THE THRILLER IN MANILA (2008)
There’s a saying that history is written by the victors. There was probably a time when it was true, too, give or take.
These days you could make a solid case that history is written by whoever made the last documentary on a subject that’s old enough or obscure enough to be outside the scope of general public knowledge, and has the conviction, balls, ignorance or all the above to present the contents as fact. Given the apparently ever-increasing limitations of general public knowledge, that gives a lot of scope to work with.
As to how old is old enough, “not too old” is probably the simplest answer. Ask two people about an event both were at, or involved with, or watched on television even 20 years ago, let alone 30, and you’ll probably get some major discrepancies between the two stories. People romanticise, exaggerate the level of their involvement, get things confused and incorporate other incidents that happened to them, but just didn’t happen at the time in question. Heck, it doesn’t have to be 20 years. Five or ten can be plenty.
Go back any further than 30 years, and history, even on a major world event or matter of public record, is more or less completely up for grabs. There’ll be experts in the field who may know better, but the general public won’t, and an unscrupulous, or careless, or, to put a more euphemistic spin on it, “determined” documentary maker can put a strong point of view over and make it stick with an audience that doesn’t know better. On a topic from the dim and distant past, with many or most of the protagonists dead, survivors with faded memories, or perhaps who were at best fringe-players to the main action under investigation, and the remaining testimony coming from purported experts who may be anything but, a movie storyteller can tell pretty much whichever story they choose by picking an angle, and being selective with the footage they use to back it up. On that level, history becomes completely up for grabs.
A few years back, at one of the Melbourne Film Festivals, I saw a documentary on the heavyweight boxers Joe Louis and Max Schmeling, centred on their second fight, but also about the men, both before and afterwards. Though not without fascinating moments, and two immensely interesting subjects, it was a mean-spirited exercise apparently dedicated to trying to ruthlessly disparage the memory of the German fighter Max Schmeling. He was portrayed as kind of a Nazi dupe, a loyal and more or less unquestioning German soldier under the Nazi regime, and a kind of lucky dope who stumbled into business success after the war, just as he’d fortunately blundered into being a cynosure for the Hitler regime to his benefit and been able to turn that to his advantage. His post-fight relationship with Louis was “exposed” as something grossly “exaggerated”.
Louis was portrayed as a symbol of freedom, and an inspiration to all Americans, but particularly African-Americans, who served his country in wartime, and may have had one or two unfortunate weaknesses in later life, when he was exploited by others, but was basically a pretty good egg.
Some of what was included in this whitewash was, in a way, nearly as amazing as what was left out.
It was mentioned that Schmeling had a role in saving the lives of some Jewish childen and kind of glossed over, seemingly because it didn’t fit the profile the film-maker was trying to build up. I believe it was mentioned in passing, and fleetingly so, that Schmeling paid for Louis’s funeral. It was mentioned that Yossel Jacobs, Schmeling’s manager, was Jewish.
What wasn’t mentioned was that Schmeling had already risked getting on the Nazi’s shit-list, (and almost certainly was on it), well before Louis crushed him in their second fight, mainly because he resisted all Nazi pressure to dump his Jewish manager, who was anything but shy about making it known that he was Jewish. Obviously Schmeling knew the risks there, but he stuck by his manager. He would have known the even greater risks in hiding anyone from the Nazis, as he apparently did for the aforementioned children.
Many many other accounts have stated that Schmeling would meet with Louis when he could, and gave him money on many occasions, and that they were good friends in the decades following the fights, although how often they saw each other or chatted on the phone I have no more idea than the filmmakers did. Well, perhaps slightly more idea than they did.
As to war service, it was completely glossed over that Schmeling, by then certainly not the Nazis #1 pin-up boy, served as a paratrooper in battle, in harm’s way, whereas Louis’s service was largely publicity/morale oriented, as he gave physical training to other troops, gave exhibition tours under Army aegis, and was not placed on active duty in a theatre of war. This is not to say Louis shied away from any duty, just to point out that this was the deal he had. (When the military was trying to talk Muhammad Ali out of his conscientious objection stance on a different war many years later, it has been suggested, in pretty much these exact terms, that he was offered the “Joe Louis deal”.)
