Ghosts of Manila - Mark Kram [73]
They had a new referee in this one, Tony Perez, and it would prove calamitous for both, particularly Frazier. Ali came out strong again, with an economy to his moves, a fluidity to his punches. He drove Joe back on his heels and to the ropes in the second with a lead right. Joe was in trouble, then Perez, thinking he heard the bell, interrupted the action, thus giving Joe time to recover. Frazier groped and floundered through the first four rounds, appeared frustrated and unable to sustain aggression, his punching volume. A major reason for this was Perez’s action; he was allowing Ali to hold Joe around the neck. “You gotta stop this,” Futch told Perez, who said he would. By the middle rounds, Ali was slapping and straying aimlessly to the ropes, a sign of a tired fighter. Joe made his run in the eighth and ninth with some solid work, but to no avail. By holding him at every turn, Ali never let him wheel out his gunnery. No question who would get the decision. Ali, who worked largely to Bundini’s hint earlier at camp: “Champ ain’t gonna try to hose him down this time. He’s gonna pick the backdoor lock.”
Call it ring generalship, or sly craft, or Ali making good use of what he had left. But except for bursts of excellence here and there from each, it was a referee’s fight. Perez, by giving carte blanche to Ali’s plan, had robbed the fight of its drama. Even Emile Griffith, a nonpartisan and former welterweight king, was moved at ringside to keep yelling: “Let go of his head!” Said Futch: “I don’t consider it a loss. Neither does Joe, for certain.” Futch’s anger never surfaced, but each time, ten in all, that he studied the film he grew angrier. Perez, clearly, had placed Joe (who needed space) in irons. Carefully, as if combing a pet for fleas, Futch counted Ali’s stifling “holds,” tallying 133. When Perez later met Futch at a boxing dinner, he asked for Eddie’s support for a Pennsylvania license. Futch said evenly: “I’ll oppose you. Whether you’re incompetent or dishonest, either way, we don’t want you in Pennsylvania.”
Ali attributed the victory to the “valid strength” of his Deer Lake camp. Nothing had been settled or clarified, only signs that the ravagement of their first fight had taken a sizable carving of flesh from each.
In the ring, a mere victory is only important to a fighter and the people who bet on him or have an affinity for him. As in no other sport, how one wins is the delineator of claims to true excellence; a string of numbers behind your name, while beautifying, is only agate on the sports page, no guarantee of quality except to imbecilic statistic gnomes. Figures, like bikinis, show more than they reveal. What was the quality of his opponents? Was the big name capable of moving all chips to the center of the table, or there just to put up another digit, prized by marketing people but not by the serious followers of boxing who wanted a tingle, the legitimate prospect of no-exit encounter. Fighters like Jake LaMotta and the two Rockys, Graziano and Marciano, to name just a few of the time, were not from the ring academy, yet were plungers of high and jolting voltage.
And so, by now, was Ali since he threw his heart the first time at Frazier, whose intent was never doubted. When