joe was in bad shape at the end of round 14. i know that ali would have pulled whatever bit of strength he had left to answer the bell for the 15th and probably would have stopped frazier.
You insinuated that Ali was more likely to quit than Frazier, just because of some comment Ali may or may not have made.
It's reported that Ali was wanting to quit. It looked to me as if Frazier was protesting Futch's decision. (I can only go on what I see, hear and read.) Dundee and Bundini would never have allowed Ali to quit anyway, so there's no suggestion (from me) that he wouldn't have come out for the 15th.
Ali quit? He didn't even want to quit after round 10 of the Holmes fight. Just more sensationalism from the Ali camp- just like the broken jaw probably happened after the second round. The Ali legend makes for good tales and ripping yarns.
Were Dundee, Pacheco, or Bundini ever quoted as stating that Ali said he wanted to quit before round 15 in Manila? At the end of round 14, Ali was actually knocking Frazier backwards with his punches. If there had been a round 15, Ali would have likely avenged Joe's knockdown of him in the FOTC, and forced Carlos Padilla to stop the contest long before those three minutes were up. Ali wanted to quit in the first match with Liston, when his eyes were blinded (supposedly by Monsel's solution), but Dundee washed them out, reminded Ali, "This is for the big one Daddy-O!," and swatted Muhammad on the can as he got off his stool for the following round. I think Ali was simply embellishing the legend of Manila by claiming that he was ready to quit himself. They knew they had that match won, and Ali had already driven himself to a 15 round kayo win over Wepner earlier in the year, so he certainly had the capacity to do it again (as he nearly did yet another time to Earnie Shavers later). Ali is the definitive 15 round HW champion in boxing history.
The heat in Manila was a factor, and the pace was brutal. I'm sure he didn't feel the need to quit against Holmes. He could lay on the ropes getting smacked in the head all night, that's the way he was in those years. He was exerting any effort, just getting his brain pummelled. He'd practiced the same thing in sparring. Yeah, you might be right, maybe everyone is making it up. It becomes part of the story, and the people who were there start believing they saw it/heard it themselves. Apparently years after the Dempsey-Firpo fight there were dozens of reporters who swore blind Dempsey fell on top of their typewriter. Some of them probably weren't even in the stadium.
Wali Muhammad (aka Walter Youngblood) was in the Ali corner and he says, in Thomas Hauser's book on Ali, : "After the fourteenth round, Ali came back to the corner and told us, "Cut 'em off". That's how tired he was. He wanted us to cut his gloves off. And Angelo ignored him. He started wiping Ali's face, getting him ready for the fifteenth round. We sponged him down, and I gave him a drink of sweetened water, honey and water, from a bottle I'd made up. I dont know if he'd have gone out for the last round or not. Ali's not a quitter, he'd never quit. But I'd never seen him exhausted like that before." Pacheco says Ali was not going to quit, here in this interesting documentary of the fight : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BJODy0Pehw
The reasons Joe says he won all 3 fights is because of the condition Ali is in today compared to Joe's. Meaning Joe's punches have more to do with Ali's condition rather than Parkinson's.
Frazier is on record saying he wants to bury Ali, he'll outlive him and that there. The ultimate f*ck you. Frazier is just not rational when it comes to Ali. I sympathise. Frazier really was blind for the 14th...Ali would have come out of that I have no doubt. I've reviewed my earlier resentment for Futch, I think he did the right thing.
