The greatest fight of all time

Lie down Joe. Take the weight off your loafers and lie down once more and tell it like it was. This is old ground for us, but it's core stuff. We've got time.

Excuse me a moment while I get my notes from our last session. You know, you baffle me Joe, all this rage, all this residual anger. You've done well Joe, you've lived a life of giant steps.

You dropped out of school when you were 13 and worked as a mule driver. A South Carolina mule driver. Yet seven years later you won an Olympic gold medal. That's no ordinary leap.

Joe, let's digress. Take a guy like Buster Mathis. Where's he now? You ever hear from Buster? You replaced him in the '64 Olympics when he broke his thumb, you won the gold medal he dreamed of.

You turned pro and you went and took the New York heavyweight championship off him four years later. You never looked back. He had it all and you took it all away from him. Buster isn't even a footnote.

But you Joe, look at you. You were there. World champion in 1970, and when Ali came back from his ban, who put him sitting on his pants in the Garden? You did, Joe. You did. Undisputed champion of the world. Smokin' Joe Frazier.

The two of you, everything on the line, neither of you ever beaten, you came together and you prevailed. Just you and him.

All those insults you had to digest along the way. You came to him for advice as a kid and he told you to lose a few stone and try the light heavyweights.

The words, sure they hurt. Uncle Tom. White man's nigger. I know they hurt, but they were his weapons. I know you felt your people loved Ali in their heart, but look at yourself, they were just words, just the craziness of those times. You got him in a ring and you took him. You always have that.

And you knew how to be cruel. That first fight in Madison Square Garden you mocked him through your gum-shield, called him Clay; you thrust your gum-shield out, taunting him with its hit-ability. You'd come to New York that night fearing deep down that he would make a fool of you. You've told me this, plain scared you were. He didn't Joe. You stuck him. Later you would call him a half-breed. It was always both ways with you guys.

So let's get to this old Manilla business Joe. Ali has come back. He's beaten you once. This is the fight you have decided to stake it all on. Now Joe, before you tell me about it, let me run some things past you.

Manilla 1975. Ali came out of that ring that night wearing a death mask, the child in him was taken away that night. He couldn't eat. He pissed blood for weeks. He said these words Joe: "It was like death . . . closest thing to dying that I know of."

There were things about you Joe which he never respected before Manilla. You were bricks. He was was poetry. After Manilla he respected bricks.

That's the fight he still dreams about. He says it himself. It was the time to stop. Ali was pushing the rock up the hill for the rest of his career. The thrill was gone.

You took his best. First round. Joe, play the tape in your head. Slow, slow. He hits you big time. Twice. What man wouldn't have taken the option of the canvas then? He's dancing and singing and it gets worse in the second. He's stinging you with jabs. A couple of times at least it looks like you are wobbling.

Round three, Joe, he almost blows your head off, jerks it right back between your shoulder blades so that you expect to see it tumble to the floor. A man's head on the floor.

But you stand him down Joe. The people are screaming like hyenas but you stand there and you find your style, you go deep into the heart of Joe Frazier and you find what made you a man. You come to him with that style that was no style. You are chopping him, and by the sixth you are a fury, a storm. Two hooks right there and the world is wincing.

By the seventh - and you know this Joe - he was paying you respect. No more lip. "Thought you were washed up," he whispers between breaths, and the words were like blood in the water for you, weren't they? You pounded him. You pinned him in a corner and pummelled him. Big, big punches brought in by express from another postal code. That was the finest Joe, as good as anything the ring has seen. Better than Marciano, those rounds six through 10. Nobody takes that away.

And you ask me now, why? Same old question Joe. I know you'll ask that when you tell it to me. Why he didn't fall, why he didn't die, why his head didn't stop spinning, why his heart didn't stop giving.

No answer. It was elemental Joe. You brought it out in him, he brought it out in you. There was no plot. This wasn't rope-a-dope. This wasn't sting like a butterfly float like a bee. You know it. This was two men whose pride and hate was so great that they made something bigger.

By the 13th Joe you two guys were in another country. You were somewhere no one else has been. You're gum-shield is gone. You are standing in the middle of the ring and Ali hits you with some power he has no right to have. You look like a tree which has been hit by a truck. We wait to see if you'll fall.

You just stand there. You have nothing left. Your guard is gone. You are standing there to spite him. He is hitting you from memory. Once, twice, three times - 10 clear shots. It is beyond fighting and points and titles now.

Your corner wanted to stop it but they were voices from the other world. No time for sanity. Eddie Futch - if Eddie doesn't know, who does? - Eddie said to you, "Nobody will forget what you did here today." You finished it anyway.

Joe, in Holland they remember the boy with his finger in the dyke as fondly as they remember the dyke and the sea beyond it. Joe, you were part of the poem that was the greatest fight of all time.

You lost the fight but you won his respect. If you had made him cry for his mamma in the first you couldn't have done that. You have everything now Joe, and Ali, he's trapped inside that mask that is his face.

That was it Joe. Long and short. No winners. No losers. A moment for the ages. You're life is good. I'll say it to you again, you won so much that night, how can you not feel it? Tell me slowly Joe, it's been 25 years, find the words: why does the Thrilla in Manilla still hurt so bad? What was between you?