As to his “dumb luck” following the war, Schmeling saw an opening and got in pretty much on the ground floor of Coca-Cola’s expansion into Europe, and became a major executive of long-standing.
Joe Louis is one of the all-time legendary heavyweight boxers, and is, and/or was unquestionably a respected and much-loved figure in the sport world, but while they were busy putting the boots unmercifully to Schmeling in this doco, they glossed over Louis’s less salient qualities to such an extent that the whole thing unavoidably became pure propaganda rather than any sort of fairly balanced documentary.
Louis had problems, and then some, occasioned by his womanising (somewhat mentioned), substance problems (barely mentioned and pretty much glossed over), and basically being an ongoing financial disaster area, particularly, but not limited to, the area of taxes (again, included on a “once over lightly” kind of basis).
Long before the end of his life, he was reduced to being employed as a “casino greeter”, a major public figure of the past a facility would use to schmooze the customers.
How any of this would be Max Schmeling’s fault exactly is beyond me, just as Max Schmeling’s post-boxing prosperity was hardly a direct result of Joe’s woes, but this seemed to be the story the documentary wanted to tell. Hell, it WAS the story it wanted to tell. Why, the good Lord only knows.
Anyone with a skerrick or two of knowledge about the people, events and times concerned would have found more than enough logical and factual inconsistencies to smell something odd wafting from a Denmark-ly direction long before the nasty little smear-job of a doco was over. What worries me is the hefty percentages of the audience who were not boxing fans, probably hadn’t previously heard of Schmeling and almost certainly not of Louis either, or were born several years too late to ever have heard any of this stuff before, other than a vague inkling that there was a World War II at some point. To them it was a compelling story, with a lot of historical footage and old people talking like they were right there all the way through the actual events, not to mention a very authoritative narrative tone, and why wouldn’t they believe it all?
And at that distance, history is up for grabs.
Which brings us to The Thriller in Manila, a documentary about another world heavyweight title fight, Muhammad Ali v Smokin’ Joe Frazier, in 1975. Once again, this doco tries to draw greater social implications from the fight and the fighters. Once again one fighter is demonised (Ali, in the Schmeling role, kind of) and the other is portrayed as a flawed but fundamentally honest, decent and hard-done-by champion, treated roughly and unfairly by fate. (Joe Frazier stars as Joe Louis, minus the drugs, the womanising, the casino-greeter career and quite the same level of unbelievable fiscal disaster, but perhaps also minus quite the same regard as an all-time highest level heavyweight great.)
That the documentary is presented largely from the Frazier camp point of view is not a problem in itself. The basis thesis seems to be that Ali has had plenty of chances to represent himself in the media over the years, but the Frazier perspective has been swept under the carpet. It’s not the worst idea for a documentary, and not an unfair one, in itself.
That’s about where the rollercoaster leaves the rails though. From that point on in, it’s heavily weighted towards distortions, omissions, deck-stacking, factual errors, and not a few outright lies, some of them by omission.
Let me give you some examples. Former Ali entourage member, or as he likes to style himself, “The Fight Doctor”, Ferdie Pacheco is quoted throughout, and Ferdie’s conviction as to his grasp of reality might differ from the opinion of others (not excluding the audience who I saw this with, who were laughing out loud at some of Dr Ferdie’s extravagant schtick.)
Ferdie alleges at the start of the picture that big fights are held where dictators need them held to distract the people and rebellious factions from oppressive realities, i.e. that’s why the fight was held in Manila. The only problem is, that would probably hold true for exactly two big fights of the time, Ali-Frazier III in Manila, and Ali-Foreman in Zaire, and pretty much none of the others. The real key factor in why those fights were held where they were is sitting right there in shot for an awful lot of the footage in this movie, and is not named, referred to, or identified in graphics or narration once in the entire movie. He might look a lot younger, but I doubt anyone would have any great degree of trouble in identifying Don King. Leaving him out of the story is basically leaving out tremendous chunks of the story. They leave him out of the story.
