by Mark Kram
And so, by now, was Ali since he threw his heart the first time at Frazier, whose intent was never doubted. When Ali was ready to meet George Foreman for the title in 1974 in Africa, he got high marks, across-the-board respect for his courage and character as a performer, trailed by cemetery whispers, a genuine concern for his life and limb. George Foreman! A true beast! Why, he can jackknife a heavy bag with one punch! No big deal here; heavy bags become supple over time, and even a Boys Club novice could give it a bend. Ali would never tumble to that intelligence from Foreman’s camp. Big George never concentrated Ali’s mind like Frazier. He knew the style book by rote. While the press might fret over the outcome, Foreman’s youth, size, strength, and punch capability against Ali’s descent to mortal—he knew that George had none of the volume of Joe, that he was slow, that his punches came in lethargic, single blows like soldiers in a ragged march and, most of all, he was poorly conditioned and emotionally uncentered. George was not managed or trained properly, either; there had been too many voices in his ear, in and out of the ring.
Foreman was a morose young man, often angry and given to deep pit stops in attitude. His models were Sonny Liston and Jim Brown, the kind unafraid (to Foreman) to “throw people out of windows.” Ali first saw him on TV when George won the Olympics in the black-revolt Mexico City Games. He ran around the ring waving a little American flag, and Ali said: “Look at that fool jumpin’ around. Who’s he tryin’ to bullshit? He can punch some. Might make some money with him.” They later met in 1969 in a Miami gym. Ali said to him: “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.” He came back with a briefcase. George envisioned it containing hundred dollar bills, or maybe Ali’s title belt. He opened the case, revealing a telephone, then said: “Can call any place in the world in a second. Nice, huh? Become a champ and you’ll have one.” George just looked at him: “Is that it?” Ali replied: “You think I was gonna give you something for nothing.” George went back to the heavy bag, with Ali yelling: “Harder! Harder!”
That was about the size of it in Zaire, with Ali in his most cerebral fight, a virtuoso performance of mind over the stone age matter of Foreman, as he urged George to hit harder and harder. All Ali asked from Angelo Dundee was that he made sure the ropes had a lot of give to them, and the ring apron was tightened for speed. The looseness of the ropes would allow him to hang there with his long arms so he could sway and time George’s single, awkward blows or to tie his arms up. Dundee had no idea what Ali was planning. Old Archie Moore in George’s corner saw it right away, yelling: “Oh, no, you beautiful thief! I see what you’re doing.” It was the “turtle shell” that Archie taught him years ago. Archie tried to tell George about the scheme in the corner. George waved him off, saying: “He’s a tired old man.” George had a fatal love affair with his strength and punch. Ali had wanted him up close so he could measure his blows, feel that strength recede minute to minute. By the eighth, Ali took the action, feeling that George was ripe for picking, to the center of the ring and knocked him out; he was champion again with another diamond to his collection.
The result stunned the world and its press, and destroyed George, it seemed, forever. He faded out of sight, declared that he talked with God after a bad outing against Jimmy Young, and ended up, after some hard living, on Houston street corners preaching and being mocked. For years he claimed that he had been poisoned in Zaire, still amazed that his strength had left him so quickly. The hard verities of style were lost on him. There is no more vital calibration. When styles do not fit, they stick out like woolly mammoths in subtropical weather; nothing can save the bout. When they are matched (and it is rare), fighters complement each other with their own superior values, and the event has a chance to be memorable. Well, it might be asked, how was Foreman able to dispose of Frazier so easily? No three fighters illustrate the fixity of the equation of style. Big George would crumple the accessible Frazier every month. He, in turn, with his faith in raw strength, would be baffled by Ali forever. And it would always be life and death between Joe and Ali; ceaseless marauding that must be confronted by artistry at its highest level.
