On a bitter and frigid late winter evening in New York, and simultaneously during the morning heat of Vietnam’s central coastline, a long-anticipated clash between two undefeated heavyweight boxing champions took place as a proxy battle for a nation tearing itself apart over war and race.
The morning of March 9, 1971, was different. Despite a night of hard drinking at The Hog Farm, I was energized. For the first time in months, Vietnam wasn’t the first thing on my mind. Instead, I was focused on Madison Square Garden, eight thousand miles away in New York City, where Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier were about to face off for The World Heavyweight Boxing Championship.
This was not just any boxing match. To me, and millions of others, Ali versus Frazier represented something much larger than sport. Aptly billed The Fight Of The Century, this long-anticipated clash was a proxy battle for a nation tearing itself apart over Vietnam and race.
Objectively, the bout had nothing to do with me. But it felt deeply personal. As much as I wanted to be home in my neighborhood, to be safe in Natalie’s embrace, to be with my family, my friends, as much as I wanted to be done with Vietnam and its madness and fear and random death and suffering, as much as all that, I wanted—no, I needed—Ali to win. To me, Ali was the light. And I was sinking in the darkness.
The rising sun was already boiling the moisture-filled air into a steamy sauna as I set up a portable Sony radio which I had purchased at the PX precisely for this occasion. It was 7 am on a Tuesday in Chu Lai, but it was a wintery Monday night back home. Flurries gusted through New York’s skyscraper canyons at nearly 30 miles-per-hour, making the sub-freezing temperature feel even colder. Still, even this last kick of bitter winter didn’t deter an A-list crowd from showing up at the Garden. The arena was sold out. A crowd of thousands more lined the streets outside. Scalpers on Seventh Avenue hawked hundred dollar tickets for a thousand bucks or more.
Both fighters were undefeated, which itself would have made the fight a big deal. And each had a legitimate claim to the championship. Ali held it for three years until it was stripped from him by administrative fiat in 1967 when he refused to be drafted into the Army. Frazier won the vacated crown in the ring in 1970. Never had two undefeated champions faced off in the ring.
Ali had been a hero of mine ever since my dad introduced me to boxing. As an adolescent, I’d sit with him in our living room and watch the locally broadcast Friday Night Fights on a dinky, black-and-white television set. It was one of the few things we did together after my mother died. We rarely spoke during the bouts, but I cherished those evenings.
Ali emerged as a professional under his given name, Cassius Clay, following the 1960 Rome Olympics where he won a gold medal. Unique compared to the plodding, heavy-punching fighters who typified his class, Ali whirled about the ring, exhausting rivals with his speed, before punishing them with precisely aimed punches. Fast, lithe and brilliant, his strategy was victory by a thousand jabs. He was often not the strongest. But his victories came from being the smartest. Above all, I admired him for always fighting on his own terms.
Ali boxed how I wanted to live.
As his wins mounted, Ali became outspoken in a manner unprecedented in the sport. He turned into an rrepressible showboat who delighted in predicting the outcome of his bouts with rhyming verse. Facing veteran Archie Moore, young Cassius Clay declared: “He will be mine in round nine, and if you make me sore, I’ll cut it to four.” Sportswriters dubbed him “The Mouth,” and when his shameless self-promotion infuriated the boxing establishment and much of the public, Ali simply turned up the volume.
To the chagrin of many, including my dad, Ali had the goods to back up his sass. His string of victories culminated in two tumultuous knockouts of the brute of mid-century heavyweights, Sonny Liston, to claim and defend the heavyweight crown in 1964 and 1965. I couldn’t get enough of him—for what he said as much as for what he did. While successfully defending his title, Ali relentlessly ripped the Band-Aid off the country’s racial wounds. When he joined the Nation Of Islam, changing his name to Muhammad Ali, I loved him all the more. Through Ali, I began finding my own political footing and a new perspective on the prejudices which had surrounded me most of my life.
Ever since he had been eligible for the draft at age 18, Ali’s status had been 1-Y: not fit for military duty for failure on written proficiency tests. But as the war intensified, and troop levels in Vietnam increased, the standards were changed. Ali became 1-A, the most eligible category for the military service. In 1967, Ali was drafted for induction in the US Army.
He refused to take the symbolic step forward when called, declaring himself a conscientious objector. The US Government denied his claim and convicted him of draft evasion. His boxing license was suspended, effectively ending his career. His World Champion title was revoked. He faced jail time. Instead of boxing in the ring, his fights moved to courtrooms in a legal odyssey that would eventually wind all the way to the Supreme Court. Along the way, Ali became the most celebrated poster child of the anti-war movement, and arguably the most hated man in America, besieged by death threats. My worship of him intensified.
This was my first exposure to someone willing to sacrifice everything for their principles. The media portrayed Ali as a controversial lightning rod of the left. But to me, he was talking sense while so many others were not. He opened my eyes to the quagmire of Vietnam and how it intersected with racial discrimination in the world. The war and race was complicated. Ali was not.
“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?” he said.
“I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong,” he added.
Nor did I. But there I was in Vietnam, clinging to my wits, hoping to get back to my life in the world. And there in New York was Ali, reclimbing the steps in his profession, trying to reclaim the heavyweight championship that the war had snatched from him in his prime. On that bitter and frigid March evening in New York, and simultaneously in the morning heat of Vietnam’s central coastline, Ali and I were aligned in a quest for survival.
