The elevator door opened to the ninth floor of what was then the Manila Hilton, which the then world heavyweight champion would call home for a fortnight before what he himself christened the “Thrilla in Manila.” 

Photographer Eddie Alfonso and I were startled to see a bemoustached man waiting at the elevator lobby. He looked just as surprised to see us. We thought he was the champion’s bodyguard; turned out, he was Rahman Ali, the younger brother.

Nervously, we introduced ourselves and asked if we could have a few minutes with the champion. “Sure,” he said, pointing to the presidential suite at the end of the hallway. “Just knock.”  

So we did. The door opened, and there he was: Muhammad Ali himself, larger than life in the eyes of this starstruck newbie sportswriter. Eddie and I were his first visitors, only a couple of hours after he arrived in Manila for his ballyhooed world heavyweight title defense against Joe Frazier on Oct. 1, half a century ago.

Impulse

It all started with a journalistic impulse.

In the early morning of Sept. 15, 1975, Ali and his large entourage landed at the Manila International Airport. After a few statements at the tarmac, his motorcade rumbled down Roxas Boulevard toward the Hilton (now the Manila Pavilion) on UN Avenue.

Eddie and I were on our way back to the Port Area office of the now-defunct Philippine Daily Express and its afternoon publication, the Evening Express, when—on a hunch—we decided to follow the motorcade and try our luck at interviewing Ali at the Hilton. 

It was a gamble. Maybe he’d ignore us, maybe we’d be tossed out. But the gamble paid off, handing us the scoop of our young careers. Ali himself opened the door, surprisingly warm and accommodating. Apparently alone and clad only in a canary yellow bathrobe, he paced barefoot around the suite, stroking his hair with a hairbrush and constantly stopping at the mirror every few steps to admire his reflection. Eddie clicked away like there was no tomorrow.

“I’m more handsome than that gorilla,” Ali declared repeatedly, referring, of course, to Joe Frazier, the former world heavyweight champion who was seeking to regain the heavyweight title he had lost to George Foreman. (It’s the only quote I can remember from that rare encounter.)

Only a few days earlier, Ali had inadvertently christened the third fight of his trilogy with Frazier. A master of rhyming trash talk and creator of the quote “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,” the champion boasted: “It will be a killa, chilla, thrilla when I get that gorilla in Manila.”

As he spoke, he pounded a black plastic gorilla doll for emphasis. The rhyme stuck, and the “Thrilla in Manila” was born, becoming synonymous with one of the greatest fights in history.

Presser

Eddie and I raced back to the office to beat the noontime deadline of the Evening Express. Whatever I wrote, I honestly can’t remember now, but it must have been too sophomoric to be memorable at all. But Eddie’s full front-page photo was unforgettable.

What a scoop! our editor exclaimed.

Later that day, Ali held his first official press conference at the Philamlife Auditorium across UN Avenue from the Hilton. Frazier had faced the press there a day earlier to kick off the two-week pre-fight media circus.

Frazier’s press conference was hijacked by top entertainment columnist and TV host Joe Quirino, who peppered him with questions about his budding singing career.

When JQ, as he was popularly known, tried the same tactic with Ali, the champion humored him until someone finally asked a serious boxing question. It came from the quick-witted Hermie Rivera, a radio and television sportscaster who was also a boxing manager. (Media friends had long kidded Rivera that he looked more like a boxer than the boxers he managed. He even once told the self-effacing story of how reporters mistook him for his better-looking ward, Socrates Batoto, when they arrived in Mexico City for a fight.) 

Impressed by the smart question, Ali told Rivera: “You know, you’re not as dumb as you look.” The auditorium erupted with laughter, and Rivera’s friends howled the loudest.

Trouble

A few days later, Ali and Frazier paid a courtesy call on President Ferdinand Marcos and Imelda Marcos in Malacañang. Clearly charmed by the first lady, Ali could not resist recycling his earlier punchline. 

“Mr. President,” he said mischievously, “looking at your wife, I can see you’re not as dumb as you look.”

The room fell silent. Such irreverence to a dictator, in a country at the height of martial law, could get someone thrown in jail, perhaps tortured, and never to be seen again. 

But this was Muhammad Ali, world heavyweight champion. And Marcos was quick with a sharp counterpunch: “I can see you’re not too far behind,” he teased, glancing at the young woman Ali had introduced as his wife.

“Woo-ho-ho!” Frazier roared in childish delight, sensing trouble for his archrival. 

The woman, it turned out, was not Ali’s wife, or at least not yet. While his real wife, Khalilah (née Belinda Boyd), had yet to arrive in Manila, the champion had been parading the statuesque Veronica Porche, a model and future actress, as his spouse.

Khalilah arrived in Manila shortly. It’s said that she had a shouting match with the champion and a confrontation with Veronica, and left in a huff the next day. 

On Oct. 1, 1975, Ali barely survived and defeated Frazier in one of the most brutal and unforgettable fights in boxing history. But when he returned to the United States, he faced a fight he could not win—with his wife.

Four months later, Khalilah, whose family belonged to the same Muslim group that converted Ali to Islam, filed for divorce on grounds of infidelity. 

In a bitter statement, Khalilah declared: “I left him because he wasn’t what he said he was… I don’t think he deserves the name Muhammad Ali, and I’m going to call him Cassius Clay from now on.” (Cassius Clay was Ali’s name before he converted to Islam.)

Ali went on to marry Veronica, making her the third of his four wives and the mother of two of his nine children.

And my “exclusive” with Ali? Well, it didn’t make me famous. It became just a forgotten footnote in the “Thrilla in Manila,” buried under the mountain of stories written about the pre-fight hoopla and the climactic epic battle that followed. I can’t even remember what I wrote that day. But some memories never fade. Even now, half a century later, the self-proclaimed “The Greatest” pacing barefoot in his hotel suite, brushing his hair and talking trash to the invisible foe in the mirror, is an image this now-jaded journalist will never forget. To be continued