The basic premise is that Frazier befriended Ali when Ali was unable to box professionally in the wake of his conscientious objector stance in the Vietnam War, and that Frazier supported him personally and financially. There’s a story about Frazier slipping him money on one occasion, with I think an implication that he financially supported him and/or lent him money on other occasions as well.
Personally, based on the extensive amount I’ve heard/read/seen of the men and the time, I think this is basically a crock. That Frazier and Ali were friendly or at least civil and communicating at the time has been suggested elsewhere and can pretty much be considered documented. In his “autobiography” The Greatest, Ali himself includes what is supposedly a transcription of a taped conversation during a lift Joe Frazier gave him from Philadelphia to New York City. I don’t know how real it is, but I know it’s one of the relatively few things in the book, that, especially given the known personalities of the two guys, reads like something credible.
Were they in each other’s pockets? Doubt it. Was Ali calling up every other day, as stated somewhere in there? Almost certainly not.
But as to Ali being that destitute at the time that Frazier had to financially support him in any significant way, sounds like complete garbage. Could he have spotted Ali a 20 or 50 when Ali was cash-light one time? Well, that would sound a little more like it.
There’s also the implication, well actually it’s said flat-out, that Frazier gave Ali a huge opportunity, by promoting the idea of a fight between them at a time (in Ali’s boxing-exile years) when Ali’s light as an attraction was dimming.
That one is downright hilarious. Yeah, an unbeaten former heavyweight champion who was already arguably the greatest attraction ever in the sport, and suddenly people weren’t interested in seeing him fight. Quite frankly, he could have drawn money fighting Zora Folley again at the time (it’s all right – if you’re not a boxing fan, you’re not meant to know) if someone would have given him a licence and cleared a venue for him to legally fight. Frazier-Ali I was always going to be a big draw, and certainly the biggest available in boxing at the time, but Ali didn’t need Joe Frazier’s name on a contract to generate interest or money.
One of the many odd things that’s said in The Thriller in Manila is that the only thing that stood between Frazier and being remembered as one of boxing’s immortals is Ali. That’s a crock for two reasons. One, Frazier IS remembered as one of boxing’s immortals (or great heavyweights, or whatever the exact phrasing is in this reality-ambush of a doco). Two – George Foreman. Foreman bounced Frazier around the canvas like a basketball, knocking him out in two rounds in taking the title from him. In their only rematch, which saw Frazier make two inexplicably bad decisions, i.e. bulking up way outside his normal fighting weight, and even worse, shaving his head bald, George bounced him around some more, but just took longer, KOing him in 5 this time.
Frazier was a formidable heavyweight fighter before meeting Ali, and was a worthy world champion, but in terms of becoming an icon, that was Ali that took him to that status. Frazier had greatness in him, but Ali gave him a world stage to display it to everyone. Frazier was cool, man. How he looked, how he carried himself, how he moved and worked in the ring. But it was Ali’s force of character, the international fascination with that guy, and the bizarre way they meshed perfectly as combatants – that was what took Frazier to the level of international renown he received.
(What should also not be ignored, and it’s something that isn’t adequately emphasised in the movie, and something that will be foreign to a substantial portion of an audience below a certain age, is that boxing’s heavyweight title was itself one of sport’s greatest attractions in those days. That was also a factor. But anyone in the promoting business in that or a vaguely analogous area, including pro wrestling for example, will tell you that the belt and the title can get you so far in promoting an event, but it’s who’s carrying the belt and who’s fighting for the title than can take it those extra yards.)
Frazier’s hold on posterity was not diminished by Ali winning two out of their three fights. It’s specifically because of those three fights that he became such a world famous figure. (So much so that one of a completely different sport’s icons, cricket’s Viv Richards, bore “Smokin’ Joe” as a career nickname because of the perceived physical resemblance.)
But if he isn’t remembered in an evaluative sense as one of the top very few all-time heavyweights (and some would still put him there, or close) it’s got a lot more to do with being destroyed twice by Big George Foreman than it has to being shaded by Ali in a legendary three fight series.