But George, it seems, was the least of Ali’s problems in Africa. Because of his long entangled sexual life, the solidity of his marriage was unraveling, and reporters paid little attention. Understandably, for the press was not riveted on the salacious as it is today. Not even the shrill hypocrisy of Ali’s words matched against his actions could inspire the press. His comments, perhaps frivolous, about African women did not even pop an eye. He said he couldn’t be aroused by them because they were too black, that “they could use some white blood on their mammy’s side.” Much was churning behind the scenes in Zaire, all of it having to do with Belinda, the imperturbable, so it seemed, Muslim princess. There was the sudden and then ubiquitous appearance of Veronica Porche, a gliding nineteen-year-old Catholic in a long white dress, without the beads of sweat on her near-white face that clung to lesser mortals; with much poise she moved by Ali’s side like a queenly ocean liner on the night sea of Kinshasa. Who was she? “My babysitter,” Ali said, without the slightest nod to the possibility that she might be dysfunctional to his black-is-best image.
Not so to Belinda (now named Khalilah), who knew that she was under siege. From the outside, she was a wife of perfect obeisance. Privately, she’d have her say to a point, but Ali insisted on servility. Steadily, they became more like brother and sister. She was actively opposed to Ali continuing in the ring, and once had a spat about the subject while sitting in a surrey at Deer Lake before Zaire; she feared for him. Herbert Muhammad, who had arranged her marriage to Ali, knew about this, how easily Ali could be persuaded and how unprofitable it could be. Herbert and Don King, the promoter who did what Herbert told him, introduced Veronica into the mix to checkmate Belinda. Prior to the fight, Belinda scratched Ali’s face in a bitter argument, and from then on she could be seen wearing a Foreman button. Also present, in between Veronica and Belinda, was a young girl (known and accepted by Belinda) who was totally off the screen and is even today; a mystery woman who will later provide a uniquely penetrating look at Ali—Ali the angel, Ali the user.
The archipelago of the Philippines, seventeen hundred islands strung out like an arrowless bow, was America’s first Vietnam, where one-tenth of the population died in what Gore Vidal calls the first “genocide in modern history before Hitler.” After a dustup with Spain in Cuba, America flexed its young imperialistic muscle—not without thought. President William McKinley, urged on by Senator Albert Beveridge, who envisioned the United States as the “trustees of civilization,” spent a whole night pacing the floor only to decide that God had convinced him to free Filipinos, to take them from Spain. Without much intervention from Spain, America in 1900 found itself smack in the middle of a fierce guerrilla insurgency that wanted only independence. The Filipinos, when not docile, were renowned as fighters. America would lose thousands of troops in regular bloodbaths, and the .45 caliber would be invented to stop the Filipinos because ordinary weaponry didn’t discourage them. In the end, the Philippines fell to American colonialism, where garrisoned soldiers and installed bureaucrats referred to the natives as “niggers.”
By 1975, the islands were independent, after having shown uncommon courage by the side of the Americans against the Japanese at Corregidor, Bataan, and all through the action. Manila had been reduced to a semblance of rotten teeth during the war, yet all the moral intensity and reconstruction money went to Japan, a fact that made Filipinos bitter and contributed to the rise of the tough-talking Ferdinand Marcos. He was going to bring an end to American puppetry and quasi-colonialism that was still, along with the earlier rule of Spain, gutting a sense of themselves as a freestanding people. It was often noted that Filipinos had one foot in medieval Spain and the other on a Hollywood backlot. In the loose confederacy of the Pacific Rim, the Philippines was seen as the mask of Asia. Filipinos had put on so many foreign masks that when it came time to dispose of one, it had become part of their
faces; in some ways, their experience was not unlike that of American blacks. Encircled by the Pacific and South China Sea, the islands were great jagged wounds suppurating in the hot sun, a reminder of how colonialism shreds and corrupts when its acquisitive grasp is released.
Approaching from the air, the country seemed abundant with riches: blue mountains, emeralds of ripening rice terraces, great pools of water that changed color with reflections of the sun. Down on the ground, during a quick look at the land out of Manila, it was no less so, with its flowering poinciana trees, working caraboa, black forms like wood carvings in the fields. When the jet broke out of the clear sky into the thick smog over Manila, you could tear up the postcard, replace it with billowing smoke, baking tin roofs that shot up piercing arrows of light, a city that was sure to yield a Malthusian night terror. As the plane came to a stop, masses of Filipinos came in waves toward it. “Look at that, will ya?” Ali said, a man who certainly knew the quality of crowds.
