Everyone who follows boxing slightly knows all about the famous first bout between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali for the heavyweight championship in 1971. It might have been the biggest fight ever. Both boxers were undefeated, but Ali had to step out of the ring for more than three years beforehand. He had been stripped of his title almost immediately after he refused to be inducted into the United States military through the draft in 1967.
However, what led up to the Ali-Frazier fight might have been even more significant than the fight itself - which is saying something. As the legal and personal drama slowly played itself out, an opportunity for Ali to return to the ring in some fashion slowly developed. The drama eventually ended when Ali fought Jerry Quarry in a 6,000-seat auditorium in Atlanta, Georgia. Without Ali-Quarry coming first, we might not have ever gotten to Ali-Frazier ... although - considering how much money figured to be generated by the latter - someone eventually would have figured out how to put on the bout.
"Return of the King" is a look at the entire situation of that particular time and place, and author Thomas Aiello has done a good, informative job of recreating what happened before, during and after that night. Aiello, a professor at Valdosta State University, already has books to his credit about hockey in Atlanta and basketball in the Deep South. He seems well equipped for the job, and he is.
The 1960s were a period of change in Atlanta and the South, particularly in sports. While the populations of big cities were growing to 'major league" proportions, the region's legacy of racism was seen as baggage. Eventually baseball's Braves and basketball's Hawks moved there, and the NFL granted an expansion team to Atlanta in that same era. Change was in the area in the team sports.
But boxing was a different story. A black man hadn't fought a white man in the Deep South for the first 65+ years of the 20th century. It took an odd series of events to change that. For starters, Atlanta was trying hard to change its image as a racial backwater. It adopted the phrase "The City Too Busy to Hate" in attempt to woo industry there. Atlanta's voting mix was changing too. It was getting much easier for African-Americans to vote in the South, and they were working hard to change the composition of government's elected officials. (It's fair to say that white were noticing those changes, and were in some cases heading for the suburbs.)
Leroy Johnson is the key figure in Aiello's story, with the possible exception of Ali. Johnson was a state senator who also was a reasonably wealthy businessman. He saw an Ali fight as a way to grab attention for Black Atlanta. Even better, there was a path there. While many states had their own athletic commissions to set up rules for such sports as boxing, Georgia didn't have one. Basically, if someone wanted to put on a boxing match in the state, it was a simply a matter of convincing a few local civic leaders to get on board. The other states knew that Ali's situation made him somewhat radioactive, and their commissions' attitudes reflected that. Johnson and Co. quickly figured out that it really could work.
The book's initial discussion of all of this is a little complicated, but it's probably necessary to the story. The narrative picks up quite a bit once the details are worked out and Ali officially starts off on his collision course with his return to boxing. The champ/ex-champ/future champ eventually signs to fight Jerry Quarry, a good but not great heavyweight who didn't figure too much of a threat to a future Ali-Frazier bout.
Somehow, it all got done - even with bomb threats, death threats, and a Governor (Lester Maddox) who ordered flags to be flown at half staff to mark an official day of mourning. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that Ali needed only three rounds to cut Quarry so badly that the fight had to be stopped. Ali said goodbye to Atlanta professionally for the most part, and had one more tune-up before losing to Frazier. He did show up to light the Olympic flame in 1996.
Aiello has a great postscript to the fight-night story. It seems that African-Americans in the crowd were invited en masse to a postfight party offsite. The guests showed up and were greeted by people with guns.The guests were ordered to strip to their underware, and had their valuables taken. Elements of that story were used in the movie "Uptown Saturday Night."
The research here is quite impressive, and most readers probably will learn something about the drama surrounding the fight. Along the way, Aiello drops a note about Jimmy Carter's campaign for Governor in 1970. The author suggests that Carter "moved temporarily to the racial right," in an effort to gain votes in that period. It was also a surprise to see Howard Cosell's name spelled incorrectly in a couple of case; something tells me Howard wouldn't have liked this.
Fans who their boxing books to concentrate on boxing itself probably will find "Return of the King" a little too historical for their tastes, so be forewarned if you qualifiy. For the rest of us, the book shines a bright light on some very unusual circumstances that collided in Atlanta in 1970, and is worth your time.
Four stars
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