There’s so much more that’s squirrelly, oppressively slanted, or tricked up like an amusement park funhouse about this doco, that I just can’t go into all of it here, or I’ll be writing until the next Richmond premiership or until I run out of internet.
However, the treatment of the second Ali-Frazier fight is indicative, and should give any viewer fair warning about taking all the sociological sidesteps and racial long-bows drawn in the rest of the picture too much to heart, at least unquestioned.
At first it’s skidded past virtually unmentioned. Later it’s brought up and dismissed as a disappointment, one blamed on Ali’s tactics of clinching and running while apparently throwing the odd jab. (Despite the fact it’s been hailed as part of a series of “three epic contests” or words to extremely similar effect, earlier in the doco when it suited them. I guess it was the ‘epic confrontation that disappointed’, and you have to admit, you don’t see too many of those.) The clear implication is that there was something cowardly or unsportsmanlike about this.
For starters, people could actually watch the fight, in which Ali comprehensively outboxed Frazier, and won easily. Secondly, there’s not a thing in the rules that says you can’t stick and move. Ali’s slogan, quoted many times in this movie, was, in fact, “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” That it’s a lot more relevant to the first era of Ali’s career from the early 60s-1968, than it was to this era, which was a clearly distinct Part 2, is not clarified during the film.)
Thirdly, and idiotically, it’s said flat-out that the ref Tony Perez favoured Ali by allowing him to clinch. There is exactly one famous incident which garnered Tony Perez unwanted notoriety from Ali-Frazier II, and it wasn’t in Ali’s favour. In round 2, I believe it was, Ali caught Frazier late in the round with a volley of punches, and Joe’s legs appeared to go a bit, and he seemed to be in big trouble, because Ali was doing that thing where he started to amp the combinations up to warp speed, Mr Sulu. All of a sudden Perez stepped in between them and declared the round over. Only problem was, there hadn’t been a bell, and there were ten seconds left in it.
It’s the one incident from this fight written and talked about over and over again. It’s the only incident about which I’ve previously heard anyone claim any advantage to one fighter or the other, as a result of anything ref Tony Perez did. (He has steadfastly denied any wrongdoing, incidentally.) And it’s not mentioned in The Thriller in Manila at all. It’s not shown either, because as with Ali-Frazier I, aka “The Fight of the Century”, there is no footage from either of these fights included, only still photos.
As to Ali clinching, well he clinched when it suited him in fights throughout the 1970s. Tales of his surprising and underrated grip-strength in these situations are well-documented to the point of being legion. If the ref allowed it, and the refs of the time often did – Ali-Frazier II is hardly an isolated incidence of this phenomenon – Ali would do it. As shown, in Ali-Frazier III when ref Carlos Padilla persisted in disallowing the tactic, Ali had to follow instructions. As to him just running away and throwing the odd jab, well, it’s not like it’s hard to find a copy of that second Ali-Frazier fight to watch and dispel this bizarre interpretation. Have a look for yourself. Just don’t expect to see any of it in The Thriller in Manila. The story of Ali-Frazier II is the inevitable answer to an old fight fan’s question – what would happen in an Ali-Frazier fight if Joe didn’t have one of the best nights of his life in the ring, and Ali was in some sort of form. The answer was, it wasn’t very competitive. I guess some people would prefer that that question had never been answered.
Such inconsistencies, inaccuracies and falsehoods, whether accidental, by omission, or by some more deliberately skewed intention, to suit the director’s general thesis on the two protagonists, should give viewers all the reason in the world to proceed with caution on some of the loftier, and dead-weightier attempts at social significance throughout, not to mention a fairly dedicated campaign in this movie to denigrate Muhammad Ali.
There’s nothing original in it. It’s been said before that Joe Frazier was genuinely working class, while Ali claimed to represent the black working class.
It’s been said before that Ali stepped over the line in calling Frazier an “Uncle Tom” and “ignorant” while promoting the fight. (Incidentally, they fudge the time-line on exactly when Ali was meant to have made the “racial slurs” against Frazier, strongly implying that this was an ongoing campaign stretching for at least a half-decade. Actually they simply don’t specify what exactly was said before the first fight, and what was said before the third. It’s just all allowed to run into the one blur. It seems to suit the makers’ purpose to do exactly this.)
