The Thriller In Manilla - The 15th Round

Whats in the boat anyway? Is it a fishing boat?

 

Charley Burley, needs a haircut.

 

You sure are getting worse with these avatars. Staffys, Lions, stupid idiots with long hair, and a recent laughable Jones-Calzaghe one. You're going down at the rate of a jumbo jet with one wing.

 

Where is your green tinted Liston one? That sure was a nice little attention catcher and stood out from the crowd. Stay away from the Staffy's and Lion's mate. This aint no animal nature forum. Perhaps you're on one of those kind of forums as well and get mixed up with your avatars.

 

After the 10th is when Ali said "This is the closest I've come to dying". After the 14th, Ali said to Dundee "cut em off" because he was so exhausted. Dundee ignored him. This is according to the Muhammad Ali Reader by Thomas Hauser. And the article below has some detail on this.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2005/sep/04/features.sport16

The stoppage was fortuitous for Ali. Years later, Wali Muhammad, one of Ali's cornermen in Manila, acknowledged: 'After the 14th, 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. Angelo [Ali's trainer] ignored him. He started wiping Ali's face, getting him ready for the 15th. We sponged him down. I don't 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.'

'Frazier quit just before I did,' Ali told me in 1990. 'I didn't think I could fight any more.'

I don't blame Futch one bit for stopping it, as he was looking out for Frazier's health and Frazier was taking a battering.

You asked why people question Futch's judgement to stop it. The reason why is because we don't know for sure if Ali would've gone on.

 

Yeah, thats with the benefit of hindsight. Futch was too focused on the condition of his own fighter, rather than the opposite corner. Futch's judgement must be questioned and analysed after the 14th round had ended. He obviously took into account the whupping Frazier had taken throughout the 14th, which damaged Frazier even more than any of the previous rounds did. Futch probably thought at the time that Ali was ready to go again. No evidence to suggest he would have thought otherwise. Obviously both were tired considering the heat and pace of the fight. But Ali was the one getting off during the 14th round and landing punches on a regular basis. As soon as Frazier sits on his stool, Futch has to take care of him. Nothing else.

 

Christ, I can see right now that this topic is gonna get beat into the ground like a dead horse.... Let's wrap this up, folks..... ALI WON!!

MR.BILL

 

The beating Frazier took in round 14 was unbelievable to watch. Futch did the right thing in stopping the fight, and everything else is speculation.

 

What Ali says, and what he would have actually done, are two different things. No way was Ali quitting that fight. Joe would have come out, got jabbed some more, while Ali took half the round off clinching or waiting for Joe to find him with his 2 half-shut eyes. IMO Joe had no chance to win even if he came out in the 15th.

 

Good post, spot on.