The Thrilla in Manila was the third and final boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. It was contested in 1975 for the heavyweight championship of the world at the Araneta Coliseum in Cubao, Quezon City, Philippines. Ali won by technical knockout after Frazier’s chief second, Eddie Futch, asked the referee to stop the fight following the end of the 14th round. The contest’s name is derived from Ali’s rhyming boast that the fight would be ‘a killa and a thrilla and a chilla’
About Thrilla in Manila in brief
The Thrilla in Manila was the third and final boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. It was contested in 1975 for the heavyweight championship of the world at the Araneta Coliseum in Cubao, Quezon City, Philippines, on Wednesday, October 1. Ali won by technical knockout after Frazier’s chief second, Eddie Futch, asked the referee to stop the fight following the end of the 14th round. The contest’s name is derived from Ali’s rhyming boast that the fight would be ‘a killa and a thrilla and a chilla, when I get that gorilla in Manila’ The bout is consistently ranked as one of the best and most brutal in the sport’s history and was the culmination of a three-bout rivalry between the two fighters that Ali won, 2–1. The fight was watched by a record global television audience of 1 billion viewers, including 100 million viewers watching the fight on closed-circuit theatre television, and 500,000 pay-per-view buys on HBO home cable television. The first bout between Frazier and Ali took place on March 8, 1971, in New York’s Madison Square Garden. Frazier was the champion and won by unanimous decision over previously undefeated Ali in a fast-paced, 15-round bout. When the rivals met in a January 1974 rematch, neither was champion; Frazier had suffered a second-round knockout at the hands of George Foreman a year earlier and Ali had two split bouts with Ken Norton. President of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos sought to hold the bout in Metro Manila and sponsor it in order to put attention on the Philippines as a ‘great’ nation, having declared martial law three years earlier.
In the lead-up to the Manila fight as well as each of their other two encounters, Ali verbally abused Frazier. Ali told reporter Dick Schaap that it was part of a longstanding pre-fight strategy of his: \”I like to get a man mad, because when a man’s mad, he wants ya so bad, he can’t think, so I like toget a manmad.\” The fight took place in a lush setting in the outskirts of the city of Manila. Ali nicknamed Frazier ‘The Gorilla’, and used this as the basis for the rhyme, ‘It will be a killa. and a. thrilla’ which he chanted while punching an action-figure-sized gorilla doll. Ali’s preparations were upset before the fight when he introduced his mistress, Veronica Porché, as his wife to Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos. This angered his wife, Khalilah Ali, who saw the introduction on television back in the States, and subsequently flew to Manila, where she engaged in a prolonged shouting match in his hotel suite. There was a prolonged period of tension in the city that the decision and the tension were a poor environment to prepare for what was to be his final shot at the world heavyweight championship. There were 133 times that Ali needed to rest during their meeting.
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This page is based on the article Thrilla in Manila published in Wikipedia (as of Jan. 09, 2021) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
