Agence France-Presse
Los Angeles, June 5: Muhammad Ali — a beloved icon, a fighter who transcended his sport, a symbol of heroism, courage and defiance. Yet for Joe Frazier, the overwhelming adoration given to Ali during and after his career would always be hard to stomach. Frazier, who died in 2011, was to be Ali’s greatest rival in the ring.
But the noble nature of Frazier and Ali’s rivalry inside the ropes masked an ugly feud, stoked by Ali that was to leave Frazier nursing a grudge for decades after the two men finally hung up their gloves, a far cry from the time in the 1960s when they had been friends.
During Ali’s exile from boxing following his refusal to fight in Vietnam, when he was stripped of his title and widely ostracised in mainstream America, Frazier lobbied then president Richard Nixon to allow him to box. Ali returned to boxing and his “Fight of the Century” against Frazier in 1971.
Ali, a hero of the black civil rights movement, relentlessly portrayed Frazier in offensive terms, painting him as an “Uncle Tom”. “Joe Frazier is an Uncle Tom. He works for the enemy,” Ali taunted which stung Frazier.
In his 1996 autobiography, Frazier described Ali’s verbal salvos as a “cynical attempt to make me feel isolated from my own people.”
Following a second bout won by Ali in 1974, the invective took an uglier turn in the build-up to the “Thrilla in Manila” the following year, with Ali zeroing in on Frazier’s physical appearance, repeatedly referring to him as a ‘gorilla’.
“Joe Frazier should give his face to The Wildlife Fund! He’s so ugly, blind men go the other way. He not only looks bad, you can smell him in another country. What will the people in Manila think? That black brothers are animals. Ignorant. Stupid. Ugly and smelly,” Ali said.
In 2001, though, Ali apologized. “In a way, Joe’s right. I said a lot of things in the heat of the moment that I shouldn’t have said. I apologize for that. I’m sorry,” Ali reflected.
By the end of the decade, Frazier’s bitterness had finally begun to subside in 2008. “I forgive him, sure,” Frazier told.
