Joe Frazier vs Eddie Futch: Manila

[Toney616]

'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.
I mean it. This is the end of him or me'
-Joe Frazier

He had been urinting blood since the fight. 'Everything in me is on flame,' he said. 'He stood there gazing at the sun bleeding a dark, tragic red, eased down over the brown water of Manila Bay. His right hand hurt and was swollen, his eye whites streaked with blood. He looked at his right hand, tried to make a fist but could't. 'What this man do to me?' He asked with a rasp as he guided my hand over the ridge of bumps on his forehead. 'Why I do this?' He searched the horizon as if looking for an answer. 'It was insane in there,' he said. 'Couple of times like I was leaving my body. The animal could've killed me. That man weren't human in there I must be crazy. For what?' He took in th sunset again, thn said:'This is it for me. It's over.'

The Thrilla in Manila
The fallout between Joe Frazier and Eddie Futch



A couple of ghosts, if you aske me. One is still in the ring in Manila, the other doesn''t even know there was a Manila. It was a bad reckoning for both that day.
- Burt Watson

The fourteenth round:

The fourteenth was the most savage round of the forty-one Ali and Frazier fought. It brought out guilt (not felt since Joe wrecked the face of Chuvalo) that made one want to seek out the nearest confessional for the expiation of voyeuristic lust. Nine straight right hands smashed into Joe's left eye, thirty or so in all during th round. When Joe's left side capsized to the right from the barrage, Ali moved it back into range for his eviscerating right with crisp left hooks, and at the round's end the referee guided Joe back to his corner. Eddie Futch was a man in thought. 'Never fade a guy who's sneaked his own dice into the game,' Yank liked to say. But ...he remembered their fifteenth round in the Garden; did Ali have another round in him? If not Joe might win it. He looked at the swollen, purple slit of Fraziers eye. In the old days, trainers- not Eddie- would use a razor blade to pop the balloon and release the pressure. Not with this eye, it was beyond help. He remembered, too, the several fighters he had seen killed in the ring. There was a sudden commotion in Joe's corner. The lover of the Lake Poets was signaling to stop the fight.

'No, no, no!' Joe kept shouting. 'You can't do that to me!'
'Sit down , son,' Eddie said.'It's over. No one will forget what you did here today.'

With the only strength they had left, both fighters stumbled to their dressing rooms to a continuous roar. When Ali hit the passage leading toward his room, he was d****d around the shoulders of his handlers, his feet dragging, his face one of terminal exhaustion. The first thing they saw in the room was a dead man, part of his head blown away. The cop on duty there had been twirling and fanning his gun in front of a mirror, accidently offed himself, and now he was in a heap below the mirror, with a Jackson Pollack scatter of blood on it. 'Is he dead?' Ali asked, barely able to speak. 'A dead man. Get me outta here.' An omen! His handlers moved him to a sofa in another room. Tears trickled down Joe's face in the other room. He was being embraced by Eddie when Bob Goodman, the press liason, entered, asking:'Joe, can you talk to the press?' Joe agreed, and Goodman went to Ali and asked:'Champ, you up to the press?' Bundini went ballistic: 'You insane? Look at him!' Ali was a clump on the sofa, his skin a grey color. 'Joe's out there,' Goodman said. With that, Ali raised his head and asked, as if incredulous:'He is?' He added:'Get me my comb.' Ali would be a long time coming out.

The day after:

After the press conference, Joe retired to a private villa for rest. He had been sleeping for a couple of hours when George Benton entered with a vistor. The room was dark. 'Who is it?' Joe asked, lifting his head. 'I can't see. Can't see. Turn the lights on.' A light was turned on, and he still could not see. Like Ali, he lay there with his veins empty, crushed by a will that had carried him so far and now surely too far. His eyes were iron gates torn up by an explosive. 'Man, I hit him with punches that bring down the walls f a city . What held him up?' He asked lowered his head for some abstract forgiveness.

'Goddamn it, when somebody going to understand? It wasn't just a fight. It was me and him. Not a fight.'

He dropped his head back to the pillow, wincing, and soon there was only the heavy breathing of a deep sleep slapping off the shoreline of his consciousness. He was correct. No mere fight, whatever the talent, could

REACH SUCH CARNAL ROOTS AND PRODUCE SUCH FULL-BODIED GREATNESS, THE KIND THAT ALI WOULD MAINTAIN LONG YEARS LATER HAD CARRIED HIM TO parts unknown in himself and had no portfolio equal.

