What makes this video even more special than “The Thrila in Manila”….as if the third Ali vs Frazier fight wasn’t special enough…..is that in this video, the viewer has the added benefit of Howard Cosell calling and analyzing the fight from the ABC studio after the fight had taken place on October 1, 1975….for this fight was truly the best of the best….cuz Heavyweight World War III was even better that WW I and WW II….which were awesome in their own right.
It was about a minute into the 10th round of The Manila Thrila that you could sense a shifting in the momentum of the fight….where Frazier had continued throughout the middle rounds to pummel Ali with punches to kidneys and to the mid-section when Ali had refused to knuckle under….that is when Howaaad so eloquently stated that “one had to realize all over again the hidden asset of Muhammad Ali….hidden in the sense that had rarely been written about…..was that NOBODY could take a better than Muhammad Ali.”
It was this fight that prompted Ali to say “this fight was the closest thing to death that he had ever experienced”….as the Thrila in Manila proved to be one of the greatest fights in boxing history….as there is no better boxing commentator to analyze this historic fight than the incomparable Howard Cosell.
