ALI KO’S FRAZIER!

He knocked him out in the first round. How much earlier can you do it? It all started with a flurry of lefts and rights in Frazier�s corner at the two-minute mark. After a short left, Joe slumped to one knee for a 4-count. A stiff right to the bazonga finished him and he wasn�t awake for a full minute and a half. And they said he couldn�t punch!

He knocked him out in round two and what a beauty it was. First he Staggered the Pennsylvanian with a left to the jaw. Then he landed a right to the jaw and Frazier hit the deck. He arose at three, a credit to his strength. Ali then rapped two lefts and a right to the chin and Frazier went down for a second time. A left hook and a right cross finished him. Somewhere in between this punishment to the head was a terrific drive to the solar plexus. This punch had much to do with the eventual result.

He knocked him flat in the third. The third round of a scheduled fifteen-rounder at Madison Square Garden. At 1:19 of the round, after a short right chop to the face stunned and bewildered his opponent to the dismay of ringsiders and closed circuiters alike. Had there actually been a punch? Only the x-rays of Frazier�s busted chin will tell. One thing is certain: jabs.

Round four saw him cut the fucking shit out of Frazier�s left peeper. There are no arteries in that part of the face but something must have been causing the spurts, maybe it was a vein. The ref had to stop it, he had to. But Frazier protested. All losers do. Especially big losers. Like Frasier. He didn�t do anything. What a buflj! Whjfr�d they even have the fight? MvtdFve fi&d something to do with a trifflbn-ddRar gate.

lie gave him the gate in round five. Pow! A real honey of a right over Frazier�s outstretched left that glanced off Ali�s left shoulder. He never saw it coming and he hit the mat with such impact that his head bounced a few inches. Remarkably he got back to his feet. Instead of stepping out of range and depending on his long reach to take full advantage of the situation he had created, Ali went in for the kill. He went after Frazier and brought claret to Joe�s nose. Time and l^ime again his perfectly timed deliveries landed with effectiveness. After three knockdowns the ref had no alternative to stopping the slaughter and he raised the stupendous Ali�s hand, undisputed champion of the world once' more.

In round six, Cassius Clay, hard punching but erratic ex-heavyweight champ, scored an important upset when he defeated highly touted Joe Frazier on a TKO following two quick knockdowns and a big serving of brutal bozos in the ropes, leaving Frazier helpless in no condition to continue. His legs were still wobbly as his men helped him to the corner, a thoroughly beaten man.

Round seven started like all other rounds, several accurate flicking jabs to the nose of Frazier, a clinch and some feeble body attempts by Joe. But by the time the round neared the one-minute mark Joe�s features had been slashed into a gory , mess of cuts and bruises. His speedier foe blasted his way through the orthodox Frazier defense with sizzling combinations. Through puffed, bleeding lips he uttered his decision: ftI�ve had it, stop the fight.� Then he burst into tears, his dream of world dominance forever as dead as a boyscout found floating in a sewer after years of decomposition.

Round eight was like a dream come true for young Muhammad Ali, underprivileged Muslim youngster from Louisville, Kentucky. Madison Square Garden was the top of the ladder that had begun with his boyhood pals sitting on the tall cement fences overlooking the shoe and all the rusty automobile tires on the eastern end of Cabrianza della Fabrione Street, a dead-end street in downtown Louisville. Joe Frazier�s mug must�ve reminded him vividly of all those mean-ass Irish snarls as they dumped on him every day after Sunday school. Because he popped over vicious smash upon vicious smash throughout the early rounds, knocking down his foe a total of six times. A clubbing straight right ended it all for the bigger and fiercer Frazier as he was counted out to stay at 2:48 of round eight. Outer than out as a matter of fact.

Holy cow did he ever surprise the world in round nine. He had been down for no count in round two and appeared groggy and on the verge of defeat in round six as Frazier staggered in. The doctor visited his corner at the finish of round seven as he showed no offense at all during that round. But he came alive in the eighth after regaining his composure and getting his second wind. Starting the ninth with consummate boxing skill he stalked his man continually,, crushing him to the seat of his pants with a pair of lefts after about 45 seconds. Shaking the bugs out of his head as best he could, Joseph proved, easy prey. After landing the knockout wallop Ali fell over his supine victim and landed across the lower strand.

He whupped him good in the tenth. He hit him with a hammering left just above the pud, above the belt too so it was legal, he stepped back and then the creep fell flllllat on his ear and his face too as he lay there like a sleeping babe. But he wasn�t asleep, he was just in pain. He wasn�t unconscious, he was just conscious of his defeat. Why didn�t he get up? Cause he couldn�t. Why not? It hurt too much, if you ever jabbed yourself in that region with the edge of a loaded cardboard box you�d know just how bad it can feel so Ali knew the body was the weakest link. The whole thing�s the body actually, so it was really the belly part of the body where he hit him. He couldn�t stand up under his own strength and his cornermen had to do it themselves and he was a heavy mother! It took them four seconds to do it. Pretty quick I�d say.

