Ghosts of Manila

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Ali stared above the gathering into infnity, his mouth angry, eyes blank, then screamed: "Joe Frazier should give his face to the Wildlife Fund! He so ugly, blind men go the other way! ... He not only looks bad! You can smell him in another countryl" He held his nose. "What will the people in Manila think? We can't have a gorilla for a champ. They're gonna think, lookin' at him, that all black brothers are animals. Ignorant. Stupid. Ugly. If he's champ again, other nations will laugh at us." Joe turnéd and gunned a hole in the thin wood of the wall, then fl'pped over his desk. "Eddie, listen up! Whateverjou do, whatever happens, don't stop the fight! We got nowhere to go after this. l'm gonna eat this halfbreed's heart right out ofhis chest!. . . I mean it. . . . This is the end ofhim or me. " When Muhammad Ali met Joe Frazier in Manila for the third, bloody act of their heroic trilogy of fights, the rivalry had spun out of control. More than a clash of personalities or fighting... Tovább

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Ali stared above the gathering into infnity, his mouth angry, eyes blank, then screamed: "Joe Frazier should give his face to the Wildlife Fund! He so ugly, blind men go the other way! ... He not only looks bad! You can smell him in another countryl" He held his nose. "What will the people in Manila think? We can't have a gorilla for a champ. They're gonna think, lookin' at him, that all black brothers are animals. Ignorant. Stupid. Ugly. If he's champ again, other nations will laugh at us." Joe turnéd and gunned a hole in the thin wood of the wall, then fl'pped over his desk. "Eddie, listen up! Whateverjou do, whatever happens, don't stop the fight! We got nowhere to go after this. l'm gonna eat this halfbreed's heart right out ofhis chest!. . . I mean it. . . . This is the end ofhim or me. " When Muhammad Ali met Joe Frazier in Manila for the third, bloody act of their heroic trilogy of fights, the rivalry had spun out of control. More than a clash of personalities or fighting styles, the Ali-Frazier matchup had become a kind of madness, inflamed by the média and the politics of race. When the "Thrilla in Manila" was over, the hype no longer mattered: one man was left with a ruin of a life; the other was battered to his soul. Mark Kram's riveting book begins with the boxers themselves-who they are and who they were. Interweaving present and past, and told in a voice as powerful as a heavyweight punch, Kram explodes the hagiography surrounding both fighters-particularly Ali. While giving Ali his due as arguably the best fighter of all time, Kram paints a much darker and nuanced version of the
(continued from front flap) legend than anyone has ever dared. Ghosts of Manila is a masterpiece of literary journalism that is sure to take its place alongside A. J. Liebling's The Sweet Science. Ghosts of Manila is a psychologically riveting study of two heroes, many myths, and the reality behind it all. MARK KRAM covered boxing for Sports Illustrated for eleven years and wrote more about Muhammad Ali than any other writer for the magaziné. His articles on boxing have been widely anthologized, including The Best American Sports Writing of the Century, edited by Dávid Halberstam, and The Fights, a collection of essays edited by Richárd Ford. He lives in Washington, D.C. Vissza