Ali and Joe Frazier sell out Madison Square Garden. Two undefeated heavyweights, one night, and a country picking sides for reasons that are not only boxing.
March 8, 1971. Neither man has lost. Madison Square Garden is packed. Closed-circuit theaters are packed. Joe Frazier is champion. Muhammad Ali is the man who says he is still champion. The fifteenth round is a left hook that puts Ali down. Frazier wins on points. Both men have been through a war.
It is billed as the Fight of the Century and, for once, the poster is not lying. Race, Vietnam, style, Harlem versus Philadelphia — the prefight is politics. The fight is two great heavyweights who will need two more nights to settle it.
Boxing’s last era as the center of American sport has a first chapter. This is it: a Garden ring, a knockdown, and an audience that treated a prizefight like a national election.