On October 1, 1975, World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Muhammad Ali was in the ring with his arch rival Joe Frazier for the third time. This fight in the Philippines, which has been nicknamed “Thrilla in Manila,” is considered one of the most dramatic boxing matches in history – in the words of the voice-over, “They hated each other.” With the help of archive material and eyewitness accounts (including Imelda Marcos), this documentary not only reconstructs the match, but shows us what was happening behind the scenes as well.
8.75
Rating: 8.75/10 based on 16 votes cast.
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In a previous comment I mistyped the word quieter to say joe frazier was a quitter man , instead of a quieter man. I just wanted to make that correction. What a brave champ. Some one wrote frazier showed there was greatness in defeat. In boxing there’s always that hope that some miracle will happen, in this case, frazier landing a miraculous left hook. There’s always that risk and eddie futch had sense to know when the risk was too great. In the end of this story, the very end, frazier said ali won this fight. the proof is in the pudding. and that took courage too. it was just a matter of who could endure to the end and in the end frazier’s side called it off before ali. A half a second before ali could. Only God knows what would have happened. Thank God it was no tragic ending. Frazier fought a heck of a fight in that last round being blind.
Watch this film. Just great. I wish I hadn’t just watched it so I could watch it for the first time again.
Fucking good doc. Ha! For all his talk of ‘beauty’ Clay comes out one ugly son of a bull mastif bitch while Joe looks and acts — and was —- every inch a dignified star whose looks would have befitted, by the way any world class bluesman/singer. For his 2011 death the world is poorer. That he could be seen to be continually dragged down and through that kind of indignity with no attempt made to penalise Clay is a filthy stain on boxing. We all come out of Africa and we all came from some kind of lemur via incarnations as apes, gorillas, whatever. If you lose the need for pigmentation you wind up white, like the cockroaches that live in caves. Didn’t anybody try to tell Clay how low and stupid he was stooping with ‘uncle Tom’ and playing cheap shit race cards? Clay appears to be living still. He apologised from his mansion to Joe at his shack by the tracks. Does clay still believe in his god? Then may he shortly see fit to send him from one Parkinson’s hell to a next deeper hotter one. No mourning here.