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

by Mark Kram (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Muhammad Ali once admitted to former Sports Illustrated writer Mark Kram that he and Joe Frazier went to Manila for the third of their three epic fights "as champions and we came back as old men." Boxing is a particularly unforgiving sport for old men, especially those--as Kram tells us in Ghosts of Manila, his thoroughly riveting account of one of the Sweet Science's greatest rivalries--"with too much pride, heart, and unexamined confidence for their own well-being." Which defines Ali and Frazier's essential characters in a nutshell.

Kram begins his saga in the present, looking at the different kinds of isolation that currently surround each man's life, then dances back and forth through time to spar with just who these warriors have been and how they came to be the icons, for better or worse, they became. Ghosts of Manila is more than a twin biography, though; it is an often haunting meditation on how much we project onto our athletes, and how destructive the projections can be. As much as any punishment sustained in three of the most brutal title fights in heavyweight history, the baggage--personal and societal--that Ali and Frazier carried into and out of the ring changed them physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Did Ali earn all the love? Did Frazier deserve all the scorn? To answer the questions, Kram bravely goes toe to toe with Ali worship and Ali's myth. His daring rewards us with knockout profiles of two legends more complex and real than mere iconography might allow. --Jeff Silverman

From Publishers Weekly
Kram, who covered boxing for Sports Illustrated for more than a decade, tells the story of Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali's epic 1975 Manila fight, and the bitter and complex rivalry between the two men that preceded it. He begins his story when the men, both black Southerners, are isolated and in retirement. Ali calls Manila "the greatest fight" of his life, while Frazier remains obsessively consumed by his hatred of Ali. Kram is intent on undoing the media "romance history" of Ali as civil rights hero; "hagiographers," he writes, "never tire of trying to persuade us that he ranked second only to Martin Luther King, but... Ali was not a social force." Frazier and Ali began as friends, but professional competition and divergent views on race turned theirs into a rivalry that had a lasting effect on professional sport and perhaps changed the meaning of race, especially for African-Americans, in postwar America. Kram explores the fighters' serial wives and mixed-up families, as well as their shifting, hunting packs of managers and assistants Ali's Black Muslim handlers in particular ("They were into profit and running things like Papa Doc was running Haiti"). Describing the powerful title event, Kram's prose is heavy with metaphors, not all of them helpful ("Ali's legs searched for the floor like one of Baudelaire's lost balloons"), and some of the narrative reads like his earlier accounts of the fights pasted together. Still, overall this is a daring, intelligent and well-observed piece of sportswriting. (May)Forecast: Boxing is reclaiming its popularity. Author appearances in New York and Washington, D.C., along with a 50-city radio campaign, should help this fine book attract attention.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins; 1st Printing edition (May 22, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060195576
• ISBN-13: 978-0060195571
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,167,850 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Legacies of Great Fighters, May 23, 2001

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

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!

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ......Takes the Frazier-Ali Wars to a new level of thought, August 4, 2001

By	D. Roth (Cleveland, OH) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Uncovering of the Insidious Nation of Islam..., October 28, 2005

By	Jazz It Up Baby - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ghosts of Manila: The Fateful Blood Feud Between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier (Paperback)

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.