Did Muhammad Ali ask Dundee to cut his gloves off before Eddie Futch stopped the fight in Thrilla in Manila?
11.06.2025 07:17
Bill Vargus, sports reporter and historian
Ali said:
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The third, and final fight between the two, known as the "Thrilla in Manila," occurred on October 1, 1975 for the heavyweight championship of the world at the Philippine Coliseum in Cubao, Quezon City, Philippines.
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Wali Muhammad was one of Ali’s cornermen, and supposedly he told Thomas Hauser that Ali wanted to quit at the end of the 14th round.
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With the incredible noise, there is no way he could have heard what he supposedly heard from the floor.
Ali believed he was giving Joe one last big payday before sending him off into retirement, so Ali did little training, instead roaming around with an entourage nicknamed the:
First, Wali Muhammad was not up on the ring apron in between rounds, he was down on the floor.
This myth got started supposedly with Wali Muhammad but it is almost impossible to believe
These were great warriors who would have fought each other on an ice floe with the ice melting around them. What it came down to in Manila, wasn't the heavyweight championship of the world. Ali and Frazier were fighting for something more important than that. They were fighting for the heavyweight championship of each other."
Frazier growled back:
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Ali had collapsed in weariness in his dressing room, and was not coming out for the after fight press conference until told Joe was going to it. Ali said incredulously:
“Believe me, it never happened. I’m the only guy talking in the corner, and Muhammad never talked back at me. I would shut him up. No, not a word about quitting. Muhammad didn’t know what quit was.”
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What both men said after the fight.
“They lied!"
Ali said it never happened either
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“They told me you was all washed up, Joe Frazier!"
There is absolutely no proof whatsoever that Ali wanted to quit in Manila, or that Dundee was asked to cut his gloves off.
What happened at the press conference reinforced Ali’s claims he would never quit
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The venue was renamed from Araneta Coliseum, specifically for the match. Ali won by technical knockout (TKO) after Frazier's chief second, Eddie Futch, threw in the towel prior to the 15th round, because Joe could not see out of either eye. Frazier, with the heart of a lion, wanted to continue, blind or not.
Wali Muhammad never ever made this claim on the record or publicly.
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Ali was handily winning the fight on points, he was so far ahead - 6, 5 and 4 rounds - that short of a knockout he could not lose the fight
CREDIT TO:
Ali never asked Dundee to cut his gloves off, or stop the Thrilla in Manila…
“Man, I hit him with punches that'd bring down the walls of a city, Lawdy, Lawdy, he's a great champion…We were gladiators, I didn’t ask no favors of him, and he didn’t ask none of me. I don’t like him but I got to say, in the ring he was a man. In Manila, I hit him punches, those punches, they’d of knocked a building down. And he took ʼem. He took ʼem and he came back, and I got to respect that part of the man. He was a fighter. He shook me in Manila. He won. But I sent him home worse than he came.”"
Ali also said, when it came down to it,:
The Thrilla in Manila was the best, and possibly most brutal, heavyweight fight ever
“The main turning point of the fight came very late. It came midway through the thirteenth round when one of two tremendous right-hand smashes sent the gum shield sailing out of Frazier's mouth. The sight of this man actually moving backwards seemed to inspire Ali. I swear he hit Frazier with thirty tremendous punches—each one as hard as those which knocked out George Foreman in Zaire—during the fourteenth round.”
Frazier however, was ready for the last, great effort of his Hall of Fame life.
According to the two people involved, Muhammad Ali and Angelo Dundee, this never happened.
Joe was blind, Ali was completely exhausted.
Ed Schuyler, an Associated Press sports writer who was ringside said:
“Sit down son, it's all over but no one will ever forget what you did here today."
“I want him Boss, I want him!”
Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times by Thomas Hauser
“When somebody asked a marathon runner what goes through his mind in the last mile or two, he said that you ask yourself why am I doin' this. You get so tired. It takes so much out of you mentally. It changes you. It makes you go a little insane. I was thinkin' that at the end. Why am I doin' this? What am I doin' here in against this beast of a man? It's so painful. I must be crazy. I always bring out the best in the men I fight, but Joe Frazier, I'll tell the world right now, brings out the best in me. I'm gonna tell ya, that's one helluva man, and God bless him."
There are also claims Ali himself told Hauser he was done after the 14th, but if recorded, such has never been released, and was never a statement made publicly, or to anyone else.
According to Dundee it never happened
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Frazier said:
The fight started predictably, with Ali moving and jabbing Frazier, seemingly at will. But Joe in his own stolid way, was getting warmed up.
Ali would never have quit. Never.
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Sports writer Frank McGhee ringside reporting for the newspaper Daily Mirror, wrote of the last two rounds:
Perhaps Boxing writer Jerry Izzenberg summed up Manila best, and how both Frazier and Ali saw the fight:
“In the sixth round, Frazier hit Ali with a left hook that's the hardest punch I've ever seen. Ali's head turned like it was on a swivel, and his response was to look at Frazier and say, "They told me Joe Frazier was washed up.” Frazier simply said “they lied.”
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“Ali Circus".
“Joe is going, seriously?
No proof, none, zilch, zippa.
Ali had just hit Frazier with 30 straight unanswered power shots, and Frazier had both eyes shut, and couldn’t see - it was obvious he was helpless
Then Ali, determined not to let it seem he was ever second, forced himself to go as well, saying:
“If Joe’s going, I’m going!”.
Angelo Dundee, on the record, refuted any claim Ali asked him to stop the fight years ago in an ITV documentary years later:,:
Both men struggled to even get to the press conference.
Wali Muhammad left Ali’s employ after Manila, and was bitter about it
“Their lives were on the line and if ever a fight should have ended in a draw it was the one in Manila, Until Joe’s eyesight began to go, that fight was dead-even on my card and neither guy deserved to lose.
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Futch said:
In the late rounds, starting in the 12th, Ali again took over, hitting Frazier again and again, while Joe continued to pursue him. In the 13th, a hard left knocked Joe's mouthpiece all the way out into the crowd. The 14th round was terrible. Frazier was spitting blood, and his left eye had closed altogether, and his right eye was only a slit.
There are numerous problems with this story that make it highly unlikely, to say the least.
Joe, operating on sheer willpower, never went down, and was ready to come out for the 15th. But Eddie Futch, after the 14th, saw that Joe was literally blind, and stopped it. Joe Frazier, despite not being able to see, kept saying:
And the tide began to turn.
In Manila, Ali later admitted to Thomas Hauser he had come into the fight believing Frazier was finished. Indeed, in the sixth round, after Frazier stepped up his legendary body attack, Ali whispered:
“I was worn out, beat down, but I would have come out, of course, I was not going to let Joe say I quit.”