Customer Reviews

Ghosts of Manila: The Fateful Blood Feud Between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

Simply, this book needed to be written. It details the most significant rivalry in boxing history and challenges the legacy and legend of Ali. There is some choppiness to this book early on in terms of writing style but true boxing fans will not be able to put it down. I have this feeling that Mark Kram was as dismayed as I was when Ali was named the greatest Sportsman of our time by Sports Illustrated given his shabby treatment and cruel theatrics towards one of the most magnificent warriors of our time (Frazier). How can you blame Frazier for the way he feels? Finally, a sportswriter of great knowledge and literary capability has exhibited enough courage to challenge myth. Philly: Tear that silly statue down of Stallone and replace it with one for Smokin' Joe.

I waited and waited for this book to come out, knowing that it was going to be a great read. I conquered it in one night. It's even better than I expected it to be.

The greatest thing about this book is that it doesn't lie. There are no heroes, no bad guys; it is simply the truth about the massive hatred flowing between two men and how it came to be that way. Frazier is shown for the brilliant fighter that he was, (finally), and Ali is brought down to the level he should have always been at.

The story is somewhat terrible. They started out as friends. Now Frazier is almost obsessed with his hatred of Ali, and Ali refuses to mention the competitor that made him such a spectacle.

Mark Kram writes with an intelligence that one would not expect from a boxing journalist. His references throughout the book to philosophers and writers might lose some people occasionally, (like me), the fact remains that he possesses an uncanny insight into human beings. His profiles of Ali and Frazier are awesome, and this book should go down as one of the great reports on the world of boxing.

I loved this book. I'm a huge boxing fan and love boxing history. Kram's book (may he RIP) is an honest look at two men he knew well and admired in their own ways. The story is centered around the relationship of Frazier and Ali and their three fights. It discusses the significance of these fights on each man mentally and phisically as well as the larger cultural implications in a turbulent time. Knowing both men well as they were developing fighters, and after their careers, gave him access of tremendous value to the story. One of the great things about this book is the prose. Sometimes his description of the fighters, their styles, the events can give you goose bumps. You can FEEL the snap of ALi's jab. Sense Ali's desperation as Frazier "keeps coming forward, like an angry wave", or "a dark cloud blotting out the sun". One of the negative things about the book, that almost gave it 4 stars is....the prose. Sometimes it can be clunky and hard to follow. There are many sentence fragments and sometimes too many big, obscure words per sentence. But overall, the story is SO good, and the writting too awesome at times, to give it less than a 5. It is difficult for the Ali worshipers to read some of the negative things he wrote about him, but I think it is inaccurate to say he wrote them because he disliked him, or he wanted to tear him down out of spite. He reveals his fondness for Ali, as a person, many times in the book. He gives the reasons why he liked him and even tells of his generous side (giving $ to Rocky's widow). He simply tells of the other side of Ali, the bad side, that all humans have, but the Ali worhsipers fail to recognize. Unfortunately, this side is corrabertaed by other boxing historians, just not mainstream US. He gives the same treatment to Frazier. Revealing both his positive and negative traits as a person. I will agree that the book is somewhat sympathetic to Frazier, as it should be. Frazier has been forgotten, and sometimes villified, because of Ali. Kram simply intends to tell the truth, both good and bad, about both men, for the sake of ACCURATE history. Ali and Frazier are like most men. Both good and bad, and their stories are compelling.

This simply one of the best sports books I've ever read. Covering one of the most fascinating rivalries to ever command our attention, Mr. Kram sheds a great deal of light on the subject. Much has been written lately about fighters of that era and of Muhammad Ali in particular. Seldom has the subject been covered this completely.

There's no lionizing here. Mr. Kram is fair to all parties. He covers not only Frazier and Ali but the era immediately preceding them. So many details previously not known are brought to light here.

The complex relationship between the two fighters, the fire that burned between them and what started that fire which had to do with much more than simply pre-fight hype and professional rivalries.

