Frazier had thin, thin skin. He got insulted and riled up easily. Add that he was Ali's main rival and every single fight of theirs had personal and historical significance, and Muhammad went crazy.
Ali had been dumped on,big time,by the establishment in the 60's. He needed a focal point to articulate his anger on. Frazier was that focal point. Also,Muhammad knew that Joe was his ultimate rival. The competitive juices contributed to him taking his act over the top with Joe.
Futch did the right thing. Frazier would have got killed if he'd come out for the final round. You're right in what you say. Frazier's comments about Ali in recent years more than wipe out anything OTT that Ali said about Joe at the time.
It wasn't totally out of place in Ali's character. He wasn't always a saintly picture of loyalty and good heartedness. Ali turned his back on Malcolm X and renounced him, and didn't say anything good about him for years. I've seen Ali on the Michael Parkinson show deny that he had any white friends, and that Angelo Dundee and Gene Kliroy etc. were not his friends, just "associates". The real shame about the Frazier-Ali stuff is not that Ali said some horrible things, but that loads of educated "intellectual" black and white people believed and went along with those ideas. That's the sickening part. Mostly people who had no real interest in boxing, or much previous interest in the personalities of Ali and Frazier, just went along with Ali's stupid "Uncle Tom" and "White Man's champion" jibes .... rationalized them, intellectualized them and gave them more legitimacy than they deserved.
it started cuz frazier kept calling him clay in interviews, tv etc. patterson and terrell also kept calling him clay in the run up to their fights with ali. you can see how mad he was getting when bonavena started calling him clay at that press conference.
At first I think he did it to push the fight. But, I think Ali saw that he was getting to Frazier,on a deeply personal level. And (I am an Ali fan too ) I really feel Ali sought to undermine Frazier in the black community. The uncle Tom references really got to Frazier who was a very honorable and proud black man. At one point Frazier said` if I did any tomming it was for him` (Ali). He lobbied for Ali to get his license back so he could earn a living. Ali kept at Frazier about being the white mans chump, but then he kept calling him gorilla ? Saying he was to ugly to be world champ ? I thought he went over the top with Frazier, a true champion and a good man as well. However Ali could have a mean streak with certain opponents (Terrell,Liston etc) and Frazier was at the top of Ali`s list...
That happened because Frazier was doing many things to help exiled Ali, money, spend time with,helping to get his ban lifted. How did Ali repay him ? He went off on Ali in front of a bunch of people at one point, to the dismay of Frazier. Ali turned first on Frazier, that`s when the Clay references came into play.
Think how pompous and ridiculous it sounds to hate someone because they are calling you by the name you called yourself just a couple of years earlier !
Actually,Frazier was referring to Ali as Clay as early as 1967. Before Muhammad had started verbally on Joe. Maybe this was at the back of Ali's mind.
Mind-Game. Hype . Selling Tickets . It Gave Howard Cosell and the ***gots that made "Thrilla In Manila" SOMETHING to talk about .
Ali, had a certain amount of cruelty in his remarks to Joe Frazier,that cannot be dimissed as just hype. This BS excusing Ali for "taunting" opponents on the canvass, is just an excuse. I never saw a Louis, a Robinson, an Arguello doing that. Conversely, Ali had warmth after he past his prime and then retired. A contradiction in terms was Ali ! Great personality, only matched by his ego...
I never seen Ali taunt an opponent on the canvas EVER, unless you wanna call the 2nd Liston fight taunting. Any examples of this please as i genuinely cant recall him ever doing it.
