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October 1, 1975—Muhammad Ali TKO 14 Joe Frazier, Araneta Coliseum, Quezon City, Philippines

“We went to Manila as champions, Joe and me, and came back old men.”

—Muhammad Ali

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More than any other boxer, Ali openly acknowledged the physical toll his vocation took on him. This introspection, rare among fighters, who, more than any other athletes, must maintain a self-regard that borders on megalomania, underscored his belief that boxing, in some ways, was beneath him. He conceded his physical limitations as early as 1971, while being pestered by insects during an interview with Ira Berkow. “These flies keep flying around me,” he said. “They must know I'm not all that I used to be. They must see the little gray hairs that been growing in my head lately.” His worst years as a fighter, post–“Thrilla in Manila,” saw him descend into the earthbound world of the average professional boxer. These were his years of decay. Ali began, like any other run-of-the-mill pug, to get the close decisions—against Ken Norton and Jimmy Young. He clowned his way through several dreary mismatches. He lost his title to a virtual amateur, Leon Spinks, retired after winning the rematch, and, with the promise of millions for a comeback, challenged Larry Holmes in a virtual suicide mission. Already he was beginning to show signs of the damage common to fighters who do not acknowledge the hazards of their trade. While magazines urged him to retire, his celebrity status, paradoxically, grew, particularly among litterateurs, ideologues, and the same people he once terrified as a cohort of Malcolm X: Middle America. By the mid-1970s, Ali was co-opted by the mainstream and his new ubiquity was based on the very same capitalist dream machine the rebellious 1960s looked to undermine. Ali was in the movies. Ali had his own Saturday morning cartoon. Ali starred on television. Ali earned sponsorships from D-Con, batteries, and Bulova. With the radical chic sheen now gone (Revolution Road in America hit a Dead End in 1981 with the final explosive dissolution of the Weather Underground and the Black Liberation Army), Ali was safe enough, sanitized enough for Madison Avenue and Mego.