Even if the energy in Madison Square Garden was at a somewhat lower voltage than it had been on that extraordinary evening in March 1971, the arena was jammed with a capacity crowd of 20,748 for a live gate of $1,053,688; millions of others poured into closed-circuit venues around the world. From the opening bell, Ali was up on his toes and dancing, just as he had done in round 1 of their first fight. Only now, he was moving counterclockwise, an unorthodox tactic in that it seemed to invite Frazier to clobber him with that left hook. One had to wonder: Had Ali been informed by his “spies” or some other source that Joe had challenged vision in his left eye? At the outset, Frazier abandoned his customary bob-and-weave and stood upright, his gloves at eye level. As Norton had done, Frazier dragged his right foot as he followed Ali, which would presumably enhance his ability to plant his feet so he could get his punches off more quickly. Keeping the action in the center of the ring, Ali picked Joe apart with left jabs. When Joe rushed him, Ali grabbed him and held. As the bout unfolded, he employed this tactic again and again.
Ali was again on his toes in the second round, still moving counterclockwise. When Frazier drove him to the ropes and scored with a solid left to the jaw, Ali countered with a sharp four-punch combination, which he followed up with more grabbing and holding. Near the end of the round, Frazier forced Ali out of his counterclockwise pattern with a hook, only to have Ali pivot and unleash two quick jabs. Frazier slipped them, but Ali stepped in with a right hand to the jaw. The blow staggered Frazier, turning him halfway around. As Frazier backed up, Ali let loose a volley of heavy punches, many of which missed or were blocked. As Ali pursued Frazier into a neutral corner, referee Tony Perez separated them and signaled the end of the round. However, the ring lights in each corner had not flashed on. When Perez realized his gaffe, he waved both fighters once again to the center of the ring with twenty seconds remaining in the round. As Frazier moved forward, bobbing and weaving now, Ali tagged him with four solid punches, including a hard left hook to the head at the bell.
Rounds 3, 4, and 5 saw Joe pick up the tempo. Early in the third, he cornered Ali and scored with two hooks to the head, the second of which prompted Ali to shake his head. By now, the pattern of engagement had been established: as Ali continued to circle counterclockwise, Frazier uncharacteristically used his jab in an effort to close the distance between them, whereupon he would once again be wrapped up by Ali in a clinch. Although Ali began to show signs of slowing down in the fourth round, he spun out of a trap Frazier set for him on the ropes, then grabbed and held on. From his corner, Ali overheard his assistant trainer Bundini Brown wail again and again, “All night long! All night long! All night long!” By the fifth round, Ali had come down off his toes and engaged Frazier with heavier exchanges in the center of the ring. Frazier pressed Ali to the ropes and stunned him with a left hook to the head, at which point Ali smothered Joe again in a clinch. Frazier began to show some swelling over his left eye.
Going into the sixth round, it was clear that Ali was in far better shape than he had been in their previous encounter. With the exception of a brief unveiling of the Ali Shuffle in the first round, he eschewed the clowning that had corrupted that earlier performance and set himself to the sober business at hand, just as he had promised he would do in the weeks leading up to the bout. By tying up Joe in clinches, he was able to offset Joe’s aggression, which came now only in spurts and lacked his old urgency. While still highly skilled and giving a worthy accounting of himself, he did not bring the same fury with him to the ring, nor did he come at Ali with the same volume of punches. Ahead in the scoring, Ali outpunched Frazier by three to one in their exchanges. Frazier trapped Ali in his corner and began talking to him, only to have Ali clip him with a sharp one-two to the mouth. Ali then again smothered him in a clinch.
Perhaps knowing he was behind at the halfway point of the twelve-round bout, Frazier advanced from the corner for the seventh round intent upon unleashing mayhem. When he caught Ali with a big left hook to the head, a roar came up from the crowd. Sensing some surge of energy building among the fans, Cosell reported from ringside, “They expect dynamite out of every left hook that Frazier scores with!” As Ali continued to try to wrap him up, Frazier began scoring with regularity now to the body and won the round on all three scorecards. Frazier shot out of his corner and poured it on again in the eighth round as Ali appeared to noticeably tire. He steered Ali into the ropes and pounded him with short shots to the body. Nearing the end of the round, Frazier hammered Ali with a straight right hand to the head, nearly jarring his mouthpiece loose. At the end of the round, Ali walked wearily back to his corner. Again, Joe had won the round unanimously.
