This week marks the 50th anniversary of one of boxing’s greatest fights. As Muhammad Ali’s biographer, I knew the toll the bout took on him
In 1989, with Muhammad Ali sitting beside me, I watched a tape of Ali’s historic triumph over Joe Frazier in Manila, which took place 50 years ago this week.
For months, Ali and I had been reviewing his fights for a book I was writing as his authorized biographer. We’d watched Henry Cooper knock Cassius Clay to the brink of oblivion with a picture-perfect left hook. From the vantage point of my living room, that had amused Muhammad.