By now kids had somehow swarmed the jet’s wings like ants on remnants of a chicken bone. The heat and sun were enough to blast one back from the cabin doors. It wasn’t just hot there, it was as if a central flamethrower was in use that dispensed heavy wet heat that crumpled the spirit instantly. Foreigners, finding it hard to adapt, stayed by the pool, or in bars; air conditioning was like an I.V. load. A motorcade was rushed into place by the plane, and Ali, squinting, hands in front of his eyes, left for the city, on a route that took him through the grim outskirts where people lined the streets and threw flowers at his limo. “See how they love me?” Ali was heard to say. “Never been a champ like me. You think even John Wayne come here and be greeted like this? No way.” This was his kind of venue, deprived masses made for his social caterwaul.
In a press corps of about eight hundred, from all points of the world, no one could honestly guess at the quality of the fight ahead. Even after his brilliant gamble in Zaire, how much at age thirty-three did Ali really have left for what would be a totally different fight, without compromise or a place to hide if their patterns of attack held and Frazier was still, as he liked to say, “put together like a tough piece of leather.” But this was going to be the endgame of the trilogy and, considering the blood factor between the pair, the probability of the momentous in some form could not be ignored. Back in his Philly gym, Joe once more had worked toward the dangerous edge, not seen since their first fight. “I’m gonna shoot it all over there,” he said. “This is the end of the line.” Under Futch, he was working again like a farmhand. His feet were in synchrony, his punching volume way up, and Futch had raised his time on the heavy bag from three minutes to five, a long, draining pull for an aging fighter. Futch had a clear vision for the fight. First, he was determined to deter any intrusion from a referee, and Joe would be physically ready and have a single focus on Ali’s belly button; he hadn’t punched to the body much in their first two meetings.
Up in Deer Lake, serenity was the mood. Belinda was not there, nor was Veronica, only the mystery woman who searched the night sky with Ali for alien ships. Once, he put his boy, not much older than a year, on his knee and said: “One day you’ll go to Venus or Mars. You’re gonna be a good man when you get big. Speak three languages. Talk to your brothers all over the world. You’ll be smart. Not like your daddy. You’ll be able to read good. Use your brains like I do my fists.” A soft moment that seemed to adumbrate Odessa’s often buried influence on him. He had nothing to say about Elijah Muhammad, who died in February of 1975. He died intestate, but left over $5 million to his squabbling sons, including Herbert and Wallace. Not bad for a young man who, after a white guy (he said) pressed a black ear into his hand, would found an erstwhile movement of irregular energy. With that kind of money, why did Ali have to buy him a house in Phoenix and absorb his hospital expenses? “’Cause he’s a nut,” Cash said. “The old man took him to the cleaners, and they still not done.” In the ensuing struggle for power, Ali would align himself with Wallace, who had an orthodox Islamic world view rather than his father’s storefront hustle, though he was not void of unearthly power, according to Ali: “Wallace, he disappears in rooms.”
Two hours after tenderly designing his son’s future, Ali went into his packed gym for a workout, and if there was any doubt of his mellowing toward Frazier it was dispelled. He hit the gym like a kid bent on chasing the boredom of a late summer afternoon; burn the insect or slowly dissect it of wing and leg? Of all the meanness, racial and personal, directed at Frazier over the years, this one was without duplication. As soon as he climbed into the ring, the crowd chanted his name, and he moved to the edge of the ring as if he were going to explain the finer parts of a seminar. Gypsy Joe Harris, back in Frazier’s good graces, stood next to me and watched as Ali let the crowd fall to a hush.
“Who am I?” he finally asked. “You know who I am?”
“The greatest!” Bundini shouted. “The king of all he see!”
The crowd began to chant, responding like one of those crowds that used to greet some Duke of Doo-Wop: “The greatest! The greatest!”
It continued until Ali spread his hands for silence. “Gorilla,” he then said. He waited, then came at them with a louder “Gorilla.”
“Joe Frazier!” a guy in the back shouted, looking like an arriviste Hell’s Angel.
“No!” a young white woman with a pasty face, blond hair like straw, and the decolletage of a barmaid shouted at ringside. “The ape man! Ape! Ape!”