Mr. Kram takes us through every bit of it right up to and including "The Thrilla in Manila". That doesn't mean he stops there. He follows up and brings us to the present. So much has been written about Ali and much is written here. Seldom are we given such an extensive view of Joe Frazier, who is no less compelling tha Ali in this book.

This is a jewel of a book. A keeper... This one goes up in the bookshelf in a secure place for future re-reads.

Thank you Mark Kram!!!!

Although Ghosts of Manilla is ostensibly focused on the 1975 "Thrilla in Manila" in which Muhammad Ali outlasted Joe Frazier in a brutal slugfest, the book really digs into who these men were before boxing, how boxing affected them, and how we should look upon them. Those looking for lots of boxing excitement will probably be disappointed. The fight descriptions are the least well done parts of the book. Those who are looking into what heavyweight boxing is really like will get more than they bargained for. The personal record on Muhammad Ali is dramatically revised downward, and you will again be reminded that boxing is a brutal sport. After the fight, "one left with the ruin of a life, the other battered to his soul." When offered a chance to watch the fight on videotape, Muhammad Ali declined. "I don't wanna look at hell again." The book's stylistic weakness is that the author is very opinionated, and often borders on sarcasm in conveying his views.

Mr. Kram has been a boxing reporter for many years, and has had close access to most of the people he writes about in the book. As a result, he can portray his own discussions and observations from a first-hand perspective. He seems to have decided to "tell it like it is" on events that many reporters probably observe but do not comment about in public. On the other hand, he does this telling as tastefully as possible while not pulling his punches.

The book is much more about Mr. Ali than about Mr. Frazier. The key themes that are new about Mr. Ali are that he was controlled by the Black Muslims through fear of being killed, had an uncontrolled sexual appetite, did severe damage to the personalities of the black boxers he verbally humiliated, treated one of his daughters poorly, and was an unprincipled self-promoter. The book also covers familiar territory about whether or not he was a hero for resisting the draft, a good role model for young people, and the effect that boxing had on his developing Parkinson's Disease.

I learned more about Mr. Frazier than I had known before. The man was an enigma to me at the time of the fight. Now, I think I understand him better. I was sorry to see how bitter he has become, due to his treatment by Mr. Ali and the public.

To me, Mr. Ali's appeal lay mostly in his unorthodox fighting style and in his willingness to try new things. Although both attributes are mentioned in the book, I think they were overly downplayed. I never expect boxers to be role models for children. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book was the part that focused on what it meant to people how the heavyweight champion comported himself. That certainly says a lot about our society.

After you finish this book, I suggest that you think about how you would have played the cards that were dealt to Mr. Ali and Mr. Frazier. What would you have done differently? What would you have liked to have done differently?

Satisfy yourself by meeting your own high standards!

Mark Kram appears to know the boxing world inside and out. My biggest complaint is that at times the metaphors and allusions the author uses are more than a bit on the purple side. However, the book in general is well written and holds your attention. The author knows his subject well.

What a subject! He's somewhat merciless to Ali. But he cites more than a little evidence to show Ali as an arrogant, pretentious, and mean bully to his opponents, and frequently to his close associates. One has to feel sorry for many of the women that he got involved with--although with some of them you have to feel sorry for Ali. Ali comes off in Kram's book as being the perennial petulant child. As a political leader he is portrayed as laughably uninformed which could not be compensated for by his very real personal charm and charisma.

Kram sees the Black Muslims in a very negative light. He sees Ali as being almost totally dominated and manipulated by them. He touches on Ali's abandonment of Malcom X--a man of much distinction in Kram's eyes. He also hints that Sonny Liston might have thrown his two fights against Ali out of fear of the Muslims. He quotes George Foreman as saying that Liston was the only opponent who ever backed him up in a ring. He also draws a highly sympathetic portrait of Liston--much like David Remnick in his 1999 book. It's good to see the restoration of a man who has been maligned by so many people. Sonny was no saint, but then who would be with the kind childhood and life that he had to suffer from? May his spirit rest in peace. By comparison, Ali had a life of ease and privilege.