Clearly now back in contention and knowing it, Frazier emerged from his corner even before the bell called him out for the ninth round, his face opened up into a broad grin. He beckoned Ali forward, waving to him with his left glove. Perez pushed him back toward his corner. When the bell did sound, Joe eagerly engaged Ali, landing a solid right to the head before Ali folded him again in a clinch. No longer moving, Ali stood with his feet planted on the floor, as if waiting for Joe to charge him. When he did, Ali pummeled him with fourteen consecutive punches, battering him with straight right and left hands, and short hooks. Wild cheers from the now-standing crowd urged Ali on as he overwhelmed Joe with his hand speed and slashed him with chopping rights and lefts. For Ali, it was perhaps his top round of the evening.
With three rounds to go, Ali was up 5–3–1 on two scorecards and 6–3 on the other. Standing toe-to-toe with Frazier in the tenth round, Ali peppered him with short rights to the head, as Frazier swung and missed. By now, the ridge above his left eye was swollen. Frazier began the eleventh round aggressively, but again, he swung and missed as Ali draped his arms over him in a clinch. Ali was in command now, having his way as he pounded Frazier with sharp jabs to the face. Ali swept all three cards. Knowing that the only way he could now win was by knockout, Frazier came out for the twelfth and final round throwing leather. Wild with his head shots, he dug in with body shots and drove Ali onto the ropes. Though physically drained, Ali spun to the center of the ring and danced away, circling Joe in one direction and then the other. From long range, Ali slapped at Joe with a flurry of punches. Frazier trailed him but was unable to connect with any clean shots. The bout ended with the two tangled in yet another clinch along the ropes.
Ali dragged himself back to his corner.
Frazier briefly raised his arms in victory, yet there appeared to be no joy in his eyes, as if he expected the verdict that announcer Joe Bostic would deliver amid the crowd that had formed in the center of the ring: “The winner, by unanimous decision, is Muhammad Ali!”
For Ali, it had been a clever tactical victory. Intent upon dropping bombs on Joe and taking him out inside six rounds in their first fight, Ali had been content in their rematch to box Frazier, pile up points, and slip away with a decision. Goodman said, “Ali fought the fight he thought he had to fight to win. He would go bip, bip, bip and grab. He would get Joe in a clinch, and it was like a death grip he had on him.” There were 133 clinches in the bout. Futch excoriated Perez for allowing Ali to grab Frazier by the back of the neck and push him down. Futch would later say that while he and Frazier had worked on a “tactic” to offset that, Joe was “so emotionally high” due to the scuffle he’d had with Ali in the television studio that he overlooked it. Goodman agreed that the incident “really threw Joe off.” He added, “Boxers have to remain in focus. They have to keep a cool head. Once that happened with Ali, Joe was trying to punch holes in the gym walls every day. Ali knew exactly what buttons to push with him.”
Upon hearing the verdict, Cosell turned to Frazier amid the commotion in the ring. “I got no argument about nothing,” said Frazier, swaddled in a white robe as sweat beaded on his swollen face. Of the dozens of questions that would later be posed to him by reporters, only one had any bearing on what remained of his career, and Cosell asked it: “What happens now, Joe
?”
Chapter Nine
May Pops
Joe and Eddie Futch, 1975. Getty Images
Close to a quarter of a century had elapsed since Joe Louis passed through Beaufort on his exhibition tour in March 1950. Though he remained a revered American icon, the years had been hard on him. Under the crushing weight of Internal Revenue Service obligations, he sold himself cheaply as a villain on the pro wrestling circuit, where he squeezed his now-flabby physique into tights and turned a deaf ear to the laughing crowds. With a trail of failed businesses behind him, he collapsed on a New York street in 1969 in what was believed to be a physical breakdown. Only later would it be revealed that he had developed a cocaine addiction, which led to his admittance to a psychiatric hospital for episodes of paranoia. With his own inconceivable destiny still far away, Ali looked upon Joe Louis with staggering hubris, citing him as an example of how he himself would never wind up. Now sixty, the Brown Bomber had worked as a greeter at a Las Vegas casino and scraped together work where he could find it. At Madison Square Garden on June 17, 1974, he found himself in the same ring with the man who, years before, as young Billy Frazier, had looked upon him with such wonder.
