Mention “Manila” to most people and they’ll either think of a large envelope or one of the most savage heavyweight boxing matches of the modern era.
Heavyweight champion Mohammad Ali and Joe Frazier met on 30 years ago, on 1 October 1975, for the third time.
Ali was the odds-on favourite. The fight was scheduled for 15 rounds and began at 10:45 in the morning to accommodate closed-circuit television viewers in the United States. As it unfolded, everyone at ringside understood that they were watching greatness.
'Joe was nowhere near the fighter he'd once been,' Dave Wolf, a member of Frazier's camp, would recall. 'And neither was Ali. But as occasionally happens in boxing, their declining curves crossed at exactly the same spot. And they were so evenly matched and put so much of themselves into the fight that it was historic.'
This classic bout is superbly recreated in an article by Thomas Hauser in yesterday’s Observer newspaper. And not just the fight, but psychological clash between Joe Frazier (fairly ordinary slugger) and, well, “the most famous man on Earth”. It’s a excellent piece of boxing writing and analysis of the eternally fascinating figure of Mohammad Ali.
Like its predecessors, Ali-Frazier III featured two great fighters with distinctly different personalities. In one corner, Joe Frazier: a decent hard-working man with rural roots and little formal education. In the other: the most famous man on Earth. Ali, in the 1960s, was the most beautiful fighting machine ever. After beating Sonny Liston to capture the heavyweight crown in 1964, he had nine consecutive title defences before being stripped of his championship for refusing induction into the US army at the height of the war in Vietnam. During Ali's three-year absence, Frazier knocked out Jimmy Ellis to become heavyweight champion. But it was a 'paper' title. Then Ali returned and, in 1971, 'Smokin' Joe' defeated the former champion on points over 15 brutal rounds.
Frazier thought that, once he had beaten Ali in their first fight, he would be accorded wider respect. It never happened. Even though Joe was the undisputed heavyweight champion, Ali was still The Man as far as most black Americans were concerned.
'Joe Frazier was an available symbol behind whom people who hated Ali could unite,' American sports broadcaster commentator Bryant Gumbel has noted. 'Was it Joe's fault? Of course not. In fact, one of the sad stories to be written about that era is that Joe Frazier never got his due as a man. In some ways, he symbolised what the black man's struggle was about far more than Ali did. But it was Joe's misfortune to be cast as the opponent of a man who was the champion of all good things.'
After beating Ali, Frazier was dethroned by George Foreman. Then he lost a rematch on points to Ali. Following that, Muhammad journeyed to Zaire for the 'Rumble in the Jungle' in 1974. There he knocked out Foreman to reclaim the throne. The stage was set for Manila.
'You have to understand the premise behind Ali-Frazier III,' Ferdie Pacheco, Ali's cornerman and ring physician, recalled. 'The first fight was life and death, and Frazier won. Second fight; Ali figures him out, no problem, relatively easy victory for Ali. Then Ali beats Foreman, and Frazier's sun sets. I don't care what anyone says now; all of us thought that Frazier was shot. We all thought Manila was going to be an easy fight. Ali comes out, dances around, and knocks him out in eight or nine rounds.'
Wrong.
Seventies man Mark Spitz made such an idiot of himself in an interview with AFP yesterday. 
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