Thriller in Manila

Joe Frazier takes British filmmaker, John Dower, back to the most hyped boxing match in history.

While boxing legend Muhammad Ali, pale, bloated and suffering from Parkinson's disease, lit the torch for the 2002 Winter Olympics, 'Smokin' Joe Frazier sat in a room above the run-down boxing gym he owns in a poor neighbourhood of Philadelphia wishing they would push Ali right into the flames.

Frazier, now 63, takes British filmmaker, John Dower, back 33 years to the most hyped boxing match in history, and beyond. Frazier has never forgiven Ali for the racial taunting leading up to the fight in which he called Frazier 'gorilla' and 'uncle Tom' - the worst possible insult for a fellow black man.

Although Ali beat Frazier in Manila in1975 in their third and final fight, Frazier says, 'I clearly won the fight. The proof is in the pudding. I'm walkin', I'm talkin', I'm still havin' fun at 63.' His meaning is clear: Ali came off worst in the long run. Frazier's speech might be slurred, he limps and his hands are deformed, but it's not Parkinson's.

Dower also interviews the key members of Ali and Frazier's respective camps, including Ferdie Pacheco, Ali's fight doctor and Georgie Benton, the only surviving member of Frazier's three-man corner team, who recall the almost unbearable tension before and during the fight. Imelda Marcos, whose husband the dictator Ferdinand Marcos is thought to have paid $10 million for the Philippines - then under martial law - to host the fight recalls, almost flirtatiously, encountering Ali at a reception in the presidential palace.

The Thrilla in Manila took place on 1 October 1975. It was one of the first live global satellite broadcasts and so was scheduled in the morning to accommodate the American audience. Ferdie Pacheco, Ali's fight doctor, remembers: 'At 10am the stickiness of the night was still there, but cooked by the sun. So what you got is boiling water for atmosphere.'

The bell for round one rang at 10.45am. 'It was 125 degrees,' drawls Frazier. 'We were fighting against each other, then we were fighting against the heat.'

By the tenth round Ali gasped to Pacheco, 'I think this is what dying is like.' The years of bad blood ensured that neither man was willing to yield. With five rounds to go the fight became a contest of pure will. Dower's film frighteningly captures why for both Ali and Frazier, it had gone beyond a boxing match - it was a matter of life and death.

Frazier's trainer, Eddie Futch, stopped the fight after round 14 while Frazier was on his stool, his face so swollen he was virtually blinded. At the same time, Ali was pleading with his corner men to cut his gloves off. 'We were dead, both of us,' says Frazier.

In 2001 Ali said in an interview with the New York Times, 'I said a lot of things in the heat of the moment I shouldn't have said, called him names I shouldn't have called him. I apologise for that, I am sorry, it was meant to promote the fight.' Dower's documentary finds Frazier in no mood for forgiveness.