Only now Louis was a referee, hired by Garden boxing president Teddy Brenner to officiate the rematch between Frazier and Jerry Quarry as an added attraction. But the press was skeptical. Along with the fact that he was getting on in years, he had largely refereed pro wrestling matches, which in no way compared to the unscripted warfare that could be expected to erupt between Joe and Jerry. Five years after their previous bloodbath, the stakes were even higher: both were at the crossroads of their careers. The winner would get a shot at whoever prevailed in the Ali-Foreman showdown scheduled for the fall in Africa, and the loser would be more or less through. Would Louis be able to keep order as the action intensified? Or would he find himself overwhelmed by it and be a step slow to react, just as aging referee Ruby Goldstein had been at the old Garden in March 1962 when Emile Griffith backed welterweight champion Benny Paret into his corner and pummeled him with a barrage of unanswered blows? Paret died in a Manhattan hospital ten days later of a brain hemorrhage.
With beads of sweat still pouring off him moments after his loss to Ali, Frazier had an unequivocal answer when Howard Cosell asked him, “What happens now, Joe?” There was no question that he would fight again. Retirement had always been a moving target for him, and now it seemed to be slipping further away, even as there seemed to be concern behind the scenes regarding his health. Three weeks after his loss to Ali, he visited his ophthalmologist, Dr. Myron Yanoff, and complained of worsening vision in his left eye. Upon completing his examination, Yanoff reported to Frazier that his while his cataract condition had progressed only “somewhat” in his right eye, it had advanced “quite significantly” in his left eye. Dr. Yanoff remembered, “I told him that continued fighting would cause the cataracts to worsen.” Even so, the condition of the eye worried Futch less at that point than the lack of intensity Frazier had shown in the ring. Futch and Frazier agreed that if he did not beat Quarry, and do so convincingly, it would be time to call it quits. Futch told the press, “He has to show me he still belongs in this rough business.”
Annoyed by the scuttlebutt that he no longer possessed the will to whip himself into shape, Frazier did precisely that during seven weeks of hard preparation for Quarry at his North Broad Street gym. Lending Futch a hand now was George Benton, the artful middleweight contender whose career had ended when he caught a bullet in his back in a random shooting incident. Along with the skull sessions they held with Frazier, Futch and Benton tutored him in how to shorten up his left hook and position himself to use both hands instead of just his vaunted left. To drive the point home, Futch yelled from ringside, “Use your right! Use your right!” until he was sure Joe was hearing it in his sleep. Chiefly with that right hand, Frazier tore up his sparring partners as if they had all taken money off him shooting craps. Contrary to the preposterous rumor that circulated in North Philadelphia that Moleman Williams floored Joe in a sparring session—which Futch said would not have happened even if he had handed him a bat and given him a free swing—Frazier actually dropped him with such punishing force that Futch was unable to use him again for a week. Next, Frazier toppled the cagey Jimmy Young, left former opponent Scrap Iron Johnson with bruised ribs, and then drilled Frankie Steele so hard that he drove his teeth through his lower lip, a cut that required six stitches to close and nine days to heal. Futch observed, “I have never seen Joe punch any harder or look any better.” Across a total of ninety-four rounds of sparring, it seemed as if the “old” Joe Frazier had reemerged.
Quarry remained an enigma even to himself. As he once said, he always seemed to fight the wrong fight, brawling when he should have been counterpunching and counterpunching when he should have been brawling. Although Jerry had earned in excess of a million dollars in the ring, more than any boxer who had not won a championship, he could never find a way to win when the chips were down and greatness called. Along with his losses to Jimmy Ellis and Frazier, he was stopped twice by Ali in bouts that could have positioned him among the elite of the division instead of a step just below. On the heels of his second technical knockout at the hands of Ali, yet another thorough beating in which Ali summoned the referee to stop the fight seconds into the seventh round, Quarry announced his retirement to pursue a career in public relations. By way of an explanation, he told the Associated Press that his “desire” had dulled and the PR job had been just what he had been looking for.