Ali stared above the gathering into infinity, his mouth angry, eyes blank, then screamed: “Joe Frazier should give his face to the Wildlife Fund! He so ugly, blind men go the other way!” Bundini slapped his thighs, the comic in love with his own lines. “Ugly! Ugly! Ugly!” Ali went on, then added: “He not only looks bad! You can smell him in another country!” He held his nose. “What will the people in Manila think? We can’t have a gorilla for a champ. They’re gonna think, lookin’ at him, that all black brothers are animals. Ignorant. Stupid. Ugly. If he’s champ again, other nations will laugh at us.”
“Call us pig farmers!” the Hell’s Angel bleated. “Can’t have it!”
“Jist niggers!” a black guy screamed, tossing a grenade from the rear that extracted a sad expression from Ali. “Ain’t that the truth,” he said. “Jist niggahs and freaks. They gonna say that ’bout me?”
“Nooooooo!” the crowd roared in unison.
“Right on!” Ali agreed, then prepared for his parting shot. “Gorilla,” he said. “Ugly and smelly!” He then dropped low, on his haunches, splayed his feet, knuckles waving by his knees, and turned his nose flat and gross as he mimicked an ape. He jumped frantically around the ring, snorting and puzzled like an ape. The crowd chanted his name, mindless, nearly out of hand and, with Frazier not there to trample to death, it pushed toward the ring. Ali held his hands up, then dropped one finger to crush his nose again and said: “Settle down now. Be back in a few minutes and show ya how I’m gonna destroy the niggah.”
“Smoke ain’t gonna like this,” Gypsy said, shaking his head.
Did he have to tell him?
“Why you think I’m here?” he said. “Smoke wants to know everything.”
According to Gypsy, he reported back to Joe, who was getting dressed after a workout. A neat man, he was meticulous about the way he dressed and appeared. Music was playing, he splashed lotion on his face, and he was in a high mood.
“What you got, Gyp?” Joe asked.
“He ready to be a corpse,” Gyp said. “Not much left. The right hand slow. If you ask me.”
“He never looks good in training,” Joe said. “Was he hangin’ on the ropes like usual?”
“Yeah, you know how he is. Lets them big guys tear at him.”
Joe looked at Futch.
“He won’t be there in Manila,” Futch said.
“What else happenin’?” Joe asked. Gypsy did a little shuffle with his feet, looked at Eddie.
“Well?”
Joe listened to the abu
se Ali had poured on him, then said: “Ya hear that, Eddie? He’s always after your manhood! Anything else?”
“Well, Smoke,” Gyp started. He hesitated, and Joe snapped at him, saying: “Gimme it!” Gyp said: “It was a big crowd. Couldn’t move in the place. He hopped ’round like an ape. Said you not fit to be champ. And you smell so bad they can smell you in another country.”
Joe turned, gunned a hole in the thin wood of the wall, then flipped over his desk. Futch tried to calm him. Joe, rubbing his hand, finally said: “Eddie, listen up! Whatever you do, whatever happens, don’t stop the fight! We got nowhere to go after this. I’m gonna eat this half-breed’s heart right out of his chest.”
“Joe…” Futch said.
“I mean it,” Joe said. “This is the end of him or me.”
A land of palabas, dramatic spectacle, it was said of the Philippines. Nothing was small there except the people. The squalor was immense, made worse by pounding heat and sun, relieved only by the monsoons, which drove against the islands like sheaths of warm metal. Outsize disaster had a regularity, overloaded island ferries going down with two thousand aboard, whole settlements even in the city washed away in an instant by floods, and always the promise of even worse from coughing volcanoes. Certain religious ceremonies—though increasingly viewed in the land as exhibitionistic machismo—portrayed a hunger for more suffering, with parades of bloody self-flagellants and crucifixions. Even the torture commandants of Marcos, it was said, had found new, diabolical ways into the human spirit; for the very special, a special room in the Malacanang Palace that contained the blackest practices. Yet the Filipinos were seen around the world as a remarkably peaceful, passive, fatalistic people, a myth according to one dissident priest who carried a gun while serving mass in what was known as the Church of the Black Nazarene in the noisy Quippo section, its statue of Christ black from the bombing ash of World War II.