Bouts of Mania: Ali, Frazier, and Foreman--and an America on the Ropes

by Richard Hoffer

Overview

The fights resonate still: The Fight of the Century, Down Goes Frazier!, The Rumble in the Jungle, The Thrilla in Manila. And the fighters, too—MUHAMMAD ALI, JOE FRAZIER, GEORGE FOREMAN—three complicated and competitive men who happened to be vying for sport's biggest prize when boxing was still a national reassurance and its champion a cultural resource. They fought five times for that title, from 1971 to 1975, ranging across the globe, and their struggles, triumphs, and defeats echo through the years as well.

At the time, however accidental their convergence, it was an irreproducible pandemonium. Three of them? At once? Those fights made for a roiling and convulsive tournament, all the more striking against a backdrop of national dysfunction. Their competition—fighting each other in every possible combination, on nearly every possible continent, to nearly every possible outcome—mattered as much for the country's confidence as it did for deciding the titles at stake. In fact, their heroic efforts—global spectacles that offered brief glimpses of clarity and confidence—may have been the only thing that made sense back home during the social and political morass of the 1970s. This golden age of boxing reassured a shattered country that such fundamental, if sometimes elusive, qualities as courage and determination still mattered. And when it was all over, neither the contenders nor the rest of the word would ever be the same.

In Bouts of Mania, longtime Sports Illustrated writer Richard Hoffer evokes all the hopes and hoopla, the hype and hysteria of boxing's last and best "golden age."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780306822223
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	07/08/2014
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Richard Hoffer has been an award-winning writer for Sports Illustrated for more than twenty years and is the author of three previous books, including A Savage Business: The Comeback and Comedown of Mike Tyson. He lives in Santa Barbara, California.

Table of Contents

Prologue 1

1970

Chapter 1 Rat Bins, Unwashed Punks, and White Owl Cigars 7

Chapter 2 Philco Dreams, Philadelphia's Finest, and a Fiat-Footed Bull 15

Chapter 3 Horoscopes, the Fifth Ward, and a Little Mean Guy 23

1971

Chapter 4 Velvet Hot Pants, Tough Going in Laos, and Closed-Circuit Doppelgangers 33

Chapter 5 Little Sissies, Soul Power, and Judy Garland's Shoes 43

Chapter 6 Red Tassels, Celebrity Scribes, and Duke Ellington 55

1972

Chapter 7 Techniques of Ballyhoo, the Pittsburgh Symphony, and Tall Timber 71

Chapter 8 Nietzsche, a Black Hospital, and a Piranha Pond 83

1973

Chapter 9 A Tunnel of Love, a Red Rubber Mouse, and a Veteran Russian 93

Chapter 10 A Short Trip, a Whodoyoucallum, and Old Heroes 105

Chapter 11 A Rope Bed, UFOs, and The Dating Game 113

1974

Chapter 12 Two Pasty Men, a Bad and Ugly Scene, and Ice Cream on a Stick 125

Chapter 13 Marlene Dietrich, a Robot, and an International Smash and Grab 133

Chapter 14 A Leopard-Skin Hat, a Monster, and Mr. Tooth Decay 141

Chapter 15 Nuclearology a Picnic Basket, and Judge Craven 149

Chapter 16 Chicken Claws, Mozambique, and a Convertible Cadillac 159

1975

Chapter 17 Coke-Bottle Glasses, a Florida Dog Track, and a Mummy 169

Chapter 18 Economic Technicians, the Other Wife, and the Wildlife Fund 179

Chapter 19 Subdural Blossoms, Coolers of San Miguel, and Gin 191

Chapter 20 Nursery Rhymes, Pretty Shoes, and a Horrible Soufflé 197

1996

Chapter 21 A Steamboat, Leprosy, and a Caesars Palace Parking Lot 207

2011

Chapter 22 A Second Banana, Betsy Ross, and a Dodge Drafter 225

2013

Chapter 23 A Smell of Sorrow, Ham Hocks, and the Gourmet Products Show 239

Acknowledgments 251

Notes 253

Bibliography 263

Index 267

Editorial Reviews

Advance praise for Bouts of Mania

"I'm old enough to have lived through, and even covered part of, the raucous era defined by that immortal troika of Ali, Frazier, and Foreman. What could be better? Well, reliving it through the piercing prose of Hoffer, one of the few stylists able to capture this dark and dizzying decade of the '70s."—Jack McCallum, bestselling author of Dream Team

Boston Globe, 7/10/14
“An entertaining reminder of the days when fighting had the power to thrill the country and cause riots at the same time…Bouts of Mania honors [the boxers'] struggles with lovely prose. It was often observed that while boxing was the most brutal of sports, it inspired much of the best sportswriting. From Norman Mailer to James Baldwin to Joyce Carol Oates, some greats have taken their shots at the sweet science. Richard Hoffer's new book continues that fine tradition.”

Kirkus, 7/1/14
“Fans of the sweet science should enjoy this shaggy yarn of a bygone contest and era.

From the Publisher

2014-06-11
FormerSports Illustratedsenior writer Hoffer (Something in the Air: American Passion and Defiance in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, 2009, etc.) turns in a sprawling piece on the “riotous roundelay” that was the battle of three boxers for the world championship.The author locates that competition within brackets of great historical events: the publication of the Pentagon Papers, the fall of Saigon and, in between, Kent State, when, in a curious turn of phrase, he notes that National Guardsmen killed four college students “for no real good reason.” That throwaway phrase is symptomatic, for while Hoffer certainly knows his story and his actors, he infuses it with a know-it-all casualness that can be grating at times. Would Ali, Frazier and Foreman really have been “athletic footnotes” in another era? Not likely: All three were staggering, scary, brilliant fighters, each in his own way, with Ali (whose conversion to Islam, Hoffer writes, might have branded him as a “religious kook” had he not redeemed himself by refusing to serve in the military) blessed with a devastatingly poetic wit atop it all.Hoffer’s sociology is suspect and too often heavy-handed. His account of the actual fighting, though, is immediate and arresting. The same holds for his portrait of the swirling sideshow that surrounded the three, with Ali delivering, for instance, “an unrelenting attack on Frazier’s intelligence,” Frazier responding with “classic menace” and Foreman coolly assessing the weird international arenas in which they were thrust. There’s not much here that can’t be found in the grand documentary filmWhen We Were Kings, but Hoffer offers plenty of reasons why we should still remember, and esteem, the lethal trio for more than bucking the draft and hawking stovetop grills.Plimpton or Mailerit isn’t—not even Cosell. Still, fans of the sweet science should enjoy this shaggy yarn of a bygone contest and era.

Kirkus Reviews