Muhammad Ali and ‘Thrilla in Manila’
When Muhammad Ali survived 14 brutal rounds with Joe Frazier in the 'Thrilla in Manila' 45 years ago, it wrote a page in boxing folklore but left both men forever diminished.
Fought in the Philippines' stifling daytime heat, with barely functioning air-con, Frazier was beaten practically blind and Ali was on the verge of surrender.
In the end, it had been Frazier's trainer who threw in the towel to hand Ali victory on October 1, 1975, settling their head-to-head 2-1. However the fight came at a price to both men.
"Ali and Frazier could not be the same again, after pouring and spending practically almost all their power and sturdiness in Manila," said Recah Trinidad, a Philippine boxing columnist.
Ali, who had beaten George Foreman in the 'Rumble in the Jungle' in Zaire a year earlier, arrived to the fight at 33, his best years well behind him.
They battled in the 25,000-seat Araneta Coliseum with such ferocity that spectators including Imelda Marcos, wife of then-Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, were spattered with blood.
"It was like death. Closest thing to dyin' that I know of," Ali later said of the bout.
Ali set an acrimonious tone in the weeks resulting in the fight, enraging Frazier, 31, by likening him to a huge ape.
"It's gonna be considered a thrilla, and a chilla, and a killa, when I get the gorilla in Manila," Ali boasted, coining the nickname that still resonates today.
On fight day the momentum swung backwards and forwards between your men, who were within their third and final match-up.
One Frazier punch sent Ali's mouthpiece flying into the fifth row, but neither fighter fell.
The fight in the tropics was staged in the daytime to suit US television audiences, however the crowd and TV lights overwhelmed the air-conditioning.
"At 125 degrees -- we were fighting each other (in addition to) against heat," Frazier said in the 2008 documentary "Thrilla in Manila". Ali's blows had swollen Frazier's right eye almost shut, and he was practically blind in his left because of a training injury.
His face soaked in blood, Frazier argued along with his trainer Eddie Futch to let him turn out for the 15th round, but Futch stopped the fight.
Later, it was revealed that Ali himself wished to quit.
His biographer Thomas Hauser told the 2008 documentary that towards the end of the round an Ali cornerman heard the champion telling trainer Angelo Dundee to "cut 'em (gloves) off".
"Round 14 was the closest I've seen somebody come to killing somebody," Ali's fight doctor Ferdie Pacheco told the documentary makers.
But following the Thrilla, "both men were never the same again", said Nick Giongco, a sports analyst at the Manila Bulletin.
He said that although Ali would defend his world title a further six times, and regain it in a rematch after losing to Leon Spinks in 1978, the self-styled "Greatest ever" never fully recovered from the "brutal beatdown" Frazier had inflicted.
Ali would finally hang up the phone his gloves in 1981 aged 39, following consecutive losses to Larry Holmes and Trevor Berbick. He retired with a win-loss record of 56-5.
The "Louisville Lip" died on June 3, 2016 after an extended struggle with Parkinson's disease.