It was evening, the next day, in his Hilton suite, his body bent and listing to the right, so badly had his organs been seared; He had been urinating blood since the fight. 'Everything in me is on flame,' he said. 'He stood there gazing at the sun bleeding a dark, tragic red, eased down over the brown water of Manila Bay. His right hand hurt and was swollen, his eyewhites streaked with blood. He looked at his right hand, tried to make a fist but couldn't.

'What this man do to me?'

He asked with a rasp as he guided my hand over the ridge of bumps on his forehead. 'Why I do this?' He searched the horizon as if looking for an answer. 'It was insane in there,' he said. 'Couple of times like I was leaving my body. The animal could've killed me. That man weren't human in there I must be crazy. For what?' He took in the sunset again, then said:'This is it for me. It's over.'

[Toney616]

Life goes on:

After Manila, Joe Frazier, with his head shaved to a glistening point, heavy and slow, met George Foreman in June 1976. In training, Futch noted that Joe spent long parts of sessions on the ropes, where he'd go to rest, lie back and pick off punches, and often miss the one you did not see, then it's over; this is where careers end. Eventually, fans grow tired of a fighter's survival and want the seriously new to sweep out the old. George wasn't new, but at least he'd dispatch a barnacled name once and for all. George dribbled him, the stopped him in the fifth, with most of the crowd shouting Ali's name. Frazier came down with hepatitis, and five years later came back to fight to a draw against a barrel of congealed rust named Jumbo Cumming. 'No, I don't approve,' Futch said, refusing to work with him, opening the split between them that had been dormant after Manila. Joe was fond of saying:'I got mugged by the ref in the second Ali fight, and Futch took Manila away from me.' He particularly resented what Eddie had said after the third fight:'Ali's too strong for him now, and Joe's too small.' When Joe later took some of his fighters to North Carolina, Eddie was there and Joe just gave him a curt nod of acknowledgement.

Frazier had years before tried to break a sword on the head of Eddie Futch, too, not easy to do. Eddie had opposed his return Jumbo Cummings and drew Joe's anger when Eddie, as just an adviser, told Joe that Marvis was too green to face Larry Holmes. Joe told others:'He never did anything for me except collect fifteeen percent of my purse.Eddie can't train nobody. He was just there to wipe me down. 'This was not about Marvis, Eddie knew, it was the Frazier-Ali thing, that last round in Manilla that Joe wouldn't forget.

Eddie bided his time.

In Vegas for the Marvis-Holmes fight, they went on a radio show together. Eddie refused to confront him, then Joe got older and bolder, until Futch opened up on him. He told him of his relationship with Yank Durham, how Yank followed what he said on all matters. 'But Yank was my friend and your manager,' he said, 'and I never wanted to take credit. I made more money than you think.' By now Frazier was off balance, he was hearing new information. 'And why did you call me every time a decision was needed?' Eddie asked. Joe backed off, and they just skirted the edges of Manila, neither now wanting to escalate the argument. Even so, when Frazier was in a mood usually brought on by a comment about Ali, he would excoriate Futch. He had been too soft to have been in charge. Yank would have sent him out for the fiftenth in Manila. 'Don't talk to me about Eddie Futch, 'Joe said. 'He became a big hero with the press. Such a caring man.

DON'T TALK TO ME ABOUT HIM'

Nobody had, it was as if he had been talking to himself.




A couple of ghosts, if you aske me. One is still in the ring in Manila, the other doesn''t even know there was a Manila. It was a bad reckoning for both that day.

sources:

Ghosts of Manila: The fateful blood feud between muhammad ali and joe frazier by mark kram

[sugersean15]

good stuff...........

[gopi11]

I was there.

I was just 15 and the 100+ degree heat was almost unbearable to me, imagine what both boxers felt fighting under the bright spotlights. Fourteen punishing and brutal rounds. The atmosphere was electric, the only regret I had was I was too far away to hear the classic lines coming from both corners. Ali, Frazier, Dundee, Pacheco and Futch all under one roof...

[Canelo Phresh]

great read

[tibbar]

i remember that day, the streets of manila was almost deserted, it seems that all people disappeared except for a number of people on errands hurrying up, returning to where they came from with the same urgency as if prolonging their exposure to the sun will cause their demise. i was one of those who was in front of a tv set then sent out to buy beer, i was just a small kid then but nobody wanted to go out and away from the tv and missed the actions.