Kram is very kind towards some of the other of Ali's opponents. He obviously displays much sympathy and compassion for Joe Frazier. The poor boy from a family of 25 children in South Carolina. He was the real flesh and blood black model for Stallone's Hollywood treatment/white transformation. He portrays Frazier as a sympathetic person and great fighter with little of the meanness and malice of Ali. The author deals at length with Ali's racist taunts of Frazier.

The author is also obviously very fond Floyd Patterson. Another unfairly maligned heavyweight--and underrated one as well. Ali's verbal treatment of Patterson, Frazier, and others was not one of the highlights in his career. He apparently learned much from professional wrestling theatrics. And today's pro wrestling probably owes some of it's hype to his example.

Kram, the veteran sports writer, writes admiringly of Sugar Ray Robinson and sees him as being truly the greatest boxer of all time. He admits that Ali might be the greatest heavyweight of all time--although he claims he was not a particularly good inside fighter and did not have particularly impressive hooks. He admits to his very impressive skills and also his magnetic charm. However, in this book he more or less tells the Ali worshippers that they need to take a lot of cold showers. From his view, this guy is not the great hero that so much sports writing puffery has proclaimed him to be in recent years. It's very hard to be the great political figure and leader when you haven't a clue as to what politics is about. Writers should definitely cool any comparisons to Martin Luther King or Malcom X.

Finally, this book will not make you want to pick up the gloves for a career as a boxer. Moreover, if you have children, it will cause you to want to injure them if they ever even think about pursuing boxing. When I was younger I admired the courage and skill of those who were accomplished boxers. But now I have to agree with the ex-amateur boxer, Rod Serling, who portrayed the "sport" as a decadent, disgusting, barbaric aberration. This isn't sport, it's about brain damage to the participants and the moral degradation of the "fans". At one time I, too, was one of those "fans". Hopefully, boxing will eventually be seen for what it is and die a quiet death of irrelevance. Anyway, this book is truly about the "living death" of the two gladiators of the "thrilla from Manila".

Kram, a longtime writer for Sports Illustrated, is interested primarily in two subjects. One is boxing (about which he waxes nearly lyrical) and the other is Muhammad Ali (about whom he is decidedly skeptical, condemning his "brainless exhibitionism," calling him a "religious fake," and comparing him as a positive social force to Frank Sinatra ). But in his mostly first-hand description of the growing animosity between the two heavyweight champs, Ali and Frazier, he by-the-by reveals important information about the Nation of Islam (NoI), especially in the 1960s.

We learn that the organization offered the boxer Sugar Ray Robinson a bribe to convert. The NoI saw Ali as a "useful idiot with a name" and exploited him as an ongoing theme. Turns out that Ali's most famous political utterance, "I ain't got nothing against them Vietcong," was not his own but was slyly dropped into his presentation by a NoI watchdog to burnish the NoI's revolutionary credentials. His NoI handlers fleeced Ali financially. When Malcolm X was expelled from the NoI, Ali laughed and scorned him. At one point, Ali feared being killed by NoI assassins, much as Malcolm X had been - and the night of the latter's murder, a fire was set in Ali's apartment.

Another theme has to do with the attractions of the NoI for a man like Ali. Those were two-fold. The NoI gave expression to his resentments and suspicions of whites, swathing them with a religious and even theological justification that deepened and solidified them. Less known, NoI customs neatly justified Ali's desire to have his way with women. As he understood the NoI doctrines, they posited the "inferiority" of women, their obedience to men, their extreme modesty outside the house, and their acceptance of polygamy. All this ideally matched Ali's interests.

