Ghosts of Manila - Mark Kram [66]
Ali was composed for the twelfth and tried to take it to Joe again as Joe advanced behind a hail of clubbing of his own. “He was empty—tired, man,” Joe said later. “I could feel it. But I couldn’t pull his wings off. I didn’t want just to beat this guy, I wanted to destroy him. Hit me, I hit you. I didn’t give a damn.” Booed for trying to buy time in earlier comic posturing, Ali tried a new angle for time, laying on Joe like a sack of mud after exchanges as Joe repeatedly pushed him off for punching room. In the thirteenth Ali was up on his toes jabbing, trading then clinching, holding his own, a style that paid off. For in the fourteenth, Ali’s movement was his best in the fight, stinging Joe with jabs and spinning out as Joe tried to burrow into a firing zone. Frazier’s face was a mess now. But visual decomposition isn’t—or shouldn’t be—a factor on the scales of ring justice; if so, Marciano would never have won. Put the other man in a dark room, make him bleed to the point of intervention, or drown him in points, that’s it. Punch-stats, so lazily abused today as measurement of a close fight, mean zero.
Going into the fifteenth and final round in a fight that caused two hearts in the crowd to stop forever, call it 7–6 Frazier, 8–6 Frazier, or 7–7 and nobody would skull you with a chair. Each had to break the tape with fury. Ali, sensing crisis, opened with a left and right that sent spit flecking from Joe’s mouth. Joe pushed forward, located him with a nice right, and there it was—bam! The crowd, on its feet from the ninth, couldn’t get any higher as a Frazier left hook lifted Ali into the air. He landed on broken, stumbling wheels, careened back to the canvas, his red tassels jumping, his head bouncing in the air, with the ref Arthur Mercante counting. How he got up from that blackjack—who knows? He staggered to his feet, his right jaw now double its size, as if he had a bad toothache. Ali searched for life in his legs. Worn out and with a pitiable face, Joe could not drop him; the most dramatically fought fight in history, its most skillful, was over. Fans swarmed toward the ring.
The crowd beaten back by Garden police, the results could now be heard with decorum. Mercante came in 8–6–1 Frazier, the middle judge 9–6 Frazier, the final call 11–4 Frazier; this latter view from a head certainly made for a flying chair. Ali didn’t flinch, said to Dundee: “Let’s get outta here.” Mercante said: “It was the most vicious fight I’ve ever seen. I’ve never seen so many good punches thrown so often.” As Ali left, Joe’s brother Tom, tears in his eyes, screamed at him: “Crawl! Crawl on your knees over here to Joe Frazier!” Ali wouldn’t be coming out to the press conference. He was getting dressed to go to the hospital for X rays. Jerry Perenchio, the copromoter along with Jack Kent Cooke, walked into a scene in Ali’s dressing room that dropped his jaw. He had seen a lot in show business. No doubt he had had, with no boxing savvy at all, vision for this fight, saw in it an amalgam of high-test performance and Hollywood glitter. Memorabilia was not a craze then. But when Judy Garland’s pump went for a high price, he saw the future. His idea was to try to gather items from this memorable night—robes, gloves, trunks—especially if they had blood on them. Was he now on such a search? He said he had gone to the room to congratulate Ali. The quarters were empty and dim. He couldn’t believe his eyes. On the rubbing table was Ali, and before him on her knees, her head in his lap, arms wrapped around his hips, her long hair spilled over his torso…. No, it couldn’t be, not after fifteen rounds with Joe Frazier. There was no movement, though; the woman seemed to be in silent grief. Jerry spun back for the door. Ali said: “You know who this is?” Jerry drew closer. Ali turned her head toward the promoter. Diana Ross! “Diana,” Ali said, “meet the man who paid me two and a half million