Perhaps never has so much helium been blown in the attempt to make Ali into a horrible villain for the “racial slur” of repeatedly referring to Frazier as a “gorilla”, before their final fight. The idea promoted is that to call a black man this is a terrible racial slur and for Ali as a black man to call Frazier that was somehow even worse.
Maybe I’m speaking out of turn and out of the right school here, but I’ll take the risk in the vague hope of inserting a molecule of sanity to this debate. It has never occurred to me for one thin second of my life, including at any point during this movie while they were trying to ram the idea down my throat by any means possible - not excluding extremely dignified and distinguished-sounding English-person narration - that Ali called Frazier a gorilla for any racially motivated reason. (And given that he’s a black American, why he would insult another black American person with an epithet supposedly calculated to denigrate black people as a whole is a fair question they never once approach in this movie.)
Personally, I think Ali called Frazier a gorilla repeatedly for the specific, if not only, reason that he needed a silly gimmick name to insult him with, and gorilla rhymed with Manila. As in, “It’ll be a thrilla, and a chilla, and a killa, when I get the gorilla in Manila.” As he repeated, with variations, only around 300,000 times before the fight.
Like he called George Foreman “The Mummy”. He, or Bundini Brown, or whoever, thought Foreman moved a bit like the Mummy in an old horror movie, and he, or someone in his camp, thought Frazier looked enough like a gorilla for the gimmick to stick.
It’s not the nicest thing you could say to anyone. (Although he wasn’t trying to be nice.) It may be a stupid thing to say in terms of well, anyone, but especially where the door was open for it to be thought of as some sort of racial epithet, because pig-ignorant white racists had used it, or similar, about black people in the past.
But the key point, mentioned in passing here, but deliberately slewed off in terms of positioning and editing of the film, is that Ali was trying to promote a fight and have fun doing it, in his peculiar style, and Frazier took offence on a level that Ali almost certainly didn’t intend, and probably was oblivious to, especially for one main reason.
One of the key moments in all sport bizness history, but one known by too few, and perhaps understood by fewer, is a time in the early 60s when Ali was meant to be promoting a fight in a radio station appearance, I think in Hawaii. As Ali has said by his own testimony, he did the typical sportsman of the time “Yes sir, no sir, I hope I win, I been training hard” type interview, but was then galvanised when a professional wrestler also being interviewed in the studio tore up a storm delivering his bad guy promo for the local arena match at the weekend, growling and spraying about how he was going to tear his opponent in half. By the end of it, Ali, who knew nothing about the two guys in the wrestling main event prior to the interview, admitted that he was all but panting to see those guys tear into it. He also realised he’d been missing something from how he’d been portraying himself and promoting his matches and it planted a major seed, as this was something he felt he could do very well himself. He turned out to be pretty much right about that.
(Ali invariably said in interviews that the pro wrestler in the radio studio was Gorgeous George. George was a famous attraction of the 50s and 60s, an early television star, and one of the most known wrestlers around the world ever, to this day. However, those who’ve looked a little further into this story from a wrestling point of view suggest that at that time and place, it’s unlikely it was Gorgeous George. The loud-mouthed blonde heel wrestler who dazzled Ali with his promo, and inadvertently changed the course of the legit sport business was probably Fred Blassie. Blassie was also a wrestler from the 1950s, who was a star name for another three decades, and was also known around the world, if not perhaps as iconic a star as Gorgeous George, although the latter had a shorter career on top. Blassie met and/or worked with Ali on a number of occasions. Apparently he once brought up, in a private conversation, that Ali always said it was Gorgeous George who’d captured his attention in that radio studio, but pointed out that it was actually him (i.e. Blassie). Ali admitted his error, agreed that it had been him, and then went straight back in all press interviews to saying it was Gorgeous George whenever the story came up. Although Blassie didn’t do the kind of vaudeville “gay” gimmick that George did, the two kind of superficially looked alike, and the chances were that Ali simply couldn’t remember who it was, and went with the more famous name. Also he’d probably watched George on TV in the 1950s back home in Louisville.)