“Smokin Joe” Frazier was renowned for the brawn and ferocity he brought to the ring. His left hook was so powerful that when he connected, some ringside spectators swore they felt the reverberations. A sharecropper’s son from South Carolina, Frazier grew up in the hard knocks ghettos of Philadelphia. Two years younger than Ali, he came of age for military service after the 1969 lottery was instituted. His high draft number of 221 ensured he would never be called for duty. While Frazier was virtually mum on Vietnam and race, he became the default representative of the pro-war silent majority. To folks like my dad, who saw the American political scene as hippies versus hard-hats, Frazier represented “my country right or wrong.” By 1971, many Americans saw them as opposites in every way.
As the opening bell approached, I was overcome by a sense of dread, uncertain that Ali could prevail. He had only fought a handful of has-beens and nobodies since his return to the ring. Frazier would be the real deal. Ali may have been the sentimental favorite for idealists like me. But in Vegas, oddsmakers went with Frazier. Ali’s age, the lay off, Frazier’s power—they all spelled doubt.
In the barracks, Mama San quietly went about her morning cleaning, steering clear of my hootch. Baochi, our mongrel ratter, lay still beneath my bunk recovering from a night of hunting, undisturbed by the static crackle of the radio broadcast. To follow the action, I used a trick I learned years back on the night shift at The Wall Street Journal switchboard tuned in to hockey and basketball on the radio. I closed my eyes, envisioned the ring, and hung on every word of veteran sports broadcaster Tim Ryan who painted the scene at Madison Square Garden as an “extravaganza that has transcended beyond a mere sports event.” In the background, I could hear the palpable tension of the Garden crowd. It matched my own.
As they approached the ring, I could almost see both fighters being greeted by the fans. The boos for Ali were almost equal to the cheers. Fans weren’t so much applauding Frazier as they were rooting against Ali. When the fighters were introduced, a knot tightened in my belly. “Frazier will be wearing green trunks, Ali is in red.” I immediately visualized a small-arms fire fight in the field. Our tracer bullets were red; the ones the enemy fired, green.
Ding.
The metallic clang of the bell for round one put all the preliminary anxiety behind. It was like the difference between anticipating Vietnam and being there. Once in country, there was nothing to do but keep body and soul alive. Now, in the ring, both fighters had to endure until the end.
Ali in his prime was a dancer in the ring. But not this night. Announcer Ryan described Ali as flatfooted, attempting to stand and spar with Frazier. Frazier’s style was to bore in on his opponent and once in range, swing his huge arms and fists mightily.
This will not be healthy, I thought, beginning to fidget in the early morning heat. I judged, at best, the first round was a draw. It was a hopeful if unrealistic conclusion—much like the way our country had once viewed Vietnam.
In the middle rounds, Ali persisted in slugging it out with Frazier, toe to toe in the center of the ring.
“Not wise,” I whispered to no one in particular, my worry growing that Ali was inviting disaster.
He had a peculiar talent for stepping into an opponent while simultaneously leaning his torso impossibly far back, creating a canyon of air between the two. Early on, Frazier took the bait and launched a wild left hook that missed Ali by a mile. Ali countered with three rapid fire left jabs—his most effective punch—and then a right, which connected and seemed to hurt Frazier. Ali kept landing combinations, finishing with powerful right crosses that might have felled other fighters. I swung my own fists, mimicking what I had just heard, hoping to add power to Ali’s efforts. But Frazier was steadfast. In the round’s final seconds, he rooted Ali motionless with a tremendous left hook.
By the time Ali was back on his toes, resorting to his signature footwork, Frazier was ready with a counter-offensive, barreling in, cutting him off, landing punishing blows to Ali’s jaw and midsection. Ali began to slow. Ryan made him out to be frustrated. My fear intensified. In that round, I began to fear that nothing Ali did would stop Frazier. Frazier was in his element. He would bear any punishment; never quit, keep on coming. He reminded me of the enemy we were losing to in Vietnam.
Ali had predicted he’d win by a knockout in the sixth round. But by the ninth, it was clear Frazier was unperturbed by anything Ali threw at him. Frazier crouched his way into close range, bobbing and weaving below Ali’s longer reach, peppering him with body blows up against the ropes. A worn and battered Ali had no option but to tie up Frazier to stop the punishment. Even when Ali let go with a torrent of right hooks, catching Frazier in the head with a flurry of combinations, it wasn’t enough to turn the tide.
In round 14, Ali was desperately to land a knockout blow. Behind on points, the fight was lost unless he conjured a magic bullet. I refused to give up hope. Ryan described Frazier’s face as puffed and swollen; blood trickling from above his right eye. He had never been cut before. But he kept coming for Ali. And there was nowhere to hide. I surveyed my plywood barracks with empathy.
My tee-shirt clung to my back with sweat as the two fighters, thoroughly exhausted, touched gloves for the last round. The crowd roared their appreciation for the savage, drawn out combat they had witnessed. Then, mere seconds into the 15th round, Ali back pedaled to his left, opening up his stance to unleash a right cross. Frazier was quicker. He pummeled Ali with a Herculean left. It sent Ali to the canvas with a broken jaw. It signaled the end of his night.
For the next two and a half minutes, staggering and hurt, Ali took a clobbering. The right side of his face blew up like a balloon. He desperately tried to remain erect, covering up and holding onto Frazier to block his powerful head shots. I let out a breath at the final bell. The outcome didn’t need to be announced. Ali had been defeated.
I cried.
Ali had stood for us all in Vietnam. But this day there was no victory; no redemption. The wars—Ali’s, Vietnam’s, America’s, my own—continued. I rolled over, wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand, and closed my eyes. But sleep did not come.