sides, to root for him so he could feed off their passion.
It is not all a stark story of a prizefight matching two undefeated fighters, played out against the background of a splintered nation. The audience laughed out loud when Marvis recalls asking his father what he prayed for in the moments preceding the fight.
"He said," Marvis remembers, " 'I asked the Lord to let me kill this guy. . .because he was not a righteous man. ' "
Later, Marvis amplified his father's feelings. "He always felt that there is only one 'The. ' He always felt that there is only one 'Greatest. ' Someone claiming to be 'The Greatest' is not a righteous man. "
Maybe Marvis has persuaded Joe that to err is human, to forgive divine. Maybe. Maybe. *
The world of sports extends beyond the ballparks, outside the arenas. Each Thursday, Stan Hochman will take a look at sports reflected in the popular culture, through books, magazines, theater, movies, television and art.