Ali for years, in the 70s particularly, but also before, used pro wrestling type verbal techniques to help promote the matches and, as they’d say in the wrestling biz, “get heat on himself”. Sonny Liston was “The Ugly Bear” in an Ali pre-fight promo even before Joe Frazier HAD a professional career. (It may have even been while Ali was still Clay. If not, it’s a long way back anyway.)
There was nothing racial about that, and I have deep and abiding doubts that there was anything more “racial” in Ali’s mind in calling Joe Frazier a “gorilla”.
Some of the stuff Ali said was arguably meaner than necessary (for me the “ignorant” line of attack is a viable example), but it’s simply the truth that he talked the Ali-Frazier fights into untold millions of dollars, extraordinary purses for the fighters by the standards of the time, and bazillions of viewers and unprecedented worldwide interest, while captivating and entertaining people throughout. He turned them both into greater icons than they would have been without Ali’s peculiar variant on hype, which in a way I guess means Ali being Ali.
None of which means, he couldn’t have apologised afterwards if Frazier had taken offence.
As the movie makes clear, he apologised afterwards, and on more than one occasion. I don’t think it makes it anywhere near clear on how many occasions Ali has expressed nothing but extreme goodwill towards his former great opponent over the three and a half decades since Ali-Frazier III. If Ali has publicly said a bad word about Smokin’ Joe since then, I have to admit I’m unaware of it.
Frazier still hasn’t got his head around it the best part of 35 years later. Frazier indeed expresses pride at the thought that he might have been substantially responsible for Ali’s latter-day degenerative physical condition. That’s “not letting go of something” in the extreme. I don’t know whether at this late date, a rational person would blame Ali for this state of play rather than Joe Frazier. However, the movie, which is not a rational person, basically seems to. I find this surpassingly bizarre.
There’s one great story about Joe Frazier’s undying enmity for the man he’ll be perpetually manacled to in terms of posterity. In 1996, when Ali lit the torch at the Atlanta Games, there was a story reported around that time, which I found hysterical, but probably for all the wrong reasons, because as much as I love both guys, there was something about this that was classic, no bullshit Joe Frazier, even as “wrong” as it was.
Frazier was reported, and reasonably widely, as having remarked, when he saw Ali trembling so much when he went to light the torch, that he was sitting there watching the TV, just hoping he’d fall in.
Typically, in the movie, they get Frazier’s son Marvis to tell the story, and he screws it up, saying Joe Frazier hoped someone would “push him in”. Why would anyone push him in? Joe’s version is just so wrong, it’s hilarious. It’s like in his mind, they’re the Roadrunner and the Coyote going at it forever.
Please don’t misunderstand me about Joe Frazier. I think he’s one of the all-time legends of sport, and one of the great heavyweight boxers, but more than that too. He has unbelievable presence as a person and there’s just something about him that always has and always will galvanise me about him every time I see him, with the sole exception of when he tries to be a singer. Even in his abiding hatred, or whatever it is, of Muhammad Ali, as much as I wish for their mutual benefit that he could let it go, he’s a very honest person with his own peculiar integrity, who can’t help but tell it exactly the way he sees it, and that thing he has for Ali is a part of it.
But I just think this is a bullshit movie, filled with fabrication and fairy-floss, which just happens to be on a great subject. I wonder if anyone critically involved with it reflected for one second on the irony that the subject they’re disparaging throughout is pretty much directly responsible for the lion’s share of any fame or profit that comes to them from it.
And how too simply delightful to see IMG’s logo come up at the end. To me, the foundation for an IMG (or equivalent) to even exist comes back to the worldwide fascination for a Muhammad Ali back then (and maybe the odd Pele or George Best or so). Would that be the pound of flesh, or the thirty pieces of silver, sir? And to think there’s people that dare to suggest that Don King’s an exploitative dirtbag. The very idea. Well, whatever Don’s faults, even were they to be legion, they don’t include having anything to do with this movie, apparently. You figure if Don had had any involvement, they at least would have mentioned who he was at some point.
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