I was gonna make a thread about this fight, you beat me to it. Anyway... happy birthday to the best HW fight of all time, won by the best HW that ever lived. :happy
Hmm...The GOAT world heavyweight title fight is seven years and thirty days older than me. :think Thank goodness film existed by then. The only thing that could possibly improve it is if the official result read Frazier RTD14 Ali.
I despise heavyweights, but I love this fight. One of the best you could hope for, regardless of weight class. Both men left most of what they had left there that night. There's something epic about the very thought of such a thing.
I'm glad the fight got stopped, Futch would have just led Frazier out to a brutal massacre in the last round. He knew this so he stopped the fight.
Definitely at one with you on this. Simply cannot understand those who say that Futch should have let Frazier out for the 15th. Are they sadists ?:-(
Thirded. The Thrilla was a war in the truest sense of the word & I loved every minute of it's compelling brutality. Happy 35th, Thrilla in Manila.
the 14th round was brutal, just brutal. Ali was catching him with straight right hands, open. Frazier's will kept him in that round. No doubt in my mind that Frazier would have come out for the 15th but its was the correct call. Pity Dundee didn't pull Ali out 1st.
This fight to me, proves Ali can always be credited with will. He overcame his rival in an absolute war. Frazier wanted to continue, sure, but he was finished: Ali, the boxer and the mover, the Butterfly, as Joe called him, ground Frazier down like he was the punching pressure fighter. I'm often in awe of both men watching this fight, but of Ali more. He's the top heavyweight because more often than ever not, he found a way to win, and 3 of the men who beat him, he managed to defeat back.
