Excerpt from Richard Hoffer’s Bouts of Mania

The fourteenth round – and it would be the last one, the final three minutes in their shared agony – was a kind of science experiment, an investigation into the extremes of human behaviour. Just exactly what was a person capable of, how far could he go, how deep could he reach? Nobody had ever seen it conducted at this level, precautionary measures usually in place that would abort any further research, saving the subjects, somewhere just short of death. So, to that extent, nobody really knew what desire and pride could accomplish, or, rather, destroy. Now they did.

Ali, plumbing his final reserves, hit Frazier with every punch he had. Jabs, right-hand leads – he threw them all and connected with every one. Frazier, unable to see or simply unable to penetrate that protective cocoon of Ali’s, caught them all flush. All. It was odd. Frazier having gone down so often and comically in his fight with Foreman. And now he remained so dangerously resolute, his head on deadly shocks, bouncing back every time. Ali hit him, stopped him in his tracks, and Frazier took an instant to regroup and slogged forward again, an apparition, the kind of haunt Ali might see in the wee hours. And was hit and ... on, and on, it went.

This was too much. It shouldn’t come to this. Their arrival on the world stage, their coming together, had been a marvellous happenstance. Two spirits of this size occupying this platform – well, there wouldn’t ultimately be room for two, and certainly not for a third, that hulking menace, Foreman – made for a lively time. The world, America, hadn’t enjoyed so much sheer potency at all, and definitely not all at once. The three men, having being pared to two by now, had made for a once-in-a-generation show. Or maybe it had been rarer than that.

That this was at an end, this terrible tournament over, was now obvious. The three men had fought each other in every combination, a total of fifty-one rounds across four countries, and produced a survivor, although barely at that. Even as Ali was telling his corner to cut his gloves off after the fourteenth, [Eddie] Futch, who’d seen eight men die in the ring, was shutting Frazier down across the canvas – “Joe, it’s over,” he said. Camp spies waved frantically from each corner, hoping one surrender might trump the other’s, but even if Ali had managed to quit first (not likely, not with that corner), his advantage had been clear. He was the survivor

They were each now ruined, as Foreman had been ruined before them. This was the price of spectacle, the cost of glory. Ali went to a reception later that night but soon retired when he realised what a ghastly vision he must be. Indeed, wrote Dave Anderson in the New York Times, “The champion’s face resembled a mask that been stretched to fit.” The next day, not looking much better, he told Sports Illustrated’s Mark Kram that he had been pushed into a strange and frightful place. “It makes you go a little insane,” he said. ... They had very nearly fought each other to the death ... The heat of their rivalry turned into a kind of self-immolation, each man consumed in his own desperate effort to destroy the other. There wasn’t anything left of them. They fought on, of course – Foreman, too – but never to any similar effect, never again approaching greatness or any form of brilliance. It was over, even if they didn’t know it yet. They had, for the benefit of a country that just needed the warm glow of glory, made a bonfire of themselves. Their embers, after all his time, still smoulder away.