Only six months elapsed before Jerry unretired. In the year and a half that followed, he hired a new manager, divorced and remarried, and clicked off six consecutive victories, including a unanimous twelve-round decision over previously unbeaten ex-con Ron Lyle and a first-round technical knockout over hard-hitting Earnie Shavers. Unveiled before the boxing press prior to the Frazier bout would be a “new” Jerry Quarry, free now of the corrosive influence of his father and the managerial entanglements that had accompanied him. New manager Gil Clancy, who had shrewdly pointed the way for former welterweight and middleweight champion Emile Griffith, enthused that “Jerry is on the way up.” According to Clancy, he had become physically stronger, a harder worker, and less sensitive to criticism. To go with his repackaged look inside the ring, Quarry also had a new wife, Arlene Charles—called “Charlie”—a blond former Miss Indiana and budding starlet whose credits included parts in Clambake, Speedway, and I Sailed to Tahiti with an All Girl Crew. Charlie explained that she was around to keep Jerry “relaxed.” Concerned that his fighter would climb into the ring too relaxed, Clancy warned Jerry to lay off sex for the two weeks before the bout.
Odds dipped from 6–5 Frazier to even money with the arrival of fight night, clear indication that regardless of how Frazier had drubbed him in their prior meeting, the personable white heavyweight had a loyal following of fans who had warmed to reports of his reclamation. But Frazier was certain that the new Jerry Quarry would quickly revert to the old one as soon as he laid leather on him, and that is exactly what happened. Only in the first round and briefly in the second did Quarry try to box Joe as Clancy had instructed. From that point on, it was all Joe. Grinning as he advanced upon Quarry, he pounded him to the body and head, as Quarry began bleeding from a cut over his right eye. Frazier worked Quarry with both hands to the body in the third and stunned him with a solid right cross to the head. Clancy yelled, “Mooooove! Mooooove!” Quarry stood as if his boxing shoes were encased in concrete while Frazier pummeled him again and again. Through the fourth round, Frazier continued to pour it on, backing Quarry into one set of ropes and then another. With thirty seconds remaining in the round, Frazier landed a double left hook to the head and chin, which appeared to freeze Jerry in midair before he caught himself from falling. Just before the bell, Frazier connected with a fierce left hook to the abdomen that caused Quarry to sink to the canvas. Quarry got up at the bell as the count reached five. With tears i
n her eyes, Charlie left her seat and headed toward the dressing rooms.
Standing over him before the fifth round, Clancy alternately scolded Quarry for “throwing the fight plan out the window” and worked to close the cuts that had opened up over both eyes. Cleared to continue by New York State Athletic Commission physician Dr. Harry Kleiman, Quarry came for the fifth with his hands held high to protect his face. When Frazier drilled him with yet another unanswered right hand to the head, Quarry held up his gloves in apparent surrender, as blood began pouring harder now from the cut over his left eye. Frazier pointed to Quarry and told Joe Louis, “The man is cut bad. What are you going to do?” But Louis looked at him blankly. Along press row, writers and others called out to the Brown Bomber, “Stop it, Joe! Stop the fight!” Thinking that the action would be halted, Frazier turned back to his corner, but Louis ignored the cries to end the fight and signaled the two fighters to continue. Upon hearing Futch yell, “Go back in there!” Frazier caught Quarry with two left hooks that caused his body to shudder. Only then did Louis step in and stop it, at 1:37 of the round. In his column the following day in the Los Angeles Times, Jim Murray waxed grimly, “It was a fight so brutal and atavistic [that] this dispatch should be filed in cave drawings.”
Given up for a ghost of his old self only days before by the press, Frazier was full of new energy and resolve in his evisceration of Quarry. Clancy claimed he had never seen Frazier look better and predicted he would beat the winner of the Ali-Foreman bout scheduled for Kinshasa on October 30. “O ye of little faith,” Futch told reporters with a big grin. As Frazier had said of Bugner the year before, he had no desire to injure Quarry more than he had. Joe explained, “When it looked like the skin was ripping off his eye, I wanted it stopped. I have a warm feeling for Jerry.” On his way out of the Garden, Frazier stopped in and said good-bye to Quarry, who had required a total of eighteen stitches—fifteen over the left eye, three over the right. “Stop by if you ever happen to be in the neighborhood,” Frazier told him. With an ice bag affixed to the purple bruises that covered his face, Quarry told him, “You are a helluva man.” Dejectedly, he told the press that he had “no strength,” fueling speculation that he had left it between the sheets. Or had it come down to the inescapable fact that the “new” Jerry Quarry was a shot fighter before he even stepped into the ring? Of what remained of his career, now scattered in shards by his feet, he added poignantly: “I had this long, elusive dream. I’m not too sure it can be made now.”
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