Joe Frazier gets the center ring in HBO’s ‘Thrilla in Manila’

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Smokin’ Joe is on the phone and upside my head, joking, singing and jawing once again about the fight of the decade, of the century, some would say of all-time: the so-called “Thrilla in Manila.”

Justifiable or not, hyperbole was the order of the day on Oct. 1, 1975, when Joe Frazier climbed into the ring with Muhammad Ali for the third and final of their legendary bouts, in Araneta Coliseum in the sultry Philippines capital (the fight took place in the morning to accommodate live TV-feeds for overseas audiences). Their epic confrontation is the subject of “Thrilla in Manila,” a HBO documentary that will debut tonight and be reshown on several subsequent dates.

“I really didn’t watch the fight because I didn’t like the way it finished,” Frazier replies when asked why he’d never bothered to view the bout before HBO’s crew asked him to, so that they could film his three-decade delayed reaction.

Frazier wasn’t alone in that sentiment.

The furiously contested slugfest between Ali, the kinetic boxer, and Frazier, the dogged slugger with the withering left hook, ended with both men brutally battered. Frazier never forgave his trainer and cornerman, Eddie Futch, for stopping the fight before the 15th round, while Frazier fumed on his stool, one of his eyes closed from swelling. Ali, meanwhile, nearly had his hips lock up due to the punishment that Frazier was inflicting on his adversary’s organs.

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(Photo courtesy HBO)