Ali-Frazier: The Rewrite

The beast never rests, is never sated, cannot be stopped by either iron gate or unexpected outbreak of perspective.

Just the other day, it could be seen dragging its knuckles through the NBA Finals and setting its sights on the public image of Allen Iverson--spitting out the old (Poster Child for Everything That Is Wrong With the NBA) and replacing it, in a finger-snap, with something altogether new (Heroic Little Modern-Day David Slinging Three-Pointers at the Purple and Gold Goliath).

Yesterday, it rehabilitated Ray Lewis--out with the handcuffs and the murder charges, in with the Super Bowl champion robe and scepter. Tomorrow, it moves on to Barry Bonds, perhaps its greatest challenge to date. The beast doesn’t care for Bonds, never has. But let Bonds have 65 home runs by the end of August, on the road to 75, and the beast won’t be able to help itself. St. Barry, Misunderstood Prince of the Long Ball, will be on the way.

In his new book, “Ghosts of Manila,” former Sports Illustrated writer Mark Kram shakes an angry fist at the beast. Kram examines the media’s manipulation of the reputations of Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in the aftermath of their celebrated trilogy of heavyweight fights, culminating with 1975’s “Thrilla in Manila,” and argues that both men have been wronged.

Ali as beloved American icon, 1960s rebel with a cause, civil rights champion, gloved and oiled battering ram for sweeping social change?

Frazier as slow-witted historical footnote, sparring partner for Ali in his greatest moments of athletic glory, bitter old pathetic man still grinding an ax a quarter century after the fact that two of three decisions went against him?

Kram, who covered Ali and Frazier during those years, isn’t buying it.

Frazier, as portrayed by Kram, is bitter, all right. After watching a trembling Ali struggle to light the 1996 Olympic flame, the Kodak moment that clinched the once-controversial figure’s mainstream lionization, Frazier remained unmoved: “I hope he falls in the flame.”

Quoted from his autobiography, Frazier says that if he and Ali “were twins in the belly of our mama, I’d reach over and strangle him.”

As they discuss the greatest heavyweights of all time, Frazier tells Kram he wouldn’t place Ali in the top five. Why not? Because, Frazier says, “I beat him three times.”

So that’s it: Frazier simply cannot come to grips with reality--Ali won two of the three decisions--and cannot forgive Ali for stealing the fame, fortune and legend that rightfully belonged to him, no? That is the current media thumbnail on Frazier, and it is not flattering, casting him as a small man, petty and mean-spirited.

Kram does not deny that Frazier’s sentiments are real, but disputes the cause. He contends that Frazier was irreparably wounded by Ali’s betrayal of him.

According to Kram, Frazier was instrumental in resuscitating Ali’s career after Ali’s 3 1/2-year banishment from the sport for refusing to serve in the Army. Frazier lobbied on behalf of his rival, gave Ali his comeback shot at the title, even agreed to a 50-50 split of the prize money.

Then, Frazier listened as Ali trumped up publicity for the fight, and the sequels, by calling Frazier a coward, a dullard, an “Uncle Tom” and, before the final meeting in Manila, “a gorilla.” To Ali, this was basically grease for the media hype machine, another slab of meat served up because the beast always needs to be fed. No harm, no foul.

But, in Kram’s estimation, Frazier was humiliated by Ali, hurt and crushed. “He don’t know how this hurts my kids,” says Frazier, whose emotions snowball from confusion to fury to seething obsession--a broken bottle still digging into his gut, as Kram describes it.

Ali’s public mistreatment of Frazier is merely the launch pad for Kram in his attempt to dismantle The Myth. Ali, the author writes, was “not a social force,” but in fact closer to a real-life embodiment of Chauncey Gardner in the movie, “Being There.”

Kram: “Each group would attach their own values to him, just as Chauncey’s talk of topsoil and the life cycle of the rhododendron was inflated into comic wisdom.”

As painted by Kram, Ali was just another narcissistic superstar athlete driven by no motivations grander than self-preservation and self-advancement. He was a puppet face-symbol exploited by the Muslims, a visual aid latched onto by the intellectuals of the day and later “celebrated for all the wrong reasons and . . . interpreted by a generation of media that was barely born at the height of his career.”

Kram’s assault is relentless, leaving no target unscathed, including the fundamental tenet of the Ali mystique: His courage to stand by personal convictions and protest the Vietnam War, at great cost to his personal livelihood. Kram sees nothing brave in Ali’s refusal to enter the Army; instead, he portrays Ali as acting out of fear after being duped by Muslim leaders into believing he’d be sent to the front lines or knifed in the barracks by some racist redneck. A series of boxing exhibitions, a la Joe Louis, would have been his likely assignment.

Even Ali’s famous line, “I ain’t got nothing against them Viet Cong,” is stripped from him. According to Kram, the line was suggested to Ali by Sam Saxon, described here as “an early Muslim watchdog and headbanger” who had the boxer’s ear.

Every media badge jumping onto the Ali bandwagon is similarly lined up and shot down. Howard Cosell was “a tinhorn poseur, a formerly dismissible amoeba in the lawyer chain who found TV and one day would think he was worthy of being a senator.” Bryant Gumbel, who as editor of “Black Sports” aided Ali in his campaign to cast Frazier as “the white people’s champion,” is a “mediocre writer and thinker, excellent qualifications for the large success he would have on television’s ‘Today Show’ with a shallow, hard-worked ultra-sophistication.”

Kram pounds away, but ultimately his attack on Ali hits the same kind of wall Ali did in Manila, when Frazier refuses to buckle in the face of a vicious assault. “What you got in that . . . head?” an incredulous Ali asked as the fighters separated after the fourth round. “Rock!”

Ali’s legacy is made from the same stuff. Because of his global impact--at one time, his was the most recognized face on the planet--Ali was a massively influential figure, whether by accident or not. His words, whether or not they were scripted and handed to him, carried weight. His career loss of 3 1/2 years, at the peak of his athletic prime, was a sacrifice, regardless of the outside forces that may or may not have pushed him in that direction.

Can you imagine any athlete even contemplating the same today? Michael Jordan, when he quit the Bulls the first time in the early 1990s, did not do so to protest the exploitation of child laborers in Asia by Nike, or some such worthy cause. He quit solely in the name of the advancement of Michael Jordan, Inc. If Jordan could make it as a major league baseball player, if he could not only out-Bo Bo Jackson but also give Jim Thorpe a run for his millennial reputation, the candles lit at the Jordan altar would burn that much brighter.

It is impossible to watch “When We Were Kings,” the documentary of Ali’s 1974 fight with George Foreman in Zaire, and ignore the impact of the man as he moved through throngs of adoring fans on the other side of the globe.

Or, as Spike Lee put it to Kram when both discussed Ali on Bob Costas’ HBO talk show, “I know that Ali was a puppet for the honorable Elijah Muhammad, but he was a great source of pride for a whole lot of African Americans. I do not believe that it was not in his heart not to go into war. . . . He stood up, he took a lot of hits. . . . What cannot be underestimated is the effect he had on black America--he was a shining prince, he was like God. That’s the way we saw him. A lot of people still see him that way.”

On many levels, “Ghosts of Manila” fights the good fight. Its attempt to rehabilitate the public perception of Frazier is especially worthwhile. But Ali, flawed as he was, isn’t leveled. Trying to devalue all he represents, across time zones and decades, is like swinging at a ghost.