It seems that Kram's primary goal in Ghosts of Manila is to deconstruct Ali's mythical legacy. He claims to be one of the few journalists who saw and still see Ali as he truly was - a not-so-bright, often mean-spirited, self-promoting man and easily manipulated tool of the Nation of Islam. He rejects the idea of Ali being a real symbol of the civil rights movement, and instead, he portrays him as a propaganda machine for the Nation of Islam. The author also takes serious issue with Ali's treatment of Frazier who he portrays as a fine human being with a few minor flaws whose life was permanently changed for the worse as a result of his bouts with Ali.

Now, there are definitely truths to Kram's viewpoints. Sure, Ali was not really the civil rights hero he's often portrayed to be. He was also an incorrible womanizer, and he didn't treat a lot of people around him very well. Unfortunately, Kram goes overboard in his attempt to completely destroy the Ali myth. For instance, maybe Ali wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but he was smart enough to use psychological warfare against both Frazier and Foreman inside and outside of the ring. Neither Frazier nor Foreman could fight back in like manner suffering devastating losses as a result. Also, Kram forgets a big reason why Ali was so loved. He was so damn charismatic. One needs only to view the Oscar-winning documentary "When We Were Kings" to appreciate Ali's appeal.

The story of Frazier's life is indeed sad, and he is still not appreciated as the great fighter that he was. Unfortunately, no matter how much Kram wants to build up Frazier's legend while destroying Ali's myth, the fact remains that Ali's place in sports history is secure because of his arrival at the right time in boxing and politics and not to mention, he was a hell of a fighter.

I did learn a great deal from this book, and I do agree with the author on many points about Ali's myth. I just think that he went for the overkill and failed.

A cheap shot, but an essential look at Ali

The Times' caption on the cover of "Ghosts of Manila" says, "...at times unbearably vivid". I feel there is no better way to express the angst I felt while reading this highly informative book by Mark Kram. Muhammad Ali has been the greatest hero in my life, and it is despairing to see so many skeletons fall out of the closet.

I am not saying that I endorse the book wholeheartedly. For, in his attempt at the de-beatification of Ali, Kram gets carried away and hits Ali left, right and center. He does it to such an extreme that you doubt whether Kram's intentions are honest. You start to wonder whether Kram is taking cheap shots now at a man who cannot defend himself. It is clear from the book that Kram's relations with Ali during his career were not cozy, and he just might be hitting back at Ali.

However, honestly speaking, I do not want to debase the book either. Kram's account is one of the most vivid and informative literature in boxing you will find. No one in my view has described the careers of two of the greatest champions of the ring, Ali and Joe Frazier, with such blunt objectivity.

While Ali has had reams and reams written about him, Smokin' Joe Frazier has been quite undeservingly sidelined in boxing history. This seems to be the leitmotif of Kram's work. It is apparent that Kram is a big fan of Smoke, and he uses this book to take Smoke's side and slam Ali. This gives one a clear opportunity to criticize Kram: was it Ali's fault that he was the most charismatic and skilled champion in history, and that Joe was just unfortunate to compete in Ali's era?

Whatever the underlying reason for Kram's disaffection for Ali, he has done a great job of producing an insightful critique of Ali, about a man we do not fully know; a side we have never seen. When the book ends, you will, if you're an Ali fan, feel weak in the guts, and will be forced to question your admiration of Ali, if at least for some time. (One revelation that is most disturbing is about the cherished Hudson incident, where Ali is said to have tossed his Olympic gold medal in the Hudson River. Kram reveals that the incident never even happened!)

Joe Frazier is given preferential treatment by Kram, who must nonetheless be praised for letting us know more about a great champion that most of have forgotten. Joe's rise from being a farm boy to a great champion is very moving. It is interesting when Kram reveals that Joe practiced his punching skills by hitting carcasses at a butchery in Philadelphia where he worked. This was copied by Sylvester Stallone in "Rocky". More importantly, Kram blasts a great myth that has existed about Joe: that he wasn't a proud black, that he was a "white man's champion". Kram roundly blames Ali for propagating this idea about Joe, who lacked the smartness and intelligence to fight back and dispel the notion. According to Kram, Ali, worried that new champ Joe might disturb his position as the foremost black hero of America, spread the notion to consolidate his position in the black community. This reason is termed by Kram as the most important one in Ali and Joe's rivalry, which continues to this day. The ugliness of the rivalry can be gauged by the way Joe reacted to Ali lighting the torch at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, infamously saying that he felt like pushing Ali down in the flame.