He bombed him with lefts and rights in the eleventh and they tolled the ten. If it had been in the tenth it would have been ten in the tenth, and ten in ten for that matter. Looking every bit as sharp as he did as Nestor Martin the inventor of the Bernoulli in �New Lost Fresh Pecks,� he peppered his hide with strings of jab and then a stampede of wild rights. And wild is just the right word for it, you�d think he was fighting Tulo Granada and his pack instead of Joe Frazier the Sultan of Stomp. But it was Joe but Joe didn�t show nothin. Not a thing except his height and weight and face and features and hands and feet (altho both were covered with leather or the equivalent) and exposed midriff and knees and his back. But his back was invisible for the duration of the knockdown, once he was all the way down, not while he was still going, down. But once he was down it was for a full sixth of a minute, for some odd reason the time you gotta do it for in order for, it to get registered as a KO. It used to be you hadda do it for the full minute and the round ended when the guy was down and it was a minute until the next round and so he just hadda not be able to recover in that minute.� But that was before things got civilized by the Marquess of Queensbury. Some people call him the Marquis but he was actually a Marquess. He died years before the fight and in no way figured in the result.

He assaulted him with stiff belts to the teeth in the twelfth but Frazier kept his chin up and a stiff upper lip as well. Bad move, Joe! For a man with so many worlds worth of natural ability to blow his cool like that suggests some hanky panky but the fact remains that he'was flattened and flattened fairly. Right qn his fuckin ass. The fuckin bum. He blew it. He lost. To a convicted felon of all people! Jesus H. Piss! What a dunce.

Lucky thirteen saw a strange occurrence indeed, a victory on a foul, as Frazier�s gloved fist swayed too far below the beltline and immobilized Ali due to testicle damage. But he�ll recover and he was ahead on points anyway except that both fighters were marked about the face and cheeks with narrow slits of blood. Ironically the result made no sense as Jim Farley had outlawed title victories on a foul when Schmeling won it from Sharkey 40 years ago.

The fourteenth stanza saw Ali thank his lucky stars for a seering knockout victory over Joltin� Joe Frazier. The universe had been testing him and he responded in kind. It had appeared that Frazier, punching as he did in his best days, would get his man. He put all he had into his punches but Ali never flinched. Ali lacked the punching power of the defending ^W.B.A. champion but he made up for that with his consistency and good fortune. Some would call it luck but since when is TNT in the form of a fist just good luck?

The final heat was the scene of exactly what it had been against Oscar Bonavena, a veritable puncherama. And it wasn�t in cartoon form, even though he put the lights out for Frazier, far out. It was a torrid round with Ali doing the Ali Shuffle for the first time in the bout, then wrestling his man and shaking him up with tagging blqws to the jaw. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and out, BONG.

Altho he couldn�t knock out his valiant opponent he copped the unanimous 15-round decision. The referee scored it 10 rounds to 3, 2 even, while the two judges scored it 9-6 and 8-4-3. The audience greeted the decision with the same unpleased reaction as had the jive-asses on hand for the Clay-Terrell go-around in 1967 (the last time the man had been called to officially regain a championship he had never lost in a ring): no KO, no cheers. And to think they once cheered Floyd Patterson!

When Johnny Addie announced the split verdict in favor of Muhhammad Ali the crowd greeted it with disbelief. They didn�t disbelieve the winher, just the split. Judge Ryan O�Shaughnessy had voted 14-1 and referee Harold Valan had come up with a respectable 12-3, both in Ali�s favor. But when judge Jim Nash voted it 15-0 Frazier something was rotten in M.S.G. Bottles hit the ring apron and they had to have been bottles brought in for that purpose since ,t he Garden concessionaires use only cups.

TO GET TO THE POINT: ,that 15-0 looks pretty ridiculous but how worse is it than the 11-4 that judge Bill Recht scored it? I scored it 10 to 5 for Ali, that�s exactly what I said, 10 to 5 for Ali so WHAT�S ALL THIS GODDAM SHIT THEY�RE HANDING DOWN ABOUT FRAZIER WINNING? WHAT UNPARALLELtED BULLSHIT! Just because Joe knocked his man down in the final round the audience didn�t even whimper, they came to see some hard punching so they were satisfied, just like they would�ve been dissatisfied if Ali had merely decisioned Bonavena. A buncha Fuckin Drips! Dullards! Dipshits! Jesus Christ, Recht means right in German and this was all fuckin WRONG, Ali dominated three quarters of the fight and when he wasn�t landing solid jabs and combinations he was toying with the top of Frazier�s head. What were these guys watching, a synchronized swimming contest?!

This is the worst deal they�ve ever, ever, ever, ever, ever given him, the -worst. Worst, worst, worst, worst, worst. Wurst in German is sausage and that�s what Frazier�s face was, particularly around the eyes. You could have bit into it, that�s how puffed out it was. He�s strong, he�s a tank, he�s a bull, he�s a bulldog, etc., etc. BUT HE DIDN�T COME CLOSE TO WINNING THE LOUSY FIGHT.

It was a good fight, classic stuff and all, more so than expected but did you see the look of bafflement on Archie Moore�s face after the decision was announced? Bafflement. And Don Dunphy who had slipped into calling all Ali�s clinches as being responsible for him losing points, he�d slipped into that jive for lack of something better to say, Don Dunphy didn�t even believe his own explanation at the end, he knew it was bullshit: ALI WON, HE WON, HE WON, HE WON. Period.