On this date, 50 years ago, also a Monday, I fretted about attending a closed-circuit pay-per-view telecast later in the day of the heavyweight championship fight between undefeated champion Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali (still “Cassius Clay” to many). The fight would be the third for Ali, also unbeaten, since he had been banned from boxing three years earlier for refusing induction into the U.S. Armed Forces. It was being billed as “the fight of the century.”
The local telecast was to take place at the San Diego Sports Arena, then less than five years old. It was expensive to attend, maybe $15.00 (hey, that’s just under a hundred bucks in today’s money). I wasn’t even sure tickets would still be available.
I decided to go.
Based on the seat I was able to get, I may have bought one of the last tickets available. I was in the top row (I could lean back onto the side of the building), the screen was at the end of the arena, essentially perpendicular to me, with no one to my right. I and many others in my area watched the fight leaning significantly to our lefts to reduce the distorted presentation we saw on the screen.
The event took place at Madison Square Garden, New York City. According to the Associated Press article about the fight, “The stars and the star-struck came in their finest to watch on a Monday night in Manhattan. It was March 8, 1971, and those crowding their way into the Garden were attired in the fashion of the day, which included full-length fur coats, velvet pants, and peacock feathered hats — and that was just the men. There were also plenty of fashionably attired women in miniskirts or long gowns, with enough skin and hair on both sexes to make the crowd watching as good as the fight.
“At ringside, Frank Sinatra had a camera in his hand, chronicling the scene for Life magazine. There were Kennedys in the building, along with celebrities of the day such as Diana Ross and Woody Allen. The moonwalkers from Apollo 14 were on hand, too, still bearded from their trip to space.”
Those attending in San Diego were not so much the “stars and the star-struck.” If there were San Diego notables in attendance, they were nowhere close to my seat.
I wasn’t a huge fan of boxing, but it was a much bigger sport then than now. And one major reason for that was Ali. He had become a cultural figure, admired for his antiwar stance by many and despised by as many, if not more, for the same reason. Frazier, who still referred to his opponent as Cassius Clay, was called an “Uncle Tom” by Ali and, whether it was his intention or not, represented to many the cultural “working class” of America. With the cultural clash of America represented by the two fighters, the event was portrayed as much a fight between those cultures.
I think I wanted to see the fight to see what happened in that clash and to see “history.”
To the disappointment, I think, of most in the San Diego Sports Arena, including me, Frazier won the 15-round fight by unanimous decision. While Ali won the 14th round, Frazier caught Ali flush in the jaw with his best of many potent left hooks in the final round, knocking him to the canvas.
Here is a video (7:52) of the highlights of the fight.
Much of what I remember from the evening was the environment inside the Sports Arena. It became increasingly warm and, as smoking was permitted in those days, the upper levels of the arena, where I was sitting, became quite smoky.
After the fight, Ali’s jaw was heavily swollen, but x-rays showed it was not broken. Frazier would eventually need hospitalization for injuries he suffered in the fight.
March 8, 1971 may well have been the high point of Frazier’s career. He lost the next two fights with Ali and was then knocked out twice by George Foreman. After reclaiming his title from Frazier, Ali later defeated Foreman in the 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle.”