An important note is that this book is more about what happened out of the ring than inside, because Kram apparently doesn't want to take the attention away from the personal lives and rivalry of the two fighters and place it at the boxing techniques of the two, which is what most writers are wont to do.

All said and done, "The Ghosts of Manila" is simply a must read for any boxing fan. For all theories that exist, there must be objective and clear-sighted studies done to clearly project the real side of things. This is what Kram's book is, and this is what it should be ultimately praised for.

You might conclude from the above review that I have mixed feelings for the book, which, in most ways, is right. Perhaps the correct view to take is that you could either love or hate this book, but you will not be able to ignore it.

A footnote might well be that for many days I wasn't at peace with myself for why I had admired Ali so much, and whether I should still continue with my admiration of him as "The Greatest". But then, I have come to the conclusion that none of us is without faults. Great people are no exception; it's just that their faults are in the limelight. In retrospect, we have seen how much Ali has done as an ambassador for peace in the world; how much hope he still gives us even with his debilitating disease; and how much he is still loved. It's my suggestion to Mark Kram to let bygones be bygones, and join in with the rest of us.

Add Mark Kram to a list that includes George Plimpton, Norman Mailer and Nick Tosches of authors that attempt to take the most barbaric of sports and rise it to a higher poetic level with their prose. And also add Kram to a growing list of sports and non-sports writers who take what should easily be able to mold a great book out of a page turning, thrill a minute topic only to get their fighters lost in a swamp of alliteration and a metaphoric morass.

"Ghosts" recounts perhaps the greatest rivalry in sports history, the blood feud between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. It was a rivalry that was haunted with heavy racial overtones, Ali cast as the hero of the black man, Frazier as the sellout to the white establishment. In the end, it left Ali a punch drunk simpleton (and not just a victim of Parkinson's as Kram correctly points out) and Joe Frazier a man consumed by bitterness.

Not that "Ghosts of Manila" is easy to put down- in reality Kram builds to the climax, the apocalyptic brutal fight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in the Philippines. So much so you are willing to read many sentences twice, and kick yourself for not paying more attention in College Lit. It's like suffering through a good undercard, but one you cannot appreciate because of the anticipation of waiting for the Main Event.

Kram does a terrific job breaking down both men's psyche and backgrounds, mapping the path in the 60s for the horrific collision course between the two great athletes in the 1970s. But just like many heavyweight title fights, you walk away from the main event with that sinking feeling the promoter just took you for a sucker.

To his credit, Kram shatters the Ali myth. It's not a pretty picture. The Greatest is reduced from the civil rights icon he has been portayed by the media as, to a semi-moronic easily lead tool of the American Islam movement, and even a con man. Ali as egotistical womanizer. Before someone mistake the author as some contrarian looking to make a quick buck by writing a controversial book, credibility abound: Mark Kram tips his hat to Ali as a fighter, and he should know, seeing he wrote numerous articles on him in Sports Illustrated.

But the most venom is reserved for Howard Cosell. Cosell liked to portray himself as Ali's partner in his crusade against the Man. Kram does not buy it- his Cosell is a cocktail swilling, ambulance chasing egomaniac and frontrunner.

Why do sportswriters feel the overwhelming need to impress the reader with their writing skills? Perhaps frustration from seeing their journalistic pedigree being dismissed because they are sports writers. But then why can I read Phil Berger's books without my head spinning?

"Ghosts of Manila" is a must read for boxing fans and those interested in learning more about Muhammad Ali, and for that reason, it is reccomendable. For casual readers, I recommend looking up his 1970s Playboy interview and drawing your own conclusions.