On the Ropes

Everyone must know by now that Joe Frazier decked Muhammad Ali in the 15th round of their championship fight Monday. That's what all the headlines say, and it's the one picture every paper seems to be using. But so what? Sonny Banks and Henry Cooper each dropped Ali to the canvas once before, and they're both washed up now.

So it was Frazier by unanimous decision. And now he's the word on everyone's lips. The champion all along. There was never another who was greater. And that's pretty disappointing. No one will ever listen to another word Ali says. The jibes, the taunts, the magnificent insults have at once become ridiculous bluster.

From the very start, the whole fight seemed so wrong. Ali wasn't prancing, shuffling, dancing rings around his opponent. Instead, he stood still, leaned back on the ropes, occasionally snaring Frazier's shoulders with his arms or teasing Frazier's chin with his glove.

But for three or four rounds, the strategy seemed to work. Keep the feet planted firmly on the mat, dodge Frazier's punches, guard the kidneys with the bobbing elbows, wait for an opening, and then . . . connect. Frazier would be smoked out before he could pummel Ali's body into submission.

There was no other way for Ali to do it. He could have played his old game against a lesser fighter, but Frazier's endurance would have been too much. To land enough blows on his opponent. Ali would have had to shuffle eight or ten rounds-something for which his 43 months of inactivity had left him completely unprepared. So he decided to anchor himself on the mat, to gain enough sheer strength to put Frazier to sleep with as few punches as possible. But to do that, he had to stay close and inside, which is where Frazier is at his very best.

The whole inside strategy, it turned out, was completely inadaptable to Ali's style of fighting. Ali can only take down an opponent with punches to the head. But Frazier stayed so insistently close that Ali, with his awkwardly long reach and his constant dodging of Frazier's jabs, couldn't get off the punches he needed. His game that night was a purely defensive one.

Frazier tracked him relentlessly, often missing but sometimes landing one big body blow after another. Frazier's whole strategy was to pummel Clay's body and arms, something which the in-close fighting allowed him to do all too often. After round ten, Ali was badly bruised and exhausted from all the dodging.

Those head shots which Frazier landed late in the fight were little more than a fluke. The groundwork for the slaughter of the last five rounds had been skillfully laid during the previous ten. Forget Ali's jaw for a moment. Even if he couldn't talk to reporters after the fight, even if that lip of his will be hung up for a few days, it isn't nearly as hurt as his midsection, which will probably be on ice for the next few weeks.

So now Ali is angling for a rematch. He probably realizes what he's done wrong. And if the next bout is far enough into the future, Ali will have time to train and get his style right, so that the next time he fights Joe Frazier he won't have to hit the mat again.